Metro Trains

Back in 2009, a terrible train collision killed nine people in Northeast Washington, DC, on the Metrorail. It took place one stop north of Catholic University, where I was a student for most of the 1990’s, riding the Metro daily.

I rode the Metro daily for decades. In 1976 my brother, my father, and I rode the first-ever Metro train run, along with the mayor. (My dad worked for him at the time; I was five and my brother three.)

Last month I rode the train through Tuscany, where they make train cars. It reminded me of the service problems the Washington Metro experienced during the early years.

There weren’t enough train cars. The first order of rolling stock for the Metro came from Georgia. But then we waited, through the early- and mid- of the 1980’s, for a second and third order, both from Italy.

In the early eighties, you often had to wait 20-30 minutes for a Metro train to come. Then the Italian orders arrived, and everything changed: trains every few minutes. Ridership began to grow steadily, right alongside the growth of the metro area, until 2008.

(I just checked, and there are 280 cars still in service in the Washington Metro, from the order of 290 that arrived from Italy in the mid-eighties.)

Not for nothing, but these 3000 series railcars – which first hit the tracks in 1984! – are sounding pretty smooth as they roll along. @nbcwashington #wmata pic.twitter.com/ERTpORZo8b

— Adam Tuss (@AdamTuss) October 19, 2021

Thank God those 280 old cars are still around, since Metro announced this week that the entire 7000-series of rolling stock, acquired in 2015, will have to be taken out of service for an indefinite period of time because of a safety problem.

D.C.'s Metro system abruptly pulled more than half of its fleet off the tracks after a train derailed three times in one day last week. @AdamTuss talked to metro employees who say they've known about the safety issues for years. pic.twitter.com/B6HfxSBoH9

— The News with Shepard Smith (@thenewsoncnbc) October 19, 2021

Now history is repeating itself: 30-minute+ waits for a train to come.

 

Wait times are more like 45 minutes not the 30 minutes @wmata @WOTPRadio is saying in their press release @Metrorailinfo

— Matthew Henry (@gmphap1) October 19, 2021

—

I noted back in the summer of 2009, after the heartbreaking crash, that things would never be the same for the Washington Metro. They haven’t been. Ridership has decreased since then, even as metro-area population has risen. In 2008, the Washington Metro system averaged 752,000 trips per weekday. Then ridership began declining annually. When it plunged 85% last year because of coronavirus shut-downs, that drop actually fit into the longer-term trend.

And now this: Yesterday morning during rush hour, the system had only 23 trains running, on six lines. It is a sad, sad spectacle. The doldrums of the early 80’s have returned, but without the promise of a better future this time.

I remember watching this now-quaint little movie as a kid, at the public library down the street from our house.

Things have not turned out so well.

Unbelievable! Taking an hour between trains now!@wmata @Metrorailinfo @WTOP pic.twitter.com/roEpOw9GKR

— Matthew Henry (@gmphap1) October 20, 2021

 

Debt Relief

I remember using the Lubyanka Metro station in Moscow when I visited the Soviet Union in 1983.

It is the closest station to Red Square. May the poor people who died there on Monday rest in peace…

…Some people have debts that they will never be able to repay. Terrifying to contemplate: I owe more than I will ever be able to earn. I cannot provide for my family. We are in a hole we can’t get out of.

Entrance to Lubyanka Metro Station, Moscow

But there is something a hopeless debtor can do: Get a lawyer and go to a bankruptcy judge.

In the clear light of a thorough reckoning, everyone acknowledges that the debts are hopeless. The debtor agrees to a feasible payment plan. Life becomes much more austere–no luxuries, humiliating oversight–but at least the cloud of hopeless debt is gone.

This is us, people.

We owe God a debt we could never repay. How can we make up for even a single sin? He is perfect, loving–our gentle Father. To displease Him for an instant is more than we could make up for in a lifetime.

We are bankrupt before God. The human race needs debt relief.

Let’s go to the Judge. Let’s get on our knees before the altar and the mysteries of the Sacred Triduum. Let’s beg God for a feasible payment plan.

Christ will pay off all our debts and give us an austere, humble way to redeem the rest of our lives on earth.

