Gallery Place/Chinatown. © 2012 Michael W. hicks

As breadmaker Mark Furstenberg pointed out in our Answers Issue this week, D.C. is still a car city. That's particularly true in the suburban swaths served by the Metrorail's red line. And at this point, the riding the red line has become a miserable experience for many. Peruse the WMATA Twitter feed, and tweets about service delays [...]

Take The Long Train Home: What's more frustrating than having to squeeze onto a crowded six-car Metro train even though the subway system can handle eight cars in each station? Watching a ten-car train go by. The transit agency recently disciplined some workers for allowing a train too long to fit properly in stations to [...]

© 2012 Michael W. Hicks

Metro Center. © 2012 Michael W. Hicks

You For President: Normally we stay as far away from presidential horse race politics as we can, but today was a weird day. First up, the guy everyone was so fired up about six months ago, Texas Governor Rick Perry dropped out of the race (even though he's on the D.C. ballot). Erik Wemple ranks [...]

Two Metro employees have been arrested and charged with "conspiring to commit theft from programs receiving Federal funds." An investigation initiated last October led authorities to Metro police officer Vincent Haile and revenue technician Horace Dexter McDade. According to a release, Haile has been suspended and is in the process of being fired. McDade has [...]

You Line, I Line, We All Scream For Uline: Years ago, the Uline Arena was the place the Beatles chose for their first U.S. concert; these days, it's an empty husk of a building that's barely visible except from passing Metro trains. It might soon be a music museum, though. Architects at HKS are convening [...]

Ft. Totten Station. © 2012 Michael W. Hicks

Divorce Equality: When the District passed a law allowing same-sex marriages a few years ago, it was cause for great rejoicing. Some of the marriages, though, don't appear to have kept the joy going. So now the D.C. Council is looking into easing divorces for same-sex marriages where neither partner lives in a jurisdiction where [...]

No Pants Metro Ride, Jan. 8th.  © 2012 Matt Dunn

Occupy Hyperbole: For a few months now, people have been camping in McPherson Square, to the growing consternation of city and federal officials. The latest rhetorical salvo against the Occupy D.C. encampment came today from D.C. Department of Health director Mohammed Akhtar, who compared the situation to refugee camps in war- and famine-torn regions of [...]

As I noted in Washington City Paper's Annotated Guide to 2011, Circulators are better than buses. Almost everything about them—the low fare, the timetable, the appearance—leave traditional Metrobuses behind. Just one thing didn't: The lame website.
All that changed this week with the new D.C. Circulator site launch. It that looks better, but more importantly, it [...]

Orange Line, January 2nd.  © 2012 Matt Dunn

While all eyes were turned toward the payroll tax fight (recap: House Speaker John Boehner lost, President Barack Obama won), the Examiner points out that another extension was completely overlooked: Benefits for federal employees who use public transit.
Commuters who rely on federal transit benefits to help pay for their daily trips to work likely will have to [...]