Reader submission: WMATA passenger shortcomings

Metro Blur, by theqspeaks

We welcome the occasional reader submission here at The District Curmudgeon, and this little bit of righteous anger from our friend Jonathan Gitlin sums up what we're sure are pretty common feelings for many who use Metrorail on a daily basis.

Dear fellow WMATA passengers, here are some things I hate about you:

• Standing on the left on the escalators.
• Standing still at the exit of escalators, during rush hour.
• Standing still at the exit of escalators, during rush hour, pulling your enormous suitcase behind you.
• Standing in the doorway of the train I’m trying to get out, resolutely refusing to move an inch. No, I’m not sorry I barged you out the way.
• Meandering slowly up the platform, wandering from side to side as you go.
• Wearing sunglasses. Underground. When it’s already dimly lit. You look like a cretin.
• Eating. Are you blind, stupid, or just inconsiderate? Because it pretty clearly says no eating, you blind, stupid, inconsiderate fool.
• Schoolchildren.
• Having to deal with the pages of your copy of the Examiner that you littered all over the seat.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Let me add:

• Meandering slowly down the platform, during rush hour, in a crowd, pulling your tiny backpack on wheels behind you. You're an adult, carry the pack on your back, you lazy, inconsiderate, space-wasting fool. You're taking up the room of 4 people on this crowded platform!

Have a wonderful weekend!

State of Incompletion

As a former Michigander, it always bothered me to see the state represented without the Upper Peninsula or Isle Royale. A map showing only the Lower Peninsula, labeled "Michigan," is incomplete. End of story.

Map of "Michigan" from Van Diest Supply Company

When I see maps of Virginia like the one below in today's edition of the Washington Post's Express, without the Eastern Shore included, I wonder if Virginians are equally bothered.

Map of "Virginia" from the Express [PDF]

It bothers me to see maps produced without some level of concern for cartographic accuracy. This is the world we live in. Everyone can be a "mapper," but the level of quality is greatly diluted.

Irony: litter from Two Rivers PCS on its way to the Anacostia

I guess it's that time - the yearly litter bomb from Two Rivers Public Charter School.

Nearly a year ago to the day, I wrote about this school's lazy attempt at neighborhood outreach. They've printed the exact same flyer, on different colored paper, with updated dates, and done the same thing - hanging it on the fence of every house in the neighborhood.

Same thoughts as last year - couldn't they have procured a database of some sort so they know which homes actually have school-aged children? The vacant homes on the block aren't going to send to many children to any school. Same goes for the houses with retirees and those with DINKs.

Unfortunately, there was a pretty good breeze today, and many of the flyers blew off the fences and into the streets and gutters. Here are a few photos from our street.

Irony? Flyer from "Two Rivers"about to go down the drain toward one of those rivers.

They gave us three flyers this year. I guess one wasn't enough?

I could take a dozen more pictures of the treeboxes and gutters of our neighborhood, but I believe the point is clear enough. I wonder if teachers teachers at Two Rivers could take their students out for a real-world lesson about stewardship of our natural resources and how good neighbors aren't litterbugs.

DDOT photo of the old Sears building on Bladensburg Road

I was poking around in DDOT's photo archive on Flickr last night, and I came across the following photo:

Southeast/Southwest Freeway 1968 (DDOT on Flickr)

It's a picture of the construction of the Southeast/Southwest freeway through Capitol Hill in the late 1960s. It's a stark reminder that the freeway cut a neighborhood in two, and it's a scar that we'll likely continue to have for decades to come.

What caught my eye, though, was the bright patch at the top of the photograph. I've cropped that section out, enlarged it, and circled the interesting spot below:

You can click above to enlarge it even more. I'm pretty sure this is the old Sears, Roebuck & Co. building. (At that link, you can see a photograph of this amazing Art Deco building, which was still standing until the late 80s/early 90s). It was located on Bladensburg Road, just north of the Starburst intersection, across the street from Trinidad. It's now the location of the Flats at Atlas apartment building, which is better than a vacant lot, but certainly not as cool as a repurposed Art Deco beauty would have been.

A two-block shuttle for "urban lifestyle" apartments?

Trilogy NoMa is a strange apartment complex.

To start with, the name is ridiculous. The buildings were built in a long-established neighborhood (Eckington [PDF], since 1830) that just happened to have some empty lots. The business improvement district (BID) to the south is called NoMa, and it includes a few of the commercially-zoned lots at the southernmost extent of Eckington. The developer decided to use the NoMa name for the complex, most likely because they felt it was a "brand" they could exploit.

The contact page for the complex, though, says these are "Apartments in Chinatown DC - Trilogy at Noma DC Chinatown" at the top of site. Clearly there is some confusion on the part of the ownership regarding where they made their investment. I wonder if they know the city and neighborhood well enough to know where they're actually located.

What "drove" me to write this post, though is the photo below:

That contact page touts the Walk Score for the apartment complex - a respectable 71. (Worth noting - the Transit Score is a 72 and the Bike Score is a fantastic 89!) It's questionable if the management really believes in that Walk Score, though, since they have a shuttle van to drive you the two blocks to the Metro station.

