Unsuck DC Metro: When did Metro's Slide Start?

The slide started when they expanded the system beyond Arlington, Alexandria, and the District and tried to turn it into a commuter rail. Time to get back to basics. Chop off the Vienna extension; forget about anything south of National Airport; beyond Anacostia? Done. WMATA needs to get over itself and reclaim its mission as an urban mass transit system.

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Another Nick · 649 weeks ago

"The slide started when they expanded the system beyond ...Alexandria."
"forget about anything south of National Airport"

Uh...where do you think Alexandria is, exactly?

John Nota · 649 weeks ago

My family moved to the DC area when I was 12. This was the tail end of the 90s (1998) and I remember relying wholly on the intervals of when a train would come was five minutes during the weekdays, 10 minutes on Saturdays, and 15 on Sundays and it was reliable enough. I remember when I was a first-time tourist in DC the Metro was reliable enough to get you there. It never would creep up slowly upon arriving at a station or be stuck mid-tunnel. Even in the hot summer 4th of July in the late 90s, Metro handled its crowds very well.

Even after I relocated to Northern Virginia and went to college in the state and came back home, went to DC or used Metro for various purposes Metro wasn't bad. It seemed like after I graduated and started interning/working in DC in 2009, Metro couldn't handle crowded trains and had major backups and delays.

Let's not even talk about fares. I remember back in '98, Metro fares used to start under $2.25. I could be wrong, but yes, it was cheaper and better to ride Metro back in the day. Now? No more. I think Metro never really kept pace with the expansion of the DC area since 2000.

Neil Stevens · 649 weeks ago

Agree with @undefined. I did some research a few weeks ago, and the system was specifically NOT designed to be a way to get people form the suburbs into the urban core.

It just can't do that well. It's not designed to. It cannot succeed, which is why the Blue line is NEVER AGAIN going to be useful for this purpose, short of massive construction and capital investment that nobody's ever going to pay for, and would take forever to complete anyway.

"The system is under strain now because we've expanded -- to Franconia-Springfield, to Glenmont."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/...

Chris · 649 weeks ago

A lot of the problems now can probably be traced to the original design decisions, some of which are, for all practical purposes, irreversible. Dependence on escalators, ridiculously long escalators (Bethesda, Med Center, Wheaton, etc.) instead of high-speed elevators such as those enjoyed by the riders at Forest Glen, stations with only one way in and out, and most of all the wheel-and-spoke model for line layout instead of more of a web-like model.

MDScot · 649 weeks ago

Actually the layout is not wheel-and-spoke, just spoke. A circular connector, roughly 50% out from the center would have been a great help .

I assume "hub-and-spoke" is the term Chris was going for here.

Chris · 649 weeks ago

Yes - thanks to MDScot and undefined for the correction.

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Chris · 649 weeks ago

A further problem is that Metro is seen as a transportation cure-all. I live in Bethesda and went to the Iota in Arlington (Clarendon?) to hear music a couple of months ago. Before that time, I had never had trouble parking there. That time, I discovered that most of the street parking has been zoned out of existence, and wasted a lot of time looking for a spot and finally parked about a 20-minute walk from the club. I asked about it, and an Iota employee told me that Arlington figures that if there is a Metro station nearby, everyone can just take Metro. Obviously, relying on Metro (rail and bus, in my case) to get from Bethesda to Arlington and back on a work night is not a practical option. Sadly, I scratched the Iota off the list of musical venues that I will go to. So add to the above list the pie-in-the-sky belief of local governments that a metro stop is a transportation solution that solves all tranportation problems for everyone.

Bitter Brew · 649 weeks ago

Definitely true. Russ Banham's book, "The Fight for Fairfax," has good observations on how politicians embraced Metro as a substitute for adequate roads.

FWIW, Clarendon has added hundreds of pay-parking spaces over the last five years. Iota is just as driveable as ever -- it just costs more $$ to do so. I usually park in the Market Common lot for $6, because it's open 24/7 (on weekends, the lot under the PNC is only $4, but it closes before midnight during a lot of the great weekday shows at Iota).

