Tag Archives: Stations

BRAC, but for WMATA station names

What’s in a name? Recently, a WMATA Board committee voted to add destinations to the Foggy Bottom and Smithsonian stations. The two will soon be “Foggy Bottom-GWU-Kennedy Center” and “Smithsonian-National Mall” stations, respectively. Matt Johnson at Greater Greater Washington has a good read on why these name additions are a bad idea and will add to rider confusion. But leaving aside the merits of WMATA’s station name policy, the inability to follow that policy is a case-study in importance of decision-making architecture.

The changes contradict WMATA policy, last considered in 2011 when there was universal agreement about problem: station names were often too long, multiple names for a single station was confusing, and the required changes in signage (updating every single map in the system) were substantial and usually understated. Yet, the Board can’t resist adding destinations to station names.

There will always be a constituency for adding a destination to a station. It speaks to the great power of a transit station to define a neighborhood. These name change requests are coming up now, in advance of the opening of Phase 2 of the Silver Line (which will require re-printing every map in the system, changing lots of signage, etc). So long as the ultimate decision about station names sits with the WMATA Board, individual Board members will always be subject to lobbying from name-based interests.

WMATA’s official policy acknowledges the problems with station name sprawl – there’s agreement about the issue, but an inability to follow through. The name policy reinforces two basic ideas, that station names should be distinct, unique, and brief:

Distinctive names that evoke imagery; using geographical features or centers of activity where possible
19 characters maximum; preference for no more than two words.

The very idea of adding to a station name (so that station now has two names) violates both principles – the name is no longer singular, and it’s longer than necessary.

This suggests a problem in the structure of the decision-making. Changing the decision-making process could better align the outcomes with policy. The simplest solution is to simply remove the Board from the equation and let staff make all decisions. However, if that isn’t acceptable, there is another model to consider – one similar to the Department of Defense’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission.

BRAC is a solution to a similar type of problem. Towards the end of the Cold War, there was universal agreement about the need to downsize the military and close and/or realign redundant, outdated, or unnecessary facilities. However, because of the importance of each facility locally, members of Congress would lobby hard on the DoD to keep those bases open. Any action to close bases through Congress would be subject to all sorts of legislative logrolling. The interests of individual members proved unable to meet the overall goal.

The procedural solution of the BRAC Commission was simple: form a commission to develop a list of bases to be closed, based on objective criteria all parties agree on in advance. That list of recommended closures must then be either approved or disapproved by Congress with no alterations or substitutions. Congress was willing to delegate this authority to a commission as a means of solving their own collective action problem.

One political science review of the process notes three key elements that make this delegation of power successful: agreement about the goals, agreement about the steps required to meet the goals, and a narrowly defined scope.

Imagine a BRAC-like process for WMATA station names. Agreement about WMATA’s unwieldy names, agreement on the policy to apply, and a narrow charge to an independent committee to propose changes are all in place. If I were a member of that committee, I might propose a list looking like this:

This proposal changes the names of 28 stations. The list includes stations planned (Potomac Yard) or under construction (Phase 2 of the Silver Line); it also assumes the addition of the National Mall and Kennedy Center under the ‘current’ station names.

Highlights from the proposal:

Dramatic reduction in the number of stations in direct violation of the character limit – from 20 to 3.
Sorry, local universities: you’re off the list of names. Unless a university builds a station on campus (and ‘Foggy Bottom’ is more distinctive than ‘GWU’ – sorry, Colonials), it’s hard to justify appending all of these acronyms.
Despite an effort to remove hyphenated names, some remain. Navy Yard-Ballpark has legit wayfinding benefits; Stadium-Armory loses the ‘stadium,’ noting that a handful of confused baseball fans still travel to the wrong station even though the Nationals haven’t played at RFK Stadium since 2007.
Those pesky airports: with Metro coming to IAD, it’s worthwhile to spell out ‘International’ in contrast to DCA. The proposal distills down to MWAA’s own shorthand: Reagan National and Dulles International.
None of the changes are re-branding efforts – all of the ‘new’ names are either part of the existing names, edited for brevity and clarity.

