Buried at the bottom of yesterday's WaPo story about the $1.5 billion funding package for Metro passed by the Senate is this juicy tidbit:The bill also includes a provision to improve cellphone coverage in the subway system. Within one year, the 20 busiest underground Metro stations would be required to have cellphone access for all carriers. Currently, only Verizon or Sprint roaming customers can receive signals.The last we heard about plans to build an expanded......

For all its foibles, Metro is still something most of the capital region wants to take pride in. Sure, all the news lately about the Metro funding bill touts the importance of federal workers riding the rails on a daily basis - but when it comes down to it, Metro in general is something beloved by most area residents, regardless of where they work. Metro conducted one of its Customer Satisfaction Measures over the past......

The long-delayed bill which includes a potential $1.5 billion in funding for Metrorail will finally be voted on in the Senate tomorrow, and it is expected to pass. Debate on the floor was officially closed by a 69-17 vote yesterday, and it would appear that the legislation has more than enough votes to make it's way to President Bush's desk. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is probably finding the bill more difficult to roadblock these days,......

A handful of Metrobus route and service changes took effect on Sunday, the most notable of which is an increase in the frequency of the 5A line, which travels between L'Enfant Plaza and Dulles Airport. Three westbound and three eastbound buses have been added every weekday, which is good news for anyone who regularly uses the often very crowded 5A. The additional buses will leave D and 7th streets SW at 6:25 a.m., 2:30 and......

The notion that we'd all like to do more with our SmarTrip cards isn't new - we've been calling for such improvements for quite some time. So, it was understandable that we were encouraged by reports released last winter which indicated SmarTrip cards would be able to be automatically reloaded like E-Z Passes by the end of 2008. In hindsight, we probably should have been more pessimistic. The Post reported earlier this week that the......

Metro brings word that yesterday, the House of Representatives approved an amended version of the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 and the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, H.R. 2095. While the bill's main financial purpose is to allocate $13.06 billion in federal funds over the next five years to Amtrak, it also includes $1.5 billion in appropriations for Metro to make capital improvements in the next ten years - vital funds......

If you aren't getting your fill of commenting on local transit issues through the 16th Street Bus Study or the DC Neighborhood Circulation Study, there's yet more chances to make your voice heard. WMATA announced today that they'll be holding public meetings beginning September 24th regarding possible improvements to 14 bus lines, including the oft-travelled "D" and "2" series of lines. For more information regarding the sessions - or to register your complaints online if......

Another weekend, another bunch of Metro maintenance-based delays to report. We suppose we can take solace in the fact that those of you on the Yellow Line are finally getting a much-deserved break this weekend. Red Line: Beginning tonight at 10 p.m. through closing on Sunday, trains will be single tracking between the Friendship Heights and Medical Center stations. To assist the flow of rail travel towards D.C., every other train in the direction of......

Virginia Railway Express had its busiest month ever in August, hauling an average load of more than 15,000 people per day. It's both a testament to the metro area's thirst for mass transit and a startling turnaround for an agency that was shedding customers left and right as recently as last year. Heck, the system is even looking into possibly expanding its reach. But there's big trouble rumbling under the surface. According to the VRE's......

According to the Post, Metro finally got its on-time measuring system working in Metrobuses after 35 years. So, that's the positive news. The statistics uncovered, on the other hand, pretty much confirm what everyone already assumes about the buses' ability to stick to a schedule: namely, that they have no such ability. A report to be released on Thursday will show that overall, Metrobuses were on-time (defined as falling somewhere between two minutes early and......

Due to security surrounding the dedication of the new Pentagon Memorial on Thursday morning, all Metrobus service that would usually run through the Pentagon Transit Center will be rerouted to Pentagon City. The Center services a good number of bus routes, so if your commute takes you through Northern Virginia on a bus, we'd recommend looking in to some alternate plans on Thursday. Metrorail service at and through the Pentagon station will not be affected.......

Last week, the Washington Business Journal ran a Q & A with Metro Chairman Chris Zimmerman, and while the majority of the interview was "Metro needs more funding" ad infinitum (not that we can argue), this one bit did catch our eye: Transit-oriented development is what has made a success out of Arlington’s Rosslyn-Ballston corridor. Where else in Metro’s system do you see the best potential for new development? Anywhere there’s a station. At......

Reader Michael Griffith sends us this picture and a report from his Metro ride this morning, where he encountered the new spring-loaded handles that Metro is currently testing. Older cars have gotten boring (but probably just as effective) vinyl straps, but the stainless steel is the wave of the future! From the looks of it though, they aren't really being used that much...yet. Said Michael:No one was using nor commenting on the handles...I also......

Whilst browsing through our usual feed of transit news, we came upon this USA Today article about the Drive 55 campaign -- it was of modest interest, but nothing that seemed to be too D.C.-area related. After all, the speed limit for all our major highways in Maryland and Virginia have been set at 65 since the national limit was raised by Congress in November 1995 (see page 20 of this PDF), and only a......

We thought that we had noticed more Metro Transit Police patrolling at the mouths of Metro stations and up and down platforms in recent weeks, and now we might know part of the reason why: the total count of reported thefts in the system, both violent and not, is way up from last year. According to the Metro crime statistics site, year-to-date robberies and larceny in the entirety of the system are up about 38......

