Metro Musings

The other day I was exiting Metro and got a message that I needed to add money to my Smartrip card. I went over to the add fare machine and put in a twenty. The machine promptly spit it back out. I tried again and it did the same thing. I then noticed that it only takes ones, fives and tens.

I got out my wallet and fished around inside until I found a five. I have to say I wasn’t sure I had anything smaller than a twenty in my wallet. I put the money in the machine. This time it excepts it. My card is updated and I get change.

I got a nickel and three one dollar coins. Two of the coins were the recent ones with the presidents on them. The other was the old Susan B. Anthony coin of so many years ago. I realize it would be very difficult for the machine to give out change in the form of paper money. But I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with these coins.

I needed to add fare to my card. I figured I’d use the coins for that. The recent one dollar coins the machine had no problems with. The Susan B. Anthony dollar coin the fare card machine would not except. Which I have to say I was not all that surprised at. But it does seem a little odd that Metro would have a dollar coin given as change that couldn’t be used in the other machines.

Then there’s this. One side of the escalator down to the platform level at the Bethesda stop is being repaired. It’s been that way for months. There’s a sign from Metro telling when the escalator will be back working. It first said April, then May, then June. Now the sign says the escalator will be back working in September. Let’s just say I’m not holding my breath on that. In all likelihood it won’t be back working in September either.

This underscores the problem people have with Metro. If you say something is going to happen in a certain time frame make sure it does. We the escalator that’s an additional six months to get to up and working. That just shouldn’t be acceptable.

But again it’s Metro.