Welcome to Cheese Metro station. (Photo: Reddit/Xiann)
A new Trader Joe's location opened in Clarendon on Nov. 18, and the grocery store presents a special theme — our favorite local transit system WMATA.
"It's sort of a retro, '40s look," Trader Joe's Stephanie Jenson told me Friday afternoon. "Every Trader Joe's tries to pull from its location and uses what's most recognizable."
In their little spot of Arlington County, Virginia, what's most recognizable is the local Clarendon Metro station. Google Maps places the 1109 North Highland Street grocery store at 171 feet from the station and suggests it'll take you only 48 seconds to walk the distance. As Jenson said, the Metro is heart of the area.
Two local artists produced the various Metro-themed decorations around the grocery store, which include a Metro station located on a beach and little train displays next to different food groups, complete with food group-specific pylons.
Happy New Year's Eve, D.C. The year is finally coming to a close, and I hope you've been enjoying the holidays. Last week's festivities prevented a review of recent transportation news so we have a lot of recent items to collect here for you on this celebratory long weekend. Drive safe, enjoy, and see you all in 2012!
Here's a review of the biggest transportation stories of the last couple weeks:
• Remember, SoberRide is offering free trips. Transportation deaths spike around the holidays, so be extra careful.
• North Korea's Kim Jong-Il died, and in light of the holidays and the seriousness of this event, I took a look at the transportation of North Korean capital Pyongyang. The city has its own Metro, around since 1973, as well as a system of streetcars and roads. Just don't expect any traffic lights. See 16 photos of the Metro here.
Every good commute calls for a good playlist. Forget long waits for Metro trains, crowded jostling on the cars, walks that seem endless, and the bus stops to what feel like nowhere — this weekend, just sit back and enjoy the songs on your iPod or MP3 player. The right song kills all the travel stress, and in honor of that fact, TBD's On Foot blog offers you a weekly transit-themed track for your Metro playlist. The destination will come eventually, after all. In the meantime, just enjoy the ride and the music.
This week's traffic jam: "The Jeep Song" by The Dresden Dolls (2003)
Metro has unveiled brochures, videos, and other PR efforts in an attempt to prevent riders from freaking out over the prospect of no operating escalators at the south entrance to the Dupont Circle Metro station. The escalators will be closed for safety reasons starting in February for a period of about eight and a half months, WMATA predicts, as they're being replaced. Earlier this fall, the transit agency mused that it would have to close them for as long as one year. Metro replaced its first escalators in 15 years at the Foggy Bottom station.
Shortly after that Dupont Circle Metro announcement, WMATA spokesperson Dan Stessel told me the agency hoped to lower expectations about how long the repairs would potentially take. They wanted, sensibly enough, to control the rider reaction. Say a year initially, then eight and a half months, then complete the job by then or even faster if possible. These new examples of PR outreach continue that trend of preparing Metro riders for the systems' coming inconvenience, now about four weeks away.
How to best make riders calm down? Clear explanation. WMATA offers a video this month that, at the least, can be credited with frankness about the state of the current escalators.
"These escalators have one of the highest fail rates in all of Metro," WMATA project manager Lonnie Murray says in the video. "They also happen to be one of the rarest escalators we have, not only in Metro but around the country."
One of the highest fail rates? No need to tell local Metro riders that. See the rest of the two-minute video with Murray to understand why:
The District of Columbia wants to turn the city into a pedestrian's delight. What does a walkable city require? Accessibility, transit, safe spaces, and especially good streets, sidewalks, and sights worth looking at. These sights include eye-pleasing storefronts, perhaps a well-crafted median, and of course a glimpse of greenery, of nature, of trees and flowers.
Expect plenty of that to come in the next few months. The District Department of Transportation has trumpeted its plans to plant 3,540 trees across the city's eight wards from November till May, and now, as we look toward the new year of 2012, seems like the right time to stop, appreciate, and look forward to the plants to come. Its Urban Forestry Administration lets us see how it will change the face of Washington, D.C. and even lets residents adopt some of the trees.
What I especially like is DDOT's online tree map, which lets us examine exactly where all of the planned thousands of trees will be planted. What species of trees will enliven and drop leaves on your neighborhood? Check the map here:
If you drive in the District, AAA Mid-Atlantic has some numbers that will crush your holiday spirits. The auto club has collected the statistics about how D.C. fined its drivers in the fiscal year 2011 and in the first quarter of the new fiscal year of 2012, which began in September.
