Transit in D.C. – A Honey of an Anklet

Outgoing

Word is that Metro’s venerable, perplexing farecard machines are soon to be replaced. So here’s maybe a last look at the old machines at my local station.

The farecard machines have been retrofitted more than a couple of times. Originally, they accepted only cash and dispensed a paper farecard.¹ Now, credit/debit cards are accepted and what comes out is a laminated plastic stored value card.

Since there’s a rush hour premium added to the distance-based fare, it’s very easy to have insufficient funds on your card in order to exit (especially back in the old paper farecard days). (See the busy table of fares at the top of the machine.) Hence, the Exitfare machine, in original orange livery, which was designed to one purpose: top up your card so that you can exit. Fun fact: Exitfare was originally called Addfare, but riders would try to use it to add more than necessary to exit.

¹If you want to sound like a tourist, call it a ticket.

Some links: 112

A new niche scam: Someone has been impersonating Robert Faturechi, ProPublica reporter.
A recap of rumors and misconceptions about the “missing” Georgetown Metro station, from the guy who wrote the book.

Did planners consider a rapid transit station for Georgetown?

Yes, but only in 1962 and 1963.
Mid-century Malibu in paper matchbooks: I especially love the map to the Lindomar Lodge Motor Hotel printed on the inside of the matchbook cover. Some of the 50s gags are rather sexist, alas.
From Mark Liberman of Language Log and Clare Downham, a poster of UK regional names for alleyways. Lemony Snicket revealed. I’m idly working on something about American practice of double-naming thoroughfares, like Street Road in Bensalem, Pa. and elsewhere.

Some links: 110

Opinion: Why I’m handing in my Pentagon press pass, by NPR’s Tom Bowman.
DC’s lonely streetcar will shut down in March, alas.
Things worth getting better at, or, 10x vs 10%, by John D. Cook.

There’s a perennial temptation to solve the problem you want to solve rather than the problem you need to solve.
What Shakespeare’s Capulet is talking about when he shouts at his daughter, “Out you green-sickness carrion! Out you baggage/ You tallow-face!”
When is a battle a massacre, and vice versa? And what is settler colonialism? Akim Reinhardt explains.
RE:PUBLIC launches, a journalism project focused on one of the few issues with bipartisan support: public lands. (In the western US, I suspect that the degree to which people support public lands depends on how the question is framed.)
Recently published research indicates that Blue Dasher dragonflies (Pachydiplax longipennis) can thrive in crummy, polluted urban environments.

Darn shame

Ride it while it lasts: The D.C. streetcar “system” is set to be phased out.

Some links: 108

D.C. Circulator buses find new homes far from the city
Fact-Checking the ‘President Who Follows Science’ on his environmental record
An Inside Look at the Subway’s Archaic Signal System in NYC
An Open Letter to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Who Thinks My Daughter Is a Tragedy, by Anaïs Godard

Your version of the future has no room for her. Thankfully, she doesn’t need your permission to belong. She’s already here.
Leo Mazzone is still rockin’: An Old-School Pitching Coach Says I Told You So

“All anyone in the majors watches now is how damn fast a guy can throw,” he told me, rocking on his heels. “Grunt and heave, grunt and heave. It’s not pitching; it’s asinine.”
Oh, lovely, first the Colorado and now this: A Crucial River Treaty Is Tangled in Trump’s Feud With Canada

Negotiations over the Columbia River basin could affect the environment in Canada and electrical generation and flood control in the United States.
Damn, those things are much bigger than I realized: a rubber bullet in the Museum at the Times

Hmm, the Times and the Post have different headline casing styles.

Metro Rewind, 2024

The graphics and statistics are a little goofy in this year’s incarnation of Metro in review. But it’s interesting to know that I’ve entered/exited 24 of 98 stations this past year.

Still looking to do a Metro Challenge one day. When all the lines are in full service, and the weather’s nice, and…

WMATA, 2023

Some links: 102

People movers (mobile lounges) at IAD are sticking around for at least 20 more years. I like ’em. Remember to hold on for when the lounge starts to move! (Eurgkkh, lots of clickbaity slop on this local TV news channel page.)
Why did Tom Lehrer give up writing, recording, and performing? Francis Beckett doesn’t really answer this question, but he does offer a nice recap of Lehrer’s oeuvre for the younger folks.
Jason Kottke reprises this lovely post about flying in a small plane with his father in the upper Midwest. Low on fuel. With a thunderstorm approaching.

But the thing was, I was never scared. I should have been probably…it was an alarming situation. I’d been flying with my dad my whole life and he’d kept me safe that whole time, so why should I start worrying now? That’s what fathers are supposed to do, right? Protect their children from harm while revealing the limits of the world?
When I visited the Westmoreland Museum of American Art last month, I noticed that several works were labelled “artist once known.” Here’s an explainer from the Hood Museum of Art for that new convention.

I haven’t really decided whether I will continue posting at IEFBR14. In the meantime, here are two computing/math links:

Researchers have applied gravitational wave detection techniques and Bayesian approaches to peer into the corroded innards of the Antikythera Mechanism.
Communications of the ACM is now fully open access.

Some links: 101

Casey Ruken on 1950s-era preparations for nuclear war in the capital. I’ve been collecting images of fallout shelter signs here in the DMV and elsewhere.
Guest contributor J. M. Christoph to Greater Greater Washington explains why digging new tunnels for Metro is not as simple as coloring in new lines on the map. Because geology.
I am at a loss to identify hawthorns (genus Crataegus). Turns out there’s a reason for that.
For future reference: Ian Paulson’s annotated bibliography of pre-Peterson field guides to birds, leading with Florence Merriam Bailey’s Birds through an Opera Glass (1899).

WMATA, 2023

A laggard in the 2023 roundups: my year in Metrorail/bus trips.

8/300

Hoping to see one of these on my RIBS 2 (I still miss you, 551 and 5S!) line: Fairfax Connector’s first electric buses hit the road, with more on the way.

Numbers game

WMATA’s survey about renumbering plans for Metrobus routes only runs thru 28 September, and it hasn’t been well publicized, so respond promptly. I have some concerns about the fixed order in which choices are presented. And there’s no space in the survey for general feedback. But I am warming to the idea of numbering routes according to hands of the clock.

Some links: 95

Peter Dreier for the Conversation: “five unsung labor movies, all based on real-life events, that, in my view, deserve more attention.”
ChatGPT makes up stuff about John Kelly.

Perhaps the computer program trawled through the multiverse and found a timeline in which John Kelly had nabbed a Pulitzer for his “thoughtful musings on Twiggy, the water-skiing squirrel, and how weird it is that Sugar Pops are now called Corn Pops.”
At Shorpy, a fine photo of a D.C. Transit streetcar (not a PCC this time).
ICYMI: The U.S. Geological Survey is collecting dead lepidopterans found by community scientists in AL, GA, KS, NE, OK, and TX.
An exploration of the oeuvre of Neil Breen (of Double Down and several others).

Category: Transit in D.C.