Regardless of whether you support it as a viable alternative to light rail or not, Bus Rapid Transit is being seriously considered in many local jurisdictions as a way to move more people around. But in order for BRT to work properly, there's got to be an effective way to keep car drivers out of dedicated bus lanes. Which is why we found this video report from NBC4 a proper jumping point for today's post......

Hey Virginia, are you taking notes? Encouraging transit developments are happening in Maryland these days - mostly revolving around the MARC system. MARC's facing many of the same challenges that every other local transit system is: booming ridership, infrastructure in need of improvement, less than stellar performance, and waning public confidence. But lo and behold, things aren't grinding to a halt. First, MARC's administrator, Paul J. Wiedefeld, admitted that the public deserved a better way......

The amount of miles logged by Maryland, Virginia, and District drivers fell sharply in May, contributing to a national drop of more than 9.6 billion miles, the third largest slide in the country's history. The decrease saw local drivers notching between 1.7 and 4.2 percent fewer turns of the odometer. So, you might ask, what's this got to do with Metro? Well, lots. The conclusions that we can draw from this drop are many -......

Baseball's trading deadline is July 31, but the District's transportation scene experienced it's own version of a pennant race deal yesterday. Now-former head of DDOT Emeka Moneme resigned from his post to take up the Chief Administrative Officer post at Metro. Mayor Fenty can't be too upset at the loss; WMATA is just returning the favor after Fenty plucked current City Administrator Dan Tangherlini from Metro back in November 2006. David Alpert has the first......

Metro, you know that we love you, and that sometimes, life isn't fair - after all, you've had kind of a rough year so far, and us transit buffs, we understand that. But you surely can understand that when we start seeing comments like, "I'm planning to go back to car pooling. Really. I'm getting fed up with this," we worry. Because for all your wild successes this year in getting people to the......

Jim Graham's hearing on the Anacostia streetcar project has come and gone - the results? Everything's pretty much the way it was before. Barring any last minute legislative derailments, the Anacostia line should go on as planned. There is, however, a small new can of worms opening. The debate centers around whether or not the line will actually achieve anything other than pushing forward streetcar development to other parts of the city. Some transit types......

I don't think I've ever seen a group work so hard to do nothing. It was doing nothing taken to an art. They had since February to come up with something and they came up with nothing. It was like a 'Seinfeld' episode, the show about nothing. - Virginia Governor Tim Kaine Well, we were planning to bring you some of the "highlights" from the recent special session of Virginia's General Assembly - but it......

Metrorail maintenance may make for an interesting read, but that doesn't make it any easier to swallow - unfortunately, Blue and Yellow line riders will get to experience that first hand this weekend. Metro is telling customers who plan on riding between the Pentagon City and Braddock Road stations to factor in an additional 35 minutes of travel time from 7 a.m. Saturday until 7 p.m. Sunday for track work. Additionally, there's going to be......

Metro maintenance can be disruptive. It's not a secret - weekend work is something that can really throw a wrench into your plans. You've often commented wondering why Metro has to take weekends, sometimes many in a row, to fix a track switch. Well in case you missed the Post's awesome Commuter graphic this week, make sure to check it out to get a feel for how much labor and intricate planning actually goes into......

View Larger Map This year's Independence Day fireworks are scheduled to begin at 9:10 p.m. (Hopefully, the weather will cooperate.) But do you know how you'll be getting to and from the District's most coveted viewing locations? Well, the District government (and the rest of us living here) would really prefer it if you used public transportation or walked, rather than driving - as one might suspect, there's going to be all sorts of stringent......

Did you get an email from Metro yesterday? If you did, you're now an important part of a new program that's attempting to find ways to improve the service of the S bus lines, which run between Silver Spring and downtown D.C. The first step in the The Metrobus 16th Street Line Study was surveys which were distributed to riders of any S line bus on June 18. The email contains details about a community......

A typical weekday morning for yours truly involves catching the next train out of Van Ness-UDC to Dupont Circle. And more often than not, there's a train waiting for me at the station when I get there. No problems, right? Well, we've noticed recently that there's been a slight issue with the pacing of trains in the morning on the Red Line - namely, (and we never thought we'd say this) that there's just too......

After last week's Metropocalypse, we all took in the reports as to how major loss of service happens, and the fallout after the fact. But nothing really hit the nail on the head like Lena H. Sun's half-report, half-plea for the future. Sun touches on most of the points that seem (at least to us) to be regurgitated over and over these days: Metro's infrastructure is old - trains are past their primes, overworked stud......

It's been quite a week for the Orange line, with three long delays in three days (not to mention last week's storm-related delays). Monday's derailment of a train between the Rosslyn and Court House stations left people clamoring for a way to get home, but luckily, it wasn't as severe as it could have been. Of course, no one would argue that being stuck in a tunnel for a long time with air conditioning on......

We all know the effect that levels of federal funding have on transit around here (and, obviously, around the country). One only has to look to the way that the Federal Transit Administration has handled the development of the proposed Purple and Silver Lines to see it - public services toyed with by the fickle madam that is federal appropriations. Without the cash from the Feds (however small that apportionment may be), not much seems......