4 Metro stations reopen for Red Line riders: Silver Spring, Forest Glen, Wheaton, Glenmont

WASHINGTON - FOX 5 is tracking the Metro and red line riders got welcome news this weekend: The four stations that were closed for the summer are back open, right on time.

The closures were for purple line construction and red line improvements. It's a big sigh of relief for riders.

The Silver Spring, Forest Glen, Wheaton and Glenmont stations opened back up Sunday but Silver Spring will remain an active construction zone through the purple line opening, which is slated, for now, to be 2027.

Riders told FOX 5 that the shuttle buses used to replace the train were fine.

"The shuttles have been helping a lot, but it has been so hard, so different, so if you miss one shuttle, you’ve got to wait, so it’s been very chaotic, but everyone’s been so helpful, you know. It floated right through," Metro rider Tiffany Holland said.

WMATA sent a long list of all the fixes it made along this portion of the red line this summer.

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Among them, replaced over a mile worth of rail, nearly 200 track signs, cleaned drains and repaired sidewalks, among other things.

Purple line preps were a key part of this construction as well, building key components for pedestrians who will one day transfer between the purple and red lines.

WMATA says if they’d done weekend closures, this would have taken 8 months, but because they shut down the stations, they were able to do this in three.

Despite varied feelings about how much people liked the shuttle buses, there was near unanimity from people we talked to that they were happy the rail station was back open tomorrow.

"I only heard a little bit about the reopening, when I looked up the WMATA website, shout out to WMATA good job with that, so I’m excited to be able to ride on the trains again, and have that kind of normal flow," rider Amaris Johnson said. 

"I’m actually happy about it because it was way smoother, but I will miss the shuttle buses, though, the nice buses," Holland added.

WMATA said there were 850,000 shuttle trips during the three-month closure.