Oren’s Reading List: A Look at DC’s Paper Farecard Designs

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dcmisc12As of this Sunday, March 6, WMATA will no longer accept paper farecards at its faregates. If you still have a paper farecard, you can trade it in at a farecard machine or Metro sales office over the next few months, but I suspect most of you reading this will prefer to keep them as souvineers. WTOP Radio put together a slideshow of some of the various designs that were used on the front of the farecards over the past 40 years, you can view it by clicking here.

How many of these designs do you remember? Do you still have any DC paper farecards that you do not plan to trade in?  Leave a comment and tell us!

Rail Photo of the Month: March 2016

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Alstom Citadis 302 039

Alstom Citadis 302 039

Location: Derech Yafo (Jaffa Road) at Yafo-Merkaz Station, Jerusalem, Israel
Operator of Vehicle:  Citipass
Date of Photo: August 19, 2011

After many delays during its construction, the Jerusalem Light Rail opened to the public on August 19, 2011.  Thousands came to check out the line on its first day of operation.  However, prior to opening, many were critical of the impact that the light rail construction had on the Jaffa Road, one of the main streets through Central Jerusalem.  Buses were rerouted and many businesses suffered as the construction wore on along this major thoroughfare.  However, the pain was probably worth the gain.  As seen in this photo, the once congested Jaffa Road has become a well utilized pedestrian mall that is far more pleasant for enjoying a meal at one of the many cafes or restaurants along this stretch.  And the light rail itself is highly utilized and the centerpiece of a much improved transportation network for all of Jerusalem.  The road to get there may have been difficult, but the problematic aspects of the construction have been forgotten as time has gone on.

For more photos of the Jerusalem Light Rail, please click here.

 

Bus Photo of the Month: March 2016

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Neoplan AN460A 5319

Neoplan AN460A 5319

Location: 9th Street, NW at Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC
Operator of Vehicle:  Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Date of Photo: April 11, 2012

WMATA ordered 21 Neoplan AN460A buses to replace its aging MAN articulated fleet in 2003.  As of this writing, only three buses remain on the active roster, and these buses are not likely to be in revenue service.  With the impending retirement of these buses, WMATA’s articulated bus fleet will be entirely low floor, and the only remaining high floor buses will be the Orion Vs (that are also due for retirement soon).

WMATA’s previous experience with Neoplans was not great, and no orders were procured from that company for many years.  It is fair to say that the Neoplan artics performed better than the 9500 Series buses that WMATA had until the early 1990s.  However, the Neoplan artics operated on the heavy use Northern Division lines for their entire careers and only four buses of this type received a mid-life rehab.  As a passenger, I am not sorry to see these buses go to the big bus garage in the sky.  However, as a transit fan, I will remember the fast pickup these buses had when they first arrived and that they looked better with the “MetroLocal” scheme than most of the other buses in WMATA’s fleet in my opinion.

To see more photos of WMATA’s Neoplan AN460A buses, please click here.

Check back tomorrow to see the rail photo of the month for March 2016!

Oren’s Reading List: 10 Amazing Things That Took Less Time Than the D.C. Streetcar

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If you haven’t heard, the long awaited DC Streetcar is scheduled to begin revenue service tomorrow morning.  The folks over at CityLab have compiled a list of things that took less time than it took to plan, design, build, test, and open the 2.2 mile long line, which is opening a number of years behind schedule.  CityLab sets the DC Streetcar construction at 9 years, but way back in 2004, DDOT ordered three streetcars which sat in storage in the Czech Republic for a number of years before finally being brought to the DC area.

I will not be attending tomorrow’s opening, but as soon as I have photos of the streetcar to share, you’ll find them here at Oren’s Transit Page.

Click here for the list of things that took less time to construct than the DC Streetcar.

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

Transit Bloopers

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Last week, I showed a friend of mine a photo posted to a Facebook group of a Ride On bus that was supposedly going to a place called Glennont.  Here is the photo, courtesy of Dave Galp, who originally posted it online:

Good luck finding Glennont on a map of Montgomery County, MD...

