There is a lot of talk about how the DC Metro is not keeping up on it maintenance. I had occasion to ride Metro to gain impressions on this topic. The last time I rode Metro is getting on more than 20 years ago. Now as then I regard the stations with their cast-concrete vaults as architecturally pleasing. As the system opened in 1976, my last, prior trip was midway between its opening and now.
That said, I want to say that it remains my favorite mode of transportation to get around the greater Washington D.C. area. The train line is a walk-across-a-pedestrian-bridge from Reagan National airport. It took me to within 10-minutes walk of where I was staying in Virginia, which was a comfortably walkable hotel-shipping-restaurant district along with the businesses and agencies served.
The trains accelerate briskly and smoothly. Don’t know if the ride is as smooth as the proverbial Pullman car, but apart from some jiggle perceptable by sitting at a car end, the ride was steady and the suspension soaked up rolling over crossover switchpoints. Remembering the roar of the subway in Chicago, these train cars are remarkably quiet.
But the visual appearance of the train cars, ouch! What were once bright brushed-surface metal panels are now steeped in grime. The insides can only be described as dingy. For Metro’s vaunted enforcement of a no-food policy – Fawn Hall, secretary to Iran-Contra schemer Ollie North, was reported in the news as being issued a ticket to pay a fine for eating a banana in that pristine transportation jewel of our nation’s capital – there was chewing gum ground into the carpeted car floors. Whereas the stations were kept clean, I saw graffiti inside some subway tunnels – how did it get there? As to the under-the-hood condition affecting safety that has garnered recent news coverage, I took as good a look as I was safely able from the platform and I thought I saw a “patch job”
A postscript on my two main points: 1) the threadbare look to the train cars and 2) the confusing fare options to “newbie” riders.
A gritty, grimy transit system might be OK for New Yawk or Chicaguh (I grew up riding the one in Chicago and have ridden New York’s and other cities). A transit system isn’t supposed to be an Eight Wonder of the World, it is utilitarian, it is a tool for people to get places around a bustling city.
But DC is our nation’s capital, the capital of a great nation. I have e-rolled my eyes on many occasions on this web site with respect to the recurrent argument that it is somehow a national disgrace or a shame that this great nation lacks, say, a shiny high-speed intercity of comparable performance and quality to those of our major trading partners. On the other hand, if there is a place for a “showcase” train, DC Metro is it. I think this was recognized early on and embodied in what was then the “modern” industrial design of the trains to the architectural design of the stations to the no-food policy and making a public example of Ollie North’s secretary eating a banana on a train platform.
Especially with respect to encouraging inexperienced transit users, of which Metro receives many owing to DC rightfully being a tourist destination regarding our national heritage and memories and a destination for petitioning our government, whether for a cause or to seek funding to carry out its governing functions beyond its city limit, or to participate in the Federal legal process.
To encourage the neophyte users, you want a pleasing environment, which Metro once had when I joke to friends about it being the “Moscow Subway”, which at least during the Soviet days I am told was treated as a showcase decorated with art treasures, and back in the day the Soviet police engendered enough respect of the State that you didn’t disrespect it by littering or vandalizing
Montreal METRO aka STCUM METRO (almost as bad as the name SEPTA in Philly) during the Hot Quebec Summers is dusty dirty and hot on both stations and onthe train. The Rubber Wheels generate a lot more dust then the steel wheels and the venulation system for the cars is way outdated.
The day they opened the system I was there on a class trip with the Transportation Program, and it looked dingy and dim. Its style was the sort of architecture that looks dirtier and more awful if any aspect of maintenance is ignored … this in a city that has perennial low-rent problems outside of the parts maintained as islands of privilege with Federal dollars.
Take the WMATA system out from under the DC administration, and extensively redesign it esthetically, and put in lots and lots and lots of LED lighting, and you might be able to get rid of some of the intrinsic dinge factor. But do you really expect that all that is going to occur?
Your memory is good. Back in the late '70s when I last took DC Metro, it looked to me like they used the same card readers as SF BART did. Newbies and tourists always have trouble with a new system so hopefully there is more than one working machine per station. [:-^] More than likely some ‘consultant’ convinced cough DCM management that the new RFID fare cards were the solution to replacing paper tickets on buses and rail. As we’ve seen here in Los Angeles county, there are many, many ways to bungle that changeover and the consultants just kept cashing in. [:(!]
As for the dingy carpets, that is surely a sign of incompetent management and/or a coddled union with narrow work rules. The exact same insane issue has existed on the original BART cars for 40+ years. Carpets should be replaceable with rubber mats as part of a routine maintenance cycle - WTH is so hard about that?
Why? The older cars appear to run and ride just fine – are there maintenance problems with age? That is, have these cars outlived their “economic life”, meaning, specifically, that the annual repair bills exceed the loan payment on new cars?
If getting new cars is to replace cars with the appearance of being worn out, can the interiors be gutted and replaced with fresh carpet and wall panels?
They are aging, but the main reason is that they do not do well in crashes. Metro has stuck them in the middle of consists to try to placate the public, but the physics remain the same.
The 7000s are due to replace the 4000s as well (eventually).
As you may know, regular railroad passenger equipment must meet specific compression tests, and the 1000-series cars date from a time when transit was exempt. Today, transit has its own compression test rules.
I think it is 700,000 b. for regular passenger cars, and 400,000 lbs for rail transit vehicles.