I was really hoping to do a Dino review, but my mind is now clouded by my love-mostly hate relationship with the DC transportation system. I walked out thinking it’d be nice and easy to catch a bus up Connecticut Ave. back home. I wait, and I wait for nearly 20 minutes. And it’s cold. So I decide, forget it, I am going to take the metro up one stop to get home, because I do not want to wait anymore. Maybe I will take the bus home from there. I get out of the metro station just as the bus pulls away from the stop. The bus that probably got to Cleveland Park just a minute or two after I decided to take the Metro. As I proceeded to walk home in the blustery cold, I saw no buses. I am not one to pin my life on the reliability of any transportation system, but it is stupid that during a fifteen minute walk home, no buses passed me a.k.a. I can walk home faster than it would take me to take a bus including waiting time. Now… the general idea is that taking the bus is faster than walking, taking the metro is faster than the bus and taking a taxi is faster than the metro. The pricier the mode – the faster it should get you there. This seems to not be the case in this crazy, mixed-up world that is DC.
I’ve seen a couple of different transport systems in action. BART and Muni in SF are beautiful, clean and not too crowded. I think there is also the “city not full of crazy, mean people” (see post about DC crazy, mean people) quotient to consider as well. Buses were okay as well and necessary, since their train system doesn’t do much besides run north and south.
London is wonderful. It covers the city with a well thought out plan for line intersections. I went after the 7/7 bombings, and even though some lines through some stations were closed there was always a workaround to get somewhere else. The buses there are not ridden by only the poor, and they’re everywhere. When I lived there I had a stop in front and in back of my building. The escalators move quickly AND there are signs to tell people to stand on the right. SIGNS. Something that DC Metro seems to find very complicated. Aside from the fact that whenever it rains, something is broken in DC… because it NEVER rains in London.
Anyway WMATA is a subject I could “rail” on about for days. Though I do like the fact that I don’t have to drive much. Like I said love-hate.
It was fun meeting you the other day at Dino (and seeing you on the dreaded Metro a few days later). That meal at Dino was sooo good and I encourage you to review it!