Agenda: Hunter Mill Transportation Advisory Council, June 19, 2013

These regular meetings provide a brief update and opportunity for discussion on the wide variety of transportation development issues and activities in the Hunter Mill District.

Silver Line opening delayed until January, WTOP Exclusive, June 12, 2013

By Ari Ashe

WASHINGTON - Metro's Silver Line was expected to open this December, but a top official at the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority now tells WTOP that the official launch date will not be until early next year.

Sam Carnaggio, director of the Dulles Corridor Project at MWAA, made the revelation during a presentation at the Action Committee for Transit on Tuesday.

"The project from the contractor is expected to be completed by the end of September or in early October, so we're now projecting January 2014," he says.

Carnaggio says construction work is about 94 percent complete, with the remaining work being mostly cosmetic. . . .

Click here for the rest of this WTOP exclusive report.

WOW! Editorial: Metro continues to aggravate its riders, Washington Post, June 9, 2013

By Editorial Board, Published: June 9

LIKE CHARON piloting his lifeless charges along the River Styx, a darkened Metro train rumbled through the Tenleytown-American University Red Line station early last Tuesday morning, its windows black, its destination unknown. Although it never stopped for the passengers waiting forlornly on the platform, it did emit an ear-splitting horn blast.

We don’t know if the horn was meant to scare commuters, greet them, jolt them awake or warn them (gratuitously) not to try boarding a moving train. To passengers, it was just another bewildering, maddening, soul-sapping Metro moment, a quotidian annoyance barely worth mentioning.

Except that it is worth mentioning that Metrorail is a slow-rolling embarrassment whose creeping obsolescence is so pervasive, and so corrosive, that Washingtonians are increasingly abandoning it. Even as ridership climbs on MARC and VRE commuter trains, and holds steady on Metro buses, passengers are deserting Metrorail in droves. . . .

And it just goes downhill (both the editorial and Metrorail performance) from there!

Read it all here.