Metro to shut down National Airport station for Labor Day weekend. A lot of people are upset about this. WMATA will be shutting down the Blue/Yellow lines from Pentagon to Braddock Road. This means the National Airport, Crystal City and Pentagon City stations will all be shut from Friday at 9:30 pm until Tuesday at opening. Labor day is a prime travel weekend, however the amount of work WMATA will be doing is extensive:
This weekend, Metro will replace the entire rail interlocking (four switches) at the Pentagon City Metrorail station, replace 2,000 feet of rail, 735 ties, perform concrete and deck joint repairs along the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport Metrorail station aerial structure, and conduct fire line maintenance from 9:30 p.m., Friday, Sept. 4, to closing, Monday, Sept. 7.
I acknowledge the fact that Metro does have to occasionally suspend service to perform repair work. We all talk about how Metro needs to get things into shape. I'm continuing to research the bigger picture problems with safety, but I'm not going to bicker too much over this. It's unfortunate the condition of the track and stations has deteriorated to the point of suspending service for a long weekend, but Labor Day is a traditionally car-oriented travel day, and airlines are expecting less passengers this year.
@MayorFenty Twitter feed is not the Mayor's official feed. To everyone who wrote about how the feed sucked, shame on you for not finding out if it was real. City Paper's Mike DeBonis asks the Mayor's office, who confirms it is not Fenty's feed. Fenty's office should consider having an official feed... I'll even manage it, and I won't demand $100k.
DPW sort-of confirms they removed the Alice Swanson ghost bike. I received a vague, unsigned email from DPW last night that said all street memorials are removed within 30 days of notification. Furthermore, DPW writes "We apologize for any grief the removal of this memorial has caused the family of Alice Swanson." As of yet, still no information on who requested the memorial be removed, or why. I'll note that the memorial remained for more than 13 months before being removed.
Another month, another comment. What has this blog become?
ReplyDeleteIn the past the posts covered a wide range of topics, social and political. Now, not so much. From teh Google:
Hits for "metro" when searching this blog from 11/19/2008 (Dave's first day) to today - 201.
Hits for "metro" when searching this blog for its entire existance prior (3/28/2003 to 11/19/2008, five and a half years) - 445
All that in spite of the fact DC has a perfectly good Metro watchdog blog: unsuckdcmetro.blogspot.com
In the past these comment threads were lively, crude, engaging, with plenty of hatin'. Now they're dead.
In the past the people posting here never took themselves too seriously. Now we have a why.i.hate.dc twitter feed. Dave has become "Dave Stroup" like this is a real prime news source and Dave is a real reporter. We have google adds inviting us to learn about scientology. We have the logos of local television stations, blogs and newspapers displayed prominently reminding us of the minor celebrity stalker who proudly displays pictures of himself with Dustin Diamond and William Hung hoping to appear just as cool and to perhaps acquire some of that megawatt star power himself.
Dave, do you really think this is your ticket to the big time? If so I may have some troubling news for you. Why not just have fun with it? Alice's bike, done. John Catoe, done. If you insist on maintaining the yawn-inducing tone here, surely you have some topics of discussion that can originate with you rather than forcing yourself to comment on what every other local blog has already scooped you on. Go after those, kiddo.
Good luck.
The site has gone in a different direction, this is true. I attempt to be a little more in-depth on certain issues, and that seems to echo with some of the readership. More people are reading this site now than have since King Friday installed Google Analytics last year.
ReplyDeleteI added my last name because I was already "outed" earlier this year, and also I was sick of people putting quotes around my name when discussing the site when they didn't realize it was my real name.
Frankly that other Metro-related blog fails in many aspects. There is a discussion that isn't going on anywhere, and the WaPo only touched on it a few years ago. There's some real problems at Metro, and posts about how a transit police officer scared someone with a shotgun aren't exactly hard-hitting either. Sometimes they have good material, but lately it's been a stretch.
It's not so much as viewing it as a "ticket to the big time" as it is that I enjoy taking something seriously and engaging an audience about topics of possibly more importance than the fact that _____ pissed me off yesterday.
Is it different than WIHDC was under previous writers? Yes. Do we have a completely different readership now? Probably. Am I OK with that? Yeah, I think I am.
I agree. This shit is coma-inducing. I followed this blog since its inception and wrote as m@ for seven months. Even had three court dates related to this blog. No kidding. Call me what u want but dont call me boring. No one hated dc more than me and today i am finally leaving after ten yrs. My eventual destination is chicago. Take care wihdc. I loved u.
ReplyDeleteCurtis,
ReplyDeleteYou need to go away. If you were a dinosaur, you'd be a dorkasaurus. I did not stalk that City Paper reporter. She should be so fortunate to have a stalker. It was a legal dispute regarding publication and the entire matter did in fact involve my writing.
Moreover, I did not fabricate the threats received from this sit. Nor did I make up the comments. They were real.