Imagine this proposal put forth to the WMATA Board for an up or down vote…

Metro’s stainless steel future – Metro Center sales office

Another element of WMATA’s stainless steel future has emerged from behind the plywood: part of the newly renovated Metro Center sales office.

Unlike Metro’s new entrance to the Rosslyn station (now open to the public, with some pictures from Dan Malouff), the sales office is located within the shell of the existing Harry Weese station vault, showing what we might expect from future large-scale interventions to stations. In line with Metro’s stated intentions, the new sales office is heavy on the use of stainless steel:

New Metro Center sales office. Photo by author.

Currently, only the portion of the structure outside of the fare gates is open, featuring four ticket windows. The remaining windows, inside the paid fare area, are still under construction. The design of the sales office mirrors the design of Metro’s smaller sales office at the Anacostia station, which opened in 2009.

New stainless steel of the ticket office contrasted against the system’s standard ‘Metro Brown’ pylon.

The gap between the two banks of ticket windows not only divides the office between the two sides of fare control, but also to wrap around one of the pre-existing ventilation pylons. The juxtaposition shows the contrast between the original palate of Metro Brown against the new look of stainless steel.

Old Metro Center sales office, 2006. CC image from Wayan Vota

Replacing the sales office was one of Metro’s ‘shovel ready’ stimulus projects, upgrading the booth to include a number of new features, including beefed up security complete with armor plating. (!)

At the same time, SmarTrip cards are now available at a wide range of retail locations as well as vending machines in each station. These machines are a stopgap until WMATA’s next-gen fare payment system (dubbed NEPP) is up and running. New fare vending machines like those in use in other systems around the world will combine the roles of the current SmarTrip vending machines and the existing farecard machines. More and more transactions are automated, including automatic loading of SmartBenefits and automatic replenishment of card value when your balance gets too low. Some older paper passes and fare products are now available on SmarTrip, the NEPP promises more opportunities for this. All of these developments bode for increased automation and less of a role for the old-fashioned sales office.

Nevertheless, you never know what kind of circumstances might emerge to beef up the need for all those ticket windows; perhaps the 2017 Presidential Inauguration will produce the same ‘insane lines’ for commemorative cards as 2009. Maybe.

Metro’s stainless steel future – Rosslyn

As the construction fencing starts to come down around the second entrance to Rosslyn Station, you can now see the future aesthetic for Metro infrastructure. Lots of steel and glass, but little of Metro’s original materials: concrete, tile, and brass.

Elevator-only second entrace to the Rosslyn Station. Photo by the author.

Elevator-only second entrance to the Rosslyn Station. Photo by the author.

The three elevators descend to a new mezzanine adjacent to the existing mezzanine. More renderings of the project are available at Arlington County’s website.

Cutaway of the Rosslyn Station second entrance. Image from Arlington County.

Above ground, the elevators emerge in a completely different structure across the street from the existing entrance. The separation between the two avoids the discord between Metro’s current embrace of stainless steel and the system’s historic colors and materials. Even though this project represents an addition to an existing station, the construction is almost entirely outside of the existing station shell. Unlike the proposed Bethesda renovation, the Rosslyn project thereby avoids the conflict between the old and new palates.

New Rosslyn Station entrance pavilion. Photo by the author.

As the Metro system has expanded, it’s also picked up architectural variety. Even during the build-out of the original Adopted Regional System, the station architecture varies from station to station, depending on age and the construction methods. All of the ARS stations used the same palate of materials, despite the variety in design. Additions beyond the ARS (NoMa infill station and the Largo Extension) feature a different look than other above-ground stations; the Silver Line to Dulles will feature an entirely different architectural vocabulary.

