Agrrh stupid Metro- hamsters could do a better job!

The BBQ Pit
1

Wow two days of massive delays on the Orange and Blue Lines (the Blue line, being the bastard child of Metro is forced to wait if ANY of the lines has an issue). Where are all those new cars you bought 2 years ago to much fanfare- oh that’s right you fucked that up. Those cars are still not here, so many trains are still 4 car trains in fucking rush hour because you cannot get a simple order for train cars right.

Not to mention other classic Metro blunders- elevators that never ever work. Hello!!!, I imagine being handicaped is hard enough without 50% of the fucking elevators not working. Shuttle bus available upon request my ass. Fucking fix the damn elevators you ouzing pussbags. Waiting 20+ minutes for some shanky mini-bus in the summer heat is a frigging joke.

How about them escalators! One or more broke per station- its almost a birth right now. Here is an idea- maybe if the 5 workers standing around scratching their asses watching the one poor bastard actually working did something on their own these damn things would get fixed in my lifetime.

Oh and the trashbins at the exits are always overflowing with newspapers-- thanks for not recycling shitheads. If you are going to put trash bins out there, put newspaper recycling bins as well.

Another fucking swell thing is the wonderful lack of diversity in your hiring. Walking the streets of D.C. is a wonderful experience in diversity. The city’s resident’s make up every race you could ever imagine- it is one of the strengths of D.C. IMHO-- but you will never see that reflected in the Metro employees. Are you telling me with a straight face that no qualified Asian, Latino, Native American ect (including but not limited to obviously- feel free to add to the list) apply? Or are you not hiring them? Because I am looking hard and not seeing them. Its fucking called diversity assholes- that means your rainbow has more than one color. If I am missing something please let me know, because of the thousands of Metro employees I see dozing off instead of working do not reflect the diversity see riding the trains themselves. Why?

In summation, you suck.

ps. I do like Smartbenefits and the Smarttrip card, please give a cookie to the right thinking employee who thought those up.

2

Wow two days of massive delays on the Orange and Blue Lines (the Blue line, being the bastard child of Metro is forced to wait if ANY of the lines has an issue). Where are all those new cars you bought 2 years ago to much fanfare- oh that’s right you fucked that up. Those cars are still not here, so many trains are still 4 car trains in fucking rush hour because you cannot get a simple order for train cars right.

Not to mention other classic Metro blunders- elevators that never ever work. Hello!!!, I imagine being handicaped is hard enough without 50% of the fucking elevators not working. Shuttle bus available upon request my ass. Fucking fix the damn elevators you ouzing pussbags. Waiting 20+ minutes for some shanky mini-bus in the summer heat is a frigging joke.

How about them escalators! One or more broke per station- its almost a birth right now. Here is an idea- maybe if the 5 workers standing around scratching their asses watching the one poor bastard actually working did something on their own these damn things would get fixed in my lifetime.

Oh and the trashbins at the exits are always overflowing with newspapers-- thanks for not recycling shitheads. If you are going to put trash bins out there, put newspaper recycling bins as well.

Another fucking swell thing is the wonderful lack of diversity in your hiring. Walking the streets of D.C. is a wonderful experience in diversity. The city’s resident’s make up every race you could ever imagine- it is one of the strengths of D.C. IMHO-- but you will never see that reflected in the Metro employees. Are you telling me with a straight face that no qualified Asian, Latino, Native American ect (including but not limited to obviously- feel free to add to the list) apply? Or are you not hiring them? Because I am looking hard and not seeing them. Its fucking called diversity assholes- that means your rainbow has more than one color. If I am missing something please let me know, because of the thousands of Metro employees I see dozing off instead of working do not reflect the diversity see riding the trains themselves. Why?

In summation, you suck.

ps. I do like Smartbenefits and the Smarttrip card, please give a cookie to the right thinking employee who thought those up.

3

I can’t speak to the Washington system, but Montreal’s has its own problems. However, I am mindful of a very cogent thing Spiny Norman once said:

4

While this is probably true (I commuted from Vienna to Chevy Chase via metro for several years); it doesn’t suck as much as not having it.

I would now give both my left and right nuts to be able to sit on a train and read during my commute rather than dodging all these other cars.

