Matthew, though, has logged more mileage in the air than by any other means: to date, 29063 miles in 26 segments. Most of this has gone well. We’ve always bought him a seat, even when he was young enough to travel as a “lap child.” In the past, it was common to travel with a young child as a “lap child” and then use an empty seat for him while aboard the airplane, but in recent years, there is no such thing as an empty seat, and lap children must almost always actually be carried on a grown-up’s lap for the whole flight. My advice, then, is not to count on there being an empty seat, but rather, to count on there not being an empty seat, and if you can at all afford it, buy the seat for the child.

Of course, even when you buy a seat for your toddler, and you tell the airline such when you buy your ticket, you may find, when it’s time to select seats, that there are none together. Your toddler might even be assigned a middle seat by himself ten rows back from mommy and daddy. Don’t panic! As crazy as some airline practices might be, they would never actually seat a toddler away from at least one parent. Further, in all the 26 segments we’ve flown with Matthew, the three of us have been separated only once (and on that flight, he slept the whole way through).

This is not because we’ve always bought our tickets early enough to select a whole row of seats together–we often get nothing good left to select from, and we’ve also had flights cancelled and have needed to squeeze on later flights. But if you can’t select good seats when purchasing a ticket, have patience and wait until you’re at the gate. If you are assigned seats apart, nobody will be able to help you get seated together except the gate agents: not customer service on the phone, not the front counter agents where you check in, and, unfortunately, not any agents at an airport that’s not the one where the flight in question departs from, which makes tight connections rather nerve-wracking. I once spent the better part of an hour on the phone with an airline’s customer service department, speaking to the phone agent’s supervisor, only to end up with a worse seating assignment than the computer had automatically given us. The gate agents fixed the problem, as they have in every single other time we’ve had seats assigned apart, with the worst outcome being that one time Matthew and his mommy were together while I was several rows back. So the best thing to do is to be at the gate as soon as the flight is posted, which is usually no more than an hour before departure.

So one way or another, we’ve almost always had a row of three seats to ourselves. The fact that we buy a seat for Matthew does not imply that he stays in the seat for the entire journey–he only does this when he falls asleep. But even if he doesn’t use his seat, having the whole row to ourselves makes quite a difference, as he can be moderately active without disturbing anyone else.

Every time we’ve needed to travel in a car on the other end of our trip, we’ve brought on board and installed his carseat in the aircraft, then subsequently installed it in the car at our destination. Car seats could be obstructions to other passengers, so on single-aisle aircraft, they have to be installed in the window seat, which the gate agents have always given us. Our infant car seat installed almost trivially on airplanes–the seat belt cinched across two hooks just above the baby’s legs. Matthew currently uses a Sunshine Kids Radian 80 carseat, which works quite well for air travel. The seat quickly folds up into the back for storage, making it relatively compact to haul around. With an extra strap, it can be worn as a backpack. The belt path, for the forward-facing configuration, is readily accessible underneath the seat back padding. It fits through X-Ray machines, and we’ve had no troubles from TSA about it.

We’ve frequently taken our stroller along as well, and it fits through the X-Ray machine and also hasn’t given us any trouble at security. Incidentally, the TSA does require that infants’ and toddlers’ shoes be removed for security screening, just like with grown-ups. We had quite the routine down, getting the three of us and our shoes and the carseat and the stroller and a diaper bag and our carry-ons–with laptop computers out, of course–through security. We are grateful for the “family line” when TSA provides one.

We’d check the stroller at the gate, dropping it off and picking it up at the end of the jetway. Although it’s quite handy for movement about the airport, we’ve also found that we don’t always use the stroller much at our destination–sometimes it’s stayed folded up in a rental car the entire time. So we’ve experimented recently with stroller-free traveling: we didn’t bring it along on our last airplane trip, nor on our train trip to Chicago, and both of these worked out rather well.