Roads that Don’t Have to be Plowed

On September 9, 1969, President Nixon’s transportation secretary ordered work on the Three Sisters Bridge to begin…

As construction began, near Foxhall and Canal Roads, just west of Georgetown, demonstrators lay down in front of bulldozers and tied themselves to trees that were slated to be chopped down. Opponents paddled a canoe out to the Three Sisters — the three boulders siting in mid-river — and hung a banner on the rocks that read: “Stop the Bridge.”

Arrests took place daily. But work was halted by a temporary restraining order issued that October. In August 1970, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court ordered work on the bridge halted.

His opinion said that proper planning procedures had not been followed and local voices had not been adequately heard. (Washington Post)

Not long ago, I promised to detail the Washington highways that might have been, but thankfully are not.

Our city was spared these depredations, thanks largely to ‘Washingtonian of the Year,’ 1972: Peter Craig.

Here is a brief outline of the city-choking asphalt that would have been laid:

A. I-66 would have crossed into Washington over the Three Sisters Bridge. Then it would have split into two freeways:

1. The Potomac Freeway would have channeled traffic from the Three Sisters Bridge along the Georgetown waterfront and onto a newly tunneled K Street. (It would have been eight lanes wide, double the size of the existing Whitehurst Freeway.) The K Street Freeway would have tunneled from Foggy Bottom to Seventh Street NW. (The approach lanes and exit ramps that now sit near the Kennedy Center would have been the western terminus of this freeway.)

2. The Palisades Parkway, four lanes wide, would have gone northwest from the Three Sisters Bridge to the Capital Beltway in Cabin John, along the Maryland side of the Potomac.

B. What is now the Metro Red Line from Union Station to Silver Spring would have been the ten-lane North Central Freeway. It would have met the Beltway just west of Georgia Avenue.

C. The Northeast Freeway would have allowed I-95 to continue through Prince George’s County and into the District, where it would have joined the North Central near what is now the Fort Totten Metro station. Ten lanes would have gone through Langley Park and Takoma Park.

D. The Industrial Freeway, would have run in six lanes from I-395 just north of the Capitol to Kenilworth Avenue in Maryland, along the New York Avenue corridor.

Glover Archbold Park

E. Most Appalling: There were to have been an “inner Beltway!” The South Leg of this ‘Inner Loop’ would have tunneled under the Mall, beginning beneath the Lincoln Memorial, running below the Tidal Basin and emerging between the 14th Street Bridge and the Jefferson Memorial (in one early rendering, it would have been trenched through the Mall, not tunneled).

Dear readers, I know that some of you are in far-flung places. It might be hard for you to visualize clearly the horror of what could have happened to the most splendid city on earth.

Suffice it to say that there ought to be a statue of Peter Craig in at least one of the beautiful, well-treed parks which he saved from the bulldozers.

“Ooh. Excuse Me.”

John Catoe and Jim Graham

Now the naked emporer of Metro has quit the throne.

Catoe declared–with apparently no sense of irony whatsoever–that his last day in office will be April 2. That is, Good Friday…

…Eighty-one years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born. Stay tuned for more on this–we will publish an earth-shattering homily tomorrow…

…Solid Hoya victory last night.

But there is no rest for the weary: ‘Nova at high noon on Sunday! Let’s throw down the holy gauntlet and fight for Catholic-school dominance!!

…Now, dear reader: I know that sometimes you say to yourself (while malingering here on this website), “What in the world is this blog really all about? I mean, really! It is just a little too strange.”

Well, I finally found the perfect explanation for all these insufferable posts that I put up here. It explains why they stink.

The explanation comes, of course, from the preaching of our hero and premier hall-of-famer, St. Augustine.

In his sermon explaining the Parable of the Wedding Banquet, he explains how the banquet of Christ is a banquet of faith. Our bodily senses do not perceive it.

As he explains this, he gives the best possible analogy for the preaching ministry, as practiced by your unworthy servant:

We for our part have perceived nothing about the Lord through the outer senses of taste, smell, touch, and sight. We have heard with our hearing and believed with our hearts.

And what we heard did not come from Christ’s own mouth, but from the mouths of His preachers–from the mouths of those who were already dining with Him at His banquet, and invited us to join them by belching their appreciation for the feast. (Sermon 112)

I dine at the banquet of Christ. I eat my fill. I belch. And the rest is weblog history.

Titans of the Underground, Naked Emporers

In 1956 a five-alarm fire consumed the Wanamaker’s Department Store in New York City.

Firefighters doused the burning building with their hoses for days.

They sprayed so much water that it flooded the subway station below.

