By brownpau
A Metrobus crashed into an Alexandria apartment last night. No one was injured as the resident wasn’t home and the driver had just offloaded his passengers due to a door problem — just before the bus started rolling away — but both apartment and bus appear to have been totalled. WJLA has more, and here’s some video of the scene from Associated Press:
By Brittany
photo: Adam Tuss/WTOP Photo
As shorter people across the metro area (myself included) know, the bars that run along the top of the middle of Metro cars can be quite high, leaving some to crowd around the vertical poles for security. On a full train, this was always challenging, but the problem was exacerbated when WMATA redesigned cars to have even fewer of these poles.
WTOP now reports that WMATA is looking into the issue and will begin adding nylon loops to the ceiling bars in the style seen on many other urban transit systems.
Continue reading
By brownpau
Quick update on the Foggy Bottom Metro escalators: Friday’s mess was the result of a passenger’s footwear getting stuck on the middle escalator that afternoon, closing it down in addition to the already-under-repair first escalator, so that only one escalator was left open to serve as stairs. As of today, two escalators are open but shut down, both serving as stairs. Continue reading
By brownpau
Foggy Bottom Metro escalators have done it again, this time at the height of the Friday afternoon rush, and I have once again gotten video of the mess:
Last time this happened, only one escalator was barricaded, so desperate riders could at least scamper up the opposing escalator. Today, two were blocked, so only one shut-down escalator was available to serve as narrow stairs for both ascending and descending foot traffic. The result: crowds above and below. Epic fail once more.
Metro police and station personnel were on hand to do what little they could, but that didn’t seem to do much to thin the mass of people. And, as before — after taking this video, I didn’t bother waiting in line; it was faster to just walk the two blocks to Farragut West Station.
This is pretty bad, WMATA. Why have escalators at all if your contractors can’t even maintain them?
By brownpau
Notice anything weird about this Metro video I took just yesterday? Watch and listen carefully! Continue reading
By brownpau
A small track fire on the Red Line at Metro Center prompted single tracking between Dupont Circle and Judiciary Square earlier this morning (around 7:30 AM), causing a cascade of delays down the Red Line in both directions all through the morning rush. The fire has been put out and trains are moving, but between 8:30 and 9:00 AM things were still a fair mess, with crowds of people filling trains and platforms to capacity.
To WMATA’s credit, communication with passengers from train and station PA systems was clear and thorough, and the rush hour crowd, though thick, flowed with tolerable courtesy and smoothness. (As quickly and safely as possible, as they say.) At least, that was my experience getting to work this morning. Does anyone else caught in the crowd feel differently?
(NBC4 reports that the fire started in a “stud post.” What are those?)
By brownpau
Bra on Metro Elevator
Originally uploaded by brownpau
Someone must have partied especially hard in the Gallery Place/Chinatown Metro elevator on Saturday afternoon, as evidenced by this bra left on the trash-strewn elevator floor. I’d have picked it up (hey, free bra) but it was a bit damp and muddy, and not my cup size anyway.
By brownpau
“Couth, courtesy, and common sense” — iMetro’s three personal values whose deficiency makes Metro that much more unpleasant to ride. (Strictly speaking, though, “couth” is more adjective than noun, generally used as ironic foil to “uncouth.”) He follows up with a few photos demonstrating said unpleasantness. I’m especially WTF-ing at the jacket on the other side of the tracks and the rocks on the glass canopy. And next time I see someone doing chin-ups on the overhead bars I might just pull down his pants. Or at least tut-tut sternly.
More fun Metro ranting at WTFMetro.
By Tom Bridge
The overturned vehicle we mentioned this afternoon on I-395 in DC? Yeah, it was a WMATA van, transporting disabled passengers. They’re having a bad month over there at Metro, what with the Escalator issues, a Multi-failure Day, a busted Yellow line, and many other issues we’ve all talked about here.
I wonder, is there any place we should send our condolences for their rough month? What exactly do you get that friend that somehow manages to screw up every part of their core competency in just a few weeks?
By brownpau
If you’re like me, you probably wake up every weekend morning thinking, “I’m tired of seeing only pigeons, sparrows, seagulls, starlings, and other parasitic and invasive avian species in this urban environment! But I don’t have a car! If only there were Metro-accessible places to see more diverse species of indigenous birds in the DC area!” Well, despair no more! John Beetham of the DC Audubon Society has posted Birding By Metro, your guide to bird-spotting locations easily accessible by DC public transportation.
Birding By Metro. Go do it. Seriously. Bring back pictures.
By brownpau
Big mess at Foggy Bottom this morning. Watch this video:
Foggy Bottom is the singularly worst-designed Metro station I’ve used in the system: only one exit, twin escalators going up together from platform to mezzanine, and just a single escalator going down to the platform, no stairs, traffic bottlenecks all over the place. The situation was made worse this morning when only one of three mezzanine-to-street-level escalators was working — going down. The middle escalator was closed for repairs, and the escalator going up was open but off, serving as stairs. I’ve seen it like that before, but throw in a rush hour crowd in a time of “high” fuel crisis ridership, and you get a foot traffic disaster.
