Commuter Dispatch: They're Only Human

THERE'S BEEN SOME INCREASING hostility toward the new voice of Metro's train announcements, Randi Miller (pictured at right). Now that her voice is being heard on the vast majority of Metro train cars (Metro says the full conversion will be completed by the end of the month), some people don't like her. While Miller isn't doing station announcements -- only instructions for people to board trains, stand clear of doors and move to the center of trains -- a chatter in Monday's Roads and Rails chat with Steven Ginsberg on washingtonpost.com is fearful of "robot" voices like Miller's ... although from what we can tell, Miller is not a robot:

Chevy Chase, Md.: No more robot metro voices! Anyone else remember the Red Line operator who would announce, with unthinkable gusto at 7AM, "Gallery Place, home to Michael Jordon [sic] and your Washington Wizards"?

Steve Ginsberg: Remembering different Metro voices is the whole point. We want character, we want wit, we want some sense that the people driving the train live in the city we're in. We don't want automated nothingness.

So even though our stations are sterile, apparently we don't want sterile voices on our trains.

But real-live people can be hit-or-miss on Metro trains or buses.

During the tail end of Tuesday's evening rush, we were heading back into the District on an Orange Line train when our train operator began giving detailed information for each station between Rosslyn and Metro Center. At Foggy Bottom, she announced that it was the stop for the "John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts" and the "Department of State." At McPherson Square, she said that the Vermont Avenue exit was toward the back of the train, while 14th Street was toward the front.

It wasn't just the detailed information given, but the manner in which she was speaking. It reminded us of the matronly, authoritative woman who announces train departures at New York's Penn Station. In every syllable that rolled off her tongue, she made it seem that fighting the corruption of the English language was important to her, a fight that we should all care about.

But then, our Orange Line train approached Metro Center, and she made the error saying that it was the transfer point for the Yellow Line. Wrong.

A Metro employee sitting near us on the train started laughing. It reminded us of elementary school when the perfectionist kid in the class made a mistake and the rest of the class got a kick out of seeing the teacher's pet make a misstep.

But then there are the opposite folks -- those Metro employees who have face-to-face contact with the riding public but somehow forget that fact.

Late in the evening last Saturday, we were waiting for an S2 bus at the corner of 16th and M streets NW. The S buses, which run between downtown and Silver Spring, are crowded most times of the day and into the night, as seen in this photo from last year. A man who said he was from Hyattsville approached the bus stop and openly expressed his anger to us. He asked us how he should get to Adams Morgan, where he was supposed to be two hours earlier. But he said a series of Metrobus drivers got him way off track when he asked for directions, the last one supposedly telling him to get off "where all the churches are," presumably for Columbia Road, where there are three churches. But 16th Street has a lot of churches to begin with, many that you can't see at night. And generally, bus drivers on the busy 16th Street line have little time to care about the individual needs of late-night passengers.

So we gave the lost man, who ended up near the White House (which is not Adams Morgan) directions uptown and he got off at Columbia Road. He was still ticked, but grateful. It just goes to show you that on public transit, humans can either be a riders' best friend or worst enemy. Others can be generally useless.

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Photo of Randi Miller by Linda Davidson/The Washington Post; Photo of crowded S bus by Gerald Martineau/The Washington Post

Posted By Michael Grass at 3:57 PM on May 18, 2006 Tagged in Free Ride

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