Clarendon Nights · 649 weeks ago

You should not let that discourage you from visiting Iota! It is my favorite place for live music, as they have bands every night there.

The issue is more with Arlington County than Metro. Arlington has recently been very anti-car, and pushing alt transportation like bicycling, buses, Metro and (eek) streetcars. Arlington County wants less of its citizens to drive, but they don't realize they are alienating people coming from other areas like you in the process.

F'n JD · 649 weeks ago

This. I have hammered on this issue since I arrived here in 1999. A dual track system is destined for failure from Day 1.

That said, it has significantly declined in reliability since 1999-2000.

Ciderbarrel · 649 weeks ago

I have to agree with everything you have said.

I have lived here my whole life and I can only comment to early Jan 2000, but between 1995 and then I used Metro as my daily work commute from Wheaton (and then Glenmont when it opened) to McPhearson (or Farragut North when I didn't feel like transferring) and a they never had the heavy delays due to track work back then. Nor were there constant delays, train problems, or elevator outages. Looking back, I do remember elevators going out frequently in the late 90s and it was a shock to most people as they had been so reliable. Now, I'm shocked IF the station elevator works.

I didn't really get back on a train until 05 or so and in those 5 years or so, I started to see the cracks in service.

Now if I have somewhere to be on the weekends, I plan an extra 45 mins for delays due to single tracking and elevators out of service.

As others have said, dual tracks and the spoke setup to move people only in and out of the city core are 2 big mistakes in the system. Look at NYC, London, and Tokyo at examples of robust subway systems

Ciderbarrel · 649 weeks ago

And by elevators, I meant escalators. Had a WMATA style brain-fart.

VeggieTart · 649 weeks ago

The elevators and escalators are equally unreliable. The elevators just smell worse and are claustrophobia-inducing.

I could be wrong, but I think the reason Metro didn't build redundant tracks is that it had enough trouble getting funding to build the system as it is--which someone should have seen as a recipe for failure.

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MLD · 649 weeks ago

Very few systems around the world have more than two tracks. Extra tracks are for express service, not for sitting empty so you can use it to get around disruptions.

Part of the problem is technological - the system envisioned a future version of public transportation that was difficult to deliver with 1970s/80s technology. High speed, high capacity elevators, better tunneling tech, and other things were not available.

The biggest problem though is that maintenance was underfunded/nonexistent for decades, and we are hitting a wall where a lot of things need to be fixed all at once, similar to the process the NYC subway went through in the 70s/80s. It's about the same time frame - 40 years from construction things started falling apart rapidly. There's a reason why the Green Line has far fewer problems than the other lines - it is much newer.

There are also huge problems with work culture and morale at WMATA as evidenced by many articles on this blog. This won't be fixed by just firing people at the top or the bottom and replacing them - people on this blog screamed "fire Catoe!" and he was, and things haven't really gotten better. There needs to be a concerted effort from the Board to find someone who really wants to shake things up, but they do not seem interested in doing so.

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Ciderbarrel · 649 weeks ago

I feel that there needs to be something a la "Office Space". They need to have everyone interview to keep their jobs. I think a complete implosion of the workforce, from the board all the way down to the bottom of the chain need to be fired if they're not up to snuff and the ones who really care about their job and really work hard need to be kept. They are a rare breed, in WMATA, indeed.

Jason · 649 weeks ago

Express tracks may not be there to just sit empty (and you know, be intended to provide express service), but they CAN be used to divert around problems.

Bryan · 649 weeks ago

So what does Metro do? Make the uber expensive Silver Line two tracks. Great job guys.