The numbers, frankly, speak for themselves, and AAA freely employs well-used exclamation points in describing the extreme number of citations given out, well above cities of similar size. The auto club seized on a parking ticket statistic that the D.C. Department of Public Works quietly released in a Dec. 22 press release about ticketing food trucks and subsequently expanded on an alarming trend of rampant ticketing, one that's been growing and noticed for years, in its own Dec. 28 release.
How depressing are the numbers? Here's what AAA tells us:
• In the fiscal year of 2011, D.C. gave out 1.6 million parking tickets ... an average of 126,720 a month, 31,680 a week, 5,280 a day, 352 an hour, and nearly six per minute. Jesus. This is far higher than what was granted in the previous year: 1.54 million tickets.
• Since the fiscal year of 2012 began in September, D.C. has given out 315,000 tickets for the first quarter.
Stakeholder madness. (Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Bossi)
The question of how WMATA should rename its various Metro stations for 2012 has dominated the past year. Hours and hours of debate ensued. People eventually wondered whether the transit agency was spending its time and resources wisely, so fixed on renaming stations as escalators remained broken and service frustrated riders. In November, WMATA finally released a list of new station names.
Yet now, looking back at the Great Metro Station Name Debate of 2011, a D.C. traffic engineer has now crafted his own humorous version to show just how silly and complicated the whole naming process has become.
As WMATA considered how to rename its Metro stations for the middle of next year, the transit agency looked at input from many, many different regional stakeholders. These stakeholders included universities, hospitals, community groups, the National Park Service, and others, all of whom wanted their identity captured in a Metro station name. To have a name included in a Metro station title carries greater promotional, advertising value. Should Gallaudet University be represented in the New York Avenue Metro stop's name? Should Holy Cross Hospital be part of Forest Glen? And perhaps we should add "National Mall" to the Smithsonian station? For months countless possibilities were floated in meetings and on the Internet. Anyone within the vicinity of a station had a vested interest and frequently pushed for inclusion.
D.C traffic engineer Andrew Bossi saw these debates and devised his own clever Metro map, one that imagined what would happen if WMATA listened to all potential stakeholders around the stations. What he crafted over the course of more than eight hours and two drafts was a nightmare-scenario map, one cluttered with appended, super-long names that included every possible interest group imaginable. Each name includes three or four identifying markers. Instead of "Foggy Bottom-GWU," Bossi envisions "Foggy Bottom-West End/Georgetown-Washington Circle/GWU-Kennedy Center/Lisner Auditorium." In a word — yikes. You can imagine the visual chaos of so many long Metro names. Bossi notes that his longer names are based on "existing precedents of geography (squares, circles, roads), federally-supported museums, neighborhoods, memorials, four-year universities, high schools, and professional sports team logos." WMATA has stated its intentions to avoid long names for exactly this reason (ideally keeping names to under 19 characters), and we should have no real worries that Bossi's vision will ever come to pass. But it's worth taking a glance at how stakeholder interests in transit station names can run amuck.
Here's the rider-imagined eyesore, in all its WMATA renaming glory, featured courtesy of Bossi:
The fate of Washington, D.C.'s taxi industry created more than a little stir in the days before the country broke for the holiday season earlier this month. A somewhat contentious press conference hosted by Mayor Vince Gray, Councilmembers Mary Cheh and Tommy Wells, and D.C. Taxicab Commissioner Ron Linton on taxi-industry overhaul grew contentious with the interrupting shouts of taxi drivers and ended with drivers holding court for local media, as I reported at the time. These drivers refuted the official narrative advanced by D.C. officials and claimed that drivers' voices were not truly represented in this new overhaul, which will entail the installation of GPS, credit card readers, a uniform taxi color, and new charges.
The discussion was tabled until January, when the Council plans to hold a hearing on the new proposed legislation.
But in the meantime, Cheh, chair of the Committee on Environment, Public Works, and Transportation, has released a survey about the taxi industry that seeks answers on some of the big questions involved.
December may be a colder, darker month but many people still take to their bicycles to get around the District of Columbia. The darkness creates new risks for cyclists, however, and if you haven't yet seen it, I urge you to check out TBD photographer Joshua Yospyn's fascinating gallery of D.C.'s nighttime cyclists.
