Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Who Else Loves the Yellow Line?


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From Jamie:
I have recently become hopelessly enamored with the Yellow Line. It’s better than all the others put together (wait, that’s a low bar to set). I want to write it poems and send it flowers. I want to stand under the elevated tracks at Huntington and hold a boom box over my head. That is how much I have come to love the Yellow Line.

I live at Van Dorn and work at Union Station, so for the past two years my commute has been Van Dorn to Metro Center on Blue and then Red Line to Union Station. I always sort of knew that it would be faster to change to Yellow at King Street and skip the whole Rosslyn-Foggy Bottom-Farragut loop, but the thought of transferring trains TWICE instead of once was appalling. I liked getting on the train and zoning out with my newspaper for a solid half hour before I had to do anything.

But one day I saw that there was a service disruption on Blue and Orange, and I decided to bail out and give the Yellow a whirl. I waited on King Street platform for two extra minutes til the mostly-empty Yellow Line train came along. It chugged along at a solid pace and pulled into Gallery Place eons before I would have gotten there on Blue+Red. Then I hopped the Red Line and got to work fifteen (15!!!) minutes earlier than I would have normally. How in the hell?

Oh yeah, that’s right – I didn’t have to deal with the Orange Line merge at Rosslyn, where Blue usually gets shafted while two or even three Orange trains pass in front. I didn’t have to deal with the throngs getting on and off at Farragut West and McPherson Square while the doors chime over and over and the driver starts threatening to offload the train. And I didn’t have to deal with the dreaded Metro Center.

Oh glorious Yellow Line--where I can always easily find parking at Huntington (there are SO MANY GARAGES there!), where I can give the Green Line the finger pulling into L’Enfant Plaza because we get priority; where I can always get a seat because the line is so short during rush hour that the train never gets very full. I just hope the Yellow Line feels the same way about me, and we can be together forever and ever.

Two transfers to let me ride in bliss? I’ll take it.
Other items:
Metro doesn't want to pay tax, threatens to sue (Examiner)
Commuters would like public transportation option (WTOP)
 
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