For the one airplane trip in which we did not need to subsequently travel in a car, we used the CARES harness. This allowed us to put Matthew in the middle seat instead of the window. One strap for the CARES harness does need to be installed underneath the tray table for the seat in the next row back.¹ In part because Matthew wasn’t used to this harness, it did seem like it was harder to get him to cooperate with getting strapped back in when we needed him to be, compared to his carseat. On our recent Amtrak journey we left the carseat at home–there is no need or way to install a carseat (or harness) on a train–and we rented a carseat with our rental car. That worked out fine, so perhaps we’ll use the CARES harness more as we seek to haul around less stuff as we travel.

1. In a small number of situations, where the tray tables stow flush with the seat back into a cavity, and the strap around the tray table would not follow the contour of the cavity, that the tray table–of the person in back of the child–would not be able to be opened if the harness were in place.

Broadly speaking, these technical documents attempt to quantify the decision-making process in order that every subsequent decision have justification. The process obscures the study biases by shifting them into the methods of quantification, and ultimately confuses quantifiability with importance.

Setting the Stage

The formal program of the study was documented in the Project Work Plan, in January 2003. One of the first of the study documents was the short Quality Assurance Program, an eight-pager released in November 2003. It establishes the tedious tone in which all further study documents will be written with empty management-speak such as “All DMJM Harris staff performing tasks on the project will utilize the appropriate implementing procedure for the work being performed.”

Two reports were finished in August 2004: The Needs Assessment and the Evaluation Framework. These followed the extensive series of community meetings in late 2003. The Needs Assessment was the only technical document that was published on the (now-defunct) study website. It examined population, employment, and overall destination patterns across the city in relation to existing transit service. The Evaluation Framework brought together all the input–from DC agencies and from the community–about routes and goals and needs and defines what sort of analysis is to be done. A structure of seven routes is proposed, two of which have alternative routings, but the stops along those routes are not defined yet. The project goals are laid out, and the measures and criteria used to evaluate choices in terms of those goals are defined. The general work plan for several documents that follow is laid out.

Route and Mode evaluation:

Screen 1, released September 2004, evaluates seven potential transit modes (streetcars, “bus rapid transit,” light rail transit, diesel multiple units, automated guideway transit, monorail, and heavy rail), and ends up recommending only streetcars and “bus rapid transit” for further evaluation.

The Definition of Alternatives, released in November 2004, analyzed the routes given in the Evaluation Framework for the two chosen modes. Station locations were assigned and propulsion technologies are considered. For each route, a “service plan” was developed, including the headways between successive runs and calculations for route travel times. Although there are separate calculations for streetcars and for “bus rapid transit,” no details are given about the assumptions that went into the calculation of the travel times.

Screen 2, released March 2005, takes the service plans and route structure from the Definition of Alternatives and tries to evaluate how well each would fulfill the project goals by applying a set of “Measures of Effectiveness,” which are defined in the Evaluation Framework. Claiming that “the operational characteristics of BRT and Streetcar are similar at the level of detail” under study, it lumps both into a “premium transit service option” to decide whether a particular corridor should have “premium transit,” or whether it should only receive some bus service enhancements. Corridors were ranked (high, medium or low) based on a few criteria for each of the four project goals, leading to a composite score. Further analysis on meeting corridor deficiencies and operational considerations, and concluded by recommending some routes for “premium transit” and relegating some to get only “local bus enhancements.”

Screen 3, released May 2005, takes the “premium transit” corridors of Screen 2 and applies further “Measures of Effectiveness” to determine whether each corridor should be Streetcars or  ”bus rapid transit.” Each corridor is broken into segements, and the effectiveness criteria are applied to the segments individually. Where applicable–which isn’t as frequently as one might think–Streetcars and “bus rapid transit” are evaluated separately. The scores from these evaluations are totaled, to come up with proposals for streetcar routes, “bus rapid transit” routes, and “rapid bus” routes.

