Why not just take the yellow line!

DC Metro's expectation in cutting Blue Line service was that many Blue Line riders would switch to the Yellow line and transfer, thus reducing the overcrowding.  While it may be a questionable planning strategy to make individual's preferred path so aweful that they choose an alternate route, it is true that Blue Line riders have an alternate route into the core.  In their initial planning, WMATA expected between one-fifth and one-third of Blue line riders to transfer instead of dealing with the insufferably long wait times.

Turns out, transferring is more painful than WMATA expected.  Just 14% switched - hence, overcrowding on the blue line.

So why was Metro so wrong.  It turns out that people really hate to transfer.  Some papers looking at the psychic cost of a transfer in subway systems suggest that adding a transfer is equivalent to adding almost 10 minutes to a trip (one study I found says subway transfers have a psychic cost of 8 minutes, another says 9.5 minutes).

So when Metro is giving riders a choice between taking a Yellow/Orange transfer or waiting 10 minutes for the next Blue line train, the psychic transfer-cost alone eats away all of the time savings.  When you add to that fact that taking the immediate yellow line train may not even get you there sooner, it's no surprise that Metro was off with their projections.

This also means that Metro is substantially underestimating the true costs that they are imposing on the Blue line riders by cutting Blue Line service.

Introduction

As many Metro riders in Northern Virginia are already aware, in the summer of 2012 the governing organization of the DC Metro system, WMATA, "enhanced" Metro service with their new Rush+ system.  In the process, they cut service for Blue Line riders by 30% from 10 trains per hour to 7 during Rush Hour.  As a result of the change, Blue Line riders have longer waits and overcrowded cars during peak hours.

WMATA (rightfully) note that the Rosslyn tunnel is a major choke-point in the system.  However, they dramatically misrepresent to the public the impact of the service cuts to the Metro riders who live along the Blue-line corredor in Arlington and Alexandria. 

When the Metro System finally gets the silver line operational, WMATA plans to cut Blue Line service further from 7 trains per hour to 5 per hour, so all Blue Line trains will be 12 minutes apart.  As a result, the Blue Line will be the only line in the core of the metro system that does not have enhanced rush hour service.

This site is one blue line rider's attempt to spread the facts about the problems that Metro is creating on the blue line, in the hopes that they decide against imposing their planned service cuts.