The Incredible Architecture of the Washington Metro
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ก.พ. 2023
- The 11 types of stations on America’s most iconic metro system.
(Also sorry I pronounced McLean wrong)
My Twitter: / metamodernismyt
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Matt Johnson’s fabulous article that outlines all 11 station types (with a map): ggwash.org/view/36068/metro-h...
Thumbnail photo, Arch I station video, and Dulles station platform photo by @Enjineer (@jeremyzorek on Twitter)
More photo/video credits-
Cleveland Park station from mezzanine by Jared Tarbell: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Columbia Heights metro station by dbking: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Forest Glen Station by Ben Schumin: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Stockholm - Solna centrum Metro station by Pudelek: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Moscow Metro photo by A. Savin: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
St. Petersburg Metro photo by MScheiner: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Washington Dulles International Airport at Dusk by Joe Ravi: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Reagan National Metro Station by Eric T. Gunther: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Potomac Yard METRO Station by Duane Lempke: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Union Station WMATA repainting 2017 by Antony-22: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Station construction photo from WMATA archives: archive.org/search?query=subj...
Arlington Cemetery station from outbound end of platform by Ben Schumin: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Eisenhower Avenue Station by Ben Schumin: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Cheverly Station by Ben Schumin: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
National Airport Metro by Ben Schumin: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Vienna Metro Station by Ben Schumin: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
College Park Station by Rainclaw7: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Old map animation and historical video from “Metro: Here and Now”: • Metro: Here and Now
Music: End Credits by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio • Free Chill Synthwave M...
More cool DC Metro stuff-
RMtransit DC Metro video: • So, the US Actually *C...
Secrets of the Red Line by Andy on Track: • Secrets of the DC Metr...
Metro speedrun: • I visited all 97 DC Me...
I grew up riding the DC metro and absolutely love the original waffle design and signpost pillars. The whole system has a clean and consistent visual aesthetic that makes it really unique. The only thing I don’t like is that the underground stations can be a bit dark and gloomy, and the concrete is starting to crack and show its age in some stations. It’s still a beautiful retro vision of the future.
Painting the underground stations might have been controversial, but it definitely helped improve accessibility for those with bad vision and just made things feel less depressing. Just adding more lighting wouldn't have cut it, I think.
Something that Metro has indeed fixed in many stations (thank goodness) is the lumens/type of lighting: it's added light bars on the mezzanines of stations like Metro Center and Farragut North, and it's increased the brightness of the uplighting in the platform pylons and the side lights on the tracks. It's very noticeable, and especially for a station like Friendship Heights that was incredibly cavernous and dark in a negative way, it made a huge difference.
@@peabody1976 Yes, it was hard to even read anything in stations like Friendship Heights. But the architecture is great. The canopy over the entrance (like the one in the video) is well done. The only mystery was why no one thought it was a good idea in the first place. There are stairs and escalators down into subways all over NYC and other cities with no canopies, something I never understood.
I agree with all your points. Every station should be bright enough so passengers can read wherever they (we) are standing. And stained, cracking concrete looks bad in any lighting. I think the paint jobs were a good stopgap measure until Metro can install brighter, more efficient lighting.
@@sebastianjoseph2828 Some of the original publicity for Metro during construction boasted that the dim, indirect lighting would help passengers "relax" while they wait for trains. How can you relax when you're in a hurry to get somewhere and you can hardly see your surroundings? ;-)
We need more of LBJ's Jumbo infrastructure
i dont even live in the us but this Lyndon guy seems like a good apple
One of my favourite American presidents. He was a great man. Tonnes of infrastructure projects. The Just Society. He was wrong on Vietnam but everything else he was an amazing president.
Give every city some waffles
ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ!🎉
Part of why it’s so good is that it eschewed the overblown, hulking nature and excessive amount of right angles and hard edges that ruined most other brutalist architecture. It’s actually a very welcoming feel because of all the curves in the design. It also made significant concessions to people, like stone benches, tile floors, easy navigation, wide sight lines, and pedestrian-friendly spaces. Nearly every other brutalist structure ever created felt actively hostile to human beings and to mammalian life in general.
Great video. I love how spacious they made many of Metro's stations, even those peak above ground stations.
