Washington Metro - makes you appreciate the tube

[williamn]

Basically this is just me venting. I recently moved to Washington DC from London and I am finding the Metro totally infuriating, here's a few reasons why.

Poor signage and badly lit stations makes it often impossible to find out where you are from the train.

Very poor frequency outside of peak hours - every 20 mins is standard.

Stations unable to cope with volume of passengers

SO many broken escalators - 3 out of 4 in my local station

Lots of randoms stops in tunnels, trains not quite aligning with platforms right and edging along.

Some odd problem with doors, with them often taking 20 seconds or more to open at stations.

I think that's it. Suffice to say it's driving me mad and making me nostalgic for the tube!

 

[citybus]

It seems the safety issues (the fatal crash from a few years ago) in Washington has led naive senators to call for more strict safety measures for all of America's subway systems. They've drafted up regulation that will end up reducing the quality of service on systems which are already safe. It's like the farcical safety measures on US heavy rail that make it uncompetitive with motorcar use. It has unfortunately escaped their attentions that car driving has much higher rates of mortality than trains so this 'safety regulation' only ends up killing more people in the long run

http://streetsblog.net/2012/07/03/how-much-will-new-federal-safety-mandates-cost-transit-agencies/

 

[williamn]

Well at least one of my colleagues here has switched to driving instead of Metro, it's simply quicker.

I read today that operators have to count to 5 before opening Metro doors to ensure they are actually in the platform. Crazy. And oddly infuriating while you wait for them to open.

 

[Eagle]

Also the Washington Metro has one of the least understandable maps I've ever seen. Extremely thick, squiggly lines with tiny dots for stations that are too far separated from their respective labels, and a green smudge in the middle with faint unlabelled pictograms to represent the Mall, without indicating which stations are for which buildings. It'll be even worse when the new Silver line service opens; the centre will be totally filled in with colour...

 

[PFX]

That's not a map. It's a picture of His Noodly Goodness! http://www.venganza.org/

 

[Crisso]

Agree wholly with OP. I first used it on holiday in Autumn/Fall of 2010 joining it at the end of the Red Line at Shady Grove above ground. When it stopped at the first station underground inbound, it was so dark, I thought there was a power cut! It was only after using the system I realised this was the norm. The lighting is appalling and surely a muggers paradise! Also, the standard of driving of the trains was poor with frequent occurances of station stops presumably short of the marker then, a lurch forward for a few feet before the doors opened. In comparison, the New York Subway overall is a very efficient and good system.

 

[citybus]

Mind you they managed to route the Washington system through the city despite all the state & administrative boundaries it crosses. New York hasn't managed to do that very well over the last century.

 

[Eagle]

That's not a map. It's a picture of His Noodly Goodness! http://www.venganza.org/

And there was me thinking that all the secret imagery in DC was of Masonic origin...