Jun 18
Photo: FredoAlvarez (flickr)
Taken above the passenger waiting area at Union Station. Yes, I dared to take a photo there, despite recent high-profile silliness.
Oct 05
Here’s one from the “Well It’s About Bloody Time” file. The Examiner reports, “Metro plans to give riders free SmarTrip cards next year.” The card will also be more widely available. Instead of trekking to Metro’s sales office at Metro Center or a station with a SmarTrip vending machine, one could pick up a card at the local megamart.
Metro aims to eliminate paper transfers with this move by requiring the card for bus-to-bus transfers. More people will be encouraged to pay their transit fare electronically and without scrounging for exact change. The number of people unprepared for bus travel — the ones who ask other passengers for change when they board (and it always seems to be the same people) — would go down. That makes me, a daily bus-rider whose route is often late, very happy.
SmarTrip cards currently cost $5 apiece and are required to pay for parking at Metro station lots.
Sep 26
Metro: ‘Never Try To Run’: A public service announcement on a Metro bus in Washington, DC, discourages people from running after buses. (FredoAlvarez/flickr)
Aug 01
In a curious (and audacious) move, the DC Taxicab Commision (DCTC) canceled a community meeting slated for tonight. The topic: replacing the current taxicab zone system with a metered one. The reason for cancellation: a lack of parking. No, really, they did. They’re afraid they won’t be able to accommodate the large number of people that would surely show up to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library. Funny, they’ve never had a problem dealing with standing room only crowds before.
In lieu of the meeting, the DCTC will administer a phone survey this month to residents in all 8 wards. Additionally, DCTC will set up a phone and email hotline where others can leave comments.
The library, incidentally, is accessible by mass transit, a short walk from the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metro station.
While I firmly believe a metered system is the way to go, the DCTC’s move to cancel tonight’s meeting is a smack in the faces of cab drivers who want their say, especially given the venue’s proximity to alternate transportation. Granted, I’m sure cabbies are allowed to participate in the survey and hotlines as well.
But a lack of parking? Surely there was a better — and less suspicious — reason than that!
Apr 06
The Express’ Free Ride blog offers tips on getting to and from the H Street NE corridor (the so-called Atlas District), where a spate of bars and nightclubs sprang up in the last year or two. Hint: cabs aren’t necessarily your best option.
Then again, that’s true all over D.C.
(link via DCist)
Jul 07
Typically, people leave town as a means to relax and unwind. As my luck would have it, though, I’m not that typical.
My whole day stems from today’s bombing of several stations in London’s Underground system. I awoke at 6:20 or so, intent on putting my overnight wash load into the dryer, and then going back to bed for half an hour. I passed by my computer on the way there, and saw an instant message from the mate.
“Are you there?”
I responded and that’s when I heard about the bombings. Immediately, I covered the incident at my new blog project, DC Navigator. It’s been a couple of hours since the last update, so I need to check back on that soon.
But I digress. Metro, in response, “escalated” its police presence throughout the system, though I get the impression they didn’t exactly come through on that. I saw one police officer at Union Station… and that’s it.
I headed into work for a couple of hours. By the time I left, the terror threat level for all forms of mass transit was raised to “code orange.” Because we all know how effective the color code system is.
I was scheduled to catch a train to Philly at 2:05 this afternoon. I got to the station almost an hour early. I thought I was golden — I had enough time to have a quick lunch and ascertain a prime boarding spot for myself. Couldn’t have been simpler… until this announcement:
“Please have your ticket and photo ID ready before boarding. Your ticket must have your name and only your name on it. If it doesn’t, you will be turned away.”
And my ticket had the mate’s name, and only the mate’s name, on it as he purchased it for me on Monday. Argh.
I headed to the ticket counter to resolve it. After dealing with two people, I got nowhere, and I wasn’t going to get amywhere until I did some financial finagling (sp?) to buy a new ticket and have the old one refunded.
Fortunately, the third time was a charm, and I got a ticket agent to help me with that. I literally had a minute left before the train’s scheduled departure, and I made sure the agent promised me that if I missed the train, I’d be put on the next available one.
With seconds to spare, I made it back to the gate. As it turned out, I had several minutes to spare — the train left more than 20 minutes late. Such is my traveling luck.
Which brings me to now. I’m somewhere between Baltimore, Md., and Wilmington, Del. As long as it doesn’t rain when I’m in Philly like it did last time, I’ll be fine.
Oh, wait…. Hi, Cindy!
Grapefeed
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No on Prop 8
I take the bus to work every morning. On a good day, the bus itself is a few minutes behind schedule (despite my stop’s proximity to the start of the westbound route) and the ride takes about 30 minutes.
Realistically, good days on that route are few and far between. My bus is often more than a few minutes late (Sometimes two busses come at once, with one being very late and the other being right on time or early.) and traffic extends the commute by 10 to 30 minutes. It doesn’t help that my route comes in close proximity to the Capitol and Union Station, two landmarks so thick with traffic they merge into each other. So help you if there’s an emergency at either location, or worse both.
Given the route’s reputation — which hasn’t improved much in my nearly six years of using it — many riders will chase after the bus or run to the stop when they see it approaching. (I’ve been known to do this myself, I imagine to the great amusement of my fellow passengers: “Lookit the fat boy run!”)
I spotted a public service ad inside the bus today which quoted a bus driver who supposedly logged over 3 million miles. He said,
Better off in what way? We’ll be less sweaty? We won’t be mocked by the less mature passengers on the bus? We’ll have a valid-but-difficult-to-prove excuse for being late(r) to work?
If the route had a better on-time record, I might be willing to overlook this PSA. With the Metro bus route’s notorious track record of tardiness — including wait times of up to 25 minutes during rush hour, when busses are supposed to be more frequent — this PSA is nothing more than a printed slap in the face.
For the record, I didn’t have to run this morning; my bus was only 7 minutes late and the ride was about 30 minutes. Today’s was a good commute.
But I was still late to work — I overslept.