5

The Blue Line troubles are part and parcel of why I stopped using Metro regularly. My office is directly above the Courthouse stop on the Orange Line. To get home, I would take it to Rosslyn then transfer to the Blue Line, then the Yellow Line to Huntington. (Yes, I know I could’ve taken the Orange to L’Enfant Plaza and switched to the Yellow. Do not go there.)

So, I get off the Orange at Rosslyn and go downstairs every evening. Usually, after about a minute and a half, there’s a 6-car Orange train going back towards Vienna. Then, shortly after that, another Orange train – sometimes 4 cars, somtimes 6. Then, a Blue Line 4-car train, packed to the gills and about to get worse. Sorry, I value breathing too much to get on that train–I’ll wait. Another Orange 6-car. Then another. Finally, after 20 minutes have elapsed, a Blue train that I might be able to get on. On average, I was seeing 10-12 Orange cars for every 6 Blue cars. Not worth the aggravation.

The escalators don’t bug me–I can get up the stairs fine. But the elevators do bug me, because the handicapped ridership is significant enough that it’s a serious inconvenice for them.

I used to see newspaper recycling bins all the time, with signs asking people to please put their papers in there so others could read them if they wanted. (Take that, Washington Post!) Did they get rid of them?

6

Well, Metro is a majority black employer in a majority black area. That’s just how it is. It’s one of the few places in DC where someone with a high school education can get a decent job. You won’t find Asians driving a bus or sitting in a ticket booth because they are too busy going to grad school to become software engineers. You won’t find Indigenous Americans because DC doesn’t have a big American Indian population. Latinos, on the other hand, are plentiful, and it is a puzzlement that one never sees Latino bus drivers or motormen.

7

Well, Metro is a majority black employer in a majority black area. That’s just how it is. It’s one of the few places in DC where someone with a high school education can get a decent job. You won’t find Asians driving a bus or sitting in a ticket booth because they are too busy going to grad school to become software engineers. You won’t find Indigenous Americans because DC doesn’t have a big American Indian population. Latinos, on the other hand, are plentiful, and it is a puzzlement that one never sees Latino bus drivers or motormen.

8

Matt-Mcl good point. Metro has been getting worse though- it’s a shame because the system was once the envy of many cities, but despite the hefty amounts of cash it receives and political clout they have, the system has been one cluster-fuck after another. I only had exposure to Montreal’s system as a tourist, but it seemed nice. Although Montreal is one of my most favorite cities- so it may have been rose colored glasses at work.

Newton meter sorry to hear about the traffic. Metro has gotten much worse lately- especially certain lines. The Metro management types rested on the system’s past reputation while it’s current problems multipled. The shame is the system could be restored if it would just receive some competant leadership. Alot of people at my job have given up on Metro and now drive in to work alone (which makes Baby Jesus Cry ™) but after my experences lately I cannot really blame them. Seeing that the Metro cars are packed to the gills half of the time, the only thing you can read now is the shirt tag on the fellow wedged in front of you.

I feel your pain pldennison. Also, they ditched the trashbins and recycle bins on the platforms post-Sept 11th. Of course the mouth breathers left the trash bins in the exit areas of the stations which everyone can access- that is MUCH safer. . . .

9

Oh, I see plenty of Metro employees of Asian or Latino descent but for some reason they’re all bus drivers.

10

Has anyone actually seen one of the new cars? I’m on the Red line and I have several friends that are daily commuters on the Orange line- none of us have seen one of em yet.*

*[sub]OK, one friend claimed to have seen one once but he admits that he was pretty drunk. General consensus is that he actually saw the Flying Dutchman, which is more believeable.[/sub]

11

Great, everybody is replying to the thread I didn’t post in. Well, if you’re going to close the other thread, I’ll repost here

Well, Metro is a majority black employer in a majority black area. That’s just how it is. It’s one of the few places in DC where someone with a high school education can get a decent job. You won’t find Asians driving a bus or sitting in a ticket booth because they are too busy going to grad school to become software engineers. You won’t find Indigenous Americans because DC doesn’t have a big American Indian population. Latinos, on the other hand, are plentiful, and it is a puzzlement that one never sees Latino bus drivers or motormen.

I’m grateful for not being handicapped because the constant elevator/escalator outages are a disgrace.

12

BTW: it’s not just the short trains; I recently heard a report that one car in a Blue Line train had a door suddenly open between stations.

13

I am trying to keep it in just one thread- sorry about the double threads, I do not know what happened there :confused: .

