Live Q&As

I'm not sure about the air cooling equipment for Farragut North specifically. It's one of the oldest stations in the system and may have some of the older cooling equipment.

Temperatures can vary a lot from station to station -- even from one end of the platform to another. The fans that Metro places on the platforms can be a big help, but only if riders get to stand quite close to them.

No underground station is going to feel really good in the heat we're having, but in some stations, the equipment does break down and it can take a while for the maintenance staff to replace the busted parts. I'll ask about Farragut North.

I've often heard from riders who complain about how long it takes to transfer their stored up fare value from one SmarTrip card to another, but I don't recall complaints that it doesn't ever get transfered.

It would surprise me to learn that there's any way of demagnitizing a SmarTrip card. They're not the same technology as paper fare cards, which can be demagnetized in a variety of ways -- even keeping them too close to your cell phones.

The plastic farecards, with their embedded chips, can get broken -- could happen if you put one in your back pocket and sit down, for example

Metro is going to have to go to a different system, because the company that does SmarTrip cards isn't going to do them anymore. I think it may be several years, though.

Best solution would be an all-purpose card, a credit card that can be used for transit fares as well.

The project hopes to get the work on the Local/THRU lanes done by this fall and open them to traffic. But if the paving and lane stripping can’t be done before cold weather sets in, the lanes may not be open till spring or summer 2012.

That's part of the HOT lanes project. This phase of the bridge reconstruction is supposed to be done by late summer. Still to come is the construction the flyover ramp at the interchange.

There is one list you can look at for Metrorail. It's the list of major trackwork projects, the kind that involve halting rail service in certain section for the entire weekend and using free shuttle buses to span the gap.

Here's a shortened link to that list:

http://bit.ly/osksq9

It's good that Metro is doing this. The list runs to June 2012. But it's not complete. There's plenty of weekend track work that Metro does not define as "major" but still is very important to riders -- especially if they are transfering trains on weekends.

Metro posts the additional information about those other maintenance delays early in the week for the upcoming weekend. For example, the list is just out for this coming weekend. In addition the "major" work scheduled for the Red, Blue and Yellow lines this weekend, which involves shuting some rail service, there's single-tracking planned for work between Eastern Market and Stadium-Armory.

I wish Metro could go back to showing us the full list of weekend projects at the start of each month.

As you note, I do a posting each Friday morning with the full maintenance schedule for the weekend. For this coming weekend, there's an especially big deal affecting service on the Red Line. I want to devote a blog posting to that today. Not only is it a fairly big disruption, it's also likely to affect some of the tennis fans planning to take the shuttle buses to the Legg Mason tournament from the Van Ness Station.

Those signs are usually issued by the local police department on the grounds that it's better to have a moving van park in a reserved space than block a through lane. It's also routine to get permission to block off a street for a community event.

If you were to park in a reserved space where a family expects to see their moving van, I would expect the family would either ask you to move or call the police.

Metro doesn't normally run regular weekday service on a weekend because of a ball game. The transit authority does normally have extra trains on standby to help clear the platform after games.

I think Metro generally has done a good job clearing the platform at Navy Yard station after the games, though it can get pretty tight in some of those rail cars.

I notice that many riders don't realize that some of those post-game trains are shuttles rather than regular trains. I've seen the looks of surprise on the faces of many fans when the operator tells them that Mount Vernon Square is the last stop.

But the main complaint I've received is that while Metro does a good job clearing the Navy Yard platform, people have to wait a really long time on nights and weekends at the transfer stations, L'Enfant Plaza and Gallery Place.

I just peeked at Metro's escalator maintenance list to see that it shows two escalators out of service between the platform and mezzanine on the First Street side. One was out for a modernization and one was being used as an up and down walker, because the other was out of service. They're both listed as returning to service today.

The list doesn't always show the up to the moment status, but I think it's gotten a lot closer to that recently.

Union Station, such a busy station with so many escalators either busted, out for repairs, or being used as walkers, is one of the top sources of rider complaints about the equipment.

I'm not sure any particular guy is going to make all that much difference, given the scop of the long-term problem. It's more about money and an overall management plan.

And in that regard, the transit authority is engaged in a major effort now to fix the escalators. But the transit officials have been quite upfront in saying that they expect that because of their intensified repair program, riders are going to encounter a lot of out of service escalators this year, perhaps more than ever before.

I haven't heard of any further changes coming from VDOT to ease the congestion and confusion for toll road drivers heading east in the morning when they reach the HOT lanes work zone at the Beltway.

The number of complaints I received peaked in the three weeks right after the new work zone configuration started in June. It's fallen off, but I have a feeling it's mostly because it's summer and because many drivers felt they made their point and the problem for them hasn't changed.

I'm worried about September, when everyone is back from vacation. The work zone is scheduled to remain well into 2012.

I still get letters of complaint. The focus recently has been on drivers on the left side of the toll road heading straight toward I-66. I doubt there's going to be much more relief over there, because that's a work zone for the new HOT lanes ramp.

The good idea get a little out in front of the technology?

I think it's still pretty well observed -- it's just one of those things that's really annoying and really obvious when someone doesn't do it.

Not exactly a rule. More like a guideline.

It's hard for me to say exactly what was going on with your card, but you'll probably recall that Metro has been trying to upgrade the software that reads the cards and makes the calculations so that it can accommodate fare passes and other things we all want the cards to do -- like make it possible to cross between Farragut North and Farragut West without being charged an extra fare.

None of this upgrading seems to have gone smoothly for Metro.

Temps can definitely be different from place to place within a rail car. Can be different even if you just happen to be on the sunny side of the car. Haven't heard anything about changing the AC setup for the 7000 Series. Some series perform better than others. Lots of complaints about the AC and other equipment on the 5000 series especially.

Metro told me a while back that its tests showed that bench seating didn't actually add much space for passengers. And there's no plan to configure the new cars that way -- although the car construction deos allow them to reconfigure a bit.