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Urban Planning
By Michelle | December 20, 2007
Some people complain about congestion on the DC metro, especially the organge line. Of course, larger subdivisions further out from the city center–especially along the infamous orange line–have pushed up rush-hour metro ridership to new heights. I wonder if anyone considered this when they thought out the Dulles Corridor extension? As you can see from this map, the line will include first Reston, then eventually beyond the airport itself, scooping up communters from the Tysons Corner area as it traverses along the orange line through Arlington.
But new track will only be laid from the existing East Falls Church station westward. So will trains on the Dulles line simply continue along the current Orange line route into the city? Call me a skeptic, but the trains are already pretty frequent during peak rush-hour periods–it’s hard to image that WMATA will be able to squeeze that many more into the current schedule. This will probably mean that half the trains that currently travel along the orange line will being/end in Vienna and the other half will terminate along the Dulles route. Thus, Metro will be increasing its passenger load without significantly increasing capacity–especially since stations can only handle 8-car trains. I guess the originally planners didn’t expect the WMA to grow so large.
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But DC-commuters might just have to get used to more crowded traveling conditions. After all, Asia copes with much worse. As an extreme example, take Chunyun (春運), the period of extremely high traffic around the Chinese new year when migrant workers return to their home villages for the holiday. |
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Although the Chinese government established temporary lines during the 2007 Chunyun period, there was a shortage of tickets, and altercations broke out among would-be travavellers trying to get home. Take a look at these people waiting in line for tickets. Perhaps we Americans are all just a little spoiled…
Topics: DC, East Asia, In the News |