Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Back page ad in the Express, 9/3/2009.

The hullaballoo over the under-promoted closure of the yellow and blue subway lines between Pentagon and National Airport stations this weekend is interesting because for those of us on the red line, we experienced this for two weekends in August. (On this weekend's closure, see "Board Raps Metro Over Holiday Closure Notice " and "'Next Time Around, We'll Do It Better' : Metro Aims to Avoid Future Closure Flaps" from the Post.)

Hey, I missed initial notice of the red line closure myself, and we ended up taking one of the "express" buses from Union Station to Takoma. But the impact of that closure, a break in the line, had to be much more significant than what will happen this weekend. And there is no question that WMATA throws a lot of buses into these shuttle efforts.

While these kinds of closures for maintenance should be announced far earlier in advance for people to plan, with signs in all the stations for at least one week in advance, some people won't end up knowing until that day, when their plans go awry.

Signs in all the stations on the system with advance announcements would definitely be a step forward.

Ads that week in the Examiner and the Express aren't probably that helpful because hundreds of thousands of people don't bother to read these papers, even if they are distributed at subway stations.

And at least the maintenance is being done during relatively low use periods, although this wasn't necessarily the case with one of the days that the red line was "broken" last month.