Metro cooled off Nyarku by putting his family up at a Holiday Inn for two nights. We apologize for the inconvenience. Fernandez acknowledged that the contractors building the three miles of track and two stations in the Columbia Heights and Petworth areas have made mistakes, nicking utility lines too often and taking too much time to clean streets of the dirt and mud created by the trenches workers are digging to lay the tunnel and put in the stations. The stations, scheduled to open in 1999, will connect the Green Line between U Street and Fort Totten, giving riders a seamless trip between downtown Washington and Greenbelt in Prince George's County. 14th Street between U and Harvard streets, and steel plates cover holes.
Cement trucks block crosswalks.
Power lines are exposed at 14th and Harvard streets where schoolchildren cross. One recent day, the corner of 14th and Kenyon streets was covered with two inches of muddy water pumped from below the surface into a storm sewer. It may not be much consolation to residents such as Crawford, Nyarku or Imhoff, but conditions in the Shaw and U Street areas were worse during the subway construction there. At one point the contractor was fired after stopping work, leading to delays and lawsuits during the late 1980s and early 1990s. To avoid repeating the Shaw debacle, then-Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly and the Metro board negotiated an agreement under which the safety and cleanliness of the Columbia Heights and Petworth areas were to be maintained at all times.