Photo by Grundlepuck.

Metrorail is going the way of the DVD — 11 of the transit system’s rail stations will get “subtitles” over the next year, a process which WMATA hopes will make things tidier without sacrificing the established identity of any individual station.

Kytja Weir reports that the renaming will take place in concert with next year’s Blue and Yellow Line realignment, so as to reduce the financial burden of signage replacement. (The system will be rolling out a new map at that time, too, so the cost of replacing station signage will be incurred anyway; the designer of the new Metro map, Lance Wyman, has said he thinks shorter station names would be an improvement.) The secondary names of the stations would be placed below the primary name on pylons and placards, in a smaller font.

The stations which will get “subtitles” are below, with the primary name in bold:

Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan
New York Ave-Florida Ave-Gallaudet U
Mt. Vernon Sq/7th St-Convention Center
Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter
West Falls Church-VT/UVA
U Street/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo
Vienna/Fairfax-GMU
Georgia Ave-Petworth
Grosvenor-Strathmore
Dunn Loring-Merrifield
Rhode Island Ave-Brentwood

The idea of shorter names has been one that’s gained momentum over the last several months, though there are some who believe that the subtitle compromise involving primary and secondary names doesn’t go far enough. (Of course, station maps and signage will have to change again whenever the Dulles extension is completed, so WMATA could change things up again in a few years if it doesn’t help.) There are some names that won’t be forced to adhere to the new rules, too — for one, the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport name was mandated by Congress, so that’s not going anywhere.

What do you think? Will this change actually improve anything, or is it just a pointless exercise?