I have spoken before on the great fun it is to take public transportation on a regular basis. While I am SO glad there is a good transit system in place where I live (otherwise I would be paying $15/day to park my car at work), sometimes I just can't stand it. And I feel like I want to yell obscenities. Take this week, for example..
Escalators are out all over the place. The good news is that when an escalator isn't working, it turns in to just a regular flight of stairs, which is still usable. And while I walk up and down the escalators anyway, and this normally wouldn't be a big deal, it turns out that I am not the only person in the city using mass transit, and thus using the non-working escalators. Those that normally categorize themselves as escalator-riders tend not to handle the walking up of the stairs very well. So there is a MAJOR backup to get on these things. People are trying to haul their luggage, strollers, suveniers, etc up the stairs and having a very hard time of it. I've missed my bus twice this week just because I've been stuck behind slow-moving, struggling stair-climbers. There is one particular escalator at the Pentagon station that is hit or miss. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I have had the thing quit working mid-stair-climb 3 separate times. That is the most odd feeling. I've got my stride, walking up the escalator, the handrail either moving not as fast, or faster than the escalator itself (why is this always the case? Can't they link the handrail to the motion of the stairs so that they are at the same speed? It baffles me), when .................. stutter - STOP. 3 times! Totally weird.
Anyway. So that is the escalator issue. Next is the train issue. It seems as if there is 'track maintenance' somewhere every day. Which delays all trains. And there's the common 'sick passenger on train' issue (tourists). For some reason, 2 of the trains I've been on this week have broken down. We get to a stop and the driver comes on the loud speaker announcing that everybody has to get off because the train is broken. WHA - ? So we all pile out of the train cars and crowd on to the platform... and the 'broken' train pulls away. This has me a little confused. How does a broken train continue on its way down the track? Was there somehow too much weight on the train? Is it only broken when people are on it? Very strange, I tell you.
After all that frustration with the metro escalators and trains, and all the tons of people who are involved that I have to touch to squeeze by or through, I finally emerged out from the underground only to see my bus pulling away from it's resting spot. Awesome. Another 20 minutes for my next bus... and the creepy old guy with the long gray stringy hair has the opportunity to watch and stare at me in the mean time......
and just for fun, let's start this all over again tomorrow.
For more information, this pretty much sums it up.
2 comments:
LOL, cool picture. What do you mean by "sick people on train (tourists)"?
Sixoryx - common train delay reasons include 'sick passenger on train'. I assume that most of the time this means somebody has barfed. And I blame it on the tourists who aren't used to riding the trains and have perhaps chosen a seat that has them facing backward. :D
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