Stephen Smith · 649 weeks ago

For someone who spends so much time bitching about WMATA, you really have very little knowledge of how mass transit works elsewhere. WMATA has a lot of problems, but the two-track design is not one of them. I can't think of a single postwar metro system in the WORLD that has four tracks (save for some incredibly high-throughput Japanese lines), and the vast majority of prewar systems also only have two tracks (London, Paris...). Here's a good explanation of why express tracks are outdated.

Aaron Z. · 649 weeks ago

The problem has very little to do with being able to scale down service and single-track - Metro and others do this already. The argument that Metro's planners made a mistake by only having one track in each direction has more to do with peak capacity than anything else. This is especially a concern because there are six lines (soon, seven) vying for three routes through downtown. The DC Metro is a bad compromise between cost and efficiency. The line merges and splits create a number of choke-points in the system (most notably Rosslyn, Pentagon, and L'Enfant Plaza). When single-tracking, you really can't run more than one or two trains per hour in each direction because of the signal issues.

Well, the problem is twofold.

The first is interlining. Two have two tracks for a line carrying two separate services is bad enough; two tracks for THREE services is insane. If all of the colors were separated and ran on their own two tracks, it would be far less of an issue (not the least of which would be because those other lines would be providing redundant capacity).

Second, though, is just the shitshow that is WMATA right now. If trains weren't subject to constant offloads, weekend repairs, etc. - i.e. if the system were in a state of good repair - then two tracks would be perfectly adequate. But this is sort of a catch-22 (kind of like the argument against stainless steel cars: don't pay more to make them safer in crashes, just DON'T CRASH).

abstractnonsense 6p · 649 weeks ago

Two tracks carrying two services is normal in many cities around the world. In New York, nearly every track pair splits into two different services somewhere, and one track pair (the 60th Street Tunnel) splits into three. In London, whose longer stop spacing and deep-suburban service has parallels with Washington, two tracks carry 2-3 services on the subsurface lines, with some of those services branching out further in the suburbs, and on the deep-level lines three lines branch as well; only in two locations do different lines interline to give local and express service. On the Paris RER and every S-Bahn system, a central trunk line carries anywhere between 2 and 6 services. In Chicago, the two-track Loop carries five different services, with flat junctions. In Tokyo some commuter lines have four tracks with local and express service, and the busiest has eight, but that's justified by immense demand, and most central track pairs are highly branched in the suburbs because of subway and commuter rail interlining.

Branching is actually very logical on a system that's used even for outer-urban service, let alone suburban service like in Washington. You're not going to get the same demand out of Dulles or New Carrollton or Bethesda as out of Union Station, Arlington, and the Capitol. This means that to avoid overcrowding the inner segment or running lots of empty trains to suburbia, you need to either short-turn some trains or branch. (None of this means it's a bad idea to build a fourth trunk line through DC, just that the idea of giving each color its own dedicated tracks is bad.)

Paul · 649 weeks ago

March 26 1976

Kara · 649 weeks ago

Yeah, the 90s were not that bad. I would not call them great but is what I expected when I moved here. One of the reasons I came here after graduate school in 96 was because I did not drive and DC had a metro system (and my prior experiences as a visitor had always been good).

I would place it in the late 90s or certainly by 2002 when they just stopped caring. They did some general idiocy on 9/11 but I think we can cut them a slack as that day was an anomaly.

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Guest · 649 weeks ago

A lot people point to the Red Line crash, but things were going well downhill at least starting in 2000.

I actually used to *like* taking Metro. Now it's a chore.

I place Metro's slide on poor management and lots of promises made to its labor force that never could be kept in the long run.

I also blame the board for not having the guts to stop stretching metro to the breakign point. Politicians should not be in charge of a transit system.

woodstockdc · 649 weeks ago

For my first Metro ride, Jimmy Carter was President, the entire Metro system consisted of the portion between Rhode Island Avenue and Metro Center, and it cost $.25 each way.

Metro's slide into suck started in the late 1990s and has only gotten worse in the past 10 years. Lack of investment into infrastructure combined with inherent limitations in the system (really, WMATA, no express track?), mixed with management that has been indifferent at best to the plaints of its ridership mean that things will get worse before they get better.