The future of New York’s Penn Station

Phase 1 of Moynihan Station. Image from Moynihan Station Development Corporation

Today, New York’s Municipal Arts Society revealed the results of their recent design challenge to re-envision New York’s claustrophobic Penn Station. The reveal of the concepts comes on the heels of a vote by the city’s Planning Commission to extend the operating permit for the station’s upstairs neighbor, Madison Square Garden, for another 15 years. The fate of the arena and the station are inexorably linked, but the discussion around re-envisioning the station dances around the real concerns of on-site interests and avoids the question of more pragmatic improvements to the underlying infrastructure.

Penn Station is easy to diss. It’s certainly not a grand space, nor a particularly functional one. Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times makes a habit of denigrating the station regularly. Given the regular beatings in the press, it’s hard not to feel sorry for the place. The challenges to improving the space are large and complex (and that’s a big reason why they haven’t been tackled yet).

Several issues pop up in my mind:

Transportation infrastructure: Penn Station has a capacity issue; the two big components are train capacity and passenger capacity. In terms of train capacity, the solution involves new tunnels under the Hudson in some shape or form.

For passengers, the solution is only partly about the ‘station’ as we commonly conceive it, the historic edifice preservationists mourn. That Penn is long gone; but the operational guts of the station never left. Penn Station today, from the concourses down, is essentially the same as it was on opening day. Improving passenger capacity could involve a number of improvements, from the relatively modest expansion of platform access points through Moynihan Station (a project that only addresses a minority of Penn Station’s passengers and did not have the support of previous Amtrak leadership) to more radical changes such as widening platforms at the expense of several platform tracks.

In DC, the recently revealed plan to re-make the back-end of Union Station involves a complete re-configuration and re-build of the entire rail yard in order to widen platforms prior to the construction of air rights development over the tracks. The lesson there is to get your platform arrangement right before you start fixing columns in place (the concept involves the demolition of the existing parking garage over the tracks because the column placement is not ideal for Amtrak’s goals). At Penn Station, however, a lot of those columns are fixed. Even if you demolish MSG above, you’re not going to re-arrange every bit of the original infrastructure. The path dependence of many of those column locations is just too great.

Aesthetic improvements vs. functional improvements: From a great deal of the media critiques of Penn Station, you wouldn’t get a hint of the transportation problems listed above. Instead, the biggest objection is aesthetic. Across town, the magnificent Grand Central Terminal is celebrating its centennial, and the comparison is too juicy to ignore for Here and Now on WBUR.

Kimmelman makes the social case for great design and emphasizing the equity and democratic power that well-designed public space can have. However, design is not destiny. Even while Here and Now gushes over the greatness of Grand Central, they gloss over the fact that it, too faced neglect, deferred maintenance, and the threat of demolition. Kimmelman seemingly glosses over that erroneous causality.

Beware PATH: Kimmelman likewise criticizes Calatrava’s World Trade Center PATH hub as an “architectural foll[y]”, now excessively over budget. At the same time, it’s hard to see the difference between the trajectory of both projects (at least, as envisioned in this design challenge) – both involve avant garde re-designs with little to say about the actual transportation infrastructure. Steven Smith’s accounting of the spiraling PATH project could be a prescient description for Penn Station:

The architecture critics were smitten. The design, The New York Times’s architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote, “should satisfy those who believe that buildings planned for ground zero must aspire to a spiritual dimension,” and he hoped that New Yorkers would detect the “metaphysical element” in Mr. Calatrava’s work. His design was supposed to spur development throughout the neighborhood and lead lower Manhattan, still reeling from the attacks, out of its malaise. To the extent that the critics were worried, it was about how it would fit in with the architectural context of the site, not its cost.

Mr. Calatrava would eventually become to be remembered with regret among those in his hometown of Valencia, where his City of Arts and Sciences ended up costing more than three times its initial $400 million budget. But at the time, Mr. Calatrava could do no wrong.

In New York, his starting point was far higher than it had been in Valencia. The Federal Transit Administration pledged $1.9 billion [ed. – now officially at $3.74 billion] for the project early on, and the Port Authority would throw in another few hundred million—a number that would climb much higher.

