After living in Boston for many years and spending ample time in New York City, I have had many positive experiences with public transportation, more specifically, the “T” and the NYC subway.
My experience with the WMATA / Metro has not been positive at all. In my experience it is:
- Too expensive, often more expensive for me than if I drive and pay for parking
- Way too slow, again, its more advantageous for me to drive
- Unreliable, though the traffic in DC is wildly unpredictable as well
- Inconvenient, the subway is so far underground at most stops it takes forever to get to and from the trains
Some might even consider the Metro more dangerous than driving. It wasn’t too long ago there was a serious accident on the Red line not far from where I live where numerous people died and many more suffered serious injuries.
When the Metro came up in conversation recently, I was stupefied to learn that the Metro operates at a significant loss. How can that be? Are the same people who run PEPCO running the Metro??
Now the news is reporting that the Metro is adding another rate fare increase for the “peak of the peak”. Ridiculous. Is anyone else outraged?
UPDATE: I’m now riding the Metro on a daily basis as I work in DuPont Circle. Now that I’ve riden the subway many times, I can say it can actually be faily speedy. The main factor regarding the Metro these days is how infrequently the escalators are operable - I’d give them 10 - 25% operability. Pathetic!
