Brutal commutes
The Metro Orange line has been a mess all week — several serious delays, and terrible overcrowding even when the trains are running. When I got to the station yesterday morning, the platform was so crowded that they had to stop the escalator to make sure no one was pushed onto the tracks. And the air conditioning in my car seems to be dead, so I’m soaked in sweat by the time I get home. It’s only taking a little longer than usual, but it’s really taking the stuffing out of me.
The scary thing is that it’s only going to get worse if the price of gas makes more people switch to the train. They can buy some more cars to run more 8-car trains, but that only adds a limited amount of capacity. I can work from home sometimes, but usually not more than once a week. Maybe I should talk to my boss about working 7-3.30 or something.
June 13th, 2008 at 5:42 am
There was a truly huge mistake in building the system, in combining the Blue and Orange lines through downtown. This is the big capacity bottleneck. It all backs up at the tunnel under the river. What needs to happen is the M street tunnel, with the Blue or Orange line routed through it – and a separate river crossing to pick up Georgetown while you’re at it. For this year, and next, they need to raise the level of service on the 38 bus, and lure commuters away from the subway that way. My guess is that in this case, what is sensible will in fact happen, since so many Congressional staff live in Arlington and Alexandria and they are sweating on the same subway cars as the rest of us.
June 13th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Oh, that ain’t good to read. My situation at work is such that, for the next several weeks, instead of driving to my oh-so-nearby office, I’ll be metroing downtown. On the Orange Line. I heard today was awful due to fires at Metro Center. Wonderful.