The lesson from ground zero is that projects like this are exceedingly complex. As Smith’s article shows, the PATH project involves complicated jurisdictional issues and a tremendous number of infrastructure challenges; the hub (with deep pockets backing the project) ended up absorbing most of those common costs.

Madison Square Garden: Penn Station has every bit of the complexity that the PATH hub does, and no element shows this more than Madison Square Garden.

All of the submissions to the Municipal Arts Society’s design challenge assume the re-location of the arena, and apparently did so without talking to the owners of MSG:

A spokesman from the Madison Square Garden Company replied, in part:

“It’s curious to see that there are so many ideas on how to tear down a privately owned building that is a thriving New York icon, supports thousands of jobs and is currently completing a $1 billion transformation. These pie-in-the-sky drawings completely ignore the fact that no viable plans or funding to rebuild Penn Station and relocate MSG actually exist. Not that long ago, MSG spent millions of dollars and three years exploring a move to the Farley building as part of the new vision for Moynihan Station. That plan collapsed for a number of reasons that did not involve MSG, but did involve many of the same people now pressuring MSG to move, including The Municipal Art Society, which created enormous obstacles to achieving the relocation.”

Indeed, MSG was once a willing partner in moving from their current site in exchange for a new arena. As the MSG spokesman indicates, the arena company decided to stay and renovate their current arena due to the slow pace of the complicated deal. The city has some leverage with the operating permit’s expiration date, but otherwise the air rights the arena occupies are privately owned, and the projected cost to buy them out in 2008 was close to $2 billion.

Now that MSG has invested an additional billion dollars into their renovation, not only has the cost of a buyout increased, but those advocating for moving the arena missed the most obvious window to strike a deal. Prior to the renovation, MSG’s aging facilities aligned interests. Now, MSG has little incentive to move, particularly when some of the proposed sites range the original short hop across 8th Avenue in the Farley Building Annex to the distant to Javits Center site along the Hudson (and far from the centrality, connectivity, and value of Penn Station).

The designs miss the art of the deal and ignore the reality that MSG will be, by necessity, a partner in any changes to the site. Ignoring this reality seems to only set the stage for disappointment in implementation. Matt Chaban in Crain’s writes:

The many—architects and urban designers—welcomed the latest push to undo the destruction of Penn, but planners and real estate bosses expressed grave reservations over the plans, which were drawn up at the behest of the Municipal Art Society.

“I don’t know how you do this without telling the people sitting on top of the station what you’re doing,” said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board, referring to Madison Square Garden.

Incremental improvements: Even without these visions, incremental improvements are possible. While the full scope of Moynihan Station might be ill-advised, the more limited phase 1, consisting essentially of an additional exit concourse providing additional platform access, is a reasonable investment. Additional investments across 8th Avenue could also clear out the maze of back-office and railroad support functions contained within the existing Penn Station facility (things like baggage handling, employee break rooms, a commissary for long distance trains, etc).

This diagram from New York State shows both the phase 1 concourse as well as the mess of rooms and corridors in the existing station. Clearing out those support functions from Penn Station allows for re-allocation of that space for additional passenger facilities and more coherent circulation.

To improve the feeling of the concourses, add an element of spaciousness, and potentially some natural light, there are options without removing the arena. As this section of MSG shows (see also this old cut-away from Popular Science), the arena floor is located on the 5th floor of the structure. The primary use of the lower floors is for MSG’s 5000 seat Theater/Forum. Relocating just the theater, combined with the removal of support functions from the lower levels, would provide a great deal of space to work with to create a more inviting passenger space.

This ‘plan B’ isn’t a new idea. Vornado Realty owns a great deal in and around the Penn Station complex and has a vested interest in improving on the station. Vornado’s CEO Steve Roth suggested as much in 2008 (The more incremental, pragmatic idea even had support from Senator Chuck Schumer):

Despite a push by Vornado and co-developer Related Companies to keep the larger-scale project alive via government support, Mr. Roth indicated he considers that scenario unlikely.