I knew the Washington Metro was architecturally interesting, but I've not seen such a comprehensive video and breakdown of the different styles before. I have to say it looks incredible. Suddenly it's shot to the top of my bucket list to go and visit next time I go to the U.S!
The waffle-style, the hexagonal tiles, and the blinking lights all make the Metro stand out! Definitely one of my favorite systems. Though when it comes to a certain line, my favorite is the Disneyland Resort Line in Hong Kong. It has two stations, Sunny Bay and Disneyland Resort. Sunny Bay has a futuristic gateway look while Disneyland Resort station has Victorian-style architecture. These two have very different designs because it was done to make passengers feel like they are travelling through time between the fantasy world of the Disneyland Resort and the city (the jingles you hear in the train's announcements reflect this too). And that's just the stations, because the trains are unique too with its cute design of Mickey-shaped handles, Mickey-shaped windows, and bronze statues of characters on display. The line was also the first on the MTR to be automated, the South Island would become the second line eleven years later!
We seem to have the same interests, now i wonder if you like furries too
The one thing about West Hyattsville is that there is exactly one other station with similar design: Eisenhower Avenue in Alexandria. I live in the area and have used both stations.
The issue with painting... When the first Red Line stations were built, and the subsequent western leg of the Red Line built, they did not wrap the concrete to protect from water (those western leg stations are deep underground and near the water table, the original five stations are cut-and-cover). A lot of those stations were built with "thicker" concrete. But flaws and pre-casting mean that leaks and cracks let in water, and thence fungal spots and discoloration. Painting does alter the look of the stations, but not the grandeur. Newer underground stations don't have as much a problem.
Metro per se is a good system. The frustrating thing is that because it's a hybrid metro-commuter rapid transit system, it doesn't serve the core of DC as well as it could; we need more actual lines in various areas of the city (one proposal would separate the Blue Line into its own corridor parallel to the east-west trunk it runs on now and north of the Red Line).
And it had a lot more riders pre-pandemic. It's just had a double whammy of pandemic and bad luck with the 7000-series trains that really hampered ridership. Once it can get back to better headways and the adjustment of new rider patterns, I think it will get more people riding again.
One more thing if you visit/re-visit: not that you'd need to go there unless you like the CIA or CapitalOne (ha!), but the town/station spelled "McLean" is said like "mic-KLAYNE".
I loved this video and its review of the different styles of my home metro system, so thank you for posting it!
What I know is that West Hyattsville has slightly flat canopies that are highly above the platforms. Eisenhower Avenue and Cheverly stations have the half gulls' wings design. Otherwise, all the Metrorail stations look very interesting.
Now I'm looking forward to you doing a similar video for LA's Metro architecture. For how lacking LA's public transit is, many of the stations have been designed pretty thoughtfully.
Definitely on my list! The red line has some cool ones for sure
@@whatwebuilt seconded, as an ex-native, would love your take on it :)!
I can definitely say at least the LA metro gets you places , not the best looking but it does get you around quite nice 😅
Chicago's don't have grand architecture but all of the elevated stations are super charming and quirky.
Your channel is so underrated. Please continue uploading.
The Metamodernism channel needs to be promoted.
The lack of advertising is also a distinctive feature of the stations.
Not sure that that is necessarily an advantage. Almost everyone loathes brutalist architecture. If tastefully done, some bright additions here and there might actually be an improvement over the hyper-oppressive bare concrete look.
@@TohaBgood2[everyone disliked that]
im glad they preserved the concrete look, while getting rid of the grittiness
A metro system that more people should be talking about is the Tashkent Metro. It's one of the most stunning metros anywhere, and it took until 2018 for them to lift the photography ban and allow tourists to take as many pictures as their hearts desire. Sure, the Tashkent Metro was inspired by the Moscow Metro, but it's more than that. Almost every subway station in Tashkent is fascinating. They all have their own unique architectural features and artistic elements. Some look like ballrooms with huge chandeliers hanging from the ceiling while others look like a film set from a science fiction movie. Walking through it is like walking through the city's history. Every station shows a part of Uzbek history, and they all tell a story from the Silk Road to the empires that once ruled over it.