You said:

Actually Metro operates in Virginia and Maryland as well. Northern Virginia has a large and thriving Asian community. Many of which live close to the Orange and Blue lines. So dispite this convienent employer right in their neighborhood of high school grads in their midst no one is applying? I doubt it. As far as this:

That is a stereotype. It may have been a well meaning one (based on your prior posts that is how I took it) but still, come on Gobear you are better than that.

Also, in 2002, D.C. is a much more racially diverse city then in the past. In fact, the ridership on the trains and the people on the streets are quite diverse.

I agree with you about the lack of Latino employees is puzzling, and to me troubling. To that I would add Asian employees and other groups such those from India, Pakistan and other countries in the region. D.C., NOVA and Maryland are plenty diverse-- it is just Metro that does not seem to be and it disturbs me-- especially from a government supported organization.

Jeff Olsen - thanks for the info, I had not ridden the buses. Wonder why the difference?

14

Should read:

Dispite this convienent employer of high school grads right in their neighborhood . . . .

Sorry if that sentence caused any difficulties-- in summation I suck! Also sorry for any spelling errors- I have grown dependent on the spell check feature in Word. :rolleyes:

15

Well, I was being humorous, not serious, but all stereotypes have some truth to them. East Asian students are strongly driven to excel by their parents. I lived and taught in the region for a decade, and I know about anxious parents with extremely high expectations for their kids.

16

Look at it this way: busdriver is one of the lowest rungs on Metro’s ladder, followed by train operator, station manager, then supervisor. Maybe Asians and Latinos are stigmatized? Of course, some drivers prefer to stay drivers just because they like having direct contact with the public.

17

I’ve seen them. They’re only on the Green line right now…they’re pretty nice looking.

18

What the heck are the new cars doing on the Green Line? The Orange Line is consistently stuffed to the rafters during rush hour; we need the new cars!

19

Got you Gobear. My humor detector was jammed-- I cleaned it out and it’s working better now. :wink:

Besides, you cannot have all of the new cars, you already have twice the trains and 3 times the cars of the poor shlubs who have to ride the Blue Line (aka the “red headed stepchildren” of the Metro system). :rolleyes:

Any more riders on the Blue Line and we are going to need those white gloved people stuffers the Tokyo subway uses. :stuck_out_tongue:

20

You could, of course, try your luck with CityRail (AKA ShittyRail) in Sydney…

The trains are filthy (when they run at all), the employees are surly, tickets are way overpriced (cheaper to drive usually), their idea of “on time” is a very loose one, and don’t even try to catch a train on the weekend, coz ten to one they’ll be doing their beloved “trackwork”.

I don’t get “trackwork”. In the old days, railways were called the “permanent way”, and for a reason. They had mega-heavy steam locomotives pounding the living crap out of the rails, yet somehow the lines remained open. When they had to fix a piece of track, they had this simple thing called “single line working”, the railway equivalent of cars sharing one half of the road with the assistance of a guy holding a stop-and-go lollipop sign, while the other half is fixed. And it took them a few hours. These days, not only do entire routes go out completely for a whole weekend, but for a series of weekends. The sign “Trains are being replaced by a bus service” is ubiquitous now. A joy cramming eight cars’ worth of passengers into one or two buses, and then to sit in heavy traffic for twice the time I would have taken on the train. Faarrrk! One time, I turned up at the station and not only were there no trains, there were no freaking TRACKS! At all! Just dirt.

When the trains do run, I have to deal with drunks, junkies, Nazi ticket collectors who assume everyone is a fare evader, vomit, rubbish, delays, slashed seats, hypodermic needles, broken air-con, panhandlers…

I live in a major suburb (satellite city) of Sydney, and work in an innner-city industrial area (with lots of commuters). Should be an good service between those two places, you’d think? Only ten miles distance. To start work at 2pm, I need to leave home at 12:30pm! A fifteen minute walk to the station, then a (usually delayed) train which stops at all stations (no expresses on my route), then either a twenty-five minute walk to work, or stay on the train a bit longer and catch a bus down one of Sydney’ most congested roads (walking takes the same time) at the expense of yet another overpriced ticket.

In the car, it’s twenty minutes down the motorway, door to door. Air-con, music, coffee, no muggers…

So I might be an enviro-vandal, but I will continue unashamedly to contribute to my city’s smog until the State Government pulls its finger out of its bloated arse and provides some clean, reliable, and affordable public transport.

Fuck!