At the end of November, Metro's new rail chief, Dave Kubicek, decided to switch off-peak trains running during the winter months to the shorter, 4-car only versions as a cost-saving maneuver. Ridership is down in the winter, he reasoned, so Metro can get away with fewer cars. This morning Metro decided to scrap the entire plan and bring back 6-car trains immediately. Metro General Manager John Catoe told the Post he decided to restore service......

Good morning, Washington, and welcome back to what will be a rather short work week for most of us. While airports and train stations are sure to be jammed with holiday travelers this week, the city's roads and metro system should be a little less crowded than normal as folks head out of town early to celebrate Thanksgiving. Less congestion may not make much of a difference in road safety, however, if a new survey......

From DCist Contributor Oscar Bunoan It's often said that bad luck comes in threes. In Vietnam, for example, a photo of three people represents bad luck. However, Vietnam is a restless, 22-hour flight away and Greg Cahill (owner of the successful Whitlow’s on Wilson) and Jonathan Williams (Whitlow’s general manager) are not superstitious men who rest their beliefs in ancient folklore. No self-respecting restaurateur, especially these two locally respected entrepreneurs, would conceive their restaurant on......

The Examiner reports on a new DMV program that would install SmarTrip chips into every new D.C. driver's license and identification card beginning in October, 2008. The program is a combined effort by the agency and WMATA, the latter of which has made no secret of its intention to make universal conversion to SmarTrip a priority. Recently Metro General Manager John Catoe made SmarTrip cards available for sale at more Giant Food stores and announced......

Via WTOP's Adam Tuss, looks like Metro General Manager John Catoe is worrying about more than just budget shortfalls. Catoe says he's about to launch a new initiative to crack down on eating, drinking and chewing gum on Metro trains. "I have noticed (myself) and have received calls and letters that there has been an increase," says Metro General Manager John Catoe. "We are going to have a focused campaign from the standpoint of......

Marc Fisher lets us know that longtime D.C. radio fixture Red Shipley, the host of WAMU's Stained Glass Bluegrass program for 25 years, died over the weekend from cancer in Charlottesville. Shipley introduced two generations of Washington area music fans to legendary and contemporary bluegrass music, up until last month, when WAMU took all of its bluegrass programming off the air and put it on HD Radio. "Radio lost one of its own legends last......

You know what they say -- better one scandal too late than never at all. We've received word from the office of Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) that tomorrow afternoon he'll be hosting a public roundtable on the Water and Sewer Agency, which has had something of a rough year so far. Reads an email from Graham: I will be holding a public roundtable on the status of the public water main system in......

Good morning, D.C. With much of the hot political action this week taking place at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, it's our job to pull your focus away from trivial issues the mainstream media seem obsessed with, like global climate change, and bring it back down to what's really important at the local level, like complaining about how gasoline could be about to get really, really expensive in Maryland. What's that you......

We've arrived at another Friday, Washington, so welcome to it. Some sad news to note off the bat, however, as the Post brings word that the last movie theater left in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, the AMC Loews Dupont 5, will go the way of Visions and the Janus 3 before it and close its doors forever in January. We can certainly attest that the last few times we went to see a film......

UPDATE: The Metro Board has put the proposed fare hikes on hold, saying they would like more details about the proposals before they would approve public hearings. They voted to hold a special informational committee meeting on Sept. 27. More than a year ago, then interim Metro Chief Dan Tangherlini began uttering those two little words no transit rider likes to hear: fare increase. At the time though, our favorite transit official was reassuring......

Good morning, D.C. Yesterday was just about the most beautiful day, weather-wise, that the city has seen in a long time, and today we're expecting more of the same. So is there anything on God's green Earth that could cause us to lose the attendant sunny dispositions we all naturally have as a result? Oh, drat. It's Thursday. Metro General Manager John Catoe will appear before Metro's Board of Directors today and recommend raising minimum......

Welcome back to work, Washington. We don't know about you, but we spent an awfully long time in the sun this weekend consuming too much food at various street festivals, so forgive us if we're still groggily pondering Saturday's news in WaPo that the fare change about to be proposed by Metro General Manager John Catoe is an "average increase" of 45 cents. That kind of increase would theoretically raise the base fare of a......

>> ABC 7 reporter Kris Van Cleave is interested in your trash. [City Desk] >> D.C. paramedics treated 12 city employees who were overcome by exhaust fumes this morning. [WaPo] >> An ornate gold medal depicting an eagle, commissioned by George Washington and later presented to the Marquis de Lafayette, is to be sold at auction later this year. [AP] >> Metro General Manager John Catoe: ""The amount of the (fare) increase is something......

Good morning, Washington. For those of you who were inconvenienced by yesterday afternoon's Red line mishap, we're sure you'll be glad to hear that the suspect who Montgomery County police chased into the tunnel got away. The whole incident started just after 2 p.m. when officers, acting on a suspicious-person call, spotted Michael J. Brown, a man known by area police and who is wanted in Baltimore for several charges of theft. After a chase......

WTOP says that Metro General Manager John Catoe will announce the details of his plan for a proposed fare hike at a meeting next week. We've been expecting this announcement for some time now, though specific details of the increase, which is expected to be put into effect in January 2008, possibly tied to inflation or the consumer price index and increased accordingly every January thereafter, have been scant. How much will the first hike......

