One of the reasons I wanted to live in the Washington DC metropolitan area, also known as the DMV (District, Maryland and Virginia,) was to be able to get around town by mass transit, and by that I mean subway trains. When I bought a home here, I intentionally purchased near a metrorail station. I have gone for years without driving to my office. I walk to the station, pull out my Kindle and let someone else do the driving.
I was ahead of my time in not caring if I got a drivers license or not. My father insisted that I do so the fall I turned 16, a few months later he handed me keys to the trucks and car and gas tank on the farm, and said, get yourself around. Oh, and by the way run to town and pick up a couple of pipe fittings for the processing plant, and a pound of nails. I became his reliable errand boy for a couple of years.
I have an ambivalent relationship with driving. I drive because I need to, and because I have control issues, but I seldom really enjoy it. It is more fun in the convertible with the top down on a sunny day.
Metrorail, the subway service in my backyard, is currently limping by with about 30% of their fleet of railcars in service, because - - - well the wheels are falling off of the new cars. Not exactly falling off, but moving outward on the axles, held on presumably by the rails, but far enough to cause derailments. This is a fleet of new state of the art railcars, made by Kawasaki in a plant in Nebraska. A multi billion dollar investment. The new cars make up about 70% of the active fleet. To cover they have pulled 40 year old cars that were slated to be sold for scrap back into service.
So far, the plan is increased inspections to identify wheelsets that "out of compliance." There has been no mention of FIXING the problem, or of DEMANDING that the manufacturer FIX the problem. I suspect before we are done that all of the wheels and axles on several hundred rail cars will need to be replaced, or maybe the wheels will just keep going around, until the wheels fall off, then they will replace them.
For the time being service on my home line is every 30 minutes, instead of every 7 to 10 minutes, and I am driving wherever I want or need to go.
Oh crud! Maybe nothing’s being said because there’s a lawsuit coming? We loved Metro when we lived there -- without a car -- for three years in the ´80s.
ReplyDeleteI had an off the record conversation with an insider. The axles and wheels are the same as metro has used since day one, the old cars are aluminum, the new cars are stainless steel and about 30% heavier. The wheel sets are not standing up well to the added weight. There may also be some manufacturing defects, metal samples have been sent off for expert analysis. I see lots of lawyers earning fat fees before this is over.
DeleteThe upside of living in a small town is my commute to work is roughly 4 minutes unless there's heavy traffic on US 1 coming into town.
ReplyDeleteThe downside of living in a Red State is that mass transit has never been thought of as a good thing so there's only one way to get anywhere and that's driving yourself.
There are only a few transit friendly places in the country
DeleteFor someone who loves cars as much as you do, I'm surprised to hear of your ambivalence about driving.
ReplyDeleteIf I am going to drive, I might as well enjoy the car.
DeleteWell, that's a problem. Hopefully some of the infrastructure money will help get the situation back on track.
ReplyDeleteMoney helps, I hope quickly
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