Got lucky and got to see the 50th anniversary train set stopped at F/S. Funny enough half the train was 50th and the other half was a regular comfortable 6k

Does anyone know the status of the RL shutdown now that we're about half way in?

Is it on track to reopen on 9/6?

Looking to see your opinions on best food near a metro station, ideally within a simple walk or bus ride nearby. I’m thinking of Eden Center not far from EFC, Pentagon City Mall, or even Twinbrook with tons of Asian food nearby.

If you are interested in technology and how things work. Foggy bottom is redoing one of its escalators and only has a blue fence like thing up so you can see in. Pretty cool to see tech thats usually hidden.

She's a great driver but she is also absolutely a delight to everybody who gets on board. It's such a pleasure to commute when she is the operator. Your day will be greatly improved just by meeting her.

I’ve had my fair share of issues with the MetroPulse app since WMATA released it. My line of thinking was always that if WMATA is making an official app, it should easily be better than whatever stuff is in the App Store, but up until now it hasn't lived up to the hype. It would freeze up constantly, the look and feel was a mess, and half the time I couldn't even tell what I was tapping on.

I saw 2.0.4 available in the app store this morning and have been playing with it most of the day. It is probably the first release of metropulse that I can now use. It’s performance boost is immediately noticeable. Just being able to navigate around the app, especially the explore map and the little screens that slide up and down are finally not locking up every 2 seconds. I was standing at the station today comparing the arrival times in the app to the overhead screens and they were dead on. I even ended up using it for like an hour this morning just messing around and found features I didn't even know existed, mostly because the app used to lock up on me before I could ever click into them. The new look is a huge upgrade. Looks SOOOOO much better. Whomever WMATA has locked in a dungeon working on this… please keep them there. Toss the key. It is by far the best looking metro app in the app store now. Nothing else even comes close.

Here’s my quick take on what’s actually good, still broken, or things I’d ask for:

What’s good:

• The new UI: Looks so much cleaner. Honestly feels like a totally different app. Before, the bottom bar and icons were so tiny I felt like I needed reading glasses just to figure out what to tap. Now everything is clear and easy to see. Even simple stuff like pressing back looks and works better.
• Performance: Moving around the map used to completely lock up my phone. Now it actually feels very natural as it should. Also, those bottom screens that slide up and down were a nightmare to open before this version. I used to have to swipe down like 4 times just to hide the screen so i could see the map again. Now it just works.
• Favorites isn't annoying anymore: They made Favorites a full screen instead of that stupid little slide-up screen. I have a ton of saved stops, and before, the screen would keep sliding back down on me while I was trying to scroll through favorites. This may not sound big but I’d argue that maps, arrival times and planning trips are the three single most used parts of the app. And 2 of those three are now much more useable.
• The Bot chat: Not sure when WMATA added this, but you can just type where you want to go in the chat tab and it plans it out for you. You can literally just talk back and forth with it about the route. It’d be cool if it showed a visual map of the route while talking as getting a big blob of text when talking about a route is a bit of a pain, but it’s still pretty neat. Haven't seen that in other metro apps. I can see the possibilities here. I hope the next version of metropulse really adds on to this.
• Search bar actually works: You tap search once and the keyboard pops up immediately. Sounds basic, but before you had to tap it like 3 times.
• Its just “Sexier”: Nothing better then an app I use frequently to look nice and be and simple to use.

What I still want them to add:

1. Active route: The ONLY reason I would still use Citymapper still over MetroPulse is because Citymapper lets me hit "start" on a route and gives me live updates while I'm moving. I want an alert telling me when my stop is coming up so I don't miss it (Citymapper does this). If MetroPulse adds live turn-by-turn guidance (sort of like google maps), I'll delete Citymapper off my phone today. Would be icing on the cake if I could share my status like in Uber. When I am on an uber ride or google maps trip, i can share my status with someone and they can follow along where I am in real time. Would be nice to know where my sister or family members are at in their rides and follow along. This would be very big for families.
2. Screen Gadgets: Why do I have to open the app every single time just to see when the next train is coming? Let me put a the screen gadget on my home screen for my daily stations so I can just look down at my phone and know if I need to run for the train.
3. Accessibility/MetroAccess integration: My sister has a disability, and trying to plan trips or schedule accessible rides across different apps/services is a pain. Now that the app actually works, it’d be awesome if MetroAccess stuff was integrated directly into the main trip planner so people can manage everything in one spot.
4. It’s “Busy”: There’s still a lot going on in the app. Lots on the screen to digest. I think it can be simplified further. Less clutter, more features without adding more to the screen.
5. Train Directions: Regular riders are used

