‘SBB CFF FFS LOL OMG BBQ WTF TLA’
courtesy of ‘Mike Knell’
Navy Yard and Waterfront/SEU are the latest stations about to go through the giant renaming dance. According to JDLand, they may well become much longer. Aaron Morrissey, intrepid editor of DCist, has an editorial in the Post today, crafted from his DCist post on the issue that raises a fine issue concerning the station names. The point is also one that Matt Johnson of Greater Greater Washington tackled this May.
It’s concerning to see station names balloon in length, and making Navy Yard into Capitol Riverfront/Nationals Park/Navy Yard seems to me to be an egregious case. Worse, the renaming of Waterfront/SEU to Waterfront/SEU/Arena Stage when SEU is no longer offering classes seems to me to be a peculiar turn of phrase.
I’m just wondering how long it is before we rename Metro Center to Metro Center/No really, stop pushing/OMG WTF BBQ. At this point, the Vegas line for that change is 5 years. I’d take the under.
The renaming of stations is certainly a fine thing in the case of the creation of something new, but perhaps we should work on some sort of parsimonious compromise wherein station names can’t exceed four words. I’m all for Johnson’s map of shorter station names, and think it may well simplify a lot of issues.
I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.
farragut west/the white house/farragut park-homeless people/not that far from farragut north so if you have to take the red line just go there-why aren’t they connected/renwick gallery
To me, any future station change will never be as egregious as “Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.” At least these others are including other landmarks (yeah, it’s still weak); the airport is the only relevant thing at its stop.
This is so annoying. I think there should be no further expanding/tacking-on of existing Metro stop names, and most of the ones that extend on with three and four locations or landmarks hyphened together should be trimmed. There should be a limit of one landmark/designation, and a rule-of-thumb limit of no more than, say, twenty characters. Determine the biggest/most well-known landmark at a stop, or the one people call it, and leave it at that.
ANCs, businesses, and other interest groups shouldn’t be allowed to keep trying to change the station names for temporary or monetary gain. It’s confusing and impractical, and residents just call the stops by a one- or two-word name anyway.
Ironically, when metro was built in the 70’s, metro offered to run the red line right to American University’s campus right at ward circle, but AU didn’t want it as they feared too much non-campus traffic. So metro moved it to Tenleytown, and AU instead paid for a shuttle service between campus and the metro.
Only 15 years later, they lobbied the metro board to officially change the name to add ‘American University’, at a cost of $60,000 some dollars paid for by none other then the DC government.
Expanding the names does absolutely no good
I thought at first that we were adding sponsers to the names which made me roll my eyes
nate wins.