And onwards

Further study documents, released May–September 2005, looked at the finances of the proposed system and put forward the timetable. All the study findings were summarized in a final report, published in October 2005. Future posts in this series will look in detail at some of these technical reports.

The study finishes

The final project newsletter, Fall 2005, and an “Executive Summary“ of the whole project were presented to the public at a final meeting, held September 29, 2005. For transit enthusiasts following the project, the end results were disappointing and frustrating. Instead of a visionary transformation of mobility in the District, the final recommendations proposed a meager streetcar buildout that, despite its modest size, would take 25 years to build. The report was frustrating because it relied on tortured reasoning that bordered on downright dishonesty, it used self-contradictory and mutually inconsistent reasoning, and offered little more than poorly-defined chimeras wrapped up in wishful thinking.

Added to the project was “Rapid Bus,” as a lower-class technology mode, joining streetcars and “bus rapid transit.” Modes were assigned to routes. The newsletter used separate streetcar and “bus rapid transit” assignments, while the executive summary lumped these together as “premium transit.” In the newsletter, streetcars got a handful of routes: the crosstown Georgtown to Minnesota Avenue route; the north-south Georgia Avenue route, which would end at K street; a Union Station to Anacostia via Eastern Market route; an M Street SE/SW route, and a short Bolling AFB–Pennsylvania Ave route. A bit of “bus rapid transit” was added: mainly Woodley Park to Eastern Market via Florida Avenue, while the rest of the 50-mile route structure developed over the course of the study was designated “rapid bus.”

On the face of it, we’re being asked to believe that there is a significant difference between “bus rapid transit” and “rapid bus,” yet no clear description of the features that differentiate “bus rapid transit” from “rapid bus” is given. “Rapid bus” is supposed to have: limited stops, fancier shelters, real-time arrival information, and signal prioritization, as is “bus rapid transit.” They’re both supposed to use “large vehicles,” with those for “rapid bus” being “distinct” and those for “bus rapid transit” supposedly “recalling the design of streetcars.”  Even though “rapid bus” vehicles “could be” 60-foot articulated buses, the largest buses used anywhere in the United States, “rapid bus” vehicles “tend to be smaller” than “bus rapid transit” vehicles. One feature that was mentioned for “bus rapid transit” but not for “rapid bus” was off-vehicle fare payment.

“Bus rapid transit” is said to run “either on mixed traffic or on dedicated rights-of-way,” and several of the “bus rapid transit” examples cited do make use of dedicated rights-of-way. Boston, Ottawa, and Pittsburgh are explicitly called out as examples of “bus rapid transit,” and shows pictures of the system in Rouen, France. Both Ottawa and Pittsburgh rely on massive, exclusive and grade separated rights of way for their systems, built on abandoned railroad rights-of-way. Rouen’s TEOR uses several sections of exclusive right-of-way with optical guidance. No similar opportunity for constructing such facilities exists along the corridors proposed for DC, and surely such rights of way would be as incompatible with neighborhood scale as light rail would be. The documents make no mention of the heavy criticism that Boston’s Silver Line has received. Incidentally, neither Boston nor Pittsburgh use off-vehicle fare payment. I find it a little dishonest to cite systems whose success (such as it is) relies on features that are not under consideration for DC.

The proposed timetable for transit buildout is galling. All lines are supposed to start as “rapid bus.” Of the meager streetcar and “bus rapid transit” network that’s proposed, the newsletter states “Naturally it will take time–two decades, in fact” to get it built. The system would not be finished until 2030, even though the need is immediate and growing, as was illustrated in the Needs Assessment. And the executive summary mentions Mayor Williams’s goal of adding 100,000 residents by 2013 is cited: presumably, we don’t want to make them wait 17 years for adequate transit.

