Green Line (WMATA) - Constructing The Green Line

Constructing The Green Line

Construction of the Green Line south from L'Enfant Plaza began in July 1984 when WMATA issued a call for bids to tunnel under the Anacostia River. The firm of Harrison Western/Franki-Denys (a joint venture) was awarded the $25.6 million contract, with construction to begin in December 1984. WMATA delayed awarding the contract after American anti-apartheid activists alleged that a Belgian company with a minority financial interest in Franki-Denys did business with the racist white-led government of South Africa, but after the links were discovered to be extremely minor the contract was awarded.

The debate over the route for the remainder of the Green Line was finally resolved in December 1984. Residents and D.C. government officials asked WMATA to build stations at Congress Heights and Southern Avenue in order to promote economic development and provide service to St. Elizabeths Hospital and Greater Southeast Community Hospital. In December 1984, WMATA's Board of Directors agreed to return the Green Line to its original route, and build the Congress Heights and Southern Avenue stations. The U.S. district court approved WMATA's decision and dissolved its March 1982 injunction, which had barred construction of the $483 million southern Green Line (now estimated to cost $132 million more than the Rosecroft route).

Funding for Green Line construction fell into place in 1985. Pressured by the previous year's Congressional action, the Reagan administration sought to provide WMATA with $250 million a year for four years to expand the system to 89.5 miles (144 km), a plan which would not fund construction of the system beyond the proposed Southern Avenue Station.

Construction on the line started in 1985. Survey and clearing work for the twin 2,500-foot (762 m) Anacostia River tunnels began in March 1985. A 24 foot (7.32 m) long, 19 foot (5.8 m) diameter tunnel boring machine built by the Hitachi Zosen Corporation was shipped to the U.S. to drill the tunnel, which required boring techniques "so novel that they have never before been used in the eastern United States." The tunnel boring machine ate through "T5" (relatively fine sand mixed with gravel and boulders which occasionally required workers to physically break the boulders apart) and clay formations about 50 feet (15 m) beneath the riverbed. The walls of the tunnel were lined with concrete as the machine moved. Liquid nitrogen was used to harden the ground where the inbound tunnel reached the northern side of the Anacostia River, to lessen the possibility of cave-ins due to the wet earth.

The completion date for the two tunnels was estimated at late 1987. WMATA engineers also inspected the mothballed Waterfront Station and found it to be still structurally sound (although water needed to be pumped from the station). However, some repairs to the tunnel between L'Enfant Plaza and Waterfront needed to be made. Construction of the tunnel from Waterfront to Navy Yard was set to begin in September 1985, construction of the Navy Yard station in early 1986, and linkage with the Anacostia River tunnels shortly thereafter. The two new Green Line stations were expected to open in 1990. In October 1985, WMATA awarded the $24.9 million contract to excavate the tunnel between the Waterfront and Navy Yard stations to Harrison Western Corp. WMATA's board awarded a $41.5 million contract for the construction of the Anacostia Station to Kiewit Construction Co. in June 1985, and said the station would open in 1990. Ground was broken at the site on September 21, 1985.

Funding for construction of the Green Line was threatened again in 1986. WMATA needed $2 billion in construction funds, but Congress was threatening to cut WMATA's funding by up to 26 percent to $184.5 million a year for four years. Congress approved $227 million for 1986 in December 1985, but the Reagan administration said that it would cut off all funding thereafter. WMATA appealed directly to President Reagan to release $400 million in funds already appropriated, but administration officials said WMATA had more than enough money to complete the Green Line. Prince George's County officials threatened to sue Metro as well as block all further construction spending in March 1985 unless WMATA agreed to use its existing funds to build the Green Line into their county. WMATA officials reacted in June by stretching out construction of the Green Line and Anacostia station to 1991. After lengthy negotiations (which included state and local guarantees to pay for cost overruns or funding shortfalls, penalties for defaults, and the imposition of two external financial monitors) and heavy pressure from Congress, Reagan administration officials released the $400 million on July 16, 1986.

With the funds released, construction on the Green Line proceeded quickly. In November 1986, WMATA awarded a $36.2 million contract to Mergentime Corp. to build the Navy Yard Station. A month later, WMATA awarded a $19.5 million contract to excavate a tunnel from the Navy Yard Station to the tunnels being built under the Anacostia River. On March 23, 1986, the second of the two 2,450-foot (747.25 metre), concrete-lined tunnels under the Anacostia River was completed. With the tunnels finished and other contracts awarded, WMATA announced yet another revised timeline for opening the Green Line in April 1987. The transit agency estimated that the Mount Vernon Square, Shaw, and U Street stations would open in late 1990, the Mount Vernon Square to Anacostia link in late 1991, and the Fort Totten to Greenbelt link by 1994. In January 1988, WMATA awarded a $179.1 million contract to build the Green Line from Fort Totten to Greenbelt, and a $6.9 million contract to complete the Waterfront station. In December 1988, WMATA reaffirmed that the Waterfront, Navy Yard, and Anacostia stations would open in late 1991.

Beginning in 1989, WMATA sought funding to extend the Green Line beyond the Anacostia Station and to operate the Green Line. Metro asked Congress to authorize $2.16 billion over 10 years to complete the 103-mile (166 km) system, as well as appropriate the remaining $193 million from the transit agency's original 1980 authorization to complete the Green Line from Anacostia to Branch Avenue and link the Green Line internally between U Street and Fort Totten. Although the Bush administration opposed the request, Congress provided $2.025 billion. Only the stations at Suitland and Branch Avenue remained unfunded.