Sure, a shuttle service for handicapped residents might be necessary and a nice service for those who need it. But this van, dropping off passengers at the northern entrance of the NoMa station, wasn't equipped for wheelchair access, and the twenty-somethings disembarking from the van appeared to have no problem walking the few feet from the van to the turnstiles.

Lazy? Silly? A waste of fuel while the van idles at the curb? All of the above? All of the above.

Open letter to local stone masons

A solid low-stone retaining wall is about to become part of history (probably tomorrow). Do you know any stone masons in DC who could use this material? Let them know as soon as you can! Read on for more...

Titan of Trinidad noted that the church at the corner of 14th and Maryland NE has finally been demolished. This is the first step in the construction of the new "Maia" apartment building that will be built in its place.

I'm writing about the detritus of the construction project, though. As you can see from these pictures, there are thousands of bricks, many of them already broken into shards, remaining on site. There are many who would gladly take solid, century-old bricks to reuse them for other projects, but I'm afraid that it's probably too late for most of these solid pieces of history. We don't value recycling and reusing in this society to the extent that we should.

I'm concerned about this stone retaining wall that encircles much of the property. Surely the demolition crews will be removing it very soon. This is the kind of thing that simply isn't built these days - people use cheap cinder block construction for retaining walls instead.

There must be a stone mason in the DC area that would be interested in getting their hands on this material. I imagine someone could take this wall apart relatively quickly (certainly not as fast as a backhoe, but let's be realistic here!) and reuse the material elsewhere.

If you're reading this and you know someone who might fit this description, please pass the story along. I'd love to see some of this material reused instead of becoming backfill for a pit somewhere.

WMATA changing more than just the "rock throwing" bus routes

Most DC news outlets have covered the story about WMATA cutting bus service to some streets east of the Anacostia River. The rationale for those cuts are incidences of rocks being thrown at buses. This news coverage has failed to point out that many other lines in the city are being adjusted or removed altogether. Two of those changes greatly affect my neighborhood, Trinidad. Very little time remains to let WMATA know what you think about these changes.

The biggest change is the proposed elimination of the D3 line. The D3 currently provides a direct connection from Ivy City, through Trinidad, to downtown, Dupont Circle, and Georgetown. It provides a convenient way to access Metrorail's Green and Yellow lines, by disembarking at 7th and E Streets NW.

Metro's rationale for eliminating the D3 is "duplication with other routes" and "low productivity." I cannot find anything quantifying "productivity" on WMATA's website, so I don't know how it is defined. Perhaps one thing causing "low productivity" would be a low farebox recovery rate on the line. I (and others) often note that the fareboxes on the buses are not working - it means a free ride, but that clearly hurts the system financially in the long run. Additionally, I'd guess those free rides aren't counted in the overall ridership totals for the line.

Other bus routes certainly ply the same streets, but nothing provides a direct connection from our neighborhood to the other side of the central business district in the morning. The D3 buses are usually crowded by the time I board at Montello Avenue and Neal Street. WMATA does not clearly state whether they will increase bus frequency on the other lines that run on Montello Avenue (D4 and D8) to make up for the lost capacity.

Speaking of the D4, it will be changing as well.

The D4 route, which currently runs between Ivy City and Franklin Square, will more than double in length when it's extended north from Ivy City to the Fort Totten Metro Station. It will be taking over the easternmost part of the E2, E3, and E4 lines, which currently run from from Friendship Heights through Fort Totten to Ivy City.

Longer routes can lead to more opportunities for buses to fall off schedule, as well as "bunching," which is when many buses on one route arrive at a stop at once. This can lead to very long waits between buses instead of the expected even spacing.

Metro originally announced a hearing for the changes happening in Northeast DC for October 30, but the impact of Hurricane Sandy meant that it was rescheduled to November 26, the Monday that just passed.

A heading says "Routes seeing improvements in this bus service change proposal" on the page with the public hearing schedule, but the list does not mention the elimination of the D3. Certainly, one could argue that the elimination of a route is not an improvement, so WMATA was under no obligation to list the removal of the route on that list. I would argue the total elimination of a route is something that should be prominently noted, regardless of whether this is an "improvement" or not.

An additional problem is that I have seen no signs at the bus stops along the route alerting people to these changes. Certainly people who ride the D3 would be interested to know their bus is going away, and wouldn't the best place to reach those people be on the bus itself?

There's still time to let WMATA know what you think (though not much time). Written testimony can be emailed or faxed to WMATA, but you must do so by Monday, November 5 December 3. From WMATA's website:

Written statements and exhibits may be sent to the Office of the Secretary, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, 600 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001, or e-mailed to writtentestimony@wmata.com. Statements also may be faxed to 202-962-1133. Please reference the hearing number. [Ed. Note: The hearing in NE DC was number 579, and the Docket number for all the proposed changes is B12-03.]
Submissions must be received by 5 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 5 [Ed. Note: From what I understand, the date for submissions was changed due to the hurricane as well, though this press release does not indicate that.]. Please note that any personal information such as name, e-mail address, address, or telephone number you provide in the statement may be releasable to the public under the WMATA Public Access to Records Policy, available at http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/public_rr.cfm.

Let WMATA know what you think about the changes to the D3, D4, or any other route that they plan to change in the new year.