It was designed to take tourists to museums and government workers from suburban parking lots to work in the morning and evening. That’s it.
The two fatal design flaws are lack of express trains and stations that are high ceilinged and deeply buried so it takes like 14 minutes to get from the tracks to the street.
It’s barely a subway it’s more like a odd suburban light rail hybrid that happens to run into an actual city.
There were three and four minute headways between trains in DC! This is just incomprehensible technological advancement for Californians.
DC is also not flat like NY. Some Metro stations are deeply buried in hills, but a bunch are shallow and many are actually above ground.
It’s like an old childhood friend — they may be in a bad spot and you can’t stand to be around them, but the love is still there. I love metro and hope it improves. It’s getting there, slowly but surely. Still fails to deliver and eliminating off-peak pricing is hurting those who have no other option.
Is it perfect? No, but neither is DC traffic…