Good luck finding Glennont on a map of Montgomery County, MD…

Photo by Dave Galp, used with permission

Did you find the error?  The sign is supposed to say “Glenmont” but the destination was misspelled in a recent update of all the destination sign readings.

At least that one is hard to notice at first glance, I had to look at the photo more than once to realize what was wrong.  The error on the destination sign of this TCAT bus in Ithaca, NY is probably a bit easier to spot:

I took this photo in the fall of 2006 and have yet to figure out how to pronounce the word on that destination sign.

This post is not meant to discredit the hard work of the transit professionals behind the scenes who make sure the overwhelming majority of the signs and brochures that passengers rely upon each day are correct.  However, we are all human and occasionally make mistakes, and in the case of transit employees, those minor misspellings have potentially wide audiences.  So what is the funniest “transit blooper” you’ve seen on a sign or heard in an announcement?  Feel free to share what you’ve seen or heard in the comments (with our without a photo attachment) below!

Oren’s Reading List: Totally Accurate, Totally Useless Subway Maps

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Yesterday, I saw an article on CityLab about yet another way to map out New York’s subway lines.  Most of the world’s subway maps, including the iconic maps from New York, London, and Washington (among others), are not drawn to scale, as the density of stations in the city center would make the map illegible.  Sometimes, one can find scaled maps, as they are useful in showing how far out a city’s network might extend, however they are not great for trip planning.

Andrew Lynch recently created a self described “totally accurate, totally useless” set of maps showing each New York City subway line to scale.  His own description fits perfectly.  The maps are to scale, and therefore accurately drawn.  However, they are also totally useless because you can’t use the individual posters to navigate the system if you need to use more than one line to get to your destination.  But I’d point out that while they might not be so helpful in figuring out how to get from the Bronx Zoo to Coney Island, they do show how distorted the subway map that we are so familiar with is. For example, take a look at the 8th Avenue IND poster on Lynch’s website.  You can see that although the A train is the longest subway route in New York at 32 miles, it’s stations are far from being evenly distributed in terms of the distance between them.  Furthermore, it is 3.5 miles between the Howard Beach and Broad Channel stations, the longest distance between any two single stops on the entire subway and one not fully appreciated on the not-to-scale maps put out by the MTA.

See more of Andrew Lynch’s work on his website, http://vanshnookenraggen.com.

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

 

Oren’s Reading List: The Meaning Behind the NYC Subway Tile Colors

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A friend of mine shared this article with me on my personal Facebook page, and I thought I’d share it with the wider audience here.  If you’ve ever been on the New York City Subway, perhaps you noticed that many of the underground stations have tiled walls and mosaics with the station names.  But did you know that the tile colors used to have meaning on the former IND lines?

The NYC subway used to be three, separate systems, and the IND was one of those systems.  Today’s A, B, C, D, E, F, G, M, R, and Rockaway Park Shuttle lines operate on what was the IND for at least part of their routes.  At the underground stations on these routes, the color of the columns and tiles in the station changes at each express stop as you head further away from Manhattan.  The subsequent local stations each have a shade of the same color used at the preceding express stop.  Then, at the next express stop, the color changes.  For example, 59th Street-Columbus Circle is an express stop and you can see in the first photo below that the station columns and tiles are blue. In the second photo, at 110th Street, a local stop north of 59th Street (and further away from downtown Manhattan) and before the next express stop at 125th Street, the columns are still blue.

59th Street

110th Street

You can read the entire article and see a map that visually shows which colors are used for each group of stations at The Gothamist.

Oren’s Reading List is an occasional feature on The Travelogue in which I share articles that I’ve read that might also be of interest to the readers of this website.

DC Streetcar to Open on February 27, 2016

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Today, the DC government announced that the long awaited DC Streetcar, which will operate a 2.4 mile route along H Street and Benning Road in Northeast, DC, will open on Saturday, February 27, 2016.  Initially, streetcars will operate Monday-Saturday at approximately 15 minute intervals with no fares being collected.  This is a long overdue project.  If you are wondering why it has taken so long for the streetcar to be completed and want something to read while you wait out the final days until the streetcar opens, I highly recommend reading this Washington Post article from last December.  As always, as soon as I have photos of the streetcar, you’ll see them here on Oren’s Transit Page!

