Reader Michael Griffith sends us this picture and a report from his Metro ride this morning, where he encountered the new spring-loaded handles that Metro is currently testing. Older cars have gotten boring (but probably just as effective) vinyl straps, but the stainless steel is the wave of the future! From the looks of it though, they aren't really being used that much...yet. Said Michael:No one was using nor commenting on the handles...I also......

Metro will be using a Sunday schedule for Monday's Labor Day holiday. This means that trains will be running between 7 a.m. and midnight and that parking at most (if not all) Metro lots will be free. Metrobus will also be running on a Sunday schedule. MARC and VRE, as usual, will not be offering service on the holiday. Also, if you're travelling on the Blue and Yellow lines, don't forget that there will be......

Over the last few days, MPD officers have been spotted standing at the corner of 14th and Irving Streets NW ticketing people for jaywalking. We saw them at about 5 p.m. yesterday and received emails saying they were out on Wednesday as well. One bystander said she saw police stop one guy crossing against the light when no cars were around: "he had his headphones on and was crossing the street and the cop chased......

A lot of our commenters expressed skepticism about how effective the city's new bicycle sharing program, SmartBike DC, would really be with only ten stations and 100 bikes. Well WTOP is now reporting that with 450 registered users already signed up to the service, DDOT has declared it a success, and is "fairly sure" the pilot program will expand. Expect to wait on that expansion, though. DDOT says one of the top locations for the......

WMATA has put out its weekend track work alerts. The Red line looks to be the most affected, as switch replacement work at the Friendship Heights station will be underway this weekend. Red Line: Add at least 25 minutes of travel time between Medical Center and Van Ness-UDC due to the switch replacement work going on all weekend at the Friendship Heights station. Inbound and outbound trains will share one track from 9 p.m. tonight......

Metro says riders should expect delays on the Red line tonight in the direction of Shady Grove due to an earlier train malfunction at Forest Glen that has been resolved. No word on what kind of delays we're talking about here, but if you were counting on the Red line to be a snap during rush hour, don't be surprised if it's a bit off the normal schedule.......

If you're a frequent parker in Arlington, you may want to budget in some extra cash for a rate hike at parking meters. According to the Examiner, Arlington County officials are considering making some sweeping changes to the current system, such as extending the metered hours and raising the current flat rate of $1 per hour. Obviously, there's a tough balance to keep here for County officials - on the one hand, the Wilson Boulevard......

After a bit of a wait, District residents can finally sign up for SmartBike DC memberships online. The city's pilot bicycle sharing program is already being used by a small number of beta testers, and $40 annual subscriptions are now for sale, according to DDOT's Manager for Bicycle, Pedestrian, and Transportation Demand Management Programs, Jim Sebastian. It takes at least a couple of weeks to process memberships, so if you sign up today, you can......

Baseball's trading deadline is July 31, but the District's transportation scene experienced it's own version of a pennant race deal yesterday. Now-former head of DDOT Emeka Moneme resigned from his post to take up the Chief Administrative Officer post at Metro. Mayor Fenty can't be too upset at the loss; WMATA is just returning the favor after Fenty plucked current City Administrator Dan Tangherlini from Metro back in November 2006. David Alpert has the first......

AlertDC sent around word just after 11 a.m. that a track circuit malfunction outside the Takoma Metro station is creating long term delays on the Red line in both directions. Trains are sharing the same track between Ft. Totten and Silver Spring. The estimated repair time is 2 hours. This Red line delay comes on the heels of an Examiner story this morning predicting serious evening and weekend delays on the Red line for at......

Metro, you know that we love you, and that sometimes, life isn't fair - after all, you've had kind of a rough year so far, and us transit buffs, we understand that. But you surely can understand that when we start seeing comments like, "I'm planning to go back to car pooling. Really. I'm getting fed up with this," we worry. Because for all your wild successes this year in getting people to the......

WMATA sent out word at about 4:20 p.m. that a Dominion Virginia Power problem is going to affect commuters this evening on the Virginia end of the Orange line. The Dunn-Loring station is without power due to escalating power outages near West Falls Church.Vienna-bound Orange Line trains will operate 12 minutes apart between the West Falls Church-VT/UVA and Vienna/Fairfax-GMU Metrorail stations, and every other train will terminate at West Falls Church. Passengers going to Dunn......

We've chronicled photographer harassment in the D.C. area, most recently at Union Station, where amateur photogs have encountered great confusion as to who owns which portions of the station and shops, where those sections end, and what rules apply to photographers in each one. Tomorrow, the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Managment of the U.S. House of Representatives, chaired by D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, will try to find answers to those......

WMATA just sent out images of their brand new Metrobuses. The new red and silver color scheme looks pretty sweet. Keep an eye out for one of the 22 new 60-foot articulated buses when they make their debut in August, on lines yet to be announced. The rest of the press release stats are below the jump.......

Jim Graham's hearing on the Anacostia streetcar project has come and gone - the results? Everything's pretty much the way it was before. Barring any last minute legislative derailments, the Anacostia line should go on as planned. There is, however, a small new can of worms opening. The debate centers around whether or not the line will actually achieve anything other than pushing forward streetcar development to other parts of the city. Some transit types......

