Metro trains famously have two types of flooring: carpet on older cars that inevitably gets gross over time and the speckled vinyl flooring on the newer 7000-series and revamped 6000-series trains.

But when Kelly Whittier boarded car 6043 earlier this week, she noticed the Metro logo on an unfamiliar gray floor with glow-in-the-dark-looking stripes. “It kind of looks like the lines could be activated to illuminate in the dark… could be really handy in an emergency,” she wrote to DCist.  It also has a wheelchair logo on certain areas, designating priority spots for people with disabilities.

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She asked us what was up with this unusual flooring.

Metro says it’s part of a pilot project that could affect how heating systems on the new 8000-series trains are built. This unique flooring is on two 6000-series cars, 6042 and 6043. The floors are heated to 86 degrees and provide radiant heat, instead of the electric heaters mounted around the floor perimeter and overhead HVAC heat found on most trains.

“WMATA has observed the rise in development, test, and use of heated floors for passenger comfort and weight savings,” Metro wrote in procurement documents for the 8000-series trains. But the agency has several questions it wanted to answer: Does such a system reduce the weight of trains? Would a system affect the glue that keeps the flooring stuck to the train? And should heating elements be placed along the walls, too?  It also wanted to see how reliable and easy to repair the systems were.

The system was installed a few years ago, but the 6000-series trains were sidelined during the beginning of the pandemic when fewer trains were needed. Then they were taken out of service completely in November 2020 after couplers failed on two trains. The updated cars were only put back into service in February. The 6000-series trains have slowly returned to service after revamping the couplers. Supply chain issues have been a problem.

Few riders have posted about the new flooring, but a Twitter search showed that cars 6042 and 6043 both have had a series of heating and cooling, door, and even rain infiltration problems over time.

The 6000-series has been a testbed for several pilot projects, including the silver vinyl wrapping on some trains to mimic the 7000-series, new flooring, and new seat fabric.

Slightly related: last year when we saw Metro demonstrate how it was testing the 7000-series trains’ wheels, we also caught a glimpse of new rolls of Metro carpeting.