Washington, D.C. has a growing population of bicyclists and in that spirit, I'd like to highlight the dynamics of biking in the darkness. Here are 8 things worth remembering about the activity:
1)Bike lighting is essential. Include a bike light at the front that casts light in the direction you're traveling and one in the back large enough to be seen by any drivers who may be approaching. "Faster riders need brighter lights to see farther down the road, but keep in mind that the brighter the light, the faster your battery will be used up," writes cyclist Ed Pope. "Dual-beam systems are available that allow you to use the low beam while cruising at low speed to conserve the battery, then switch to high power when hammering away at top speed. Lights can also be helmet mounted."
2)Capital Bikeshare bikes include safety features such as front and rear flashing LED lights and tire reflectors, which help with night-time cycling.
"Each bicycle, when in use at night, shall be equipped with a lamp on the front which shall emit a steady or flashing white light visible from a distance of at least five hundred feet (500 ft.) to the front and with a red reflector on the rear which shall be visible from all distances from fifty feet (50 ft.) to three hundred feet (300 ft.) to the rear when directly in front of upper beams of head lamps on a 19 motor vehicle.” Section 1204.3 says, “A lamp emitting a steady or flashing red light visible from a distance of five hundred feet (500 ft.) to the rear may be used in lieu of the red reflector.”
WABA as well as DDOT advise a red flashing rear light, the guide also notes.
Welcome back, D.C. commuters. 2012 is fast approaching, and I hope your winter holidays have been going well. AAA Mid-Atlantic recently announced that 2,075,000 Washingtonians will be traveling by car this holiday season of 2011 and pay more for gas than ever before in history. The average price of a D.C. metro area gallon of gas in 2011 is $3.53, 85 cents higher than the metro area's average in 2010.
In light of that chilling transportation reality, let's talk about an important dimension to how Metro, bus, streetcar, and various other transportation systems have risen across America — about how their development has coincided with a kitschy, enthusiastic rise of a culture devoted to and celebrating the very notion of public transit. Transportation systems develop deep roots among the world's societies and frequently come to define them, entering the worlds of metaphor and even schematic framing. Our means of commute often earn affection and passion among commuters. I've talked about this before, such as in the countless T-shirts devoted to bicycle love.
Over the last week, I've gathered some informal observations about the transit culture of St. Louis, Missouri, a Midwestern city that not only has an Arch but also operates a Metro with far lower ridership than the D.C. Metro. More than half a million people ride the D.C. Metro every day compared to around 50,000 in St. Louis. Its 18-year-old light rail system of two lines is called MetroLink and despite a lack of popular use, several small signs pointed to support for the idea. Consider the photo above. I visited local classic Crown Candy Kitchen in north St. Louis and saw the little sticker slapped on a trash can. "I'd rather be riding LIGHT RAIL," the sticker announces. A simple yet effective message.
The message reappeared elsewhere. When grabbing coffee in and walking the shops of Cherokee Street neighborhood, I saw the following shirt among several others celebrating the Gateway City:
Every good commute calls for a good playlist. Forget long waits for Metro trains, crowded jostling on the cars, walks that seem endless, and the bus stops to what feel like nowhere — this weekend, just sit back and enjoy the songs on your iPod or MP3 player. The right song kills all the travel stress, and in honor of that fact, TBD's On Foot blog offers you a weekly transit-themed track for your Metro playlist. The destination will come eventually, after all. In the meantime, just enjoy the ride and the music.
This week's traffic jam: "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66" by Chuck Berry (1961)
Yesterday, in light of Kim Jong Il's recent death, I took a look at the deep, colorful, and potentially dysfunctional Metro of the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. Today I'd like to examine another dimension of how people get around the city and talk about what it means to travel across the surface streets. The 3.2 million people or so people who live in the city have to get around somehow, and Pyongyang's transportation is unique in its own right, with countless pedestrians, above-ground transit systems, and several streets and cars befitting, more or less, our idea of a post-industrial power, at least on first glance. Despite many rumored and reported problems, North Korea maintains a transportation system in Pyongyang that appears modern enough. Much of the country's wealth is concentrated here, and as I mentioned yesterday, it's intended to be a showcase for the country's achievements.