I don't think I've ever seen a group work so hard to do nothing. It was doing nothing taken to an art. They had since February to come up with something and they came up with nothing. It was like a 'Seinfeld' episode, the show about nothing. - Virginia Governor Tim Kaine Well, we were planning to bring you some of the "highlights" from the recent special session of Virginia's General Assembly - but it......

In case we haven't been doing a good enough job drilling it into your head, public transportation has become increasingly popular in the D.C. metro area since gas prices have been going through the roof. Today, WMATA announced that Friday, July 11 saw the Metrorail system hit a brand new all-time record high for ridership, surpassing even that of the day of Ronald Reagan's funeral in 2004. What contributed to the 854,638 passengers who rode......

Metro maintenance can be disruptive. It's not a secret - weekend work is something that can really throw a wrench into your plans. You've often commented wondering why Metro has to take weekends, sometimes many in a row, to fix a track switch. Well in case you missed the Post's awesome Commuter graphic this week, make sure to check it out to get a feel for how much labor and intricate planning actually goes into......

You may have read Eric Weiss's story in Sunday's Washington Post, which described the District's attempts to improve pedestrian safety and encourage walking and mass transit use as a "war against workers who drive into the city." There's not much more to say about it that David Alpert and Ryan Avent haven't already said. This sums it up nicely (from Avent):Essentially, Eric Weiss went around the suburbs asking folks to bitch about the District’s efforts......

Did you get an email from Metro yesterday? If you did, you're now an important part of a new program that's attempting to find ways to improve the service of the S bus lines, which run between Silver Spring and downtown D.C. The first step in the The Metrobus 16th Street Line Study was surveys which were distributed to riders of any S line bus on June 18. The email contains details about a community......

WMATA has released a schedule for Independence Day -- and it includes a change from what we first told you last week. Metro will open at 7 a.m. and close at 3 a.m. on Friday, July 4. This schedule is different from what was published on WMATA's holiday schedule on their web site last week (it said it would close at midnight), but that schedule has since been updated. Keep in mind though that on......

It's been exactly one month since the city switched all of its taxi cabs over to time and distance meters, and we've spent that month asking every driver and frequent taxi passenger we've run across what their experiences have been. The vast majority of drivers we've spoken to agree that within the city, fares by and large even out to be about the same -- some are a little more, some are a little less,......

What's this? A rack full of SmartBike DC's shared bicycles all loaded up in front of the Reeves Center at 14th and U NW? Yes, but don't get excited: this was only for a photo op staged by the District Department of Transportation that we just happened to stumble upon earlier this afternoon (yo DDOT, how's about inviting us next time so we don't have to party crash?). These SmartBikes are going to be......

Last week, we learned that DDOT was planning on creating an "intercity bus loading zone" near L'Entant Plaza in Southwest - many of you found the idea rash, unnecessary, and potentially deadly for bus businesses. Well, you can at least take solace in the fact that Greater Greater Washington's David Alpert is on your side. Alpert has created a website which asks District officials to, at the very least, sit down and talk with residents......

The District Department of Transportation is hosting a city-wide public meeting tonight on the final draft of the District Draft Pedestrian Master Plan. If you still haven't had a gander at the plan itself, you can read it here. The plan includes a mix of efforts, including things like restriping crosswalks, changing signal timings, installing more Rapid Flash Beacons, and other tactics that target 61 "high hazard" traffic intersections. Some of the dangerous intersections and......

This is one of those items that's newsworthy because we can't believe it's news: Last night the mayor's office sent around a release announcing that wheelchair accessible taxicabs are coming to D.C. for the first time. How it is even possible there have been no wheelchair taxis in our nation's capital before now? The Post says wheelchair users currently have to call one of two suburban taxi companies that often aren't available to pick them......

We know you love being able to grab a cheap bus to New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore and other destinations along the east cost. Entrepreneurs know it too, which is why we've kept track of an explosion in new intercity bus options recently, including BoltBus, Megabus, and DC2NY, along with the traditional Chinatown buses. But with so many more buses picking up and dropping off in several areas of downtown, the District Department of Transportation......

Somehow we missed the news that UK-based Megabus.com (which began its first service in the U.S. in Chicago in 2006) began running low-cost bus service between D.C. and New York on May 30. We spotted this Megabus bus stop sign outside Metro Center on Friday. Much like relative newcomer BoltBus, Megabus.com offers tickets as low as $1 if you book early enough, as well as free wireless internet on board. Looks like they actually......

The electricity is back on! Traffic was more or less flowing normally through downtown just after 11 a.m. Pepco reports that power has now been restored to the entire affected area. Metro reopened the Dupont Circle station at 10:50 a.m., and service at Metro Center was being restored just after 11 a.m. when we stopped by to check things out. The station was still darker than normal but customers were being allowed in and out,......

Dogs and cats, living together! A second fire at the Metro Center station has now forced that station to close as well. At 9:50 a.m. another fire was reported at the station on the tracks headed in the direction of Shady Grove. An earlier fire was reported around 7:20 a.m. and caused delays of up to 1 hour on the Red line in both directions. At this point, DCist is officially recommending we all begin......