The DC Metro Red Line

I really wish this ppl that work at metro use the metro actually, and have to explain to their bosses why they are late for work every single day ohh w8 they don’t have to explain anything to anybody cos they are the best transit system in the US … Single tracking today from Bethesda all the way to china town 35 min ride turns in to 1h and 35 min and this is called best transport system … Really Thats maybe in their dreams

even if they do track rescue or whatever they wanna call it, no consideration for rush hour or alternating days. poor communication and managing expectations. worse than most developing countries, and that is insulting developing countries to be compared to this shamble of a ‘system’.

One of the worst most unreliable transit systems in the US. DC needs a new mayor and city council. Pathetic. I’ve lived here for over a decade and it only gets worse

The DC metro in general but the Red Line is a fart-​faced bag of dicks. Unexpected service delays, trains just not going to the final destinations. Even accounting for the very special incompetency that I build in for the Metro, it still never fails to lower the already very low standard I already have for them.

Unfortunately I have to ride the red line metro line to work. I have been consistently late to work at least once a week despite leaving the same time every day because of the utter unreliability and frequent delays of this piece of crap system. About every other day, the train stops for 5+ minutes because of «track issues.» The metro operators are completely unhelpful and sometimes don’t even announce what is going on. Occasionally they will skip stops last minute, resulting in everyone who planned on getting off at that stop needing to find other means of transportation from whatever stop they decide to let you off at. I’m considering getting a bike and biking to work even though it would take twice as long just to avoid the frustration and disappointment. The DC metro is an absolute embarassment to the city and country.

Abandon hope all ye enter here. Crushing unreliability awaits the unwitting. Super scary way to get to work. More safety problems then NY subway. I hate how the doors close on people and there’s no reliable timing for the trains. Equally sad is that it transports during commuter hours the most polite crowd I’ve even seen. I don’t know what it would take to improve the system. I follow the insuckmetro twitter feed to help me keep a sense of humor. I would give metro negative 10 stars if I could. So expensive and dangerous.

Avoid on the weekend, during off-​peak hours, and on days ending with «y».
That’s a little harsh. The red line will usually take you from point «A» to point «B». I say usually because trains will experience breakdowns and because it only runs until midnight (during the week). At night, the frequency drops considerably. This can easily add 20 minutes to your transport time. It is odd to see all escalators functioning. The staff members do not have a positive attitude nor do they have a good work ethic. It’s really sad because the infrastructure isn’t that bad.
Let’s quickly dispel a misconception for people who are new to the red line.
«We apologize for any weekend delays. This line is single tracking due to maintenance»
–metro staff
This will never end. All of the sun’s hydrogen will fuse into helium before the maintenance is finished.

It’s a pissing shame that the nation’s metro system (which costs almost a meal to take) has the audacity to allow 26 minute wait times.

I have the unfortunate opportunity to ride metro red line daily. This is the worst experience and makes me second guess my work commute. It is slow, over crowded, and always has some delay or issue. I am baffled by the fact that daily riders like myself spend over $ 20 to take this transit and yet they can’t even compare to a place half the price for riding like NYC? Who is in charge and how can you live with yourself for charging us what you do and causing such awful experiences. UGH. By the way, I was able to compose this review while waiting for a train to arrive for over 30 minutes.

The train is always slow, moving on one track, always stuck somewhere!!! People have to be at work, airport, somewhere important! You can not do this every day!!! In Washington DC? Really? The capital of our nation? Really? Well you suck!!! You don’t even deserve one star!

Always broken. Always delayed, inexcusably so… I am going to start driving to work.

The Metro system as a whole is a complete disaster. The red line is the worst of the worst. DC is supposed to be the capital of the free world. We should all be embarrassed by this expensive, clunky, unreliable, useless transit
System.

Would give it less than one star if possible. All metro employees should be fired. All are incompetent and have no idea what performance means. Employees are lazy and uncaring.

Unimpressed, I am. There are better train lines in many other cities. London. Paris. Rome. Chicago. Atlanta. Boston. Minneapolis. Do those train lines leave you on a platform half way to your destination when the conductor announces «This train is now out of service»?
On this latest excursion, we rode from Shady Grove to Gallery Place and back. For someone who doesn’t do stairs or escalators, we found it to be quite challenging. Though to be honest, there was at least an elevator. Many other cities are not nearly as handicap-​accessible.
«I’ve experienced better» doesn’t quite do it justice. It’s «Methinks not» for me.

I lived in Washington DC for three years and used the red line almost every day. I guess the trendy thing to do is b*tch about how much it sucks. There are even many websites dedicated to the metro and how much it apparently stinks. Please.
Those kind of websites just show how spoiled a large majority of Americans truly are and how easy they truly have it. I always wonder if any of these people have ever rode a truly horrible system such as the transmilenio in Bogota or been on a really packed transit system like Beijing or Istanbul or dealt with delays in your average African city. I know I have. Gosh, the DC metro is amazing compared to those, give it a rest already, you sound like a bunch of spoiled brats when you complain about something so little and so trivial like a door opening on the wrong side or one. out of a total of THREE. esculators breaking down at some station. Or omg, waiting for 20 whole minutes, smartphone in hand of course. Please. There was never anything too bad about the system and people need to give it a rest and realize they have it quite lucky, it is pretty good.
3.25 stars.

