Washington Metro
Friday, January 11, 2008
I thought I would share this Yelp.com review that I wrote for the WMATA. I was particularly inspired after calling four times today to fix a Smartcard problem and never being able to reach a human being:
“You know, when I first moved here, I looked at the concrete archway stations and green/red lights that make up the Metro platforms and thought, “Wow, this transit system looks mad cool, like an early ’80s dystopian sci-fi flick in the vein of ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘Aliens’.”
But two years of Metrorail has brought the analogy full-circle: today I see the Washington Metro Transit Authority as a restrictive facehugger, wrapping its spiny appendages around the area’s commuter throat to spawn a series of acid-blooded delays, chest-burstingly high fares, and unresponsive customer service that makes you want to jump into a furnace only to be implausibly cloned 200 years later.
One extra star though for air-conditioned platforms. Those are nice.”
Air-conditioned platforms?!?! You ungrateful brat!
Since you’ve experienced both for several years each, who wins in the battle of the Metro v. the MTA?
I’m going with the MTA. Their prices are lower and their outages, while annoying on weekends, are announced ahead of time so you know what’s coming. There are better features about the WMATA, like the aforementioned air-conditioning and the sign that tells you how long until the next train, but MTA is more reliable and goes to more parts of NYC than WMATA does for DC.
I have a feeling they won’t appreciate your comment as much as we do. If anyone reads it, they’ll probably conclude you were writing to compliment them on air-conditioning.
P.S. Did you look them up on GetaHuman.com to see if they’re listed there?
I prefer the CTA. I had to make a flight out of O’hare to DC one Sunday morning and they had the blue line shut down for repair. They managed to get us off the train, directed to waiting buses which left in a timely manner, to the next operating station on the line where another train was waiting. If it was DC everything would have shut down and there might be a cardboard sign.
That and it seems like CTA train doors open and close a lot faster, about 5 seconds. Metro trains in DC take forever to do the same thing.