Gotta say, this warms my heart a bit. We pay MUCH more for our fares than New Yorkers, and pretty much double that when you account for the lack of a monthly pass option! But yet, the system is TWICE as subsidies by various taxpayer dollars! AND our rush hour trains are JAMMED. Obviously, rush hour trains more than pay for their operating costs. The problem is, too many people look at metro as a commuter rail (largely because that's how the system is designed!) - So while in NYC, you have lots of people, with weird schedules, doing everything from their grocery shopping to going out to a movie all by way of the subway - in DC, for the most part, you have people going back and forth to work. These empty non-rush hour trains are what drives up fairs and taxpayer subsidies. If ridership were increasing due to more people going back and forth to work, this would do very little to hold back the next fare hike, because they'd need to buy more rail cars and run more trains to account for it, which would more than eat up those extra fare dollars. Seeing that ridership is up due to non-rush hour events like baseball games is good news for all of us who pay fares and taxes to support the system! Yay! :)

just an FYI - I was just up in NYC. The fare is 2 dollars. This morning, my fare was still just $1.35. And NYC subway is terrible. It's like walking down into hell, it's so hot. I'll take metro over NYC subway any day of the week

True that. I forgot how miserable NY Metro is in the summer time until I was up there about a month ago. Wow. Hell is an apt comparison.

Yeah, but remember, there are no tourists in hell. There everybody is a resident.

I must really question Metro's motives in continually running 4-car trains on the Blue line during rushes. This scheduling results in overcrowded trains all the way to Franconia-Springfield. the situation was especially exacerbated yesterday (07/27) with an afternoon baseball game. Trains were both late and short on the southern end of the line. Metro obviously hasn't been paying attention to migration patterns for home buyers, or to the increasing number of tourists who choose to stay in the Springfield area where hotel rooms are cheaper. Metro staff need to begin to get out of the office during rushes and re-think their scheduling patterns by actually riding the trains. These circumstances have long since past the point of ridiculousness; they now border on the ludicrous.

I agree with Jay -- it seems like Metro is a little out of touch with ridership trends. I wonder if the data they collect is misleading them? Are they missing the impact that short delays have on the system? Four packed trains and an empty train mean that 95% of the people had a miserable experience.

Can Metro start a campaign to dissuade tourists from riding at rush hour? Maybe throw a bunch of pork rinds at them as they approach a Metro entrance at rush hour, distract them from getting on?

It is interesting about the system being a commuter system rather than city transit. I thought about it myself and realized that I only take Metro to and from work and to Nats games. The thing is, I would take Metro more often instead of driving to places on the weekends, but the experience has been miserable too often, so I avoid it if I can.

To Jay and Arrrlington:

Give Metro more credit--it's not an office staffed with lazy, unobservant fools. There's a reason there are still four car trains rolling out during the mad rush. Are you not aware that our fleet is still not optimally stocked? I mean, with all the problems we've had with these foreign manufacturers--it seems like whenever we FINALLY get a shipment of rail cars, something's wrong with them half the time. So Metro has to compensate in a very strict way. All the six car trains are on more crowded lines (and trust me when I say that, as a Green line rider, my six car train is packed to the brim everyday.). Be patient. Enjoy the air-conditioned and relatively un-hellish ride (still gotta worry about those tourists).

To Daedalus: Trust me, every morning during the summer, there are plenty of tourists who congregate outside the turnstiles at Greenbelt and College Park stations UNTIL 9:30 a.m., just so they can use their one-day passes.

I'm reminded of the sheer cojones exhibited by MWATA when they requested that the Nationals organization be willing to pay them a fee to keep the system open if night games ran past normal Metro system closing times.

As I recall, the reply began with a horselaugh, and ended with a simple bit of math: "Eighty-one home games a year! If you don't think it's worth it to you, don't run the trains."

I suspect that the Redskins bring in as much or more in stadium gate receipts as the Nationals (higher ticket prices, much larger crowds), but from Metro's ridership point of view, the Redskins are (comparatively) TINY fish in the financial pond. Eight games just ain't gonna hack it in a stadium that only seats a hundred large. Now if the Redskins build themselves one of those Brazilian-style stadiums that can seat a half-million or so....