The Washington Post recently did a four part series on why the Metro in DC is in rapid decline. The Metro is the subway, for all those who haven't been to DC.

When I got to DC this summer the Metro seemed to be fine, but it has become a constant day-to-day struggle getting to and from work. It wasn't always this way. When I occasionally rode the Metro in between 2000 and 2003, I don't think I ever had a problem on the system. It's quite a contrast to my current experiences, which I thought I would share.

The first thing is that something big must be going on between the Rosslyn and GWU Foggy Bottom stations. Nearly every day, without fail, something goes wrong between those two stations. A couple weeks ago it was because of construction, which I understand. But lately the train operator gets on the loud speaker and explains that something, like a car door not closing, has stopped a train somewhere ahead of us. It seems like perfect commonsense to me to unload the problematic train at a station and clear the track. Sure, one train of people will be inconvenienced. But what about the thousands of people sitting on trains behind them? Metro's solution is instead to have the car sit at a station and fix it. Meanwhile all trains have to take turns sharing one track. Super efficient. Nowadays when the train operator comes on the speaker and says, "We'll be moving along shortly," all I hear is, "You're going to be 20 minutes late to work ... again!"

The Washington Post article claims that the "vast majority" of Metro trains are on time. How, then, does it happen that the majority of mine are late? I feel that if I'm on a problematic rail line, I should at the very minimum not be charged rush hour fare because I'm not really being "rushed" anywhere. I'm sitting still in a confined space with some dude's headphones blaring next to me.

The other problems I have deal with the SmarTrip Card. That is the electronic card that lets you not have to constantly deal with paper Metro passes and works on buses. I'd venture a guess that about half the sensors for the cards don't work. While people stand behind me waiting, I wave my card over the sensor waiting for the entrance or exit gate to open. I usually have to move to another machine because waving the card repeatedly doesn't work very well. Luckily, I've mapped out the ones that work best on my way to and from work. I can only hope that they stay working. (Note: the wheelchair-accessible gates haven't failed me yet)

The other problem, which I had this morning, was with recharging my SmarTrip card. I was down to $2.00, so I had to recharge it in order to get anywhere that morning. But, as I probably should have expected, Metro found a new way to hinder my commute. The machine could not complete my credit or ATM purchases because it could not connect to whatever network it needed in order to approve me. I fought with two machines for ten minutes and eventually had to feed one of them the few single dollar bills that I had. On top of that this morning, the train was in fact stopped between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom.

In short: Metro service makes me not want to ride. When I try to ride it won't let me in the gates. When I want a card to get in the gates and ride, it won't sell me one. Can I get a "WTF, mate?"