I didn’t even bother joining the line; it was faster to go back in, double back to Farragut West, and walk from there. When I got back to Foggy Bottom to get some video of people emerging from the system, a few daring riders had resorted to running up against the down escalator — to cheers from the crowd, surprisingly.
WMATA, This is intolerable. You have reached a new level of EPIC ESCALATOR FAIL this morning — even worse than on epic multifail day.
Update: I was on TV today for this video: Fox 5 News Edge story, featuring a quick interview with me outside Foggy Bottom station this afternoon. Washington Post’s “Get There” blog also covers the story: No Way Up at Foggy Bottom, and Clearing Out Foggy Bottom.
By Ben H. Rome
Metro Center, courtesy of brianmka
No, no, this isn’t about the current administration.
We’re talking WMATA and their plan to rehabilitate the Red Line during a four-year stretch. Meaning that aside from rush hour, the most-used line in the system will see off-peak and weekend delays for an entire presidential term.
And if approved, it’ll come right at the time when daily ridership records are falling left and right like so many dominoes. Continue reading
By Wayan
Photo by furcafe in the WeLoveDC Flickr Pool
WMATA is having one hell of a bad day, nay, bad month, that just happens to be capped by a really bad day. We’ve had multiple Metrorail outages today, on the Red, Yellow, Orange, and now all Metrorail lines. And who knows how many escalators are out.
You can blame the high heat. You can blame the creaking system. You can even blame power companies, both Pepco and Dominion. But don’t blame the record high ridership. In fact, wonder why Metrorail has such problems with such low ridership.
First, listen to Metrorail croon about its fiscal 2008 ridership:
For the third consecutive year, more than 200 million people rode the Metrorail system during a fiscal year, and for the 12th consecutive year ridership increased on the rail system.
In fiscal year 2008 (July 1, 2007, through June 30, 2008), 215,314,956 customers went through the faregates, a 3.6 percent increase, or 7 million more customers than fiscal year 2007
Sounds impressive, eh? Like you might be more crowded on the trains when they do run. That’s until you realize that back in the 1970’s, the system was designed for 323 million annual riders.
So, rather than being grossly overcrowded, Metrorail is actually grossly under ridden – 108 million riders short of its expected volume – or only 2/3 of the capacity it was supposedly designed for. And yet, even with 1/3 more design capacity WMATA can barely keep trains running at all, much less on time.
As you imagine a third more passengers crammed in against you on an overcrowded car, all I can say is: thank god those projections were so off, else we’d all be going to hell on Metrorail.
Hat tip to DC City Desk to keep Metrorail in perspective.
By brownpau
Adding on to today’s series of epic Metro multifails (1,2) WMATA kindly informs us that a Dominion Virginia Power problem will be causing Orange Line delays through the evening rush. Power is out at Dunn Loring station, meaning no elevators or escalators, and Orange Line trains will alternate termination points between West Falls Church and Vienna.
Plan accordingly. Me, I’m walking the literal extra mile to the Red Line.
By Wayan
Hot tip for those hoping to cross the Potomac River on Metrorail’s Yellow Line.
Due to an emergency at L’Enfant Station, Yellow Line trains are not crossing the river after Crystal City.
Better to catch a Blue Line train and pray.
By Tom Bridge
At $15, the price is a little high, but starting tomorrow you can navigate the Metro system on your iPhone. The details of all the functions aren’t available on iTrans’ website just yet, but there are a couple pictures in the new iTunes app store (link requires iTunes) which seem to indicate it’ll be pulling train times from the published Metro schedule.
If they’re not using the Metro train-position API, one has to wonder why they bothered at all. Oh well.
At least it’ll get line service updates?
By brownpau
Metro Nesquik Ad
Originally uploaded by brownpau
The current zoetrope-style tunnel ad between Gallery Place/Chinatown and Judiciary Square features the NesQuik Bunny telling you to go to your happy place.
By Amélie
Capitol Columns #5
Originally uploaded by andertho
My first exposure to Washington D.C. was in 1982 as a side stop on our family’s trip down to see the World’s Fair in Knoxville, TN. On that trip we did the National Aquarium in Baltimore and the National Zoo in D.C.. I remember vaguely, the trees being more plentiful and taller, however I’m also a yard taller now, and they seem now, just a bit shorter. I’m still surprised I remember something from over 26 years ago, but D.C. had that kind of effect.
Continue reading
By Tom Bridge
Busted Ass Bus
Originally uploaded by tbridge
If you’ve wandered over to WMATA in the last couple days, you’ve seen that they’re now adding bus delay detail to the top crawlbar so that you can tell just as easily that bus traffic is fubar, as well as the rail traffic.
One thought, though, Metro, could you put the route number before the message, instead of having to wait to see it later in the message?
By brownpau
Smithsonian Station is closed for security and crowd control reasons every Fourth of July, so Orange and Blue Line trains pass right through it without stopping. Fuzzy mobile video shot from a train skipping through the station last Friday, with background tourist chatter:
