We still are working on the interchange completions for Rt. 7 east in Loudoun. And then you have the choked down 4 lane gridlock entering Fairfax. We are all over the place with these transportation projects without having completion where we can wait and see if they resolve the issues at hand. What is really trying to be accomplished here?

Metro Report for 6-17-2012.

Young father decides to take his two boys to D.C. for the Nats-Yankee game on Fathers Day. Arrive at Vienna Station at 11:30 am, hoping to see some batting practice before the first pitch at 1:35 pm. Train sits in Vienna Station for 20 minutes for no given reason. Finally moving, entering the tunnel, and arriving at Clarendon Station. Train sits at Clarendon until an announcement comes that this train is “out of service.” The passengers all get out onto the platform and wait. No cogent explanations. Just Metro employees moving back and forth through the stalled train. A series of announcements over the intercom which no one can understand. Then, a part of the crowd starts toward the up escalator to the platform on the other side of the tracks. The rest of the crowd follows blindly, running smack into passengers at the bottom of the down escalator who refuse to get out of the way quickly. The up escalator is crowded to the point that the father has to hang onto his kids tightly because there is no guardrail against a possible fall onto the electrified tracks. Wait ten minutes. Another train arrives, already 75-80% full. It becomes a mob scene, with the platform crowd rushing the doors and trying to squeeze into the cars. The older of the two boys is being squashed in the process inside the train car. The father has to pick up and carry the smaller boy to keep him from facing the same. The train, fully packed, finally starts to move. At the next station, a large crowd is waiting and the people rush the train cars despite shouts from passengers already aboard that the cars are full. Another mob scene. The jam packed train finally arrives at Gallery Place, where the father and sons change to the Green Line to the stadium. The first Green Line train is so packed they cannot get on. The second train is almost totally empty. They finally get to the stadium just in time for the opening pitch.

It is a good thing that the young father spent his very early years in African cities. Because the Metro so many of us seem to love is beginning to look like an African railroad.

It sounds so great!!! Let’s bring this clusterf&$k to Loudoun County and pay hundreds of millions of dollars for the “privilege”!!!

I still cannot believe there is even any argument about this. People are truly blinded by the shiny choo-choo.

PPP?!! Shoot, he had to drive from the Gainesville area just to get to the Vienna Station at 11:30 am! Then two hours of chaos to get to the ball park on a Sunday. BO, you are getting absolutely desperate here! There’s a song we can dedicate to you: “And he rode forever on the….”

Actually, that father said he believes one of Metro’s greatest faults besides poor trackage and emergency planning, plus limits on the length of trains, is the absence of personnel who give a damn about the riders. Poor communications system in a technological age. Minimal effort to explain things. No effort whatsoever to channel and control movement at the busiest stations, even on days when ridership is expected to be heavy. Sounds like my own railroad (and airline) experiences in Africa. But at least the Africans had the excuse of being underdeveloped, poor, and new at the game of efficiency. We, on the other hand, have had almost two centuries to learn how to run trains, including regular passenger service, interurbans, and city trolleys. There is absolutely no excuse for this kind of debacle — or to lay the blame on the riders for faulty PPP. God help us if the Nats ever make it to the World Series.

Hah, Reb. Metro was lucky it was not me on that train. There was a time in Africa when I was trying to get on a flight from upcountry to the capital city. Had the wife and a small daughter with me. The jet aircraft is sitting on the tarmac, overbooked as usual. The passengers are waiting behind a chain link fence with only one entrance gate. Suddenly the crowd began rushing as one toward that gate, knocking the wife and daughter into the fence and pinning them against it. The little daughter is screaming. The wife is growling like a tigress. I am not exactly a small guy. I happened to be carrying two heavy official mail bags headed from a consulate to the US Embassy. Seeing the wife and kid in extremis up against that fence, I simply turned around and starting smashing heads with those heavy mail bags. Cleared a real good space for the wife and kid to escape through the gate to the aircraft. No, sir, Metro doesn’t want me in the middle of a mob on one of those overcrowded trains with my grandkids anywhere close to falling on the tracks!

Guys, major rail work is going on. That doesn’t last forever. You missed my point. Driving aint’ like it use to be, and can be just as arduous without PPPPPPP. (prior proper planning prevents piss poor performance) Your buddy should have done a little more investigating before expecting to get to Nats Stadium. BTW, GO NATS!

Yup, that was back in the later half of the 60s up to ‘71. It was a calmer time.

The Senators; first in the nation and last in the American League. I still have the bat.

Oh come on CMac, don’t put words in my mouth and certainly stop making things up.

There is a legitimate debate here without you stretching the truth or adding confusion.

I can’t help it that you out yourself every time you type, BO.

It is faster to drive to Nationals stadium than take the stinky, crowded, broken down train. I know this as I have done both. No one in their right mind tries to take the train on subsequent visits because the first attempt is so miserable.

