Ah yes, the "grilling" by Congress some folks here were so eager for.

Unless the GOP takes the Senate and Presidency next year, there isn't going to be a control board. The Dems were absolutely hypocrites in regards to the criminal code reform, but they aren't going to go all in on a complete take over of the DC city government.

Ah the blessed Congressional oversight some here were so desperate for. This entire hearing was largely spent shouting at or talking over the DC reps invited and entirely done for sound bites for campaigning. There was little discussion of things like the USAO issues, issues with police testimony aligning with the body cams, issues with the forensics lab, etc. Just a bunch of dogwhistles and completely uneducated assertions about the District and its residents.

Only one of those is actually accountable to DC residents.

I believe WMATA wanted to open it, but the elevators weren't ready and they were forced to wait until they were operational to open the station.

WMATA may rehab them like they do the railcars. The 2000/3000 series trains are around 40 years old now.

DC is moving to having some 24/7 bus routes, along with free fares for trips within the District. But those have flexibility in the routes for maintenance on the road, while the rails are harder to do that with.

Metro has pretty consistently shown they can barely manage with the hours they have for maintenance, and a large part of what got them into a major hole in terms of maintenance in the 2000-2010s era was that the system prioritized more service at the cost of hours to get things done.

There are many maintenance activities that can move at much greater speeds when you can have both tracks down, and it's safer for the workers too. I'd certainly love 24/7 service, but Metro would need a fundamental restructuring of how it operates and how it does maintenance to even make it a remote possibility. The system wasn't built with 24/7 operation in mind.

Alo Vietnam Restaurant & Bar

• Reston Town Center has a shuttle bus to the main town center area, with more redevelopment coming closer to the station

• Herndon is planning a big redevelopment of the offices north of the station to mixed use. If you're willing to walk about 15-20min along Herndon Parkway, there's a former industrial plaza turned commercial shops where you can find Weird Brothers Coffee and Wooboi Chicken, as well a few other spots.

• Innovation Center on the south side has an Afghani restaurant as well as a Vietnamese restaurant and bar and few small shops near Icon apartments. There are 3 new mixed use developments under construction that will add more spots for bars and restaurants to that area as well

• Dulles has planes

• Loudoun Gateway is a park and ride/bus transfer stop surrounded by data centers and warehouses

• Ashburn on the north side has an AMC theater, and mixed use spaces with a bunch of bars/restaurants and more development to come. Also more data centers nearby.

It does make me worry if there's other things that were missed on those units though.

I think this reflects which trains WMATA had in "cold storage" prior to the 7000 series issues. They probably never got the programming update that converted Route 772 to Ashburn.

NTSB can't really do anything except issue reports and recommendations. The DC Metro ran railcars the NTSB told them to pull from service for 7 years after a major crash because they didn't want to reduce service and basically just told the NTSB "nah".

I have to laugh at the idea that they think they make any capital investment. The US freight railroads fiercely resist spending anything on capital investments and typically force the government/other companies (see Brightline) to finally improve their decrepit infrastructure.

I mean, it seems to cause more problems than it solves for SEPTA.

Not really. Look at London. Its primary focus of most its lines are to pass through the core of London. It is aided though by a massive amount of connections and interchanges that allow immense flexibility. Between the multiple lines with connections at key points, the Overground, the Elizabeth Line, DLR and a robust bus network, a problem on one line doesn't criple the network.

Adding a 4th trunk line (and more in the future even) through DC with more connections and transfer opportunities would do more to improve Metro service than express tracks ever could. Express service only really makes sense when you have the density for it. DC is not dense enough (and probably never will be) to justify the cost of adding express tracks and services on the Metro lines.

SEPTA has basically had to constantly retool what stops are skipped since the day they implemented the system and even scrapped it on one of the lines if I remember correctly. Not sure it's a system really worth emulating.

Depends on your company's expense policies. Mine would definitely make me justify why I needed the $50 Uber over the $5 Metro fare outside of scheduling reasons.

Yeah, flew back into Dulles last night from a trip and it was $23 to go what would have been one stop if the Silver Line expansion was running and it would have cost me only a few bucks instead.

What the rest of the world does is highly relevant, because running a railroad doesn't magically change physics and logistics because a border was crossed.

Most other systems make effective use of signaling and crossovers to maximize a two track configuration to allow quick bypass of problems. They also work to provide effective line density and connections to allow people to simply pick another path to their destination. Running quad track/express systems really only becomes beneficial when you have heavy density and ridership (we have neither of those currently). The money spent on quad track/express service can often be spent providing more service in a parallel corridor which both serves more people/neighborhoods and allows relief off lines when there may be a major issue on another line.

I suspect there will be a number of folks taking it to Tysons for work and some into DC.

Metro is running simulated service currently. So trains are running to Ashburn, but no passengers past Wiehle-Reston.