“[We] basically feel that something good is going to happen,” he said. “Either that the governments are going to get their acts together, which they probably will not, or … we have with Madison Square Garden a Plan B, which is they stay where they are, we take out the theater, we—underneath the seating bowl of the arena—put a new grand entrance to Eighth Avenue and a new grand entrance to the station on Seventh Avenue, and what that will do is create a grand train station. Not quite as grand as moving it, but pretty nice. Actually, spectacularly nice.”

Sticker shock: There’s also the matter of cost. SHoP architects estimated their proposal at a mere $9.48 billion:

All the architects insisted their plans were workable, and Vishaan Chakrabarti, a partner at SHoP, even presented a plan using air rights sales and payments-in-lieu-of-taxes to cover the costs of the project, which he pegged at $9.48 billion. “And that’s with a factor of 30% cost overruns,” he said, as though it were a selling point.

Steve Roth emphasized that the value to the private development in the area can be realized with a less expensive station:

Mr. Roth said that the “Plan B” would add just as much value to Vornado’s property as if the original plan went forward.

“Our company’s principal interest in what happens with this Moynihan, Madison Square Garden, et cetera deal is to improve the value and increase the value of our adjacent eight million feet, which we believe we can do equally as well with Plan A or Plan B,” he said.

In that case, perhaps those air rights sales and PILOTs could be directed towards the other infrastructure costs facing the station.

A path forward? Combine new station entrances using that freed space, new concourses with space freed from relocated support functions, incremental improvements at the platform level, operational changes to the operating plans for the railroad tenants at the station, and investments in new rail tunnels under the Hudson – and now we’re talking about a realistic path forward.

The Planning Commission’s new, 15-year operating permit for MSG is a step in that direction, both in terms of identifying realistic improvements as well as syncing the timeframe for the larger discussions about the site. As Matt Chaban notes, the only realistic outcome of the MAS’s re-visioning process is “the kickoff of a renewed debate about the future of the West Side.” And, based on other examples, a decade-and-a-half timeframe would seem to be about right.

What’s wrong with ‘Metro Brown?’

Last week, the Washington Post featured a lengthy profile of WMATA’s head architect, the man behind the concepts in Metro’s recently unveiled ‘station of the future‘ concept. The article offers some insight into the thinking behind the proposed re-design of the Bethesda station, as well as some of the pushback Metro has received already from the Commission on Fine Arts (among others).

Some changes seem sensible, like higher-output light fixtures to replace current fixtures, with the goal of increased light levels while staying true to Harry Weese’s indirect lighting scheme. These seem more like mechanical or operational challenges for the most part, the kind of behind-the-scenes stuff that won’t make such a huge difference in the appearance of stations.

Other proposals seem like change for the sake of change: replacing bronze with stainless steel, for example:

Karadimov acknowledges bronze as a central element of the “original palate” of Metro. But operationally, it is not ideal. Bronze needs polishing, not just cleaning, and the grime on the railing in Bethesda easily comes off to the touch. In the NoMa-Gallaudet and Largo stations, some of the system’s newest, there are already stainless steel railings that Karadimov says are less expensive to clean (though he did not have a cost estimate) and lighter in color. Same for the first group of five Silver Line stations under construction and the canopies that cover some Metro entrances.

Karadimov proposed replacing the bronze railings and escalator panels throughout the Bethesda station with stainless steel; after criticism over the idea of stripping out so much bronze, however, he retreated, agreeing not to replace the bronze with stainless steel or any concrete parapets with glass. Instead he says Metro will keep all its bronze railings. But he says the escalator panels are a less central element that needs replacing. “That is one thing that we are going to have to have a further conversation about,” he said.

While stainless steel might require less maintenance, that doesn’t make it maintenance-free. Plenty of Metro’s entrance canopies are already showing their age, along with accumulated dirt and grime. Likewise, I can’t see any objection to the use of stainless steel features in new stations, but fail to see why this is such a critical element for the improvement of existing stations. If an escalator replacement opens the door for a stainless steel enclosure instead of a bronze one, so be it – this would hardly be Metro’s first stainless escalator. However, that reasoning doesn’t apply to bronze railings that are not in need of replacement.

