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January 06, 2005
Metro Sucks (Five in an Ongoing Series)
I'm walking home and feeling tired. I decide to hop on the Metro at Rosslyn. I noticed the train had some difficulty pulling out of the station, but then we were on our merry way to Court House. Two minutes, that's all it will take. Right.
The train stops in the tunnel. Not unusual, happens when there's a backup. But this was at 19.25 or so. No real reason for a backup. The train does the normal "unlock the breaks, roll backwards a couple of feet, engage the motors, move forward". Well, except for the move forward part.
The train was making all the right noises, but just kept rolling backwards. "We're experiencing some technical problems. We'll be moving shortly," says the driver. For values of shortly that include 15 minutes and another train. A couple of minutes later, he comes back on to tell us that "we're going to need some help."
This is the "Metro Sucks" part of this: There's no explanation of what is going on. Nothing other than those two announcements. I knew it was bad that I'd turned my iPod off so I could hear the announcements. And all this time, with every few feet we would slip backwards, the thought of what happened a couple of months ago, with one train slamming into another, kept entering my mind.
Eventually, I notice a light from behind our train, but I'm far enough away, I don't really know what's going on. Until the loud and jarring collision. Another train or vehicle of some sort was now connected to the rear of our train and was going to give us a push. After one or two false starts, and still no information, we get moving. Slowly. Really, really slowly. Eventually, I can feel the motors in my car catch and we move a little faster.
We enter Court House, but then have to wait another several minutes before the doors are opened. We step out and I saw something I was not expecting. The vehicle that was pushing us was another Metro Rail train. With passengers. I think it is pretty cool, and the obviously have a procedure for this sort of thing. I just hope that train driver told his folks what was up before pushing our train.
Posted by Samer at January 6, 2005 11:52 PM
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