Shuttle Buses and Power Outages
June 4, 2008 – 8:27 pmToday I had the misfortune of wanting to travel from Fairfax VA to Northwest DC during rush hour, a usually inconvenient but not impossible feat. Throw in a tree down between west falls church and east falls church metro stations and this becomes a sweaty, messy, fight your way through the entire suburban population of DC event. See article here.
There was a tree down between the 3rd to the last stop (west falls) and the 4th to the last stop (east falls) on the Orange line, a huge commuter line, and it went down circa 5pm. Bad timing. But what is baffling to me is that the replacement shuttle buses to serve those wanting to travel between these stations were ONLY running between east falls and west falls church! I mean, it doesn’t take a transportation engineering graduate student to realize that the crowds will grow to be uncontrollable if you are running full trains to the ‘burbs on 90 second headways. Why not have shuttles from multiple surrounding stations, so that the congestion is spread and the crowding does not impede travel that IS possible at those two stations? I have no idea why the DC plan for response to atypical event is so misinformed, slow, and poorly planned. Let this be a lesson if something much more serious than a soaking storm and power outage occurs.
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