Perhaps if there was more PPP and PPPPPPPPPP on behalf of the do-gooder Metro experts (MWAA, WMATA, Feel good liberals that love trains) it would be in better shape. Your gripe should be with these entitites, not Wolv’s family member that are merely victims in the big scam. As we all are.

I like the phrase “feel good liberals that love trains”.

Not because I’m an evil liberal, not because I’m “in bed with” trains, but because I’ve noticed as the process unfolds how many people are ideologically opposed to…trains.

Trains are bad.

Bad people use trains.

Bad people use trains to do bad things.

If we just had no trains, there would be no bad things happening because of bad people.

(BTW, support your second amendment!

And use the First to do it!)

Seriously (and that was said in a bit of jest, before anyone needs to grab their blood pressure pills), there is gut-level opposition to trains the way some people think television is THE cause of violence and teen pregnancy, and so on.

I read O’Toole’s paper (or is it Roth’s? The TJ Institute’s? They are publishing when, as it was “pre-released” anonymously on a community message board in Ashburn?) and his history shows a very good reason for him to have the knee-jerk response to rail that he does: He’s a veteran of Portland, the only place in the country that succeeded in drawing a hard edge to growth and development, and forcing the communities of the area to subsidize whatever was necessary to make “sustainability” “work”.

The results weren’t pretty, and I can certainly understand him having an aversion to any of the moving parts so often bastardized by “smart” growth, but…we aren’t Portland.

The train can and should be discussed without the piling on of boogeymen.

BE, not sure where you got all your “P’s” from. The 6 P’s are Piss-Poor-Planning-Produces-Poor-Performance and it is a work ethic. I have been using the 6 P’s since they were introduced to me 42 years ago. Yours is similar.

BO, It’s miraculous – you love metro because it is cheaper and faster. It can’t be faster than driving. It’s not possible unless you roll out of the car swat action style at the station (presuming someone can unload you) shoot down the broken escalator to a waiting train and slide in as the doors clang shut then get to the front of the train and yell at the conductor, move this train or people will die!!! Who are you, Bruce Willis?

CMac, Metro is not a Japanese rail system or a jingling Indian bus with chickens on board. Do you always live in fear?

“Always with the negative waves Moriarty, always with the negative waves.”

BO, are we riding the same Metro? No fear here, I just don’t want to pay for the broken down thing. And it does stink, open your nose.

PS – Just bought my husband the new Sherlock Holmes for Father’s Day and he watched it with the kids last night. He likes it better than the first one.

CMac, if there was anything that could stop the trains it would be you and I riding on the same one.

The question is, how many “working days” do you attend DC in a month? Be truthful because you statement was assembled ambiguously.

And if you knew what a fox Cmac is, the train stopping would be when she yelled “rape”, pulled the emergency cord and then proceeded to stomp your ass while not allowing one hair on her head from getting out of place. Other than that, I don’t know what would stop the train you both were riding.

The trains have emergency call boxes. I don’t know if they work, could be part of the 3.5 billion$ backlog of maintenance currently on WMATA’s books.

13.5 Billion. We get to share in the pain here too.

I’m sure Bruce Willis has it all figured out.

BO— Correction. The saying at the time was “still last in the American League.”

I’ll just have to one-up you here. I was in attendence at the very first Washington Senators game in D.C. Stadium. Saw the first pitch and the first hit — a single to the outfield by Tiger second baseman Jake Wood. It was all down hill from there. Not even the great Ted Williams as manager could save that team. BTW, you wouldn’t have been by any chance the fat kid who broke up the final ever Senators game by running out onto the field and stealing first base?

Nope Wolverine, that would not have been me. I think I was crying buckets at the time knowing baseball was leaving my life. And that it did, I boycotted professional baseball from 1971, until recently.

Oh and always regardless of their lack of winning I was always enthusiastic listening to my Senators on my small transistor radio with an ear piece; into the late hot summer nights. Funny Wolverine you mention your first game and the Tigers. I remember the promised savior former Tiger, Denny McClain joining the Senators. Another disappointment, but still memorable.

BTW, there are still seats painted white in the outfield of RFK that mark home runs by the great Frank, Hondo, Howard. My childhood baseball hero. (loved the aviators on that dude)

Wolverine, yes I boycotted baseball after Bob Short left in the middle of the night to steal my boyhood team from me and the region. I was crushed. So I left the sport that taught me so much, including elementary mathematics. Stats etc, came to me based on how I analyzed boxes scores.

Now as irony would have it…years and years later I was on a business down in Texas, colleagues offered me a ticket to go see the Texas Rangers play, I went, mostly out of boredom and with very little interest. While sitting there and watching the Rangers, I realized, this was the team from my youth, the team Bob Short stole from DC and moved to Texas. Then a reincarnation happened. On the same night I was watching this seemingly insignificant game, played by the carcass of my youth, MLB announced that Montreal was moving the Expos to DC. Baseball was reborn for me. Poetic to say the least.

So yes. I can imagine what it was like for Brooklyn. Hapless or not I am a homer and root for my home team. Just like Brooklyn.