I think they first started having problems in the late '90s/early 2000s when they bought the 5000 series, manufactured by a Mexican company, which suffered from many quality problems including derailments. Then they took the 2000/3000 series out for rehabilitation resulting in a shortage of railcars.

Also, due to lack of funds, rail maintenance was deferred.

Knows Metro · 649 weeks ago

You can draw an analogy between a lot of airline carriers and southwest. The reason southwest has been relatively successful is that they have one model of airline in the entire fleet. this provides savings in so many ways.

metro on the other hand....1000, 2000/3000, 4000, 5000, 6000, each with a different logistical need and specialized workers...and now 7000s.

the stupidity runs long and deep

4 replies · active 648 weeks ago

That's not quite an accurate comparison. You can't keep manufacturing the same railcars in perpetuity. Safety standards, HVAC, system compatibility, ATO, OPTO, etc. - the list of improvements and system advances goes on, and requires that new railcars be built to keep up. Can you imagine if these still ran in New York? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lo-V Though then again, they DO have bench seating. Nearly 100 years ago.

Now, I would agree that those are way too broken up. If the 7000-series passes muster, WMATA should exercise every single option they've got on the order and bring us some future stability. But you just know that they won't.

Newbie · 649 weeks ago

I don't see how the analogy carries over.

Is it that you want all rail cars to come from one, and only one, manufacturer? Or is it that you'd rather have no series designation at all and have the entire fleet replaced at once?

I can't think of any large rail transit system (subway or commuter rail) that has a fleet conformity like Southwest has with the 737.

abstractnonsense 6p · 649 weeks ago

Some large systems come close to this fleet uniformity, by making huge orders. This tends to result in lower per-unit costs. New York's most recent subway order, the R160, was 1,662 cars. Its most recent commuter rail order, the M8, was small because it's for one line with different electrification, but the previous one, the M7, was 1,172 cars. Both orders were cheap by US standards. Japan has even larger orders, and (for several other reasons as well) very low rolling stock costs; JR East's E231 and E233 Series orders are both well above 2,000 cars each. The R160, E231, and E233 were all manufactured by multiple vendors, each responsible for a portion of the order, so uniformity does not mean vendor capture.

Fleet uniformity is actually a good goal to strive for, and if I were designing a rail system for scratch I'd make sure to have it to lower maintenance costs. An established system should strive for this as well, but it can take decades to retire older cars, since unlike with planes there's generally no secondary market for used subway cars as the specs are different for each city. California High-Speed Rail is thinking in such a direction, and at least one of the international HSR operators that peer-reviewed the business plan noted its advantages, while also criticizing many other aspects of the CAHSR plan.

Mike D. · 648 weeks ago

Actually, the PATH in NY/NJ has an entire fleet of PA-5s as of 2011, which replaced it's collection of various years' PA-1 through PA-4 railcars which had been the oldest average age fleet in active service of any rail transit in the country.

Alex · 649 weeks ago

I grew up in Virginia and have lived in PG County and DC as an adult. For me, the big decline started with the red line crash. However, suppose the "decent" service we were used in the past was due to the deference of maintenance? What I'd like to know is if the night/weekend single-tracking and constant closures is the standard we need to get used to in order to avoid another tragedy? Or is this Metro simply catching up on everything they didn't do in the past, with a goal of easing back on drastic maintenance and associated closures and delays? But if it is the new standard, we'll never get service back again due to the fact that they built this system without express/bypass tunnels.

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KidIncredible · 649 weeks ago

The crux of WMATA's issues stem from the funding structure. Being stuck as an interstate compact means there's no way for WMATA to compel DC, MD or VA to give them any particular amount of funding. They basically go hat in hand to the states and DC and ask for whatever they can get. Virginia has basically held WMATA's funding hostage on multiple occasions (most recently to get a member on the board from Richmond, even though that did little to nothing). Without funding, you can't do ANY sort of capital investment, and you struggle to even maintain your system.