Metro General Manager John Catoe is considering replacing late night weekend trains with buses -- both as a way to save money and to create more time to complete track and station maintenance tasks. This is very bad news. No one could argue that Metro needs to rethink how it accomplishes maintenance tasks -- the number of weekend track work delays, regular elevator and escalator outages, and out of service trains that need repairs has......

In news that will make hard luck single guys everywhere feel better about themselves, Wizards forward Andray Blatche was arrested yesterday for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in Thomas Circle. This isn't the first run in with trouble for Blatche since joining the Wizards: he was carjacked and shot in the chest during his rookie year. Compounding the issue for Blatche is the fact that he currently has a 5-year, $12.5 million......

If you missed this story in Saturday's Washington Post, do make sure you check it out, for your own personal safety if nothing else. It seems the enormous popularity of the ugliest shoes on the planet, Crocs, has led to an alarming increase in the number of escalator mishaps on Metro this summer, as the shoes' soft resin soles can easily be grabbed by the metal teeth of the moving steps. Once trapped, the Crocs,......

When Thomas P. Jacobus, general manager of the aqueduct that provides water to the District, Arlington and Falls Church commented to the Post today, "Perhaps sometimes we don't do the best job we could of communicating," he summed up in a few words the main problem that has plagued the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority -- which delivers water from the Washington Aqueduct to customers -- over the last few years. And while it remains......

Last week we reported that the Capitals signed unrestricted free agent center Michael Nylander to a four year contract worth $19.5 million (U.S.). One day earlier, an Alberta radio station reported that the Edmonton Oilers signed unrestricted free agent center Michael Nylander to a four year contract worth $22 million (U.S.). Reportedly Nylander's agent had emailed acceptance to Edmonton, but Nylander's wife then exercised veto power over the prospect of life in the Canadian prairie.......

Welcome back to work, Washington. We know many of our regular readers are off celebrating Independence Day already, taking vacation time for a few days to make this upcoming middle-of-the-week holiday less of an inconvenience. For those of you still at your desks, we salute your dedication to the American work ethic. For those of you who'll be heading to the airport some time this week, we were going to beg to be stuffed in......

Good morning, Washington. Usually, we get pretty excited about coming in to work only to discover that the big, unwieldy and potentially troublesome meeting that was scheduled has been canceled. That's often a gold star kind of day that deserves a special trip out for a fancy coffee, and maybe doing a little jig behind the closed door of your office, right? But we have to express some serious disappointment that this meeting appears to......

Feel like your morning commute isn't already filled with enough ads for Lockheed Martin or the anti-abortion lobby? Then the Examiner brings you good tidings, as a proposal is on the table to greatly expand the amount of space available to advertisers on Metrorail and Metrobuses. Metro General Manager John Catoe hopes the proposal will help balance the long out of whack WMATA budget without increasing fares. But just where would the ads go? Some......

As wine quickly edges out beer as the top alcoholic beverage of choice by Americans, depending on your source, it seemed only natural to add a wine column into our mix of other food and drink related topics. Every other Wednesday, to mirror Eating In, we will bring you information on wine trends, news, events in the area, and any other pertinent information to your ever-increasing wine consumption. For our first installment we want to......

Good morning, Washington. We know how it is, the week before a major holiday when you've probably got travel plans -- Friday can't come soon enough. There's only two full work days left to go before you get to walk out that office door and do a little dance of joy, but in the meantime, we'll do our best to distract you from that increasingly nagging feeling that you might soon completely lose your......

Good morning, D.C. It was an eventful weekend across the District, with big to-do's tying up traffic in every direction. We hope you didn't spend too much time stuck in it. While we're genuinely thrilled to hear that Oprah Winfrey's commencement speech at Howard University was a big hit and was reported on all over the world, we're pretty disappointed to have it be Monday morning and still have zero reports from any of our......

Yesterday the WashTimes ran a story on a bill being introduced by D.C. Council member Jim Graham that would give budgetary oversight of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority to the D.C. CEO CFO, Natwar Gandhi. This morning, the WaPo follows up with a story comparing the bill to Fenty's school takeover plan -- essentially the WASA board, much like the D.C. school board, would become mere advisors to their own budget process, while Gandhi's......

The park in downtown Washington, D.C. named for John "Black Jack" Pershing tends not to do justice to the man who achieved the highest rank of any person ever to serve in the United States military. In 1919, in recognition of his remarkable career and service in the Great War, Congress elected to promote General Pershing to the rank of General of the Armies—a position created especially for him. These days his namesake park, located......

Welcome back to work, Washington. It's the Monday after a jam-packed weekend of fun for many of us, and we understand as well as you do that there's nothing so disheartening as reporting to your desk knowing that good times won't be in sight again for another five full days. It is therefore in the spirit of distraction that we present to you the weekend's funniest, and yet saddest headline for you to mull over......

Upon hearing about a water main break near Florida Ave. and Euclid St., NW, this afternoon, it was hard not to wonder how the break would impact water pressure should firefighters need to douse a blaze. As we mentioned earlier, there are more details emerging about the impact broken hydrants had on Monday's fire at the Georgetown Public Library. Fire officials are complaining that they were forced to try three hydrants near the library before......