A Post on Why I Love Public Transit (Sometimes)

Whoops. It's been another three years of not blogging. My bad.

What It Is

Do I need to explain this? Public transit or mass transit is an area's system of high-capacity vehicles, for which you pay a small fee to travel back and forth from places you go. 

What It Costs

Metrorail (henceforth referred to as Metro, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) rail system) fares are based distance time of day and distance traveled. Each fare period (peak/off-peak) charges a base fare ($2 off peak, $2.25 peak) and adds distance fare based on where you tap in and out of the system. It's kind of expensive. My office is about 7 miles from home by car and a one-way Metro trip costs $3.70.

Why It's Awesome

I live near Washington, DC and work in the District. My daily commute is nearly an hour and a combination of walking, trains and a work-provided shuttle bus. When WMATA works, it's awesome. I can drive to work and sometimes do, but despite a shorter commute by car, I arrive to work angry. I don't like shouting at other cars when they inevitably do something stupid in my way. Metro saves me the frustration of sitting in traffic and the anxiety of trying not to get in a wreck. I also get to read the paper during my commute, which keeps me informed and entertained most days.

Why It Might Not Be Awesome

Sometimes Metro is decidedly not awesome. They've recently completed a year-long compacted maintenance plan designed to reduce delays and improve safety, which itself created delays and impacted commutes across the city. While they have reported fewer fires and incidents this year compared to the last few, when there is an incident it can cause widespread issues across the system because of a lack of redundancy within the routes. Unlike NYC's subway system, each line in DC only has two tracks (most of NYC's have three, with the third used as express unless needed because of track problems), meaning trains must share a track around problems, which causes backups in both directions. 

Verdict

I like public transit. Of course now that I'm putting this in writing, I'll end up with a nightmarish commute for the next three or four weeks, but it's been generally good lately.