I dream of having MARTA's half-cent sales tax for capital purposes, but that could never happen under an interstate arrangement like WMATA.

And yes, the dual track structure is limiting WMATA at the moment, but it worked well with lower ridership and there was no way to assume that population was going to boom so high in this area. BART does fine with a dual track simply because their ridership hasn't exploded like WMATA, so is BART screwed by their design? Not really. Not yet at least.

1 reply · active 649 weeks ago

Definitely, the funding is an absolute killer. Especially because the solution is not necessarily even a three-or-more-track system.

If trains ran a) good headways, b) without breaking down or offloading, and c) with limited overcrowding, the need for third and fourth tracks would be pretty small. And much of the overcrowding/inherent limitations of a two-track system can be solved just by building additional lines that service the core to alleviate the pressure on current key stations. We can live with a two-track system; it's what runs on it that needs fixing.

EdH · 649 weeks ago

I moved to D.C. in 2004 and commuted via Metro every day, first from Rosslyn to the Farraguts and then from Cleveland Park to the same. I didn't use a car.

In 2007 I moved to Australia for two years. When I came back to D.C., I noticed that it had declined significantly. Not sure I can point to specifics of it from the time, but I remember thinking that it was not as good as it used to be.

Guest · 649 weeks ago

I started working in D.C. and taking Metro in 2002. It wasn't as bad as it is now, but every passing year it would get progressively worse and worse. Until now when it's pretty much a complete joke and having a smooth ride with no drama is a blessing.
Just this morning the operator of the Green Line at L'Enfant didn't allow all of the passengers to offload before speeding off to the next stop. Not only were those of us on the platform unable to get on, but the folks needing to get off the train at L'Enfant were taken away to the next stop against their will! WTF?

Mariterri · 649 weeks ago

I have lived here since 1989, both in Virginia & DC, and have always taken the metro while driving in if I know that I need to work late or missed my bus. I think the one track system has led to most of the problems we face today and most of all, I think the fact that the WMATA functions in essentially a tri-state area with limited funding is its second downfall. The nature of how metro is run does not allow for long term planning. I can remember Metro, in the 90's claiming that unless funding was increased we would be facing massive problems with the outdated infrastructure. Today we are. It's third and fourth fatal problems: very poor management in confronting these issues and the fact that the metro devolved into essentially a jobs program where employees do not need to worry about losing their jobs for poor performance. This is the icing on the cake.
I have learned to work with metro - I changed my hours at work to 10-6:30 pm so that I commute outside of the rush hour and that has worked for me just fine with the occasional annoyance. Not everyone has that luxury, unfortunately.

asdf · 649 weeks ago

March 27, 1976

guest · 649 weeks ago

well, i started riding it back when the coaches turned into pumpkins at 6 pm on sundays; i have to agree that it's been the last 15 yrs or so that have been the problem. unfortunately, i have no solutions. :(

and on another topic: the judge's order in the islam ad kerfuffle:
http://legaltimes.typepad.com/files/collyer-opini...

(i had to proactively *look* for the ad at glenmont; it's at the yard end of the platform on the glenmont side. wonder where the protestors' ad is going to end up? bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard' perhaps?)

3 replies · active 649 weeks ago

+1 for the Douglas Adams ref.