Wow. I didn't expect the leader of North Korea to alert me to such an interesting metro system that I'd never heard of before (and I've watched every RMTransit video ever made. lol). Thanks!
very nice to see that those stations are very open and spatious
I used to go back to DC every year when I worked for the Federal Government back in the early 2000’s. Since I never got a rental car, I would walk or take the Metro everywhere. My only gripe with the metro was that most, if not all, underground stations had terrible lighting. The vaulted stations in particular that had two tracks in center of vault with strips of fluorescent lighting mounted at grade level between the two tracks, was very poorly planned. When a train would pull into a station and stop, the train would block half of the indirect lighting in the vault which resulted in reduced light levels. When two trains, one in each direction, would stop to unload/load, you got a nice solar eclipse effect, that reduced the light levels down to almost zero. Unless it has already been started or completed, the entire metro system needs to upgrade the lighting system to today’s standards. The majority of lighting in the stations is either fluorescent or metal halide (HID). Over time the lumens produced by a lamp goes down as the lamp ages. It appears Metro maintenance does not replace bulbs until they totally go out. So, even if a bulb is only producing 50% of its original light output, the bulbs are left in place. The Metro needs to replace and improve station lighting with updated light sources which will improve rider’s safety and security while awaiting the arrival of their trains.
I believe WMATA has resolved this issue with LED lighting upgrades. I ride metro almost every day, and it never feels too dark even at older stations.
Recently visited DC for the first time and the Metro is one of the things that I liked the most, such striking architecture!
When I first visited DC and rode the metro, it felt like a scene from one of the weirdly futuristic Cold War-era movies. There is something that screams "atomic age". Perhaps because it feels like a nuclear bunker?
Your show about the Metrorail train stations is the best show I needed to watch many years ago. The stations designs are the main things I like about the Washington Metrorail rapid transit system. Your forum explains everything I have wanted to know about the station designs. Unfortunately, some of the subway stations look less than good by the water stains caused by the leaks that appear on the walls. Those subway stations appear as though they were built very few feet below the street surface. That is why I believe that most of them may need to be painted with primer paint or a lighter color to enhance their appearance. I thought that painting the surface and aerial stations' canopies top would help reduce exposure to the sunrays, but I saw that the first canopy at Rockville had chipped concrete. This makes me believe that is the reason that aerial, surface, even some open cut stations may need to be built with steel canopies. That is why Potomac Yard station is made predominately of steel. As a Metrorail fan, I am from New York. Your show is the greatest news I ever watched.
Very professional. I like your approach narrative. You are good in finding the best views. And I agree Washington DC metro is a real architectural masterpiece. Having lived the bigger part of my life in Moscow (Russia), being a frequent user of metro of Moscow and St Petersburg - still admitting - Washington metro is great architecture no doubt
Thanks for this explanation. Washington's metro is great, whether you mean the stations, with their distinct style and architecture, or the frequency of trains, network extension etc. I remember riding DC's metro on my only visit to the city to this date. I keep very fond memories of it. It gives a great image of the federal capital of the USA.
One advantage that was part of the concept of the waffle stations is that there are few walls anywhere that anyone can touch except in the tiled ticket machine and entry gates lobby. Even on the escalators down from the street the walls are far away. I too love the brilliant concept of the lights in the floor that signal the train coming. (No bumpy strips there at the edge of the platform though.)
There have been some concessions in the signage over the years. Originally, the Vignelli platform pylons were supposed to be the ONLY places where station identification signs appeared--there were no signs on the walls. That changed pretty quickly. They also added letter abbreviations in the circular line color indicators (maybe to improve color-blind access); those were not there originally.
The DC Metro opened when I was an impressionable kid and I grew up with it. To me, it's always been my mental default model of a subway system, though it's actually pretty unusual. It also seemed very futuristic and antiseptic at the time, which was attractive to people in the 1970s who saw cities as a problem--it was more or less designed to look as unlike the NYC subway of the time as possible. I know some people find its monumental brutalism off-putting, but to me it signaled fun times in the city on a high-tech train of the future.
Lol, same feelings different coast. BART had the exact same effect on me. I still think that all the other metros are wildly exotic by comparison. Except, of course, WMATA because it almost feels like home to me 😁
Production quality is amazing! This channel is going to be big
Considering that Washington DC, the US national capital, has a well planned metro system, I can't help but wonder how and why many more American cities didn't pursue such systems of their own (other than San Francisco's BART and Atlanta's MARTA). I know Cleveland, Baltimore, and Miami technically also have metro systems, but only single to a couple lines with light rail built later. And to think, since I grew up in car-dependent suburbia, I was the type of person to go "wait, DC has a subway?" just a couple years ago. Same for Boston and LA. Let alone Cleveland and Baltimore.
I take LA’s metro system just about every day. Funny thing is it’s one of the world’s longest metro systems, but the city is so spaced out it doesn’t put a dent in the problem. I’m assuming this is true for many US cities.
I'm aware that once the Regional Connector opens, LA will have the single longest light rail line in the world. I kinda worry that this little factoid will be used to mask the true transit situation in LA.
LA has a very long light rail system, but the actual metro part of LA (red and purple) isn’t more than 30km. Even if you include both light and heavy LA pales in comparison to the worlds best.
LA is a tough problem because it has fairly high density but spread out in a way that there are very few logical nodes to run transit too. It creates not just a last mile problem, but something more like a last 5 mile problem.
@@ficus3929 I think the LA metro can be very good in the medium term. What needs to be done is adding more lines, even to places that aren't dense now. And then upzone areas near stations. The Orange Line corridor in NoVa wasn't always dense, but now Rosslyn, Clarendon, and Courthouse are built up because they're along the metro. Same with downtown Silver Spring, and Brookland, and Navy Yard in DC. Transit made their density viable.
MARTA is a great system though it is targeted mostly on getting passengers from the airport to the downtown core. Though I get that this is important they really need to expand the system to accommodate more areas like Norcross. There are some other great transit cities in the US too. Seattle and Portland have some of the best integrated systems that I’ve seen blending seamlessly with the surrounding suburbs, offering convenient modal changes and well designed overall. With regards to LA metro the system should be fine after 2028 but they really need to listen more to public feedback and need to reroute some of the routes to encourage urban core densification. It surprises me how LA could’ve looked more like NYC with glorious skyscrapers and a well planned structure but it was all ruined.
This is the third time I'm watching your video, not only bc of the content , but bc the quality of the footage is so high and the variety of stations you captured is the only one around satiating my thirst for this sort of stuff 🤤
many thanks
😏
I take the orange line in from Vienna and I love the texture of board marked concrete in the peak stations out there. Very nice when the sun comes through the skylights
Montreal's metro has some amazing brutalist architecture too
One of my absolute favorite functional design elements incorporated into all of the stations are the round approach lights embedded in the platforms. I wish they were still incandescent like the old days. LEDs ruin the design aesthetic.
I remember growing up in dc as a kid getting so excited when the lights started to blink.
Whenever I visit DC I still smile when I see them 😊
I miss the old “doors opening” sounds etc … and the all-silver trains don’t quite hit my nostalgia feels but overall I still like the metro all these years later! At least the train shapes haven’t changed (at least not significantly)
I just got home from riding Metro from central DC to one of the Green Line suburbs and this video was the first thing TH-cam recommended for me. What a fantastic showcase of the beauty and diversity of Metro! I definitely want go and seek out some of the unique stations mentioned tomorrow just because of this video!
Very well done! I'd point out one small note that East Falls Church, West Falls Church, Dunn Loring and VIenna have their own station style(s) not mentioned here.
I noticed those ones looked kind of different, but Matt Johnson’s article lumped them in with General Peak, so I went with that. It seems like it’s a product of them being in the median of the interstate. I didn’t have a chance to get over to that part of the orange line, but West Falls Church is really interesting because of the two platforms.
@@whatwebuilt it's a criticism I levied at that article back then too haha. It's a minor point, but they are different enough from the ones you see on Green and Red Lines of the "General Peak" style, I do think they warrant a different descriptor.
No matter what the station design, the older brown-striped trains match them better!
FYI: Arch II is also on the Red Line, at Glenmont station.
Great design, but, I worry about the crack's in some of the stations. I think is a great system thought out overall covering the DMV. My only issue is the shutdown time concerning repairs.
Awesome video ❤ I appreciate youuuuu. Nobody talks about this stuff and I am so interested. I’m also interested in Montreal’s Metro architecture.
I wish the stations here in vancouver were like this. Our stations are small, underbuilt, and usually quite generic, with a few exceptions that I’m personally fond of.
Very well made, high quality content. Thanks for sharing.
I love the brutalist architecture. It’s my favourite metro system in the world but I wish it was bigger
Good video and I enjoy the descriptions of the different architectural styles used though out the system. Rooting for the new GM to implement much-needed organizational culture changes to provide the national capital region with safe, frequent, and reliable service.
Lovely video - I thoroughly enjoyed it
Love that you got some good use out of my various photos. It was fun to play spot-the-photo throughout the video. Also, when did you shoot the video footage throughout the system? Wondering where to look in case you possibly got me operating a train as well. 😁
Thank you for all your Creative Commons images of the system! I took most of the video on December 27-28, 2022. Some a couple days after. Also sorry for missing Glenmont station as the only Arch II on the red line!
Atlanta’s MARTA stations have some really cool brutalist architecture!!
idk why but the dark brutalist setting along with the unique roof and feeling like your stepping back (and how dirty the place is) makes me feel like i’m in the joker movie lol
Great video, thank you very much for sharing!
Great video! Is the shot at 9:53 at Metro Center? Heading to DC in a few weeks and want to get some photos for myself :)
Love it, thanks! Regards from Baltimore.
I've always loved how great the metro stations are underground. I only wish the actual train service was reliable.
Impressive and informative!
Can you do some unique metro stations in America? Because I nominate the Owings Mills Station in northwest Baltimore county for being the most brutalist station with a vaporwave aesthetic.
I have been on this metro, as an Australian, it was the only metro where It felt like in Australia and Europe, all people from all walks of life caught. Not just tourists and low to middle income people like I noticed on much of American public transport. Although the aesthetic still needs some modernising like the rest of the world. It is still super dark
What's funny is that if you ask most Americans if they like brutalist architecture they'll scream no, but people generally like the look of the Washington Metro. I was very impressed by it as a kid in the early '90s, and then went nearly 30 years without seeing it again. More recently I've taken 3 trips to Washington by train in the past 2 years and so I've had occasion to use the Metro as well. While it's not perfect from a service perspective, its visual aspect is still strikingly bold, even dramatic, and I love it for that. It is unapologetically of its time and yet it holds up well, too. Closer to home we have some echos of this style in the handful of stations built in New York in the same era (Roosevelt Island, Parsons/Archer, and the pre-renovation 63rd/Lex come to mind), but then it just stops. As I sink into middle age and become more jaded than ever, I can't help feeling something like a sense of loss for the future the world had imagined at one time, not that long before I got here, a dream that was tossed out the window to embark on a new gilded age 40 years ago that only seems to get worse and worse if you're not in that ever-thinner golden layer at the surface.
the interior of the ren cen in detroit is felt about in a similar way, people like it aswell, most chicagoans love the sears and hancock
Last time I was in DC I rode the Red Line out to Wheaton just to ride the long escalators.
Concrete, the building material of the future.
This is the exact video I needed
Currently watching this while on the DC metro.
I havent seen like 4 of the main (both arches, high peak, gull 2) and most of the unique ones designs (aside from the airport ones) since a lot of commuters like me try to avoid going to the different color lines. So this is refreshing to me.
Waffle and Gull 1 look amazing, love brutalist.
I’m in DC right now for my last spring semester of college, and I wanted to go see the Wheaton escalators only to find out that the stations is closed for construction and won’t be open until after I leave 😭
I have been there a few years ago. I live in Chicago and this blows me away.
It’s a good video overall, but 3:35 is incorrect. Glenmont has the Arch II design (being the only red line station to have it), while Rosslyn’s elevator lobby has Arch I. Rosslyn is also the only station to have both Waffle and Arch I, also being the only station on the blue, orange, and silver lines to have the latter.
It's interesting that the BART system in the Bay Area has very similar stations that would slot very well into this lineup. These two systems were built at the same time by some of the same contractors and had a lot of similar features. Apparently even the ticketing system was the same and you could use your ticket from one system while riding the other system. (In fairness, you were probably stealing money from someone's account, but I don't think people realized what they were doing at the time 😁)
Nice summary. We Northern Virginians pronounce McLean as McLANE.
Reminds me of the montreal metro
GREAT well done system...easy to miss your stop if you new to riding it....but it's EASY find your way back.👍👍
If only every major city in the US had a metro system like dc...
Thank You!
There is a station in Moscow that is very similar to the stations of the Washington metro. It is called Krasnogvardeiskaya (translated. Red Guard). Also waffle ceiling.
