Metro Closes Doors

Metro may have pulled it, but it found its way back to youtube!

The Union Station escalators are still backwards.

Metro Pulls Bobblehead Pope Web Ad

H/T to Chris for the story.

Watch this ad, knowing full well that next time you swipe your smartrip, you’re paying for shit like this.

Who let Metro get a YouTube account???

Further, they have informative videos explaining why you’re probably going to get wherever you’re going… late.

Oh, and if you’re still not sold on smartrip, Metro has a video for that, too.

H/T: Why I hate DC

The lady from the Red Line called back. We had a back and forth, as she thought I was talking about what happens when one escalator is broken (one must go up, according to Metro policies).

I proceeded to explain the traffic lane theory, and awkward two step that I endure daily, whereas I sidestep left, and the other person sidesteps right, and then we do it all over again, and one person has to make way.

Only then did she get what I meant. Apparently, they’re sending a supervisor to ‘ascertain the situation.’ I think that’s just super.

We’ll see!

I am surprised. Metro called me back this morning. I got to voice my concerns! Response time? Just under 9 hours.

I’m impressed. We’ll see if it changes things.

“This is not normal,” Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. said. “This is highly, highly irregular.”

according to a WP article.

Seriously? Way to make me confident to ride the metro. Smoke is filling the tubes, and officials are “still baffled by the unprecdented [sic] and unexplained incidents. They were beginning to consider the possibility that the events were more than mere accidents.”
(Why can’t the WP spell unprecedented?)

Metro’s conclusion?

“We’d like for them to stop,”

So would we. So would we.

We’d also like a little more assurance than “Oh, yeah, those are bad! We’d like for it to stop happening..”

In the mean time, we’re taking the bus.

When I was a little kid, the police in my suburb would frequently steal kid’s bikes to teach them a lesson. The parents would freak out, and have them call the police. The police would let them look at the recovered bikes, and then have them register the bike with the city.

Apparently, Metro wants to do the same thing with iPods. According to The Examiner

Metro police will be distributing decals to customers that will give iPods, cell phones and other technical devices a unique identification number. If the owner registers their number, the information will be entered into a national database and could help identify a device if it is lost or stolen.

This sort of makes sense, but it really is an exercise in futility. The article reports that ”

Thirty iPods have been reported stolen from Metro customers this year, compared with 34 for all of last year and just two in 2005.

”

Thirty? Wow. Who cares? If you don’t want something stolen, don’t bring it on the metro. Plain and simple. Sure, my earbuds cost almost nearly as much as my iPod, but that’s why you should use the shuffle. They’re $79, and each song is a surprise. If you bring a 60Gig iPod Video with you every day, you deserve to get it stolen. We’re all big kids in D.C., we don’t need Metro to be our parents.