Metro Musings

It’s hard not to do that when you’re on the subway twice a day at least five days a week.

I had another problem in the commute home the other day. Monday, I ran a quick errand after work and then went to Metro Center, my usual stop. There was some train that had gone out of service. And so although trains were running it took some time for them to get to Metro Center. This of course meant that the first couple of trains were packed with people. I just took a seat on a bench and read my book. I let a couple more trains go by before I decided to make an attempt to get on one. I let another pass (way too many people) and got on the next one. I was about half an hour late getting home.

Tuesday I went to the library before going home. It was a little later in the day when I was coming home so there were more people on the train. The first train in had one car that didn’t have any people in it. There was obviously something wrong with the car. I let that one pass. Got on the next one without any problem. We stopped in the tunnel before Union Station. The operator informed us that the train in front of us had to off load. Took us a few minutes to get to Union Station. Once there everyone on the platform decided that this train was the one they had to get on. It was very obvious that not everyone was going to be able to fit on the train. But that didn’t stop people from trying. The car got very packed very fast. Thankfully I only had two more stops to go.

Three times a week I head out to the gym early in the morning. I’m usually at the Rhode Island stop right around 6am. I’ve noticed that timing between cars is different they if I leave at my normal time of 8am. What Metro does early in the morning is run two cars fairly close together. Around 4-5 minutes apart. Then the next train is at least 10 minutes or more. That’s not the spacing at 8. Then you usually have a 5-6 minute wait between each train. Sometimes it’s even a little less. I don’t understand why there are two versions so to speak of the morning rush hour schedule.

One final thing to note. On one of my early mornings there was an announcement that started first time riding Metro. I think to myself this seems a little early 6am to running that type of announcement.

And those are my Metro musings.