Stainless steel station elements at NoMa-Gallaudet U Station. Photo by author.

Aside from bronze, the other element of Metro’s aesthetic under attack is the color brown:

But if the stations are to get brighter, Karadimov said, brown cannot continue to be the dominant color. “We’re not going to keep any brown,” he said. “We believe that having a lighter color will help make the station more bright.”

Like the bronze, brown unquestionably contributes to the placid feeling of the stations, but Karadimov said it contributes just as strongly to views that the stations appear dated. Whether the agency will have to retreat on the color brown as it did on bronze has not been decided.

Karadimov also has not formally proposed a color to replace it. He talks about light gray and silver, which he said would make signage easier to read, but without stainless steel to pair it with he may have to reconsider.

As ubiquitous as brown is within the Metro system, it is by no means the dominant color inside stations. The complaint that bronze is too dark seems to ring hollow, as well. Concrete and the red tiles are far more dominant in the palate than either brown or bronze.

Brown elements are limited to accent pieces and signage. The shade of brown itself is so dark that it doesn’t readily register as a brown at all, but almost a black-brown. Contrary to the assertion from Metro, this dark background provides a great deal of contrast for white lettering, making signage easy to read. White text on dark backgrounds is hardly unique to DC in terms of mass transit signage, either.

Combination of stainless steel, painted steel, and brown signage elements at NoMa-Gallaudet U Station. Photo by author.

Even in Metro’s newer stations (those not a part of the originally planned system), Metro’s white-text-on-brown-background signage standard remained intact. Why change it now and disrupt the uniformity across the system?

The addition of gray elements to Metro’s signage scheme is not new, either. Gallery Place, WMATA’s designated ‘test’ station for new signage, has seen lots of designs over the years, including different background colors and fonts and backlit signage, and the use of gray backgrounds for directional arrows – but none abandon Metro Brown.

Lighting, again

I had a chance to stop though Judiciary Sq’s north mezzanine today, the one with the new lighting scheme. My concern from the initial photos was that the lighting along the escalators, where the coffered vault has less headroom, requiring direct overhead light rather than the indirect lighting in the rest of the system, was too much of a departure from one of Metro’s distinct design elements.

New mezzanine lighting. Note the difference between the indirect fixtures in the middle and the direct ones over the escalators. CC image from flickr.

The white lines from those lights take away from the pattern of the coffers, despite the increased lighting in the area (which is substantial).

Direct light fixture detail. Photo of the author.

Increased light near escalators. Note the birghtness of the walls.

Increased light near escalators. Note the brightness of the walls. Photo of the author.

The increased illumination does indeed make a big difference, particularly in seeing where to walk. However, might there be another solution to illuminate the walkways without some of the awkward, direct light fixtures. Several of the new and newly renovated stations make use of LED lights embedded in stairway handrails. These lights, directed downward, illuminate the floor to ease navigation without the need for overhead fixtures.

LED handrail lights, Navy Yard station. Photo of the author.

In anticipation of the baseball crowds for Nationals Park, Metro expanded the Navy Yard station’s Half Street entrance to include an elevator and a new staircase from the mezzanine to the platform, which uses the LED handrail lights to illuminate the stairs.

Might this type of fixture be integrated into the brass handrails in Metro mezzanines? While these lights might not have much range, they wouldn’t need much – the new, hanging indirect lights in the Judiciary Sq mezzanine work just fine with enough overhead clearance.

Subway architecture – world tour

Several sources have linked to a great photo compilation from design boom on avant garde subway station architecture from around the world. The images come from:

stockholm tunnelbana
munich u-bahn
bilbao metro
shanghai bund sightseeing tunnel
dubai metro
tokyo – iidabashi station
prague – line a
moscow – komsomolskaya station
toronto – museum station
barcelona – drassanes station

Some of the stations are quite striking – and no, DC did not make the list.