Very few paved roads line the country, however, according to the CIA World Factbook — of the 25,554 kilometers of roadways, only 724 kilometers are paved. Pyongyang would seem to have the most traffic of any North Korean city, although even during rush hour on a national holiday, there are never all that many cars. One journalist who wrote a book on North Korea estimates that there are only 20,000 to 25,000 passenger cars in all of DPRK, "the ultimate symbol of the prosperity of high officials" and kept scarce, according to Bloomberg.
See the streets of the capital from a city bus and from a tour-driven minivan in these next two videos:
The man in the next video below, guided by the government in this minivan, notes the many pedestrians visible in his guided tour of the Pyongyang streets. "Everybody walks," he says.
The subway, as he understands it, is only partly functional, and the lines for buses are incredibly long. He says there are, in his experience, rarely many cars on the road and that North Korea doesn't possess street lights but instead employs woman who guide intersections with whistles.
7 a.m., waking up in the morning... (Photo: YouTube/ArsalansEchoes)
Happy Friday, D.C. We've finally reached the end of the week, and yes, it's wonderful.
But despite our TGIF enthusiasm, the nature of "Friday" has been infected by an omnipresent song from the young Rebecca Black. The song is an ode to the day: "It's Friday, Friday, got to get down on Friday." The words stick in your brain, unrequested, and nearly ruin the joy. The song has even made its way into D.C. transportation — specifically on to the Metro.
North Carolina native and George Washington University freshman James DeMuth boarded a Blue Line train last month, and for reasons unknown, felt compelled to belt out "Friday" while wearing a suit. Why? Who knows. Little is known about the smiling college student. He likes TaeKwonDo and studies international relations, according to Facebook. On the Orange Line, he once shouted warnings about "satanic evil" and Washington Monument conspiracies.
"Allow me to introduce myself to you," DeMuth calls out to the crowd. "I am not a poet but I am most definitely a lover of poetry. So if you would allow me to indulge myself, I would like to share with you one of my favorite works of poetry."
And then the lyrics to "Friday" begin, delivered straight-faced and spoken, like a modern-day William Shatner attempting to bring life to the song for our Metro commuters.
Within a minute, the riders yell "Shut up!" at the young man. No one respects poetry anymore.
Go to Google Maps these days, and you'll notice a new option — "Follow Santa as he travels around the world on Google Maps."
Click the option to encounter NoradSanta.org, a website that features a countdown to Christmas as well as an option to track Santa in Google Earth. Santa's commute can't be an easy one. One night, millions of stops? Sounds like a WMATA ride from hell, and all while hunkered in that tiny sleigh. He and his reindeer, more than anyone, suffer the worst of holiday transportation.
The site offers a recap of the 2010 voyage in anticipation of this year's, which will begin on the 24th: NORAD has, they report, tracked Santa for years. The organization included an explanation for the map last year:
The holiday season can be dangerous. (Photo: flickr/robertsdonovan)
Hundreds of people will die in transportation deaths in these next few days. Bleak thought, I know, but it's worth remembering in our current season. Consider this your public service announcement.
Traffic fatalities always spike during major holidays, and the season encompassing the end of December and beginning of January is one of the most significant time periods because two big holidays are paired — Christmas on Dec. 25 and New Year's on Jan. 1.
Earlier in December, I began glancing at traffic-fatality data, and among the documents I examined was the Fatality Analysis Reporting System General Estimates System report, a federal assessment of traffic fatalities from 2009 and earlier released just this fall. The examination considers many dimensions and is one of the more mature and comprehensive breakdowns for why people die on the road.
Among their many charts was the following: "Persons Killed and Percent Alcohol- Impaired Driving During Holiday Periods, 1999-2009."
Kim Jong Il died last weekend, an event that likely have an impact on international politics for years to come. Killed by "train fatigue," the leader influenced all matters in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and in light of his death, I'll be examining the transportation systems of his capital city of Pyongyang this week in two parts — the first part on the Pyongyang Metro, the second on the surface traffic. The North Korea experience paints a sanitized image of what the country is to the rest of the world. The country struggles with many issues, from its overbearing military presence to a deficit of basic nutrition. Numerous reports indicate that North Korea is far from the wonderland it would have foreigners believe. Yet the appearance of normality permeates the capital of more than three million residents. Let's take a video tour of what commuting is like — or would seem to be like, at least — in Pyongyang.
