The day care closes at 5:30 p.m., so Reuben Marshall left his downtown D.C. office about 4 p.m. Tuesday — plenty of time to make it to the Springfield day care and the smiling faces of his two children, Chloe and Zachary.
Marshall was unaware there was a problem until a muffled announcement over the train intercom said passengers would have to offload at Arlington Cemetery, leading many riders to disembark a stop earlier to transfer. The situation at the Rosslyn Metro station was pandemonium, he said. There were jampacked platforms brimming with confused riders.
“What really bothered me was the lack of information,” said Marshall, 43. “I’m like, ‘Well, maybe I should head back in the direction of L’Enfant or try to take the Yellow Line across the river.’ But without information from Metro, it’s hard to know what to do.”
Making things worse, his wife, Julie, also was stuck — on a Yellow Line train, navigating the same delays after leaving about 3:30 p.m. from a training assignment in the District. It was a race to see who could get to the day care first.
For the couple, a pair of federal government analysts who live in the Springfield area, this also was the last straw — the type of fouled-up commute that has riders fleeing the problem-ridden transit system after years of breakdowns and inconsistent service.
His wife won their impromptu race to pick up the kids, arriving at the day care more than two hours after she left work. Reuben Marshall’s commute stretched about two hours total. Luckily, he said, “they were nice about it” at the day care. Many child-care providers charge by the minute when parents are late. “But we felt really bad, and it’s a little bit embarrassing.”
Enough is enough, he said. “I just don’t have much flexibility in my schedule anymore. A couple years ago, before we had kids, I would have just shrugged. I just don’t have wiggle room.”
In a rare acknowledgment, Metro admitted last week what passengers have long been saying: Its chronic service problems are contributing to a decline in ridership. Metrorail service peaked at 225 million passenger trips in 2009, but despite persistent population growth in the region, Metro counted about 214 million rail-passenger trips in the fiscal year that ended June 30, with rail ridership declining about 5 percent since 2010.
Graham Jenkins, the spokesman for a newly formed union for Metro riders, said every botched commute contributes to a significant membership bump for his organization. By Sunday, membership in the WMATA Riders' Union had swelled to nearly 1,400, and spikes in applications follow each Metro meltdown, including the recent evacuation of hundreds of riders from a disabled train near the Georgia Avenue-Petworth station and a transformer fire at the Stadium-Armory station that has prompted significant slowdowns and service reductions.
“What good transit should do is just kind of shrink the region,” Jenkins said. “What’s happened to WMATA in the last few years is the opposite — to grow the distances until they seem kind of insurmountable.”
Marshall said Tuesday’s commute was his breaking point after years of battling delays and communication lapses from the transit agency. And there are scores of Washington-area residents like the Marshalls, who rely on the system to get to and from work and across the region for family obligations. The lucky ones have options.
Then there are those who have no choice but Metrorail. Arlington resident Arielle Eiser, 29, is a Blue Line rider who says Metro has gone from a “good deal” to a regular headache over the past few years.
“It’s not something where, ‘Today really sucks.’ It’s just a given,” she said.
Eiser takes Metro from Court House to Rosslyn, where the wait for a Blue Line train — with room for passengers — sometimes exceeds 30 minutes, and then onto the King Street station in Old Town Alexandria. Blue Line trains began running an advertised every 12 minutes last year to make way for the newly opened Silver Line, but the move has been criticized by many riders, who say the changes mean exponentially longer wait times and crowded trains.
Frustration is a normal feeling for Eiser, who finds a familiar space to vent for many Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority riders. Last week, after another fouled-up commute, she wrote on Twitter: “#Metro this is ridiculous. If I had ANY other feasible options I’d be done with this commuting nightmare #unsuckdcmetro #wmata.”
“I kind of track it on Twitter. It’s kind of a support group when you’re on Metro and you’re stuck,” Eiser said.
There are others who have left not only the rail system, but their jobs, citing Metro as a contributing factor.
Steve Howie, 63, retired from his job with the federal government last year and said his bizarre morning ritual on Metro was part of the reason. His frustrations reached a boiling point when his job moved from Federal Triangle — where he could walk from his Red Line station at Metro Center — to Crystal City.
“Having to deal with the transfer, an extra transfer,” he said, “throws any commuter into a situation where they’ve got another variable, another possibility for something to go wrong.”
In the mornings, he would take the Red Line from Shady Grove to Gallery Place, where — about 5:40 a.m. — a passenger could bolt down the platform in hopes of catching a Yellow Line train. If the rider reached the train before the “stampede” of the transferring customers, he would jam his shoe in the door so it wouldn’t close, giving them enough time to board. It felt, Howie said, like “a competition” against the train operator. And passengers didn’t want to risk waiting for another train.
“I think it’s in the back of probably most commuters’ minds that if they miss a train, there may not be another train,” Howie said.
Metro wasn’t always this way, the 27-year rider said. He remembers when trains were consistently on time, when the system’s track record was respected around the region.
Eiser, too, said she remembers better days — back when Metro was a novel way of getting around for her, when she arrived in the District in 2007 as a wide-eyed Senate intern.
Reuben Marshall said his home's proximity to the
Franconia-Springfield Metro station was a major factor in why he and his wife moved there.
They’re looking for a new home, and nearness to Metro won’t be a factor. For the time being, he said, he’s looking into other options: driving, taking a commuter bus line or slugging — where passengers carpool to work with strangers who want to take advantage of the high-occupancy-vehicle lanes. His wife will drive to work.
“You know, I don’t recall ever having a two-hour odyssey home,” he said. “We live very close to the Franconia station, and it was on purpose. I was happy with Metro. We were confident that it wouldn’t be an issue for us. Instead, it’s sort of become a daily source of frustration.”