WMATA: A Bureaucracy Only a Vogon Could Love

Narwhal 741 · 649 weeks ago

The scary thing is, that the Vogons could probably do a better job of running WMATA that the management that is currently in place.

abstractnonsense 6p · 649 weeks ago

The station art would be horrendous, judging by their poetry.

dhdf · 649 weeks ago

I moved to the area in 1999. I used metro at least twice a day for work, would often take it on the weekends as well. It was inexpensive, I think $2.10 from Silver Spring, reliable, a smooth ride free of the constant jerking we now experience, and weekends didn't mean sitting in a station for 35 minutes to try and board a cattle car. There were things like the 10% bonus for putting $20 on a card, and no peak of peak or $1 surcharge for paper cards. It was rare to find a broken down escalator or elevator. Then around the mid 2000s the system seemed to go to crap, and metro's answer was to raise fares, then raise them again, then again, and now I pay more than $11 just to get to work and back, slow as hell, literally being jerked around. I don't blame the current crop for it all though, I think it was likely the jerk before these guys who ignored maintenance issues because he didn't want to anger Jackie Jeter's crew. To me, it looks like what we are experiencing now is the result of ignoring the system for a decade. We shouldn't be surprised one bit, metro is exactly like all of DC's public systems, corrupt, full of incompetent people who are working jobs not at all due to merit, promotions happen because people know people, and nobody's held accountable for wrongdoing, ever. Until there's a change with how metro manages themselves, I mean a real change where metro installs a top to bottom accountability system and managers actually manage and people are held accountable, until that happens metro will continue to suck. I don't see that happening, just more of the same excuses and band-aids, oh, and fare increases of course.

achmafooma 1p · 649 weeks ago

I can't pinpoint a time...but I rode the Orange Line almost daily from early 2002 to mid-2004. At the beginning it was acceptable. But it degraded noticeably over those two years.

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Guest · 649 weeks ago

I remember back in the day you could get a bus transfer at your departure station. When you gave that bus transfer to the parking attendant (remember them?) at the lot or garage, you got a parking discount (I think it was something like $1.75 to park when you had the transfer.) Back then I wore an onion tied to my belt, because that was in style.

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VeggieTart · 649 weeks ago

I remember those little transfers you would get (have to remember to get it before boarding your train) that would also reduce your fare on the bus you caught. But transfers went by the wayside when SmarTrip was implemented and the card could do it automatically. I sort of appreciate that because some drivers would get cranky if the bus I catch is not right outside the Metro station. Now, as long as I catch a bus within a certain time frame of getting off Metro, I get the discount.

I know they discontinued bus transfers because of fraud; I wouldn't be surprised if some little miscreants found a way to game the system passing out Metro transfers.

pearygirl · 649 weeks ago

I rode Metro from 1981 to 2000, stopped (was in a carpool) and have been back riding Metro since 2010. I have to say I don't remember any real problems that hampered Metro, other than the weather (a couple of times snow stopped the buses, but not the trains, I was stranded in Silver Spring and had to get a hotel room, hence I do not go into work when there is snow in the forecast). Only negative is that I remember the wait for a train was a lot better than now. The customers that ride the trains are a bit more obnoxious (who puts their foot on the pole and blocks the aisle?) and the general mess they leave behind.

SammyDC · 649 weeks ago

I've been riding Metro to/from work since the mid-1980's. Back then and well into the 90's it was a safe, clean, reliable system. Rarely heard about offloading trains or track malfunctions (not even once a month back in those days). I've noticed a decline since about 2003 and a very steep decline in the past 3 or 4 years. System still gets me to/from work, but it's not a pleasant experience. Stations smell, rides are jerky, ceiling tiles are removed from several stations (mold, asbestos in the air?), malfunctions every day, poor maintenance and lousy management. It really was nice 20 years ago.

Poor · 649 weeks ago

One of Metro's founding fathers was named Cletus. I swear to god. Look it up.

ambd · 649 weeks ago

Moved here in the late 1980s from NYC area and was amazed by the speed, efficiency, cleanliness, etc. of Metro. I rarely had to wait more than 10 mins. for a train (and that was only on weekends) -- during rush hour, trains were regularly less than 5 mins apart, they ran automatically and the commute was dreamy in comparison to what it has become. I have commuted on Metro nearly every week day since that time and have watched the system go from stellar to sucky. The decline began in the late 1990s. It is due to a combination of things -- poor initial design choices (escalators, entrances, etc.), the age of the system, and the lack of proper maintenance. I often ponder those "good old days" and wish there was some real leadership capacity regionally to tackle this problem and bring Metro back to its former glory.