Similarly frustrating is the lumping together of streetcars and “bus rapid transit,” as if it’s possible to create a bus-based system that could be considered equivalent to a rail based system. Although it’s been quite clear in all the public outreach that there are lots of people who are excited about streetcars, there is no evidence that anyone is excited about more buses. This is not to say that everyone is excited about streetcars, but the opposition to streetcars does not come from an enthusiasm for buses. Streetcars offer better ride quality than buses, and the investment in infrastructure required for streetcars gives other investors confidence in the civic commitment. Indeed, while there are dozens of examples of rail-based urban revival, there are no examples of bus-based revival. Rail has shown itself to be far more attractive to riders: whenever a bus service is replaced by rail, ridership grows; whenever rail is replaced by bus, ridership drops. 

If the final output of the study was underwhelming, what happened next was breathtaking. Once the study was over, absolutely nothing happened. The study documents seemed destined to gather dust on someone’s shelf. It did not help that the DDOT Mass Transit Administrator, Alex Eckmann, left in February 2005, before many of the reports would be released and decisions would be made. The position would remain vacant until the study was nearly complete. The DDOT director who pushed to get the study underway, Dan Tangherlini, left DDOT in February 2006 to become interim general manager of WMATA. Because this was near the end of then-mayor Williams’s term, DDOT was left in the hands of the deputy director; no high-profile appointment was made. This left a leadership void from which no push to move forward with the transit project was made.

So how did the study team arrive at its conclusions? Part 3 of this series will examine the detailed technical documents produced by the study team.

Bringing a 50-mile streetcar network to Washington DC is the top priority for the DC Chapter of the Sierra Club. I have been following this issue with the Sierra Club since 2002, and it was recently suggested to me that I write down a brief history of the effort, to provide context for those new to the subject. Current progress on the issue is blogged at streetcars4dc.org. 

The DC Transit Improvements Alternatives Analysis gets underway.

The last time streetcars ran in DC was the early morning of January 28th, 1962, after which all lines were converted to buses. Such was the state of public transit in the District until March 27, 1976, when Metrorail opened. Metrorail, of course, has been a tremendous success, but it does not serve all areas of DC, and was designed primarily to move suburban commuters to their jobs in downtown DC.

The District government has, in principle, been planning to bring streetcars back to DC for some time now. My involvement began in September 2002, when I testified on behalf of the  at a joint oversight hearing of the DC City Council. A relatively small, two-year study had recently been completed (DC Transit Development Study), and then-DDOT director Dan Tangherlini, and then-DDOT Mass Transit Administrator Alex Eckmann went before the council (read their presentation) to ask that a more expansive study be funded. Plans to expand transit in the District stretch back further than that, and are generally said to have begun with the Barry-era DC Vision Study of 1997, itself 2 years in the making. And after more than ten years of talk and study, there are still no streetcars.

DC Vision had proposed four light rail corridors and a new crosstown Metrorail line. The Transit Development Study had looked at nine potential routes, and from that, DDOT proposed what amounts to five corridors for further study. Three were crosstown routes, converging in the east at the Minnesota Avenue Metro and crossing the river together. Two of these followed a northern route, heading west to Union station, from which one would go northwest to Woodley Park and another would head to Georgetown. The third crosstown route headed south to the Navy Yard, and continued to Waterfront. A north-south route followed Georgia Avenue/7th Street from Silver Spring to Waterfront, and an east-of-the-river route that went from Minnesota Avenue, to Anacostia, and finally to National Harbor.

The study that did go forward, formally the DC Transit Improvements Alternatives Analysis, was indeed quite extensive. A joint effort between DDOT and WMATA, most of the actual work of the study was done by transportation engineering firm DMJM+Harris. Numerous public meetings were held, fancy full-color newsletters and brochures were produced, and scores of meetings with community groups were held, including one with the Sierra Club in October 2003. Tangherlini and Eckmann both spoke enthusiastically about the plans for the 2002 Rail-Volution conference, which was held in DC that year. 