When WMATA changed PG Plaza to Hyattsville Crossing I was shook. Gotta love gentrification 🎉
Google maps still has it as PG plaza, and the garage has still some PG plaza signage. This coming from a white guy who visited recently :)
An outstanding report! DC Metro has one great advantage that other transit systems (e.g., BART) don't have: that unlimited gusher of federal money! The DC system could afford to create artistically great stations, while those of BART are pretty plain, functional and uninspiring.
Oh, BART would be incredible with WMATA's sweet sweet Federal dollars. It's still a surprisingly great system, but it needs a loooooot more money! From a technical standpoint, it surprising how much better BART turned out than WMATA's metro. Even after decades most of BART's technical choices proved correct (not all!) compared to poor WMATA's silly foibles.
@@TohaBgood2the different gauge ain’t helping
@@qjtvaddict You do know that the DC Metro also uses a non-standard gauge, right? Yeah, just like BART and the Toronto Subway, WMATA opted for an exotic gauge specifically to deter freight takeover. This was a legitimate concern when these systems were being planned/built.
The exotic gauge, which in BART's case isn't even that exotic with all of India using it, doesn't really have any material impact on a closed-loop subway/metro system. They never allow outside services on their track anyway.
And BART train orders are so large that it would get a dedicated train model anyway from a manufacturer. Their latest order is between 1000 and 1200 cars. In fact, BART has several generations of the same BART train running. So BART train are so large that they span several models within the same train family.
Unlimited federal money?!? 🤣 😂
No, seriously: a significant reason why the DC Metro had fallen into such disrepair a decade ago (culminating in problems discovered that were so serious that _they had to shut the entire system down for two days for inspection, midweek, without prior notice_ because it couldn’t wait two days till the weekend!!) was because the metro had no permanent funding. _Every single year_ WMATA had to go groveling to _three_ governments (city of DC, Maryland, and Virginia) and beg for money. It’s a miracle the system ran as well as it did since it was basically being starved. And of course, politicians were eager to get their names attached to system expansion, but not to routine maintenance.
When the system shut down midweek, basically bringing the city to a standstill, it was a wake-up call to everyone of what would happen if the metro were to actually fail, and so the three jurisdictions finally worked out permanent, recurring funding. And still the system is experiencing a budget shortfall - and this is with 57% of its budget coming from fares (a higher share than, for example, the NYC subway). DC and Maryland pay practically the same, Virginia less. (The share is determined by the populations, station numbers, and ridership in the respective counties.) Virginia is famously anti-public transit so they fight it tooth and nail (since most of that state views northern Virginia with disdain), hampering progress even though their state benefits tremendously from northern Virginia’s prosperity.
So please, don’t act as though the DC metro is somehow massively federally subsidized; it is, for all intents and purposes, funded locally by the counties it serves. Yes, one of those is the District of Columbia which is subordinate to Congress, but it’s basically coming from the city budget.
@@tookitogo Compared even to the other "great society metros" the DC Metro has been positively showered with Federal dollars, dude. BART didn't get half the money that WMATA got even though the Bay Area is twice larger and a looooooooooot more economically productive. We're talking a metro area that would be the 18th largest economy in the world if it were a country!
The DC Metro did not warrant even 1/10 of the money it got purely based on merits. It got that money because the DC pols wanted a showpiece metro system for the nation's capital. The fact that WMATA failed to run the system correctly is entirely WMATA's fault. BART, again, as the DC Metro's West Coast twin, didn't have any of the crazy issues of the DC Metro while being in a much more expensive cost of living area.
This, Bart and Montreal are probably are all such nice systems. Wonder what they have in common
BART and WMATA were basically twin systems. They were developed at the same time by the same contractors and even from the same pots of Federal money. Consequently, BART and WMATA are extremely similar in design, technology, and philosophy. Not many metros were being built around that time on the continent so we got this crop of very evocative space-age metros. I still like them a lot, but god is the brutalist architecture oppressive 😁
Love metro in the dmv area better then nyc train lines
The only positive example of Brutalist architecture.
oooh, Montreal subway vibes!
The São Paulo Subway was built (lines 1 and 3) around the same time and it’s has the same style of brutalism architecture.
I love how different they look compared to the newer stations.