The earth underneath one of the railroad beds collapsed, and a train sank five feet into the hole. Thank God, not a soul on the train was injured.

It was July 14, 11:50 p.m.

At 12:02 a.m. on July 20, the subway began operating through the Astor Place station again. Everything had been completely repaired in five days and twelve minutes.

It was a miracle of decisiveness, engineering efficiency, and wholesome pride.

John Catoe and Jim Graham

I thought of this when the following happened yesterday:

The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority Board, chaired by D.C. Councilman Jim Graham, voted 4 to 1 to renew the contract of Metro chief John Catoe.

At that very moment, FBI agents were in the office of Councilman Graham’s chief of staff Ted Loza, collecting evidence for a bribery case against him.

The day before, Graham had said that Metro has been subject to demonic attack this year.

“We’re having the heavens open, and all manner of demons have been unleashed.”

He really did say this. Councilman Graham said it when he was asked by a reporter whether or not Catoe should have to take any of the blame for the fact that Metro has become a tragic laughingstock.

Perhaps the venerable Councilman was just being poetic when he chalked the problems up to demons from heaven.

Hopefully the man is aware that God and the good angels are in heaven, and the demons are in the other place.

Hopefully he knows that demons tend to focus on enticing people to commit sins, like taking bribes or attempting to “marry” someone of the same sex.

On the other hand, fatal subway crashes, endless delays, surprise station closures, and other signs of managerial incompetence are usually atributable to human error.

…For the record, my disapproval of John Catoe’s regime began two years ago, when he instituted the following public-address message in the stations:

We have a lot of escalators in our system. You’ll notice that most people stand on the right side. And while you’re riding, hold the handrail for your safety. Enjoy your trip, and thank you for riding Metro.

This is not an effective message. It is an effete message.

But Catoe did not want to insist that anyone stand to the right. He didn’t want to give an order. He thought doing so would only encourage Type-A personalities to rush through stations in a furious hurry on the left.

Call me a Type-A personality if you want–call me something worse–but I do not think “stand to the right” is a suggestion. It is like the eleventh Commandment. It is escalator Rule Number One.

To review:

1956 in New York: The I.R.T. has a subway station which has been flooded by the Fire Department, and there is a train sunk into the roadbed. Everything is fully repaired and operational five days later.

2009 in Washington: John Catoe does not want to encourage rushing. It is the deadliest, most bogged-down year in the history of Metro. The WMATA Board renews his contract and gives him a standing ovation.

Empire Boulevard, Brooklyn

It has been a month since the Monday evening that rattled me as much as I have been rattled in a long time. I think September 11, 2001, was the last time I sat in front of a televison in a state of such distress.

The Washington Metro opened when I was a little boy. My dad worked for the city then, and we rode on a special Metro ride for V.I.P.’s, the day before the system opened.

He was so excited about the Metro that he used to ride it one stop each evening, from his office at Farragut North to the end of the red line at Dupont Circle. Then he would catch the bus the rest of the way to our house (near Friendship Heights–only a shaded ‘future’ station on the map back then).

The Metro ride did not save him any time or trouble. He did it out of sheer excitement.

I guess children who grow up on farms have a special love for pigs and tractors. They do not like to see sick pigs or mangled tractors. For me, it is the Metro.

There was a deadly Metro crash in January, 1982–the same afternoon Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the 14th-Street bridge and plummeted into the Potomac River. And a Metro operator was killed in a crash in 1996.

But I think the crash on June 22 is the event that will mark a turning point in Washington subway history equivalent to the turning point that was reached in New York City ten days before the end of World War I:

Have you ever been to Frederick Law Olmstead’s magnificent Prospect Park in Brooklyn? One of the exits of the park opens onto Empire Boulevard.

This street once had a different name. They had to change the name of the street, because the old name had become synonymous with death and horror. Empire Boulevard was once Malbone Street.

Click here for the New York Times account of the deadliest non-terrorist subway catastrophe in history, which happened in the tunnel outside the Malbone Street station on All Saints Day, 1918.

At least 93 people died. The crash occurred because a non-union scab with two hours of training was operating the Brighton Beach express during a strike. He took a six-mile-an-hour curve at 40 mph.

The responsible authorities were indicted for manslaughter.

The NYC subway bounced back. It became a professional operation. May the same happen here in Washington. And may all the dead rest in peace.