Water Water Everywhere

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MAN NL-313 27631 on Sderot Rothschild at Tzahal, Haifa, Israel, June 7, 2013

One of my favorite things to photograph are fountains, waterfalls, and other water features.  My stay in Haifa in June 2013 was not my first trip to the city by any means, however it was just before a fairly significant change to the city’s transportation network would take place.  About two months after that visit, the Metronit bus rapid transit network began service.  However, the dedicated lanes that the system would ultimately use were constructed and being used by local buses as early as 2009.  The “Lin” station has a set of fountains constructed in the very wide median between the bus lanes as the road widens to go around a traffic circle and sculpture at the next intersection.  Needless to say, once I discovered this, I made a point of getting a photo of a bus at this location with the fountains in the foreground.  The photo you see here is the result.

Types of Transit Photos

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I have two broad categorizations for the types of transit photos I tend to take.  These are “roster shots” and “artsier shots.”  I expect to use these terms on occasion here at The Travelogue, so I figured I should define them so everyone understands what I am talking about.  In an attempt to make the descriptions consistent and easy to understand, all the photos used as examples are of Gillig Advantage buses operated by TCAT in Ithaca, NY.

Roster Shots

An example of a 3/4 roster shot

Roster shots are not a time for creativity.  The point of a roster shot is pretty much to get a photograph of the vehicle, just the vehicle, and nothing else but the vehicle.  The most typical roster shot is the “3/4” roster shot, which is best defined as a photo showing as much of the vehicle as possible, usually from a slight angle of about 30 degrees to the side of the vehicle’s center line.  Typically, the vehicle won’t be in motion, and may even be parked in a yard at the time of the photo (in which case an effort needs to be made to have as few things as possible in the photo frame aside from the vehicle itself).  Sometimes these shots can be “wedge” shots taken from a kneeling position, but usually these are taken from a standing position.  Roster shots also do not have to be taken from a 30 degree angle; they can also be taken from head-on, the rear, or the side of the vehicle.  However, the ~30 degree angle is most common.  Roster shots are a great way to document how a vehicle looks and to make sure that a photo collection has a basic photo of every vehicle type in a given fleet, if all 7000+ photos on this website looked like the one above, you probably wouldn’t be here for very long.

Artsier/Artsy Shots

An example of an artsy shot

As the name implies, an artsy shot does have a creative bent to it.  Let’s look at the photo to the right as an example.  Yes, it is true you can see the entire front and left side of the bus like you would in a 3/4 roster shot.  But the bus is clearly moving as it is in the process of making a left turn to come closer to where I am standing.  Also, Cornell University’s iconic McGraw Tower is very visible in this photo.  If you’re already accustomed to associating the clock tower with Cornell and Ithaca, you can immediately place where this was taken.  Using the clocktower and other Cornell landmarks to add an artistic element to the photos of Ithaca’s buses can’t really be done for a 3/4 roster shot.  However, using surrounding buildings and landmarks does add a level of creativity to what is otherwise just a photo of a bus with the dual purpose of establishing where the photo was taken.

This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list!

Is it a 3/4 roster shot or not?

Lots of photos can fall between the two categories.  For example, many quick shots of a bus going down the street may share the elements of a 3/4 roster shot.  The photo above has many aspects of a 3/4 roster shot as described above, but I would place it in the creative and artsy category because I framed the photo to include the entire Schwartz Performing Arts Center entryway behind the bus.  I expect most of the photos I share here on The Travelogue to fall in to the artsier category, though like in this last example, expect to see plenty of 3/4 roster shot elements in those photos.

One Last Note

Friends who have traveled with me occasionally comment on the very deliberate “crouch” I sometimes adopt in order to get some photos.  This crouching or kneeling results in what is usually referred to as a wedge shot as a result of the angle of the subject of the photo.  In addition to creating a certain perspective that I like to experiment with on occasion, it also has the benefit of lowering one’s center of gravity slightly and sometimes makes it easier to hold the camera without moving it as much, which is extremely valuable in situations where a slow shutter speed is required (i.e. dark subway stations or night shots).