While the Commanders gave fans plenty to cheer about on the field Sunday, some got an unwelcome surprise at the end of the Orange Line in Northern Virginia.
They got on the train in Landover close to midnight, made their way through Maryland and D.C., got to the end of the Orange Line at the Vienna station – and then found themselves locked in, with no Metro workers to be seen.
“Are you serious, dude? Now we’re locked into the Metro, the X user DMV Adventures said in a post at about 1:30 a.m.
“I think it’s locked on the other side too, dude,” he said on video. “Look at all these people stuck in the Metro. Both sides are locked – and there’s no employees.”
Metro said the proper procedure when there’s a late-night event the agency is helping with – such as a Commanders game on “Sunday Night Football” – is to close the entrances to stations that are away from the event.
In other words, if you are close to the stadium, you can still get into the station there. But the farther out you go across the system, the entrances get closed. In this case, locked.
Metro stops running at midnight on Sundays. Here, the transit agency was basically getting everyone from the game home. Metro said that after reviewing video footage, they determined passengers were stuck in the station for about five minutes.
“We are reviewing the incident to address why the gates were not reopened timely upon arrival of the last train. We apologize to the customers impacted by this incident,” Metro said.
News4 caught up with Chris Comerford, the man behind DMV Adventures, after he got some rest Monday.
“I just started to think – like, OK, what if nothing happens? How are we gonna get out of here? Because there’s no other way out,” he said.
But he said a Metro employee finally showed up.
“For me, first one off the train, it was more than five minutes, it felt like,” Comerford said. “But somebody eventually came and let us out, and they were very nice and apologetic. But it was nice to finally see the person come up the stairs and just know – whew! We’re not stuck in here.”
At least the inconvenience came after a Commanders win.
Metro is open until 2 a.m. after Friday and Saturday nights.