As a transportation blogger, I always find it strange and surprising to recall that North Korea has its own Soviet-inspired Metro system located in Pyongyang, created in large part as a showcase of North Korean wealth to outside observers. The Metro opened in 1973, three years before ours in the District, and is reputed to have several hundred thousand daily riders. Unlike WMATA, the major stations of the North Korean Metro overwhelm the riders with colors and murals. See photos of the Pyongyang Metro here. The trains themselves are green and red. The deep underground stations and escalators, at least in the central locations available to the country's visitors, explode in a light unusual to behold for riders of the Washington, D.C. WMATA system. Chandeliers glow. Columns loom. Ceilings are a temple to glamor. Their Metro is designed to awe those who see the fanciest couple stations. Only two stations or so reflect this splendor, according to multiple reports; most stations are far more utilitarian. Access is limited, however, and some suggest that, as with many elements of North Korea, parts of the system are orchestrated for a foreign audience. The most compelling evidence I saw when casually glancing online was this video, which shows a woman in red and yellow exit a Metro train at the 2:21-minute mark and board again at the 2:43-minute mark. The Metro also has its own museum.
Many images and videos of the North Korean Metro have emerged in recent years. Here's official video, which describes Metro lines moving east to west and north to south from the city center:
"The diversified and gorgeous decorations create perfect underground places," the North Korean announcer says in the PR video amid piping cheerful music.
The overall set-up to the Pyongyang Metro resembles our Metro, from the available videos I've seen. People enter through turnstile gates above ground and then descend on bright escalators into the depths. What surprises me in every video I've seen is how many Korean citizens appear to be traveling on the escalators and in the system, especially given reports of its limitations. The details of the subway system are relatively limited, as visitors only glimpse certain stations and propaganda interferes with a full understanding of how the system works. People seem to pay with a small paper ticket, and I've read multiple accounts noting that the Metro there costs a mere few cents in American dollars to ride.
What would seem a simple system, however, hides great mystery as more details emerge.
WMATA is ready to reassure the public after yesterday's little incident. A part of a Metro train's brake system fell off, and hundreds of people had to evacuate through a Metro tunnel. See videos here. Although no one was hurt, the descriptions don't make for good press. The incident even made international headlines.
In recent months, Metro has discussed at length how to respond to disasters — natural disasters like the hurricane and earthquake, commute-obliterating events like the October Clarendon suicide.
Yesterday Metro kicked into action fast, at least on its communications front in the bigger, abstract sense, if not on the ground. We received multiple updates throughout the early afternoon. By 3 p.m., Metro leadership held a press conference in which they revealed the problem lay with a 5000-series car, Blue Line car #406, and that Metro would all its 5000-series cars to make sure the problem isn't repeated. It's smart and necessary, at minimum, to make these gestures, especially given the broad confusion and chaos at the affected stations that the Post's Robert Thomson and others described.
Today Metro released another update and say the agency has reviewed how they handled the incident. They correctly diagnose the problem, the need for better communications with riders on the train and elsewhere as well as on radio. Staff continue to investigate why exactly yesterday's incident happened and say it's related to a "potential hub failure" and have removed 16 railcars similar to the one that lost its friction ring yesterday. General Manager Richard Sarles has interacted with the public at many recent Metro press events, debuting the Farragut Crossing virtual tunnel and celebrating escalator repairs, and continued to exercise what the transit agency likely hopes is a calm voice of credibility and stability. In today's press statement, Sarles offered the following words:
I want to thank the D.C. Fire Department for its leadership and recognize the outstanding job they did, both on incident command and on the safe evacuation of our passengers ... Our review this morning concluded that the methodical and deliberate plan that was developed with the highest safety precautions possible, combined with the exemplary work of fire, transit police and safety officials resulted in a safe and orderly evacuation in a reasonable time frame.
The reaction to what happened is likely going to continue to play out at more than a few Metro Board meetings to come. Yesterday proved a psychic blow to the confidence riders place in their system, I suspect, at least in the short term.
People talk a lot about fuel efficiency these days. We worry about our dependency on oil, and alternative fuels like propane and electricity matter, not to mention our attention to transit and car-free initiatives.
But even 85 years ago, stellar fuel efficiency impressed our local drivers.
The proof — "Midget Runs 52 Miles on a Gallon of Gas," Popular Science magazine, February 1926.