I always have a hard time with the workers inside the station booth. They make it VERY clear how annoyed they are if you go to the window and ask for help.
Been visiting for many years and many stations. Always the same experience.
i'm not a fan of brutalist architecture either above ground or below....the wash metro has an insectoid or coffin-like look to it, like the cross section of a beehive or a collection of ant's eggs
its tough to make an underground tunnel look attractive....the best thing about brutalist insect cells is that the irregular surface makes grafitti more difficult
Thank god I'm not the only one who sees that.
Seeing the original design for the new Potomac Yards station at 8:10 now that it is complete was nice. They ended up simplifying the unique design with the two entrances connecting in a T before crossing the rail lines. Disappointing because the results requires more walking. I wonder what prevented the original design from being implemented. Budget cuts I presume.
Excellent end music
Could you do the Marta’s architecture?
Cool Intro Music
interesting report 🍸
I’ve always said Dc Metro is the Cathedral of Trains
I remember running through these stations in Syphon Filter. I heard the headways suck on this metro.
Reminds me of the Montreal metro except this one has 11 template designs used repeatedly.
Had never been in a subway before, around
1988. Rode this train, but don't remember
much about it, except the looks we got from riders.
We were eating, and I think that might've been
against the rules. Or maybe because we were both
so, so good looking back then.
The twin-tube on the WMATA is quite unique in its own way, as it mirrors most London Underground stations
I live around the DC area; I live in the part that commutes in by car, so whenever I take the metro, I feel like an adventurer going out to slay a dragon.
These stations are cavernous but their floorspace is mostly efficient, more efficient than the monumental underground light rail stations of Seattle (except for Beacon Hill, whose use of elevators should've been repeated).
Excellent video! Minor nitpick - McLean is pronounced mə-KLAYN.
Goood video.
The car interiors however are more or less untouched from 1978 with none of the information displays seen everywhere else. There it one dot matrix lights kind of sign that just says what line it is (so it might as well be a painted sign) instead of at least showing the next station. Maybe they have some new or updated ones but not that I've seen.
This system is an absolutely jaw-droppingly beautiful masterpiece of Brutal Modernist architecture. It's so unique, and nests so well with the lofty Neo-Classical Union Station, despite seeming like it would clash on paper. Even down to the hexagonal, stainless steel trains and the soft blue glow of their interior lighting just makes everything look so futuristic even to this day. 100 years from now this system will still be heralded as one of the most beautiful in America and even in the world.
You should be proud of those stations, DC.
My dad worked on the tunnel under the Anacostia
I’m a DC native and a regular Metro passenger for about 40 years. This video gives me a different perspective of the system. I must admit that seeing it presented this way makes me proud. I’ve been taking it for granted for decades. We’ve had some recent problems with crime at different stations in the system. A Metro employee was killed and several passengers injured by a random shooter with a criminal history at the Potomac Avenue station a couple of weeks ago. Overall, the system is safe and efficient.
i only have 2 complaints abt the DC metro:
1) the doors take far too long to open once the train stops
2) the escalators are painfully slow
Glenmont uses arch II. It's on the Red line.
The DC metro is gorgeous
This is one of the only systems in the world where platform screen doors should absolutely not be installed
We need some LA rail videos.
I'm sure the original color of the concrete was much lighter than it appeared after 40 years of dirt, grime, water infiltration, mold, air pollution, brake dust, etc... circulated all about by the strong winds generated by these high speed trains. Who's to say the paint didn't restore it closer to the original color and help preserve it for future generations? Just because something's old doesn't mean it has to look that way. I believe this modernist architecture has proven itself to be timeless, though not impervious to being aged.
"While the US is not a nation that prioritizes high-quality public transit..." That is putting it mildly.
I just took the Orange line into DC from the Dunn-Loring station. When it passes over the I-66/Beltway interchange (a mass of concrete spaghetti where they just added *more* lanes and ramps) I look out and see thousands and thousands and thousands of cars crawling along. Sometimes I imagine the total annual co$t each driver has to shell out to stay on the road is floating above their car: bank loan, insurance, gasoline plus repairs, making *LOT$* of corporations very happy - which is WHY the US is not a nation "that prioritizes high-quality public transit." 😞
And oh yeah - the stations could use more station name signs; right now they're few and far between and with the moody lighting often hard to read.