DC Commuting

I should have known. Or at least suspected it. I hit the off-button of the alarm clock instead of the Snooze and woke up 20 minutes later than planned. I had to hurry up and get ready for the commute.

I dashed to the car and to the train station only to find that the train was going to be about 30 minutes late. It was. At least I got the extra sleep. The platform was already hot with the morning humidity and there were dozens of extra people there because the next train is usually only 20 minutes later than the one I take. So we had two trains worth of commuters to stand in the aisles and block up the path.

By the time we arrived at Union Station, I was half-way between two local bus arrivals and waited along with a dozen people who would be wanting to board the bus also. It arrived and we all piled in.

By the time we reached 9th Street, the Police had the block over to 10th cordoned off for some unspecified reason. The bus deviated with a left turn in what was supposed to be a "uni-block detour" that turned out to be much more. By the time we moved one block south we were met by another police vehicle making us turn left again. While two wrongs don't make a right, three lefts do.

We were headed back toward Union Station until we made the third left and were headed North. By then there were a series of No Left Turns including the useless left on at E Street from where we originally diverted. K Street provided the first opportunity for a left turn, the fourth one that put us back on a Westward path.

It was about then that I thought about the possibility of the driver's name being Moses. He did an admirable job of navigating the city streets during morning DC rush hour, but we did seem lost in the desert there for a time.

Employing 20-20 hindsight this day would have been a good one to telework. Then the realization hit me. When you get to work, your commute is only half over. The day was only cranking up to its maximum temperature at that early hour. AMTRAK and MARC still had to contend with warped rails, switch and signal malfunctions, and overheated locomotives. Sometime over the past 21 years of commuting into DC the commute has become an adventure. THAT was never supposed to be.

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Red Line Today

During my MARC ride into Union Station, I received an email from a colleague that said the Red Line was in Major Delay Mode. It was several months ago that I gave up on the Red Line due the many elevator and escalator outages at Union Station and Metro Center. Not withstanding the actual train delays, the the ancillary vertical and diagonal "rail" services had become quite a problem.

For a person who relies on those vertical transports (aka elevators) the amount of extra time in the system exceeded the rail benefits over the surface bus service.

I arrived a minute too late at the bus stop and could see the extra multitude of "breakdown" riders already waiting to board that bus. I was nowhere near the stop to even try to get aboard using a wheelchair. While waiting for the next bus, I was able to compare rider notes with a few women who likewise are MARC commuters and who normally ride the Red Line trains. Their comments paralleled mine.

While riding along E Street, one could tell that there was something afoot with the Metro due to the abundance of middle aged white men wearing blue and white stripped shirts seeking to board the bus along the way and needing to ask what the fare would be. I was glad that I chose a shirt other than my blue and white stripped one.

The ride was a bit slower than normal but it did manage to be far faster than the rails. Another colleague passed me in the office and said that he decided to take my advice and try the bus this morning. He said it was a good alternative but... but he got on going the wrong direction. By the time he was well into NE rather than NW, he figured that he better ask. He was still here before me. Therefore even with starting out in the wrong direction and getting turned around, the bus was still better today.

We keep hearing that "they are working on it" and that services will be getting better. Apparently they had a long way to go just to get to "square one." I still suspect that services will get worse before it gets better at the rate maintenance and repairs are going.

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