Throughout 2003, a series of semi-public meetings were held: nobody would be excluded, but they were advertised primarily to civic leaders. In July I made it to the meeting in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood, at which, it turned out, I was the only attendee to show up. From a public outreach standpoint, this is not so good, but for a transit wonk like myself, a detailed, hour-long conversation with the project leaders was something of a treat. In the fall, the project released the first of what would be five project newsletters (Fall 03, Spring 04, Fall 04, Spring 05, Fall 05).

By Spring 2004, the list of routes under consideration had grown, and in addition, the route lines were drawn as narrow lines following actual streets, instead of broad bands indicating a general route. A route up Wisconsin Avenue was added, as was a Brookland-Columbia Heights-Woodley Park crosstown route. Alternate alignments for the southern route from Woodley Park were added: one that headed to New York Avenue and then went south to Eastern Market, and the other going to Union Station and snaking across the Capitol to Eastern Market. By the Fall of 2004, a Foggy Bottom-Waterfront route, hugging the Potomac, had been added, a a spur East of the River was added. The map presented in the Spring of 2005 backed off of showing lines along particular streets to re-work the routes into nine “proposed corridors.”

The newsletters, and other project documents, were available on a well-publicized, but regretfully, now defunct website called dctransitfuture.com (archived on the Internet Wayback Machine), and many of them are now on DDOT’s website. In conjunction with the public meetings and widely distributed newsletters, some substantial analysis analysis of transportation services and demand was being conducted, which culminated in the Needs Assessment, released in June 2004. Not surprisingly, it found a great need for expanded transit in the city. One of the most telling parts (Fig. 6, p. 17) shows a map illustrating the density of households with no car available: this quite clearly shows the need for high-capacity transit along Georgia Avenue and along H Street NE. Nearly all of the corridors from the 2004 newsletters were identified in the Needs Assessment as “recommended priority transit corridors” (Fig. 20, p. 43).

The project team met with the Sierra Club for the second time in June 2004. I recall asking if there was some thing we could focus on that could help move the project forward; the project team demurred, assuring us they had everything under control. The Fall 2004 newsletter announced that the technologies chosen for further study were streetcars and “bus rapid transit.” Through spring 2005, all the route maps presented in every facet of the study treated all the routes equally–they were drawn with the same thickness of lines with no distinguishing features–and no association of routes with technology had been yet indicated. The graphics had emphasized streetcars, modern and historic. Small features in the newsletters highlight the benefits of bringing a streetcar–and not a bus–to a specific neighborhood. 

The point made in Fall 2004 about streetcars was first that they were not considering more Metrorail, but also that it would not be the type of light rail one sees in Sacramento or Dallas or Denver. That is, it would not get dedicated rights-of-way, and would probably not be designed for long, multi-car trains. This makes sense: in these cities, the light rail is the only rail transportation and performs both suburban commuter and urban mobility functions. In DC, the transit is to be overlaid on top of Metrorail, which performs the suburban commuter function quite well.

The Fall 2004 discussion of “bus rapid transit” uses the subtle dishonesty which I’ve found to be typical of bus advocacy: it’s said to “combine the best of rail and bus,” begging the question of whether buses can ever provide service equivalent to rail (to which I answer “no”). Also mentioned is the fact that buses running on dedicated rights-of-way can be much faster than ordinary buses, which is a red herring: it’s already apparent that a dedicated right-of-way, for any sort of vehicle, is not being considered.

At any rate, those following the study at this point had reason to be optimistic.

Part 2 of this series will look at the conclusion of the study, in the second half of 2005. Part 3 summarizes the technical documents produced as part of the study. Further parts will look at the Anacostia Starter line and the issue of overhead wires.

