<Paul> The Intuitive Rider
Regular metro riders quickly develop a "feel" for their daily commute; they learn to process subtle visual and auditory cues that go unnoticed by the tourist or weekend rider. With a glance, the intuitive rider can gauge the vital statistics of the day's commute: is it more crowded today than usual? less busy than yesterday? are the trains backed up?
I ride in the last of six cars from Metro Center to Takoma every afternoon. My intuitive assessment of the crowd begins as I step on the escalator down to the platform. I'm like an experienced park ranger estimating the crowd on the lawns during a weekend outdoor concert. Usually, just by glancing at the people standing, waiting for the train, I can predict how pleasant my commute will be. A sparsely distributed crowd -- the kind I most often see because I tend to leave work at 6:30 or 7:00pm -- means that I'll be able to sit where I like: close to a door (but not in a senior citizen or handicapped section), in the inside seat, and maybe even without a neighbor.
A slightly larger crowd (that's the thing with intuitive cues, I can't put into words how much bigger the crowd needs to be, but if you showed me pictures of people on platforms I could shout out my report like a savant counting spilled jelly beans) and I'll be sitting on the aisle, somewhere far from any door in the middle of the car. Add a few dozen more people, and I'll have to sprint to the one or two empty seats on my car -- probably beating out a mother laden with children and bags in the process. One more step up, and I'll definitely be standing, but with enough breathing room to pull out my book and read. At the next level, I'll forget about the book, and just stare solemnly at the other miserable commuters. Crowd even more people onto the platform -- and at this point all it would take is one sadistic shove and someone would end up on the tracks -- and I'll be standing cheek-to-jowl as temperatures and tempers rise. Finally, anything past this level and I'll turn heel, and wander through the Hecht's above Metro Center for a half hour.
But, the quality of my predictions from the top of the escalator can't compare to the gut instinct I feel as the train emerges from the tunnel. All it takes is a glance at the first three cars of the six car train, and I know with great accuracy and detail what the last car will look like. The first car is always less crowded than the second, and the second less than the third, but I can tell by looking at the three whish by, exactly what the day's commute will be. </Paul> <!--7:53 AM-->
<Paul> A Segway
A three month hiatus is pretty pitiful, even for a blog that isn't linked from the outside world and that has no readership to speak of. To help guide me out of my posting funk, I thought I'd post a non-Metro-although-tangentially-transit-related post.
The Segway scares me. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go enter "Segway" into Google and have a read; I'll wait. Welcome back. I'm terrified of the Segway because of the ridiculous amount of hype that preceded it; because it's masquerades as a geek-gadget although it's really a status symbol designed by rich people and being bought by rich people who aren't geeks at all; and because, after the photos that emerged this past weekend, it reminds me of that dumb guy that we call President.
What scares me most about this thing is that someone claims that Steve Jobs once said that people would "design cities around it." This is the type of perverse thought that brings comfort to Segway's investors but scares the bejeezers out of me. We built cities around cars, and we almost destroyed urban life in the process. A city built to the Segway-scale will be a city too large for pedestrian life; widened streets with Segway-friendly lanes will eat away at valuable sidewalk space; Segway "parking lots" will appear. And the homeless won't drive Segways. College students won't have their own Segways. Cities will be pleasant and accessible for rich and middle-class professionals; it will be too large and too populated by fast moving, good lookin' lawn mowers for anyone else's tastes.
I'm comforted by the fact that I'm a late joiner to the Segway backlash. Plenty of other people have commented on these negative points, most more eloquently than have I. San Francisco has banned them from sidewalks. And slashdot quotes today from the new book about Segway that Steve Jobs' first impression of the thing was that he thought it sucked, meaning that the earlier-reported quote was either apocryphal, or a warning.
And if Steve Jobs thinks it sucks, then I consider myself in pretty good company. </Paul> <!--10:02 PM-->
<Paul> d2M / dM2
Why do metro lines curve in one direction? Like smiley face mouths, or root tendrils breaking the soil, metro lines curve either north, south, west, or east, but never in more than one direction. The Red Line is the most exaggerated -- it's like two dandelions, swaying in the wind.
