Browsed by
Category: commuting

Turning a Corner

Turning a Corner

Comments 0 Comment

Yesterday’s drive to and from the office was like a dream. Forty minutes in and forty minutes out. I gained 100 minutes of free time. I know it was unusual, I know it won’t hold up over time, but even if I saved 50 minutes, that’s almost an hour (a daylight hour!) a day.

Put five of those together and you have a paragraph written,  a closet cleaned — a walk enjoyed.

Driving has its own frustrations. Stop-and-go traffic, crazy drivers, the inability to get anything else done at the same time. (I love my reading time on Metro.)

But a flip has been switched, a corner has been turned. Fifty minutes is 50 minutes.

Morning Walk, Evening Prayer

Morning Walk, Evening Prayer

Comments 0 Comment
From this …
To this … 

Metro closures have one silver lining. They push people out onto the streets where they might actually … walk!

That’s what I did this morning, hoofing it from Pentagon City to Crystal City — which is not the metropolis-to-metropolis trek that it sounds like but a mile-long stroll.

It was the best way to start a day, even in this heat and humidity. I plugged in my earbuds and took off. I passed the bustle of Metro, crowds surging on and off of shuttle buses, then turned left on 15th Street, seeking shade wherever I found it.

In my ears, “When at Night I Go to Sleep,” also known as “The Evening Prayer” or “Abendsegen” in German, a lovely melody from “Hansel and Gretel” by Engelbert Humperdinck. For some reason I played this melody when I got off Metro a stop earlier in the city and walked from Chinatown to the Law Center. So it has become my go-to walking-to-work piece.

And it is blissful, calming music. Full and rich, perfect for tuning out the world while at the same time plunging into it. I arrived physically wilted but mentally charged. Maybe I’ll get off a stop early more often.

Back to Vienna

Back to Vienna

Comments 0 Comment

A brief lull for Orange Line riders in Metro’s Safe Track program (I can’t believe we’re all calling it that! what a triumph of marketing?) allows me to come and go through Vienna. I was almost going to say “my beloved Vienna.”

Maybe that’s a bit too strong, but such is the lure of the familiar and comfortable that I almost thought of it that way this morning. There is the familiar parking garage, open and above-ground unlike the one at Wiehle-Reston. There is the bridge over 66, the newspaper hawkers, the buses roaring to their bays.

I got to take the morning drive along Vale and Hunter Mill Roads, the road muggy and shaggy with summer, the turns a delight.

It was only a commute, but it felt like a homecoming.

Metrovoidance!

Metrovoidance!

Comments 0 Comment

On a week when I originally thought I’d be riding the train again I’m back on the bus. A closer reading of Metro’s scheduled shut-downs and closures showed that I’d be unable to make a connection I need to make to reach the office.

The bus isn’t a bad option; in fact, it’s better in many ways. But the schedule is limiting and it makes for quite a scramble in the morning. No more bucolic drives to Vienna via Vale and Hunter Mill Roads.  No more give in the day. It’s regimented from beginning to end.

But the change does one very big thing: It keeps me off Metro. And around here, that’s the new name of the game.

The general manager recently pleaded with riders of three affected lines to find alternative transportation. The patchwork system of shuttle buses could only support 30 percent of the usual daily riders, he said. According to yesterday’s reports, that’s about what happened. Seventy percent of the people who usually ride those trains found other ways to work or telework.

So Metro has become a public transit system without a public. And my commute, like so many other people’s, is all about Metrovoidance!

(Metro during the “Safe Track” program: They don’t keep those lights low for nothing!)

Absorption

Absorption

Comments 0 Comment

Mornings have changed since Metro began its Safetrack program. (Safetrack could also be called Slowtrack, or, more appropriately, Slowtrain.) I rush to leave the house in time to get a parking place at a lot that fills completely before 6:30 a.m.

It’s not a peaceful way to start the day, but it is what it is.

And so I begin to see this work space, overhead-lit and open as it is, as an oasis of calm. There are the windows pouring light into the room, and there is the fact that until about 8:12 the overheads remain off. There are the small, clattery sounds of other people arriving, getting settled, making coffee. And there is, most of all, the work.

