Not much has changed, and yet everything has changed.

The last two years have been… unusual to say the least. With the pandemic, lockdown, and working from home, I overhauled my commute, just like many others. And my Metro data tells the tale:

You can see the exact moment when the world shut down. From mid-March 2020 through Mid-January, 2021, I took a grand total of seven unlinked Metro trips. By mid-march 2021, I had resumed a new commute pattern, mostly for the purposes of daycare drop-off.

Metro during the pandemic has been different. 92.4% of my trips in 2021 have been on a 7000 series train, and the remainder have been on 3000 series. I haven’t ridden either a 6000 or 2000 series train since the pandemic began.

Some trivialities:

• The entire 7000 series fleet is in service, and I snagged a ride on the newest car (Number 7747) on August 17, 2021.
• Of the current fleet, I’ve ridden 1137 of the 1284 cars in service (what counts as “in service” is a bit of a moving target), or 88.6%
• My most frequently ridden car is 7673, which I’ve caught ten times over four years.
• The longest gap between cars I’ve managed is 1,382 days, on car 7111. That’s 3.78 years of the current 4 year timespan.

With life changes, so to will my commute patterns. The ‘new normal’ remains uncertain for balancing working in the office vs. working at home. My kid is now attending a school within walking distance. I’ve felt comfortable on transit during the pandemic with a mask and with relatively sparse crowds, but the pandemic’s continued impact on travel demand is painfully uncertain.

Who knows what the next year will bring?