ANONYMOUS · 649 weeks ago

People who point out that Metro is too stretched make a good case.

Look at any city with successful mass transit and you'll see a small, dense core of subway which is fed by commuter rail for those who live a little further out.

In the US, with the poss. exception of NYC, pols have decided that it'd be cheaper just to combine the role of commuter rail with subways.

Metro is a great example of why that's a bad idea.

Silver Line? Are yo ukidding me?

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John · 649 weeks ago

I visited DC in 2000. Was pretty impressed by the Metro.

Moved down here in 2006, paid extra money to be near a metro and commuted to work. It wasn't too bad then.
In 2007, I started noticing more frequent offloadings.
In 2008, I started noticing the red line was always experiencing melt downs.
In 2009, we had the Red Line crash. I also started noticing That an absurd amount of escalators were broken
In 2010, we had an escalator accident. I believe Sarles took control this year.
In 2011, we got Dan Stessel. Notice that the AC is breaking down on many trains.
2012, we get rush+, PIDs not working, and even fare gates and ticket vending machines frequently breaking down.

Its getting comical at this point. What is next?

1 reply · active 649 weeks ago

Neil Stevens · 649 weeks ago

I have to say, Rush+ was a failure of PR, not a failure of the system. Rush+ is *working as designed*. Rush+ is not an enhancement of service. It's a necessary *realignment* of service, sacrificing the Blue line, that's only going to get *worse* for Blue line riders when Silver starts coming down the tracks.

Capacity is finite. You can only run so many trains on the Armory-Rosslyn tracks, and they're going to be headed in three directions from Rosslyn now: Wiehle, Vienna, and Franconia. WMATA has (admittedly reasonably) decided that because riders going to Pentagon and below have the Yellow line option, that they're going to sacrifice the Rosslyn-Pentagon stretch in order to make this work.

Frank · 649 weeks ago

Lived inside the beltway my whole life and while I agree that there were not the chronic problems back in the 80s and 90s, the system never really went anywhere you wanted to go. It never went to G'town, it was always far from hotspots, or a long walk to your work from wherever the stops were. And, even back then, it was always way more expensive for what you paid for, than say NYC (which goes EVERYwhere, and back then just cost one token). I've always hated it.

3 replies · active 649 weeks ago

Jason · 649 weeks ago

To be fair to Metro here, apparently WMATA wanted to put a Metro stop in Georgetown, but Georgetown voted that down (something about keeping out the riffraff, or something like that).

Also to be fair to both WMATA and the Georgetown NIMBYs, the geological composition underneath Georgetown would require some reeeeeaaaally deep digging, apparently, which would make a station there quite expensive (both then and now).

Still, I say worth it, but everyone's pinching their pennies these days.

VeggieTart · 649 weeks ago

It's not just the NIMBYs but the logistics of building a station there, considering how deep it would have to be to dive under the Potomac River (it's why Rosslyn is so deep and why I really hate using that station). A number of years ago I heard an interview with a guy who did his thesis on the history of Metro, and he said that another problem was much of the stuff in walking distance from a proposed station was in the river.

RE: The article above.
Is six bus crashes a day normal for a mass transit system? (What exactly constitues a crash in this instance? I would assume they mean "incidents" as the concept of a crash to me implies an "accident" which if anyone here knows are two different things).

eed017 · 649 weeks ago

In my experience, Metro's hey-day was from about 1990-2005. RIP Metro.

Dan Stessel · 649 weeks ago

You're all being so negative. You haven't mentioned our new customer comfort enhancement that has taken place over the last several weeks. Hot cars and hot stations has seen dramatic reductions over the last three weeks. Clearly this is due to our diligent and hard working maintenance staff.

You're welcome.

4 replies · active 649 weeks ago

Mallory · 649 weeks ago

That's only because the weather has been colder. Can we *really* accredit that to WMATA?

