Report a Comment

To be honest, little focus has been on the Red Line itself. Most of the work has been on the immediate concerns of planning for a series of urban neighborhoods in a way that enables current landowners to make a profit, reduce carbon emissions, foster a sense of place, be sustainable with respect to the commons, satisfy existing residents' concerns and other related issues.

My $.02 regarding the Metro... there is more room on the Red Line. Granted, I don't live on the western side but I have taken during rush hour rather than my usual trip up the eastern side. My observations during those trips were that is operates similar to the eastern side. On the eastern side, about 1/3 to 1/2 get off at Union Station. Of those remaining, 1/3 get off at Fort Totten or Takoma (Brookland is really, really underused), 1/3 at Silver Spring and then the final third at one of the final three stations. On the west, it seemed to be about 1/2 got off between DuPont and Bethesda. Of the remaining half, 1/2 got off at Grosvenor. Most of the rest went to Rockville/Shady Grove with only a handful getting off at White Flint and Twinbrook.

Keep in mind that the long term plans for the Metro are to have the Red, Green and Orange lines all running all eight car trains at peak hours. Of course, that's dependent on buying more cars and upgrading the system's electrical capacity. Currently, every 3rd to 4th is an eight car train because that's all that WMATA owns and has enough electricity for.

Another thing to think about with these plans is that there are currently many people coming from way past the end of the Metro and taking it all the way downtown. When these new urban neighborhoods become places of employment in and of themselves, many of the traffic from the exurbs would get off at places like White Flint, much like many now get off at Bethesda since it has 55,000 jobs. I would not worry about DC residents not being able to board trains. Even though our Metro is well used, there is more capacity. Also, we forget that the flows of people in urban environments are more fluid since it's a mixed use environment. You could think of it more like the electron cloud surrounding a nucleus of an atom rather than birds migrating. It's a much more efficient use of transit.

From my daily experience riding the Metro, far too many passengers only get on the center two cars in a train. I always sit in the front or last car and never have a problem with space. However, I'm not sure that's completely relevant to crowding. It's just my perception.

by Cavan on Oct 20, 2008 1:28 pm • link • report