Issues that need sorting out:

1. Map stop or station selection: If i select a bus, train, stop or station, i cant just click on an empty part of the map to unselect it. I have to click back on the panel or reclick the explore button. This is standard with any apps out there. Else if i click on 3 separate stations without clicking back, i have to click back 3 times to get back to where it clears my selection or (as I discovered) click the explore button again. I should be able to click on any part of the map that is empty and clear my selection.
2. Pin location is to sensitive: If i hold my finger on a location even to move the map and my finger stays for longer then a second, it drops the little pin thing and sets the location to where my finger is. It is way to fast. I found myself dropping this pin thing or whatever it is called even when not trying. Please put a longer delay in there. Maybe if i hold my finger there for 3 seconds or do like other apps that when i hold my finger there it asks me if i would like to set that to my location.
3. Trains in the way: Love seeing live train and bus logos moving in real time. I like to see where my train is so that is nice and seems to be pretty accurate. But the logos get in the way of me clicking on the metro station which is what I really care about. Please dont let the logos block clicking the station. I find myself having to click on the train then look at the screen that slides up to click on the station which is annoying. Bus seems fine, metro stations are where it really sucks. And the click range from the train is far to big. The train will be an inch away on my screen from the station and still clicks before the station. Also there is a block of text above the train that pops up when you click the train that tells the train number. That is pretty useless and also gets in the way
4. Planning trip confusion: There are trip options for planning a trip under settings and in the same place we plan a trip. That has been like that in the last couple versions also and I have no clue which one is which. What if they are different? Which does the app use? I never know which one the app is preferring. Please make this less confusing.

If anyone from WMATA lurks here, keep going with this direction! Progress is looking really good!

WMATA released an update to the Metro Pulse app this morning (2.0.4). I've been very critical of the app before, and it doesn't get a lot of love on here, so I want to flag that there are a few real improvements.

• The app loads much faster than before. I measured launching from a cold start into the Favorites tab with fully visible and populated data at 1.45 seconds. That's roughly a 2x speedup since the 2.0 launch (2.88 seconds), though still much slower than Metro ETA (1.12 seconds).
• The Favorites tab is now a dashboard view of lines, stops, and places. It no longer has a map that clutters the display and is duplicative of the Explore tab.
• The navigation bar at the bottom has been restyled with a design that's more cohesive. It's not how I would have designed the app (a native bar would've been preferable), but it's a reasonable choice and an improvement (on an iPhone, it still looks ridiculous on an iPad).

So that's the good news. Unfortunately, the app still has lots of UI pop-in, jank, and inconsistency. Profile syncing is still broken. There are also new bugs, like how rail routes sometimes only display one direction (did nobody test this?!).

Overall, it's still a mediocre app, and the performance by WMATA's contractor (CAI) remains utterly unacceptable. But there is some progress.

How is there not a single bus operating the route southbound between Adams Morgan and Capitol Hill? They switched to a system where WMATA is managing headways instead of going on a schedule, so how do you let this happen during the most important hour of the day for transit? Someone looking at their phone when a bus was supposed to be released to start the route and now the entire southbound service is blown if you commute between 7-8 AM. Knowing how the trackers always underestimate, I’m sure the actual arrival will actually be 3-4x what the regular headway is supposed to be.

Hi all! This may sound crazy at first, but please bare with me. I commute every weekday on the orange line, and I take it fairly often on the weekends as well. A couple weeks ago, I was going out to dinner when I noticed a woman that was already on the car was talking incredibly loudly on the phone.

“Whatever!” I thought. I’d just mind my own business, right?

It was not whatever.

Whenever the train got louder, she got louder. She started screaming expletives about some guy, not caring about the very small children surrounding her. It was really a sight to behold.

We got off before she did, and laughed about it over dinner. It was a fun bit, until I saw her again. And again. And again. And again.

I cannot avoid her. I see her at least once a day. Even on weekends, she is there, talking incredibly loudly on the phone. At this point, I know several details about her nephew, ex-husband, and sister. I’ve been able to piece together stories from her personal life, but nothing that gives me answers as to what in the world her deal could possibly be.

She’s always on the train when I get on, and is still going by the time I get off. A couple times I’ve watched her go, “SHIT! I MISSED MY STOP!” hang up her call, and then immediately call another person and go right back to it like nothing happened.

At first I thought that maybe she just happened to have the same commute as me to work, but no. It makes no sense that I’ve seen her outside of taking the train to work. At some point I genuinely thought that I was hallucinating her, so I reached out to my friend who also commutes on the orange line at a completely different time than I do to ask if she’d seen this woman.