Stilgoe exhorts us to explore: to walk and cycle, to observe, to look for “history and awareness” in “the best-kept secret around–the ordinary, everyday landscape that rewards any explorer.” The book is partly a narration of the observations that “the explorer” would make, mixed with history that can, in part, be inferred from these observations. The first explorations revolve around a discussion of wires–power and telegraph and telephone–and rail, networks that grew up with one another. A sample:

[T]he walker emerges thoughtfully from the woods or fields and finds a tiny industrial park of grain elevators, machinery dealers, warehouses, wood-frame or redbrick factories, every structure marked by that certain sign of railroad influence, the walled-up loading door four feet above grade level, too high for trucks but the perfect height for boxcar floors. [p.46]

We go on to learn about mail, about paths and roads and highways, and about fences–apparently, in the North, livestock were fenced in, but in the South, crops were fenced to keep otherwise free-running livestock out. It wasn’t until cars started colliding with farm animals in large numbers that laws requiring the fencing-in of livestock were enacted all across the country. There is no way, of course, for any explorer to infer this entirely from his observations, but it is the sort of knowledge that  the explorer can use to understand and connect what he is seeing.

The text meanders in much the same way that an explorer would. One chapter begins with (a dubious) discussion of motel siting, and of the design of motel sites, which leads to a discussion of vacancy: not only at the motel, but what it means for a field or lot to be vacant. And what it means, then, to be a field, and how big our fields are, and how we measure how big they are, and how the weights and measures in use here are the result of some compromise between the populist- and dozenal-leaning Adams and the decimal-leaning Jefferson. Our currency (unlike, say, Britan’s) has always been decimal, but we buy eggs by the dozen, which can be evenly split in more ways than ten can, giving greater flexibility for people to pool their resources when money is tight. More significant was the continued use of the mile: a square mile is 640 acres, which is 16 times 40 acres, the canonical size for a family farm. So the use of the mile facilitated the sub-division of land, because the square mile can be nicely divided into appropriate-sized lots.

The motel siting discussion says that eight hours from a major metropolitan area would be a good place for motels: I have no doubt that it would be, but my own experience tells me that motels are much more closely spaced than every 500 miles. There are other instances that strike me as similarly dubious: the optimistic claim that railroads are “rediscovering the profitability of carrying passengers.” [p. 52] If only that were true! Passenger rail has been expanding, slowly, but as a matter of civic investment, not private profit. So I’m left with a sort of skepticism about the specific claims, but this doesn’t dampen my enthusiams for the book: it is not supposed to be a definitive treatment of anything, but an inspiration to explore and discover.

The book ends with a discussion of the “magic” of exploration, the fulfillment that comes with the discoveries and connections and the accumulation of a personal world-view. This discussion begins by noting the skepticism that explorers might encounter, from people who want to know why they want to go someplace or take a picture of something. In recent years, we have seen episodes of absurd harassment (one example in the Washington area, and proper responses.) The exploration that Stilgoe describes is very fundamentally an expression of our freedom, to go and do as we wish. The contemporary reader can appreciate the truly tragic irony in which the increased scrutiny to which an explorer is subjected comes in the name of protecting our freedom.

An article in this week’s Washington Post magazine, chronicling the quest of Bill Thomas and his friend A. L. Freed to follow old railroad tracks all across the country, brought back memories of our hikes. To cover the long distances over which railroads naturally extended, they take one-way rental cars. This article focuses on a particular expedition in Texas, during which they encounter–as I’m sure they encounter all throughout the country on these trips–the ruins of the railroading past, and also meet a handful of others who share an enthusiasm for trains. 

My friends and I were fortunate, I believe, that the old lines along which we hiked had not (yet?) been converted into multi-purpose recreational trails. Instead, they had decayed in place, offering what is an increasingly rare opportunity to explore something that’s been forgotten, something that isn’t managed by a humorless committee and burdened by rules born from a hypersensitive fear of the word “liability.” The hikes gave us a small chance to discover, to find something that wasn’t calling out to be found. Perhaps someday the state will more formally take over the land, clear out the brush, send to the dump any crossties and other remnants of actual railroading, throw down some crushed gravel, put up wayfinding signs, and then list the trails in any number of Finger Lakes recreation guides. But at least when I was there, none of that had been done. One didn’t need to rely on a commemorative plaque to understand that real trains used to run there; plenty of evidence was still in place.