Having just come down from visiting New York and using the subway pretty much exclusively, the DC metro system is a huge and confusing disappointment.
Although better than what I have back in Miami (ours is called Metro Rail) the DC metro system has much to be desired when it comes to speed, pricing, and usability.
I have to break these down a little to explain my experience.
Speed: Very long wait times between trains. Miss one and you’ll get stuck waiting quite a bit for another train. This is especially true for stations that use the same tracks for different color trains.
Pricing: This is the most confusing part of the whole system. Pricing for distance, off peak, on peak, plus a card fee. Really? Too complicated, especially for people who don’t live here and it’s really expensive, especially compared to New York’s system.
Just look at the 7 day pass to see the price difference: $ 30 vs $ 57
Not worth it, especially since I wasn’t going to travel back and forth nearly as much as I would in NYC. My rental car cost me $ 60 for 3 days and got 3 people around easily and I got to see and do more with it than having to deal with the trains.
Usability: Unless you are staying near a station and only plan on going places that are near a station I can see using it to get around, I don’t want to take a bus and sit in traffic. In all my visits to the DC area I’ve found it’s just cheaper and easier just to rent a car and deal with parking.
My experience with the red line in particular was extra disappointing, the stations were extra busy and the trains were overloaded.
I also noticed the train doors are impatient as hell, closing on people quickly and on the 2^nd attempt no longer re-​opening to let people in. I saw on several occasions people who were halfway in the train getting shut out and leaving them stuck waiting for the next one.
The only one good thing I can say about the whole system is that the stations are very clean compared to New York, but limited usefulness means I’ll be renting a car whenever I visit.

Oh so, I just got on the Red Line this week since I had to get picked up by car to head out of town on the other side. And look what I find now at the Silver Spring stop…
yup… a BROKEN ESCALATOR… WOW what are the odds???
In fact what are the odds it will take 8 months to get it running again? By which 2 months later they will have to FIX IT AGAIN??? anybody want to place any bets?
yup you know the drill…

I didn’t realize that Unilocal Reviewed the Metro lines. Here’s my chance.
I was hard pressed to say anything specific about the Red Line I wouldn’t say about the other lines until I remembered THE INCIDENT. The Red line occasionally terminates at Grovesnor. I don’t how you figure this out if you’re an occasional user because none of the maps mark Grovesnor as a terminus. One day I was on a Red Line from downtown to Shady Grove. The driver as usual mumbles something. The train stopped at Grovesnor. I was surprised to see everyone rise to leave the train except me and a sleeping guy. The train kind of backed up and then went into a cave. Everything got dark and then the train shut off. About this time, I realized there must be a reason everyone got off the train.
While still puzzling my options, a workman came along, saw me, opened the door and said, «W-​T-​F are you doing here?» So then they had to back the train onto the tracks again to open the door in a safe location.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how they meant for everyone to exit at Grovesnor. Kind of caused by 2 events: the mumbling operator and the lack of notation on a map.
Another thing that puzzles me. Farragut West is Orange; Farragut North is on the Red line. They have exits about a block from each other. I noticed the Farragut West has a sign that says something like, «Free transfer to the Red line Farragut North.» I haven’t spotted any other signs and have no idea how the transfer works.

Just as there’s a video game for shows like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, the Red Line’s home game came out years ago for the PC. It was called The Oregon Trail. Art imitates life in the sense that most people succumb to dysentery before reaching their destination due to single tracking and offloading trains.
There’s a mini-​game I like to play sometimes called, «Who Wants to Keep Their Job?» That’s where you get to the station 20 minutes early only to find out that the trains aren’t moving due to «a disruption,» and everyone races up the broken escalators to fight for standing-​room-​only on the ONE bus headed downtown. If you somehow make it onto that bus, you must then fight people trying to squeeze on at the other stations along the way.
All jokes aside, complaining about Metro is like complaining about the electric company. There’s only one provider, so there isn’t much you can do. When it works, it’s great at getting you from A to B. When it isn’t working, it’s great at getting you from A to A and a half, and making you sympathetic to the handsome guy (me) digging his own subway tunnel with a shovel out in front of his apartment.

The red line is really sad. Constant stoppages of service, outages of escalators, and absurdly high prices for trains that haven’t been upgraded in decades and never run often enough. While the other lines share tracks in DC, the red line doesn’t, meaning that it isn’t as useful and doesn’t have as many trains. And yet it serves most of the places that people actually want to go.
I live and work literally right at Metro stops and find it easier and cheaper to drive almost regardless of the situation. They talk incessantly about upgrading and expanding the Metro, but the reality is there is an enormous amount of work that should have been finished years ago that isn’t yet even started.