metro

Gosh, public transportation is a language unto itself.

I got instructions from someone over the phone on how to get from here to there and this is what he said:

Take the Mark train on the pen line to Union Station, where you'll go downstairs and get on the red line to Tacoma.

Right. A bit of Googling tells me that it's really the MARC train on the Penn line to Union Station where I catch the Red line metro to Takoma Park station. Also, there's a fare I can pay in either cash or credit card on the Penn line or I can buy a card that I can reload at any time to travel on the Red Line and then there's the 6 block walk there and back again because of course a train can't take you right to where you want to go. Walking's no big deal, but we're talking about time. If city life is so frantically paced, who can afford to wait for trains and walk from them?? Besides that, one trip would cost at least $16.

Freaking heck. How do you metro people not flee to the country with frothing mouths and a determination to never shave, drive, stand in line, or pay over $12 an hour for parking again?