SmarTrip Getting Smarter?: It wasn't so long ago that the only way to pay for a Metro ride was to buy a paper farecard, and the only way to pay for a single bus trip was to shove your coins into the farebox on board. But even though Metro only recently upgraded its payment options [...]

Some good news for Metro workers today. Unionized employees are finally getting a long-negotiated 9 percent raise:
The dispute began in 2008 after Metro and the union reached an impasse on contract negotiations.
In November 2009, an arbitration board ruled on some issues for the union, but Metro appealed the decision. The case went before a federal judge, [...]

Metro officials say they've found the Metrobus driver filmed unceremoniously heaving a passenger from his ride. Metro spokesperson Dan Stessel says Metro isn't releasing the allegedly grumpy driver's name, and that there's no word on criminal charges against him. "At this point, this is an administrative process," he says.
Video of the incident surfaced [...]

Lost in the Flood: There was a time when it seemed like it hadn't rained in the District for weeks; grass dried up and died, it was unbearably hot, and weather officials were issuing drought warnings for the region. That time was August. Since then, it basically hasn't stopped raining. Which means today, like all [...]

A Metrobus driver is in trouble for getting pushy—literally.
Video of a hulky driver shoving a not-so-hulky, maybe even scrawny, rider off a bus surfaced over the holiday weekend, and has WMATA hunting the offending employee. They weren't able to immediately identify the driver from the video, but Metro spokesperson Dan Stessel told NBC [...]

Transit maps may be the greatest thing a graphic designer can ever make. Design, I was taught when I was in the trade, is not art. It's utility, with some style. Still, Lance Wyman, the designer of the Metrorail transit map, created something strangely beautiful when he was tasked with the project in the mid-1970s.
Wyman [...]

Irene, Goodnight: If you're still thinking about Tuesday's earthquake, your anxieties are hopelessly passé. All the cool kids are now worrying about Hurricane Irene, set to blow by the Delaware coast this weekend on its way to turning New York City into an outtake from a disaster movie, tossing a bunch of rain and wind [...]

© 2011 Michael W. Hicks

Drive Your Cares Away: Suburban living may not be for everyone, but it's supposed to come with a definite advantage over an urban homestead—cheaper rent and/or mortgage payments. Turns out that's not really the case. Transportation costs eat up most of the savings from living farther from downtown, a new study reports. Homes may be [...]

Washington, Not D.C.: For residents of the District, looking at Twitter this weekend was even more alarming than usual. A charming slogan—#FuckYouWashington—threatened to take over the site. But this had nothing to do with Harry Thomas Jr.'s nonprofits, or the fate of Tommy Wells, or any of the local scandals that get myopic little twits [...]

Games Without Frontiers: In the mid-1990s, Pokémon video games, anime cartoons, and merchandise were wildly popular, despite the fact that the TV show caused occasional seizures. Now comes news on two related fronts: Pokémon still exists, and the D.C. area is home to one of its champions. McLean resident Wolfe Glick, 15, won the Masters [...]

Metro Center.  © 2011 Matt Dunn

Always Low Prices On Guns: It turned out Walmart didn't need much of a hard sell to get D.C. government officials to welcome them to town; the only argument the city's really putting up so far is about whether they'll deign to give us four stores, or five, not about whether they'll do things like, [...]

Damn The Torpedoes: The Department of Justice recently reminded federal law enforcement authorities that marijuana is illegal in the U.S., no matter what laws cities or states might pass to the contrary. Here in the District, that might have threatened a nascent medical marijuana program—except Mayor Vince Gray has apparently decided he doesn't care what [...]

Public Transit Turned Public Restroom: The Metro is good for a lot of things—getting around town, mysteriously stopping underground for a while, finding new and exciting ways to be annoyed by tourists. And now, apparently, also defecation. A rider found a pile of human shit on a pedestrian bridge between the Metro and VRE stations [...]