Arouet · 649 weeks ago

WOOOOSH

Dan Stessel · 649 weeks ago

Fall fixed the AC units.

You're welcome.

Patrick J · 649 weeks ago

What, you don't like the enhanced maintenance environment

ZZinDC · 649 weeks ago

I grew up in suburban MD and remember Metro construction–the fighting over routes, the disruption of downtown – and the excitement as the system opened. I rode it the first day in 1976 and almost daily since then. I agree with the earlier posters that the decline started in the mid 1990s; I think Metro a lacked interest in running the system – like kids with a toy train, all the fun were in building it, but they couldn’t really be bothered with upkeep. The physical decline was accompanied by a change in the public attitude toward Metro. There was one snowy winter, 1996 I think, which showed how inadequate Metro was in an emergency, although people had come to rely on it. After those storms, people had a very different, angrier attitude on the trains. Since 1976 we have seen public support waste away. I don’t think the riders really believe that the poor service due to track work will be effective or ever end, and have begun to stop relying on Metro in off-hours. Clearly the bungled Rush+ received no benefit of the doubt from skeptical riders, and further depleted support for the system.

Guest · 649 weeks ago

April 7, 1999 - the day of the "Cherry Blossom Mutiny" when metro riders refused to get off a train that was taken out of service for a door problem. Read more here - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/...

2 replies · active 649 weeks ago

Ciderbarrel · 649 weeks ago

My mother and I were on that train. It was so surreal. There was just no where to get off. We were all scared that if somehow we got off, we would get accidentally pushed onto the tracks.

Sadly, this is common place now.

This happened a lot in the 1980s on the NYC Subway (which, if you read the whole thing, sounds a TON like Metro is today). Best part: the riders eventually all got free tokens! http://nycsubway.org/wiki/The_New_York_Transit_Au...

I personally think we should do this again. Stir up some outrage. It's about fucking time.

Deafinthecity · 649 weeks ago

Honestly for me is when they started to expand the rail and bus service to other areas and increase the fare. I remember paying $1.10 on the bus transfer included and paying $2.00 on the rail to downtown dc.

Guest1989 · 649 weeks ago

I moved here in 1989. I used Metro in the early 90s not to work but for work. It was easy, reliable, clean, inexpensive. I think the sheer numbers are the key differential and what Metro was unprepared for. Maybe if it had been better managed, a smoother transition could have occurred, I don't know. But the numbers are what is here now that wasn't then. I never ceased being amazed at Metro 1989-1996. never.

I remember also people sneaking cigarettes in the back of buses in 1989. Those buses were so comfortable!

Guest1989 · 649 weeks ago

Until fairly recently we could pay with pennies on the bus. The fare machines accepted money a thousand times better than the ones today. Or maybe they actually have improved (after a dive in quality) but I wouldn't know since I use a smart card all the time.

When I got here, bus fare was .75 I think.

Guest1989 · 649 weeks ago

Andrew · 649 weeks ago

I think around the 2001 mark would be the "tipping point." I first moved to DC in 1995. Metro was how I got around and it was great. Much, much nicer than the NYC system I grew up using (no grafitti, no trash). Much more reliable then. And, although it was brown and orange, I thought the carpet was classier than what you would find on the floor of a NYC subway.

But after the 00s began, I think what happened is the city and surrounding areas starting growing by leaps and bounds from the dot-com boom, the contracting and government jobs in a struggling economy. More and more people are moving here for jobs, quality of life etc. And Metro just can't keep up with the demand. That's when things started to break down from over use (probably long beofre Metro had predicted they would go bad). And it's been downhill ever since. That's my theory anyway.

1 reply · active 649 weeks ago

Guest1989 · 649 weeks ago

This is right, Andrew. It was the additional pressure in the form of numbers. Had the numbers remained the same, well - back then, it was a cakewalk. Easy breezy. It's the increase in riders.