Figuring out life here reminds me of African villages where the boys must hunt and kill a lion on their own to be considered a man. Here in DC if you can successfully purchase, activate, and use a metro smart pass (subway and bus pass basically) you are deemed worthy of entering society. But they don't make it easy. I will spare you the whole story but we've been trying to purchase the elusive passes for almost a week now. Everyone has one and they're key to the metro running smoothly. So it must be easy to get one? There are pamphlets extolling the virtues of the smart pass that tell you to buy one as soon as possible with no indication as to where or how to do this. There are people in booths at most metro stations with cash registers and credit card machines who are unable to sell passes. I asked one of these attendants how to get a card. Through the crackly speaking box it seemed like she was telling me to exit the station and find a bus. Why? "Go to the commuter bus." It was like a mysterious prophecy. It didn't make sense and she refused to explain it but I figured I should follow it. I went and found a bus and asked the driver about buying a pass. He told me (I'm not making this up) that there is a bus that drives around to different stations. On that bus you can purchase any transit related good you'd ever want. I had only just missed it! Did he know where the bus was now? No. Is there a schedule saying where the bus will be? No. How do I find it? You can't. You just have to stumble across it. Amazing. The driver also told me I could purchase a pass at any metro stop with an official metro parking lot. Which ones have parking lots? He didn't know and I searched a nearby metro map which apparently didn't know either. Someone helpfully informed me that they thought there was a store at a nearby mall that might sell them. They didn't know the name of the store or exactly where the mall was.
Eventually a passerby who heard some of these conversations informed me that you can also purchase them at the main station in the middle of town. We went, we stood in line, and we finally purchased our passes. And here's the killer thing. When I bought our passes, the guy just picked two off a pile and handed them to me. Clearly a super intensive task that can only be done at the most secretive and secure of locations.
So here are my humble suggestions for making the DC transit system easier for the uninitiated.
1. Sell smart passes at each metro booth, on each bus, and at the vending machines that sell other passes. On your literature advertising these passes, tell people how they might actually do what you're trying to get them to do.
2. Put up some maps (in the stations themselves and in the subway cars) for crying out loud and have paper copies of maps that people can carry around.
3. Visit London. The London underground is incredibly large and complicated, yet painfully easy to navigate thanks to the simple payment options, the abundance of easy to read maps, and the ubiquitous signs directing commuters to various destinations. It makes me want to weep, it's just so beautiful. Although I have to say, the NYC system was worse, with maps completely missing from main stations and not even available at the manned booths... "I'm sorry sir, we don't have maps to give out. There should be one on the wall just there... Oh, there's not. There's probably one downstairs... Oh, you already checked? I can just tell you how to get where you need to go..."
Now for the buses here...
Please, I beg you, somewhere, anywhere, put a map of where you're going and make one available to me. It may be that Arlington is trying to improve community relations by making everyone ask several people for help before arriving at a destination, and if this is the case they should post a sign saying so. All we need is one map of the bus system and we'll be fine. They have one at the main station but nowhere else. The bus driver told me I could go online and print out a map of each route individually. What if I'm at home and need to know how to take the bus somewhere? If I don't have the internet or haven't printed off EVERY map, I just won't know. I would pay for that big map of all the routes. But I can't.
Ok, that's all for now but don't get me started on the moving company (our stuff is still in LA, we're camping in our own house) or the cable/internet people.
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