I used to live in DC. I worked downtown--such as it was--and lived with my parents in New Spring Valley in far-outer NW, a mile and a third or a mile and a half from DC's Red Line, depending on which station you wanted to go to. As I've mentioned, I don't drive. So my sister, in her glorious and copious patience, drove me to the metro most of the time. Yes, every morning (barring my five-week stint of doom-mono, or when she was out of town at trade shows), except when Mom did. Often she'd pick me up, too, at the end of the day. The rest of the time I'd walk: downhill is much nicer in dress shoes than up, particularly when there's precipitation.
Rush hour in DC is far more of a thing than it seems to be in Chicago. At least, that's my impression based solely on buses and subways. I'm almost pleased to say that I've never experienced the road-related rush hours of either city. I hear they're unpleasant. I suppose this is due to several things. First, DC is a far smaller city than Chicago, both in size and in population. Second, there are fewer metro lines (and fewer still that get the lion's share of rush hour traffic) in DC than in Chicago, congesting things further. Third--this one's just suspicion and speculation--the bulk of jobs in DC are governmental, concentrating the time at which people flee their offices.
The result of this is that I've never had to wait for a train to pass by in Chicago (Red Line, Blue Line, Brown Line, Green Line) as a result of it being overly full. In DC, I've had to let four consecutive trains pass (before shouldering my way on to get to my birthday dinner on time). One of the few pictures I have with people in it in DC (people there react to cameras being pointed at them as they might to loaded handguns in a similar posture) is of the Farragut West metro station (Blue & Orange Lines) at 6:00 on a Friday. There wasn't room to move on either platform. The escalators had been stopped so people wouldn't be shoved, lemming-like, onto the platform, causing others to fall (lemming-like) onto the tracks. People had backed up nearly to the gates. Trains went by, and still the tide didn't slow. It almost felt like the station wasn't big enough to hold the accumulated mass of commuters.
I lived a bit up the Red Line in DC. Not far enough up to get a seat in the morning (and getting a seat in the evening was more related to timing than geography), but certainly before the squeeze hit. And several stops later--at Dupont Circle, the stop before my destination--the train doors would open and workers would flood the platform and the streets. Those of us left on the train could breathe again, and try with better success to read our books, and generally carry on with our commutes.
I've already talked about my present adventures in commuting. It's settled down into something slightly more regular, modulated less by moving and more by my evening activities with friends or my boyfriend. But that discussion was mostly about routes and getting from Point A to Point B. This post is a discussion of the trains themselves, and their contents--people, in huge numbers. During the summer of my 2L year, I rode the Red Line daily from Streetervillehell down to Roosevelt, and I was always glad that I lived closer to Grand than to Chicago. The train would arrive at half past eight (or so. Or so) and would promptly disgorge half to two-thirds of its contents onto the platform before soaking up those of us there waiting. Half of my fellow commuters would step out into one station in the Loop or another, and it was just about empty by the time Roosevelt rolled around. The evening's return functioned similarly: empty train filling up in the loop, with a huge exchange at Grand--more getting on than off.
As may be clear, I spend a lot of time riding on trains. It always seems to me like the trains themselves are only a part of the system. Not in the way that buses and other such are a part of the larger public transit system, although it works that way, too, but rather that the trains wouldn't be a complete system without the riders. While on a train, I sometimes get this sense that the system--the train, the riders, the stations, the everything--is all working in sync, everyone getting on or off at their designated points and going about their daily lives from there and keeping the city running by so doing. And all the while the trains breathe people in at one point and exhale them elsewhere.
The title of this post may have been wrong: people are the blood of a city. It's the trains that breathe people.
No comments:
Post a Comment