But examine the Orange and Blue lines to best see the trend. Moving from West to East, the Orange line starts in the North, at Vienna/Fairfax, winds a bit through DC, and then peels off again to the north to New Carrollton. The Blue starts far to the South at Franconia-Springfield, and ends up South at Addison Road-Seat Pleasant (I'm not a fan of these hypenate metro station names, by the way.) Why were these lines designed like this? Why don't the two lines cross in DC, with Orange heading to Addison Road and Blue to New Carrollton? Is it supposed to be some mnemonic device? (Orange always is north, Blue always is south)? Is there some technical reason that I'm missing -- doubtful since the two lines share tracks in DC.
</Paul> <!--9:51 AM-->
<Paul> The Metro Center Rules
Metro Center is not a typical metro station. Thanks to the confluence of the 'big 3' metro lines -- the blue, orange, and red -- this is the meeting of the Tigris and the Euphrates, the O'Hare Airport, the El Toro 'Y', of the Washington, DC Metro system. Although I don't have hard numbers to back this up, I'm sure more people get on and more people get off at that station than at any other station on the Red Line. So, people, please follow these rules when you're at this station:
1. If you're standing by a door, get the hell out of the way when it opens. You can't just stand still, like a stick in a river, as people flow past you in both directions.
2. When you board the train, keep walking. Don't park it on the first pole that you see. See rule one if you're still confused about this point.
3. Walk up the platform escalators, if you're physically able. You can stand on the right as soon as you get to the street escalator. It's fifteen short steps and they're moving!
Thank you. </Paul> <!--9:32 AM-->
<Paul> The Arlington Cemetery Station Walk of Shame
Two days ago, I had to go to Virginia for a meeting. This is a very unusual thing for me; I've probably ridden the metro to Virginia maybe 10 times in the year and a half that I've lived in the area.
And I screwed up.
I transferred at Metro Center -- that was the easy part, Metro Center is home base to me: Cool, calming, reassuring, no problem. I descended another level to get to the Blue/Orange tracks, again, no problem. I even got on the train headed in the right direction. I paused to congratulate my metro prowess; I was a metro-riding wizard!
Stops I barely knew flew past -- Macpherson, Farragut (the West), Foggy Bottom, Rosslyn, Arlington Cemetery? WHAT? Huh? Where was Court House? How was I going to get to Virginia Square?
I was a Blue line rider headed for an Orange line destination.
So, here's the funny part, the part that I found to be so unusual, it prompted me to set-up a blog:
I got off at Arlington Cemetery, and so did six or seven other people. "People don't work near Arlington Cemetery," I thought. "Are these freaks coming to admire the eternal flame at 8:30 AM on a weekday?"
And the seven or eight of us followed one another down the escalator, across the station, up the other escalator, to the other platform. The seven or eight of us -- without exception -- had all made the same mistake. Every one of us got on the Blue trying to get to the land of the Orange. We didn't talk about it, although I heard a few people chuckle. We just marched across.
And, I've studied enough statistics and probability to know that this was no chance event. People must make this mistake constantly! Every day, maybe with the arrival of every Blue line train, people are making the walk of shame across the Arlington Cemetery station. I did the math -- 5 people per train, 20 trains per morning commute, 5 work days per week -- the number spiraled quickly upwards.
Every station has its own place in life. Arlington Cemetery, I learned that morning, is a place of absolute humility. It's where people from DC and Maryland learn that they are mortal; that they don't understand the Metro system as well as they thought they did; where they suck it up, and admit their failings. </Paul> <!--9:19 AM-->
<Paul> Background
Some background, first: I start each day at Takoma and ride to Metro Center. Reverse this in the afternoon or early evening. Before we moved, not too long ago, I used to ride from Woodley Park to Metro Center. The red line has always seemed the spine of the central nervous system, to me. </Paul> <!--9:07 AM-->
<Paul> Birth.
I ride the metro twice a day, every work day. It's kind of a central figure in my life. And every day, I sit on it and think about it, and I'd like to share some of those thoughts with you. </Paul> <!--8:52 AM-->
/archives