One particularly striking realization was the degree to which the railroads graded the land to make the path of the trains as level as possible–not an easy feat in the hilly Southern Tier of New York, especially in the era before bulldozers and backhoes and other earthmoving equipment. (And this grading is in part what makes the abandoned lines such attractive candidates for conversion to recreational trails.) If you know what you’re looking for, even the abandoned tracks are clear on topographic maps: compare this turn of the century map, showing the railroad lines (in particular, the two parallel lines heading to the southeast):

with this section of (substantially zoomed in) contemporary topo map:

the Southern of the two parallel lines is marked on the map, but the Northern one, although not explicitely marked, is clear. Just north of the “Besemer” label the relatively flat graded railroad bed stands out. 

Trails, I suppose, are in general good things–although as someone who hopes for a renaissance of rail travel in this country, I wonder if some of those abandoned lines would be best returned to rail service, and whether trail conversion would make this harder, because nobody would want to lose a trail, or easier, because the route is kept contiguous. But while we still can find the remnants of railroads around, we should find and explore them.

First, transportation. Amtrak was formed in 1971: passenger rail when Matthew was born is roughly the same as when I was born, and completely different from when my father was born. At some point before I was born, the passenger-miles of the airlines overtook that of the railroads. The present Interstate Highway system, begun in 1956, is similar to when I was born.  

So I think its fair to say that the transportation world in which I was born was fundamentally different than that in which my father was born, but Matthew’s transportation world is similar to mine.

For sports, my dad grew up in the era of the original 6 NHL teams, and before interleague play in Major League Baseball, but looking at the figures per 100 Million population is interesting:   

So while the NHL has definitely grown in each era, there was more football per capita when I was born than either now or when my dad was born. Most significantly, there was more baseball per capita when my dad was born than either now or when I was born. Sort of makes me wonder about all the hand-wringing that goes on about how baseball expansion is supposed to have diluted the available pitching talent.

One other facet that I thought was different about my dad’s youth, but isn’t really, is candy. I remember my dad telling me about ads for Clark bars when he was a kid–even though they’re still available, they really aren’t heavily advertised, nor were they when I was young. But according to this timeline of American candy bars, it looks like the golden age of candy bar inventions were the 1920s and 1930s; pretty much the same selection had been available for my dad as for me, and Matthew benefits from the rather small handful of candies (Whatchamacallit, Twix, Skittles) that were introduced during my youth.

One of the bonus features, then, of living in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington DC is that the Metro tracks parallel the Amtrak tracks on the way to Brookland leaving Union Station, so when I’m riding the Metro to or from home I have a few minutes view of some busy rail lines.

One sees lots of MARC trains, especially during commuter hours; they’re not so interesting. There are usually random pieces of Amtrak equipment in the yards, locomotives and switchers and the like. It’s a good day when I see a revenue service Amtrak train moving, especially an Acela Express, or the Capitol Limited. Once I saw the American Orient Express. In the late mornings, when most of the VRE  trains have arrived and are waiting for their evening departures, there’s a particularly nice view of 4 or 5 of them on different tracks but lined up: a nice illustration, I think, of the Zen View from A Pattern Language.

I of course prepare for this brief trip through the railyard, by trying to get a window seat on the appropriate side of the train: right side when going in the direction of Glenmont, left side when traveling in the direction of Shady Grove. In morning rush hour, it’s rare that any seat is available, but in the evening enough people get off at Gallery Place-Chinatown, with some more getting off at Union Station, so that there’s a reasonable of a window seat opening up. When one does, and especially if I get to see some trains, it’s a small but welcome pleasure in my day.