By mid-1991, however, falling inflation had reduced WMATA's construction costs so much that the agency said it could build the two final Green Line stations in Prince George's County without asking Congress for additional money. WMATA also proposed spending money almost three times faster up-front to accelerate its construction schedule, a move which would be more than compensated for by savings in out-years. Prince George's County officials threatened to block all further Metrorail construction unless they received guarantees that the stations in their county would be built. Funding for the remaining seven Green Line stations in the District and Prince George's remained in doubt as of August 1991, with District officials saying that it made sense to build the Georgia Avenue – Petworth and Columbia Heights stations and Prince George's representatives demanding that the three stations in their county be completed. WMATA said that it had so little money it could not fund 16 critical small construction projects, among them security gates at the Navy Yard and Waterfront stations and parts for escalators at the seven new Green Line stations in D.C. and Prince George's County. The funding impasse was broken in November 1991 when local and state governments agreed to roughly triple their contribution to Metro's construction costs by 1994 to complete the entire system.

The first WMATA budget which contained funds for operating the Green Line was proposed in December 1989. The budget presumed a December 1, 1990, opening for the Mt. Vernon Square, Shaw–Howard University and U Street–Cardozo stations, and requested funds to test the soon-to-open Green Line from Gallery Place–Chinatown to the Anacostia Station. The budget also projected that the Green Line from Gallery Place–Chinatown to the Anacostia Station would open in 1991, and that new Metrobus service will be added in Prince George's County to bring commuters to the new station.

The opening of the Green Line was significantly delayed, however, when in May 1990 WMATA fired the contractor building the Shaw–Howard University and U Street–Cardozo stations. Mergentime/Perini Joint Venture, the contractor working on the stations, had violated its contract with WMATA by reducing the workforce on the project, not meeting project deadlines, and permitting unsafe working conditions to persist. Mergentime/Perini denied the accusations. Although similar problems plagued Mergentime/Perini's work on the Navy Yard station, WMATA did not fire the joint venture company from that project. WMATA said that the problems would delay the Green Line's opening until at least the late spring of 1991.

In August 1990, WMATA hired the Perini Corp. as the new contractor, and required the company to finish the job and rebuild the streets in the area, setting a new Green Line dedication of December 1991. Federal monitors overseeing WMATA's spending, however, issued a report in August 1990 accusing WMATA of poor financial oversight of the project and blamed the transit agency for the delays and problems Mergentime/Perini confronted. Mergentime/Perini sued WMATA, claiming that it was improperly dismissed from the project.

The cost of testing and operating the Green Line left WMATA struggling financially. These costs (along with costs associated with extending and operating the Blue Line to Van Dorn Street) forced WMATA to cut 335 jobs as well as supplies, travel, overtime, and temporary employee budgets. Although ridership was projected to rise 3.8 percent to 260 million trips in the coming year, the increased revenue was not expected to cover the costs of operating the new lines and stations. Mount Vernon Square, Shaw–Howard University, and U Street–Cardozo stations opened on Saturday, May 11, 1991.

Construction of the Green Line past Anacostia Station was complicated by the discovery of a potential toxic waste site in the path of the subway. In June 1991, WMATA discovered that the District of Columbia had dumped 426,000 tons of possibly hazardous incinerator bottom ash in an unused exposed culvert along the subway's potential path near St. Elizabeth's Hospital between 1977 and 1989. The city continued to dump the ash at the site for four years after it learned that WMATA planned to use the site for the Green Line. Experts were concerned that the ash dump contained pockets of methane gas and soluble acid, which would make the site unusable by Metrorail.

Maryland officials used the discovery to press yet again for realignment of the Green Line and abandonment of the planned stations at Congress Heights and Southern Avenue in favor of construction of the stations at Naylor Road, Suitland, and Branch Avenue. The proposal led to public protests against the Maryland plan in Anacostia, and heated arguments on the WMATA board of directors. In an initial report in June 1991, WMATA determined that ash posed no environmental risk, although there were concerns that the level of pollutants would prevent any excavated material from being accepted by landfills in D.C., Maryland, or Virginia. A final environmental report in November 1991 found that the ash was not hazardous, but would need to be removed at a cost of $1 million.

The Green Line from L'Enfant Plaza to Anacostia opened as scheduled on December 28, 1991. Ridership expanded rapidly on the Green Line. In the first workweek of the year, more than 8,000 riders a day boarded at the three stations in Southeast D.C. (more than 5,000 of them at Anacostia), exceeding WMATA's estimates, and nearly 10,000 riders were boarding each day at the three stations by the third week of January.

Construction of the Green Line near Berwyn Heights, Maryland resulted in the creation of Lake Artemesia. In 1976, WMATA removed sand and gravel needed for construction from open space adjacent to the Green Line. In exchange, WMATA paid to develop the area as a lake surrounded by a park.

The Green Line stations at Greenbelt, College Park, Prince George's Plaza, and West Hyattsville opened in November 1993. Almost two years later, WMATA broke ground on the Suitland, Naylor Road, Southern Avenue, and Congress Heights stations, a $900 million project which would complete the final 6.5 miles (10.5 km) of the originally-planned 103-mile (165.7 km) Metrorail system in late 1999. The outbound tunnel to Congress Heights was completed in June 1998. The Georgia Avenue-Petworth and Columbia Heights stations were completed in September 1999, three months ahead of schedule. The Green Line's final five stations opened on January 13, 2001.