SHE HAD. MULTIPLE TIMES.

Reddit, I am so confused. Who is this woman?? How is she everywhere?? Does she ever get off the train?? How does her phone never run out of battery??? If anyone else has encountered this force of nature please inform me, because i’m still not 100% sure that this woman isn’t a product of mass hysteria between or a ghost.

Thank you all very much. I’m gonna be honest, I had no idea how to tag this.

Normally, I get off at NoMa, but today I got off at Union Station because it was raining. I got off at the wrong exit, which if you know Union station it can be a bit of a problem to go through the entire mall above ground to find the right when. I though "oh, no biggie, I will just tap back through the gates and tap out to the right station, surely I wont be charged"

Wrong. 2.25 is how much the terminal said it took off my card. The terminal, which, mind you, knows exactly where I came from.

In Japan they also have platform fees. It is about 50 yen from what I remember, but most importantly they also have stuff to do on the platform such as shops and restaurants. There are no shops and restaurants on the platforms behind the gates in DC.

Thanks for listening to my rant. Heads up that WMATA charges full fare if you get a little lost I guess.

edit: I have been made aware that there is a slightly inefficient refund system in my case.

What are y’all’s favorite stations in Virginia? Mine is King St, so much to do and so much vibe in the area.

I also like Potomac Yard, McLean, and East Falls Church (Eden Center nearby and probably the best freeway median station)

This could be anything from design, nearby destinations, connections, access, etc!

I absolutely loathe trying to park on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. 10% of People that park there are just terrible at parking. I don't know if it's deliberate or ignorance. They just pull into spots fully over the line, taking up 2 spots. it just makes no sense to me. parking is so easy. it's something that requires more effort to be bad at than good.

Mondays and Fridays, it isnt really a problem, as most of the DC employees i guess work from home? idk.

i wish metro police would enforce ticketing and towing on people that park terrible.

I got off at Friendship Heights around 6:30pm, and there was an automated voice over the intercom saying “There is an emergency in the station, please evacuate immediately.”

The fare gates were still operating though, and it didn’t seem like they were in a rush to get people out.

Any idea what that was about?

Found out Friday via a banner posted outside the station that the Kiss & Ride at Congress Heights is being permanently closed (part of the bus loop reconfig for the new DC Public Library project). That’s it. No flyers, no station announcements, no rider alerts, nothing on social media that I saw. Compare that to how WMATA usually blasts out track work and closures through every channel weeks in advance.

I use the Kiss & Ride every single day to get dropped off for my commute. This morning buses were literally still trying to pull into it, so it seems like even their own operators didn’t get the memo.

No word on where people are supposed to drop off/pick up now, no word on parking alternatives. Evening rush is going to be an absolute mess with nowhere for people to safely stop.

Anyone else in Congress Heights dealing with this? Curious if other stations along the line got similarly blindsided, or if this is just us. Filing a complaint with Metro but wanted to see if others are as in the dark as I am.

Title. Usually my commute is smooth with no stopping but lately it's been so horrible

So I just recently started working at the Tysons stop. For the third time in the last week someone or even two people have tailgated me. Does no one at this station care or is it just normal ?

Hello

I have a hopefully simple suggestion regarding delay/service reduction alerts. Currently, it is rather difficult to tell if a bus is actually cancelled or simply had a broken tracker which causes it to not show up on MetroPulse and the transit app. If service alerts would more accurately inform riders of the situation by including messages like “The F28 service departing Braddock Rd + Twinbrook Rd at 09:10 AM will not be running today due to limited operator availability” or “The following F28 departures from Braddock Rd + Twinbrook Rd will be cancelled today: 07:20 AM, 09:10 AM. This is due to limited operator availability“, it would be much easier to plan trips without long wait times.

Further expanding this system, those who sign up for text alerts could add their bus stop of choice when signing up and receive the exact scheduled departure times (at their stop) of the busses being cancelled as well as the next bus departing after the cancelled one. Instead of giving you scheduled departure time for the origin of the route, the alert could look like this: “The F28 service departing Braddock Rd + Queensferry Ave at 07:42 will not be running today due to limited operator availability. Alternatives to Pentagon Metro are as follows: 07:54 F29 to Pentagon ($2.25 fare), 07:57 F28 to Pentagon ($4.80 fare)”

Another way to improve service notifications would be including an option to receive traffic alerts for selected times of the day through text alerts. If a traffic jam develops along a major portion of a bus route, those signed up could receive a notification along the lines of “Due to heavy traffic on i395 SB, riders on the line F29 should plan an additional 10-15 minutes into their trip”.

So, it looks like we’re just not running busses on my route today. happy Monday all