The question it raises for me is the value in having a coherent design language for the system – providing ease of use for passengers – and sparking visual interest and making great spaces. DC’s vaulted stations fit into its federal, monumental role quite nicely, but the uniformity of the system (despite the small differences and details) can also be monotonous and dull.

In the event that more underground Metro stations are added within the District (perhaps with the New Blue line, or other core expansions), it’s interesting to think about new station architecture that would maintain the same design principles of the current system (volume, open train rooms, common materials – concrete, brass, red tile, etc, indirect lighting) while also allowing some variability that could provide unique identification for certain stations without sacrificing design unity.

Stockholm Metro Escalators - CC image from flickr

Stockholm Metro - CC image from flickr

Many of Stockholm’s stations, for example, use the look of exposed rock tunnels (a look considered for DC by Harry Weese, incidentally – to show the differences in construction methods for the stations drilled into the rock, versus those crafted with cut-and-cover methods), providing unity between stations while still allowing for unique designs.

Perhaps future expansions to the Metro could swing more in the direction of unique station designs and public art installations.

Let there be light

Following up on recent discussion of Metro’s lighting, it’s important to understand how much the surface that’s to be illuminated matters in Metro’s indirect lighting scheme. Earlier, I noted that Metro is currently going though a process of deep-cleaning several stations in the system – replacing light bulbs, cleaning the walls, etc. The Washington Post had a great article in March on the process for each station:

Blasts of steam from the hoses they carry scour dust from train brakes and concrete away from the panels. Sensitive equipment, including pylons on the platform, is protected from the spray, but the station is warm and misty.

Once the station is cleaned, the crew will re-bronze rails, paint kiosks and repair tile, among other tasks.

A station gets enhanced about every three and a half years. The crews do two dozen stations a year, focusing on indoor stations during cold weather.

“We’ve got it down to a science,” says Tom Morrison, Metro’s superintendent of contract maintenance and station enhancement. The job begins with a lot of prep work after the Red Line shuts down at midnight. Power to the third rail must be cut and station equipment protected.

The crew must wrap up about 4 a.m. The workers will need to be gone, the equipment stored at the end of the platform or hauled away and the station dry by the time passengers arrive and trains start running at 5 a.m.

It’s not easy adjusting to the schedule — five overnights in a station and two off days trying to have a real life — but workers at least get a direct view of what they’ve accomplished. “We can see the before and after,” says craft supervisor Andre Jordan.

Steam cleaning the walls makes a huge difference. This process is currently underway at my nearest station, Potomac Avenue. Dr. Gridlock noted earlier in the year each of the stations scheduled for a “station enhancement,” as Metro describes the process:

Major Enhancements: Dunn Loring, East Falls Church, Eisenhower Avenue, Forest Glen, Medical Center, Potomac Avenue, Twinbrook, Wheaton, White Flint, U Street, Vienna, West Falls Church.

Mini Enhancements: Ballston, Bethesda, Brookland, Court House, Foggy Bottom, Franconia-Springfield, Friendship Heights, Rockville, Shady Grove, Smithsonian, Virginia Square, Woodley Park.

The majors and the minis involve different types of work. A major takes about three months. A mini takes about 25 percent less time. I watched some of the overnight work for a “major” at Cleveland Park. During the hours the station was closed, crews on lifts power washed the station’s concrete ceiling and walls. I could see the before and after, and the difference was remarkable as they removed the tunnel dust that gathers in the station.

To get an idea of how much dirt and grime accumulates over the years, have a look at the process in action:

Potomac Ave deep cleaning, Dec 2009

Metro initially ‘painted’ several stations in order to lighten them up a bit – but the painted surfaces don’t quite have the same warm feeling that the original concrete does. They also show the dirt and grime more than their concrete counterparts.

Compare, side by side, the clean side of the station to the uncleaned one:

It’s not just the grime accumulating on the lower portions of the vault – there’s a huge difference in the dirt on the bottom edges of the coffers – that’s not just shadow (despite my crappy camera).

City Block

a work in progress…