The rules of Metro has numerous but generally well-accepted. Residents know not to eat or drink on trains, and people playing music loudly will often get dirty looks from commuters who enjoy the relative silence of their morning ride to work. As for bikes, it has long been the rule that they're not allowed on trains during rush hour. Should that change? more ›

How to get around on Metrorail and commuter lines during New Year's. more ›

Those planning to head to the beach this weekend aren't the only ones who will need to scrap their plans -- anyone planning on using Amtrak to travel south of the District will, as well. more ›

Oooh, shiny: WMATA revealed renderings of its newest rail cars today. So dubbed the 7000 series, the 428 cars will be purchased at a cost of $886 million and are scheduled to roll out -- 300 to replace the system's oldest cars, the rest dedicated to the new Dulles extension -- sometime between 2013 and 2016. more ›

DCist reader and Flickr pool contributor Andy Jones sent us this set of photos documenting a mass exodus from a delayed Brunswick line MARC train on Friday. more ›

A large majority of people appear to be taking their leave of Washington this afternoon, what with the federal government pretty much closing up for the year and many workers having the day off tomorrow. So whether you're readying to be one of the seventy percent of people who won't get an accurate screening from a TSA agent, preparing to hop behind the wheel or simply thinking about traveling around the region, here's a quick look at how things are going around the area's transportation hubs. more ›

Back in college, they always taught us journalism people to make sure we mention the most important fact of a story in the first line. You know, inverted pyramid and all that. So, here goes: the thing that I am about to talk about would cost $117 billion and would not be complete until 2040. That said: holy moley, is this PDF some sweet transit porn, or what? more ›

WMATA just announced that the morning rush hour peak-of-the-peak fare surcharge on Metrorail trips will go into effect on Sunday, August 29. (Of course, this means that August 30 will be the first day the surcharge is actually levied.) The twenty-cent charge will be added to all weekday trips which begin between 7:30 and 9 a.m. WMATA had postponed the implementation of the morning surcharge after it was discovered that the existing faregates needed a memory upgrade to process the additional fare. The afternoon rush hour surcharge has been in place since August 3. more ›

Interim Metro General Manager Richard Sarles has come under fire for the slow and inaccurate manner in which WMATA reported a near-incident on Wednesday to the Tri-State Oversight Committee, the organization which is responsible for monitoring safety on Metrorail. The Committee, represented by District Director of Transportation Gabe Klein, Maryland Secretary of Transportation Beverley K. Swaim-Staley and Virginia Transportation Secretary Sean T. Connaughton, penned a letter to Sarles that calls Metro's confused response to the incident "inexcusable," and damns the agency's "apparent internal and external communications breakdown." more ›

An Acela Express train struck a person on the tracks between BWI and Odenton earlier this afternoon. The Maryland Transit Administration has issued an alert that all Penn Line MARC service has been suspended until further notice. Northbound Amtrak trains out of D.C. are currently holding at Union Station. more ›

Via the Examiner, it looks like Virginia Railway Express will start offering a weekday a.m. express train from Fredericksburg to Union Station in July. The faster route would save commuters about 20 minutes each way. VRE is still developing plans to make several service changes once its new storage track at L'Enfant Plaza is operational. The planned express train will only carry four train cars, and will be stored at the existing storage track at Union Station. Other trains will terminate and be stored at L'Enfant starting in July. more ›

WMATA informs us that the Pentagon City Metro station has been closed due to a police situation. Shuttle bus service has been requested between Pentagon City and Crystal City. According to the Post's Martin Weil, trains are not currently passing through the station. There's no indication on how long the closure could be in effect. Obviously, this could pose a very big problem, as several events today have already clogged the Metrorail system with passengers, many that are probably thinking about heading back home to the Alexandria area at this point in the evening. Obviously, more details when we get them and as the station reopens. more ›

Though it certainly has it's issues (just scroll one post down), it'd be downright silly to deny the influence that Metrorail has on all of our lives. Just like the Post and the Redskins, most every Washingtonian has an opinion about Metrorail. So as an entity that's undeniably part of our regional identity, warts and all, we gladly wish Metrorail a happy 34th birthday today. On this day in 1976, WMATA opened the first segment of the Red Line, a 4.2-mile stretch that ran between Rhode Island Avenue and Farragut North stations. A poster on the railroad.net message boards has some most excellent vintage photography from the ribbon cutting and the first trip down the line. (It's refreshing to see that the cars were just as crowded on the first day of operation as they are now.) Here's to another 34 years of Metrorail. more ›

Acela Express trains are now offering free wireless internet service, Amtrak announced today. The service, dubbed AmtrakConnect, is in place on all 20 high-speed Acela trains, in addition to the six major stations along the Northeast Corridor (Union Station, Baltimore Penn Station, Philadelphia 30th Street Station, New York Penn Station, Providence Station and Route 128 Station in Boston), and in ClubAcela lounges. Both Business and First class passengers will be able to use the service on Acela. Officials say AmtrakConnect will remain free of charge "during the introductory period, after which the policy will be reviewed based on customer demand and system performance."
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Oops, scratch that whole "news is looking up" thing we put in the last post about today's holiday travel. If you're headed to New York City via Amtrak today, be prepared for a wait. The AP is reporting that power issues have halted all trains on the Northeast Corridor, among other lines. Trains are stuck on the tracks going both in and out of the city, with some stuck outside Penn Station and others in between NYC and Newark. Good luck, train travelers. UPDATE: The AP now says that power has been restored since 11:30 a.m., though since the outage affected trains all the way from D.C. to Boston, it's unclear how long delays might continue to get everything back into service. more ›

The National Transportation Safety Board today issued what it's calling an "urgent safety recommendation" to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, based on the preliminary findings of its investigation into the fatal June 22 Red Line crash. Despite the fact that the investigation has not yet concluded and the NTSB has yet to say officially what they believe was the cause of the accident, they have gone ahead and told WMATA that the transit agency needs to adopt "enhanced safety redundancy" of its train control system. Here's what they said:

A recent accident on the Metrorail's Red Line between the Fort Totten and Takoma stations has shown that WMATA's train control system is susceptible to a single point failure because it did not fail safe and stop a train when detection of a preceding train was lost. The urgent safety recommendation issued today calls for WMATA to evaluate track occupancy data on a real-time basis in order to detect losses in track occupancy and automatically generate alerts to prompt such actions as immediately stopping train movements or implementing appropriate speed restrictions to prevent collisions. more ›

Another weekend, another bunch of Metro maintenance-based delays to report. We suppose we can take solace in the fact that those of you on the Yellow Line are finally getting a much-deserved break this weekend. more ›

The Post reports that the body of an adult male was found on the tracks near Union Station shortly before 8 a.m. today. At the time, MARC reported that trains on the Camden and Brunswick lines had come to a complete stop in both directions due to the police investigation. Both lines were reopened by 10 a.m., but those caught in the morning commute mess had to take Metro in to D.C. after MARC trains were sent back to Greenbelt and Silver Spring stations, respectively. The death remains under investigation. On Sunday, an apparent double suicide in Baltimore County resulted in two deaths on a set of CSX train tracks there. more ›

A typical weekday morning for yours truly involves catching the next train out of Van Ness-UDC to Dupont Circle. And more often than not, there's a train waiting for me at the station when I get there. No problems, right? more ›

Hopefully, you didn't miss us too much last week. But it seems that we weren't the only transit columnists that got stuck on Amtrak during last weekend's travel. more ›