The magazine tells of how "a baby automobile" outfitted with airplane tires, nine speeds, and four cylinders motored its way into our D.C. and all the way to the Capitol after a "transcendental tour from San Francisco." It truly is a tiny car, from what the article describes. The driver and vehicle designer (with the wonderful name of Gus Petzel) looks virtually as big as the 560-pound car itself, which was said to be "no longer than a man is high." What an ingenious, hilarious invention to recall, more than eight decades old and a participant in a cross-country joy ride. Scrawled across the motor are different city names: "San Francisco," "New York." I can't imagine the faces of all the Jazz Age Washingtonians who witnessed Petzel zoom up in his "midget" motorcar.
But what's truly impressive is the mileage this little car received. Popular Science reported that the speedy car, which traveled 80 miles/hour on a track and 65 miles/hour on the road, was capable of driving 52 miles for every gallon of gas, as the piece's headline proclaims. Petzel showed off the great mileage for D.C. residents once he arrived.
Read the February 1926 issue of Popular Science here and more pieces of Metro history here.
VICE magazine has published some daring, hilarious, and intriguing journalism this month as Shane Smith releases his seven-part video report into Russia's Siberian mystery ... and into the labor camps that North Korea operates there.
I recommend watching the videos for the subject matter and want to spotlight the second of the seven clips for its illumination of Russian train life. Smith journey for days across the Siberian emptiness to reach the camps. In the video, Smith explains he always used to see these railroads as "so far away and romantic and freaky." The Trans-Siberian Railway is a transportation passage virtually mythical in its stretch, and it's compelling to observe:
Smith and his associates drink, talk, encounter pushy drunk Russian teenagers (who ask Smith to trade his wedding ring), and deal with train police who have to intervene between Smith and young Russians. He talks of the hot train cars, the smells, and the alcohol everywhere throughout the dining car. It's a strange dispatch worth watching for any transit fan.
"Being wasted is so prevalent that they have special booze police," Smith says in a voiceover, "whose only job is to throw drunks off at the nearest station if they get too drunk ... or murder-y."
Watch the entire North Korean labor camp video series starting here.
See that? It's the friction ring itself. (Photo: Courtesy of Laura Elizabeth Pohl)
Riders on the Blue and Orange Metro lines encountered more than a little delay this morning. But more critical than the delay was the confusion and panic that accompanied a mid-tunnel evacuation among the commuters. The story has spread like wildfire and already begun to appear in national media. Yet no one is still entirely sure what happened. What we do know is, largely, not especially encouraging.
Furthermore, several hundred Metro riders had a front-row seat to the accident and uncertainty. Luckily we don't have to imagine just how strange and unfortunate their morning was. Video has already emerged showing the train suspension and evacuation.
Here's what Metro rider Fabricio Torres described as "the first moments of panic" between L'Enfant and Smithsonian:
Reports and rumors immediately began circulating. Why was a Metro train stopped near L'Enfant Plaza and what was the cause? Was there fire or smoke or even a fireball?
A wheel popped off a train, some said, citing an anonymous Metro source. WMATA quickly dispelled this notion. People were told it an "obstruction" blocked the Metro tunnel. This confusion reigned for a couple hours in the morning as Blue and Orange line service was suspended until shortly after noon, when it began single-tracking. But about 300 people had to be evacuated in complete darkness throughout these hours. Luckily, no one was harmed and all was resolved.
Rider Torres also captured and tweeted the following video of the pitch-black evacuation through Metro tunnels. He later joked of mole men and sparks and tweeted: "I've been trapped on the metro for two hours thanks to a train fire. On my train." Today, Mr. Torres, was clearly not your day:
WMATA is still investigating the specific causes, I understand, but released the initial diagnosis: "The preliminary investigation has found that the track obstruction was part of a rail car called a 'friction ring' that became dislodged and fell to the track bed from a passing Orange Line train at approximately 9:40 a.m. The friction ring made contact with the electrified third rail, resulting in a smoke condition until power was de-energized shortly after the incident occurred."
All right. A "friction ring." Photographer Laura Elizabeth Pohl captured a photo of the ring on the Vienna/Franconia-Springfield-bound Metro tracks, initially mistaking it for a wheel. To say riders saw "fire" or a "fireball" seems dramatic; I imagine there was quite a flare but we're probably talking about third-rail arcing, which riders frequently spot as trains depart.
I quickly found myself wondering precisely what this device represented.