When it’s interesting (as it often is here), the calm continues as the day wears on. Because there’s nothing so quieting as absorption.

Bus Warrior

Bus Warrior

Comments 0 Comment

A new job, a new routine, a new commute. After a couple of long, miserable slogs on Metro, I tried a bus that whisks me from a parking lot in Reston to a stop five minutes from my new office. It will be a godsend — if I can figure out the parking.

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about D.C. traffic and commuting, it’s that every shortcut has already been found, every new route tried. It hasn’t been designated the second worst traffic city in the nation (bested only by L.A., I believe) for nothing!

But so far I can say this: the bus is a fundamentally different way to travel. It moves you through space above ground, for one thing. I see the white stones of Arlington in military precision. I see the Washington monument looming in the distance when we stop at the Pentagon.

Connections are clearer, the way road leads to road. It’s a good way to begin a new chapter, seeing more clearly, perched high above the fray. Not road warrior but bus warrior.

End of the Rainbow

End of the Rainbow

Comments 0 Comment

Another day, another shower, another stunning display of refracted light. Day before yesterday I stepped off the train to a scene of giddiness and awe. Hardened D.C. commuters stopped their march toward turnstile and home. They juggled umbrellas and briefcases. They looked up.

The double rainbow arched all the way over Route 66, and it lingered for 10 minutes or more. This is what the smart phone has wrought: a generation of nature photographers. People who don’t have to slap their foreheads and say, “I wish I had my camera.” We always have our cameras.

So when nature gives us a picture show we’re there to snap it. And snap it. And snap it. And snap it.

All this beauty and bother put people in a jolly mood. We broke the code. We talked with each other. Even Metro employees. One train conductor pointed up as we walked toward the station. We smiled and nodded. Another (the one who should have been starting up the next train, I think) said, “Look at the rainbow. I’m gonna look for my pot of gold.”

Vienna: It’s not just the last stop on the Orange Line — it’s the end of the rainbow.

A.M. and P.M.

A.M. and P.M.

Comments 0 Comment

Morning on Metro, waiting for a train, the line of commuters stretches to infinity. All of them must leave the bus or park the car, file into the station, take a seat (if there is one) and occupy themselves for 30 or so minutes. It’s the numbing life of regularity that is unfortunately required for much of anything to get done.

Evening on Metro, a sudden shower douses us as we exit the train into a sunny afternoon. I simultaneously open my umbrella and put on my sunglasses. Then I trudge with the masses up the escalator, through the turnstile and toward my car. But then I remember to look. Surely it’s possible. And yes, it’s true. A rainbow. Just when we needed it most.

Trudging

Trudging

Comments 0 Comment

To commute is to trudge. Yes, one must be nimble, must dash quickly into the car as the doors are closing. But there is a good amount of trudging involved, too.

The other day, as I was hiking up a broken escalator, concentrating on the thin-strapped gold sandals of the woman ahead of me, I thought that if we can’t walk a mile in someone’s shoes, we can always walk a few paces behind them.

Doing so may not give us complete access to the stranger’s hopes and dreams and worries, but it does accustom us to her pace, to the effort she puts forth to climb a flight of stairs, which in some cases is herculean.

At the very least it requires a pause and a shifting of priorities, a switch from me to thee. I don’t like it, of course. I’d rather rush up the stairs at my own pace. But trudging keeps me mindful of the lives of others.

Smooth Move

Smooth Move

Comments 0 Comment

This week Metro returns to automatic train control on the Red Line. Sounds insignificant — but it isn’t. Since the accident in June, 2009, that killed nine people, Metro conductors have used individual controls for stopping and starting. And stopping and starting. And stopping and starting.

Which means that some operators hit the right point on the platform first time around, and others — uh, do not.

Which means that some passengers keep on reading the paper, using their phones, playing Sudoku, while others — the ones with weaker stomachs — sit very still and hope for fresh air soon.

The automatic train control promises a less herky-jerky traveling experience. Legato not staccato. But this will be available only on the Red Line (which shares no tracks) until 2017, when the Orange, Silver, Blue, Yellow and Green Lines follow suit.

I ride the Orange Line for a dozen stops, the Red Line for two. I can’t wait for my short, smooth ride.