I recently got the chance to ride in Metro's new 7000 series train cars and they are most certainly a clean break from the past. New design, new features, new technology. If this is the future of our currently beyond dysfunctional rapid rail system, then perhaps there is hope after all that Metro can get their act together and really become a world-class subway system instead of the pathetic mess it is in today.
This past Sunday I checked out Metro's new Silver Line Phase One that runs from Largo Town Center in Maryland, through The District, into Arlington along the Orange Line route where it splits off between East Falls Church and West Falls Church and follows the Dulles Access-Toll Road until it elevates and makes its way towards the Tysons area where there are four new stations -- McLean, Tysons Corner, Greensboro and Spring Hill. Then the Silver Line rolls down to ground level and back to the median of the Dulles Access-Toll Road as it travels to its final destination -- Wiehle-Reston East.
After a series of delays and setbacks, the Metro Silver Line is finally set to open to the public on July 26th. Metro's newest line will include four new stations -- three in the Tysons area and the terminus near Reston Town Center. This is Phase One of what will eventually extend past Dulles International Airport to Loudoun County.
Car-crazy Los Angeles is rapidly reinventing itself into a city with a world-class public transportation system. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority operates the second-largest bus fleet in the United States behind only New York City and the second-busiest light rail system behind only Boston.
While the Westside was getting left behind in the rush to build new rail lines, mass transit is steadily pushing into L.A.'s wealthiest neighborhoods as the dream of riding the rails to the edge of the Pacific Ocean becomes a reality.
CityCenterDC construction cranes with Capitol dome in background.
In the nation's capital, construction cranes are as familiar to the city's skyline as the Washington monument and Capitol dome. Recession? What recession? It is boom times in Washington, D.C. If anti-government, anti-growth Republicans in Congress ever decided to work with President Obama to get the economic recovery moving faster (or if moderates and progressives take over this November), it would be amazing to see the rest of the country build housing, retail, office and infrastructure at the rate D.C. is doing right now.
In these troubling times, construction cranes carry much symbolism. A construction crane represents jobs, progress, innovation, hope for the future. Construction cranes are the antidote to awful austerity and a stalled economy. Construction cranes are brilliant reminders that when the public sector and private sector team up for the benefit of the country, then the future of the United States of America is bright indeed.
There was a time when Washington's subway system was the envy of the nation. So clean. So efficient. So modern. Well, thirty plus years of deferred and poor maintenance, mismanagement, safety lapses and lack of proper funding has turned Metro into a mess. The subway system of the most powerful city in the world has become an epic embarrassment and even a symbol of the nation's neglect towards its public transportation infrastructure.
Yes, Metro is spending $5 billion on improving the system and making necessary safety repairs following National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommendations after the horrific 2009 Red Line collision that killed nine people and injured 80 others. But these projects have really inconvenienced riders with long delays due to single tracking and stations being shut down for repairs. Also, it is dispiriting for many riders to still see so many broken down escalators. Or there was the incident October of 2010 when during the Rally to Restore Sanity the L'Enfant Plaza escalator collapsed injuring several people. And even when the escalators are working they run dangerously slow and sometimes produce truly horrific sounds.
The bottom line is sadly Metro is in a depressing state of dysfunction and it will take years, perhaps decades, for the system to be restored to its former glory. But thankfully there are other new and innovative ways to get around town as I discovered yesterday evening.
I was riding the Orange Line from Ballston to Metro Center for dinner and got stuck on a delayed train at the Clarendon Station due to a mechanical failure on a train at the Stadium Armory stop. After fifteen minutes of not moving on a packed rush hour train and no announcement to passengers on when we would start moving again, I decided to exit the train and the station and walk across the street to the new Capital Bikeshare station. The shiny red bikes were a sight for sore eyes. I was so glad bike sharing had expanded to Clarendon. I rented a bike, hopped on the saddle and was breezing along Wilson Boulevard while the Metro train was still stuck at the station. I rode through Rosslyn, across the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge into The District, past the White House and to Gallery Place-Chinatown where I dropped the bike off at a station. I was only around 15 minutes late to dinner thanks to Capital Bikeshare.
So when Metro fails, and trust me it will let you down, know that Capital Bikeshare is always there as a backup. Plus you get exercise and it's just plain fun bicycling around town. The only problem is that the system doesn't provide helmets so unless you just happen to carry around a bike helmet on your Metro ride, be extra careful if you go bike sharing without a helmet!
July 19-21, 2011 -- There are tram traffic jams in Prague. Seriously. I've never seen so many streetcars at one time. There must have been at least twenty of them lined up one after another. Prague's tram system is huge, with over 900 tram cars running on 87.6 miles (140.9 kilometres) of track and serving nearly a million daily riders.
Prague also has an extensive subway system that serves 1.5 million passengers every day, which makes it the seventh busiest system in Europe and the most-used in the world on a per capita basis. The Prague subway began operation in 1974 and today it is a modern, efficient system with fast escalators that get you to the sometimes deep underground and rather large stations.
Besides streetcars and the subway, visitors and locals can zip around Praha with an electric bicycle. E-bike rental PREkolo offers fully charged bikes for a little as two hours for eight euros to as much as a weekend rental for 60 euros.
Click here for more observations of Prague on Josh's Travel Blog.
Here are photos and videos of this special city. Click here to see the photo set on Flickr.
July 16-17, 2011 -- Only a two hour high-speed train ride from London, the city of Brussels is the de facto capital of the European Union so the green spotlight is on the place where lawmakers from the 27 EU member states decide environmental policies for the continent.
Brussels has a clean and efficient mass transit system. The Metro subway and light rail trams will get you to all the tourist destinations. But don't expect the subway doors to open for you, otherwise you will watch your train leave without you or you will miss your stop. The doors slide open by manually pushing a button or pulling a lever. This saves energy and reduces wear and tear on the subway doors.
The escalators are also not automatic. They are motion sensor, meaning they are stopped until someone walks up to the escalator and triggers the motion detection system and the escalator starts moving. This brilliant concept saves energy and reduces wear and tear on the escalators. Here is video of a Brussels escalator.
Biking is another way to get around Brussels. They city's bike sharing system is called Villo! and the stations are all over town. They only take Smart Cards, which are credit cards with an embedded microprocessor chip. Unfortunately, the United States has been slow to adopt this new technology so most American credit cards still use a magnetic strip. Villo! doesn't recognize the old American-style credit cards. Only the new European Smart Cards work, so I could not rent a Villo! bike to ride around Brussels.
Click here for more observations of Brussels on Josh's Travel Blog.
Here are more photos from Brussels. Click here to see the set on Flickr.
Here is video of a Brussels Metro subway train arriving at Gare du Midi - Zuidstation.
From Brussels my next destination was Berlin, with a transfer in Cologne. I took a Deutsche Bahn Intercity-Express train from Brussels North Railway Station to Cologne and then a transfer to Berlin Central Station.
This isn't my DB ICE train, but a Thalys high-speed train that travels from Brussels to Paris, Amsterdam and Cologne.
