Category: Transit in D.C.

The concrete and support columns are beginning to resemble a station platform; conveniently, it’s right where the Wiehle Avenue stop will be. Workers have built a gated stairway that leads from the overpass down to the job site.

David Schultz visits a construction site in the Dulles access road median for Metro Connection.

Matt Johnson reports also for Greater Greater Washington that the Silver Line may be starved for rolling stock in its early months of operation, perhaps delaying the opening date.

Via Greater Greater Washington, DDOT will be showcasing one of its new streetcars on a temporary track at the old convention center site for several days in early May.

Sometimes it does pay to complain. The sign for my bus stop was knocked down in the aftermath of the February snowstorms—a passing plow, a wayward pine tree, an overeager Bobcat, I don’t know. And it remained knocked down for weeks and weeks. Someone tried to prop it up into a pile of wood chips, but mostly it just lay on the ground. Recently someone else leaned it against the street name sign. And for weeks and weeks we had to tell bus drivers, yes, this is my stop at this corner, even though you can’t see the sign.

Clearly this wasn’t just a question of hammering the post back into the turf, because it was snapped off.

And so finally last Friday morning I contacted customer service through the Fairfax Connector’s web site, notifying them of the problem. (I don’t know why none of the drivers on the two lines that service this stop, apparently, had done so as well.) Later that day I received an acknowledgement, and by Thursday evening, a shiny new sign (URL-enabled) was in place.

Now if the Connector’s ugly red and orange color scheme were as easy to fix…

WMATA is shopping for rail cars for the Silver Line (as well as to replace the aging orange 1000 series cars): Matt Johnson reports that a purchasing decision will happen in April.

Greater Greater Washington critiques two proposed maps of Metro expanded by Silver Line service. The new drawing on the table, prepared by Cameron Booth, is a little too Vignelli for my taste.

In an excellent post, Matt Johnson explains what happened after Friday’s White Flint-bound Red Line train found itself on the pocket track just beyond Farragut North, how the electromechanical safety systems did the job they were designed to do, and how a derailer works.

… not only did the derailer prevent a collision or damage to misaligned switches, it also prevented the train from fouling either main track. However, while this event saw the safety system avert potential disaster, it is not clear why a potentially dangerous situation was allowed to progress so far.

More construction activity at the Wiehle Avenue site: a pair of cranes, lots of jersey wall, and ponding from yesterday’s downpours.

Via Greater Greater Washington, Lisa Rein and photographers check in on the tunneling at Tysons Corner. They’ve dug eighteen feet, so far, through Tt5, the upland terrace of sand and gravel that comprises Freedom Hill.

Sarah Krouse reports that corporate property owners have agreed to establish a tax district that will comprise part of the funding for three of the Phase II stations: Reston Parkway, Monroe Street, and Route 28. The agreement accounts for about three-fourths of Fairfax County’s share ($420 million) of the costs of the second segment, which will extend west of Wiehle Avenue.

Via Michael Perkins and Greater Greater Washington, the Coalition for Smarter Growth is collecting online signatures in support of funding of Metro’s operating, maintenance, and capital budgets. I support that cause, and if you live in the D.C. metro area, I think you should, too.

Via DCist, Barry Farm (Re)Mixed posts images of rail being laid (at long last!) for the Anacostia streetcar line.

Greater Greater Washington continues its webby awesomeness with a three-part series by Matt Johnson on Metro station design motifs, beginning with this post on ceiling treatments.

James Hohmann visits WMATA’s sign shop.

Discreetly, nothing is said about the hand-made annotations to the elevator call buttons that are meant to keep us from pushing the emergency notifier when all we want to do is get to the train mezzanine.

Technological developments continue to change the way signs are made and installed…. In the… not-so-distant past, workers meticulously copied the wording from a sign they needed to replace. Now they snap digital photos.