Opinion: Six reasons why I love Kiev metro more than Washington

Фото: Depositphotos

Even though we have two cars per family, I still take the subway to work for the same reasons as most residents of what Trump called the “Washington swamp.”

In the center, where our office is located, it is difficult and expensive to park, the roads from Northern Virginia, where I live, are usually overloaded, and the time spent in public transport gives me the opportunity to read a newspaper, news on a smartphone or a book. In addition, fortunately, I do not suffer from “public transport” snobbery, and the fact that I am helping the Earth in this way without polluting it with exhausts from my own car warms the soul. But from time to time the Washington Metro causes me sincere irritation and sweet memories of the Kiev Metro. Here are six reasons why the subway of the American capital is inferior to the metro of the capital of Ukraine.

Фото: Depositphotos

Of course, there are economic reasons for this - the city does not want the trains to run empty. But if it’s winter outside, the platform is above ground, and you have to make a transfer, then a trip by metro becomes a separate test for the most resilient.

Today, whenUber"Introduced the function"Uber pool"(the driver is carrying several passengers), you can get from the center to the suburbs for 10 dollars - in terms of money it’s almost the same as the metro, but in terms of time you can get out faster, and most importantly - much more comfortable. I suspect this is causing the Washington metro to lose ridership during off-peak hours. At least I only use the metro during peak hours.

A train with passengers stands in a tunnel for half an hour or more - an exceptional phenomenon, not a regular occurrence.

«Residual delay” or “residual delay” - when I’m on a train and hear these words from the loudspeaker, my mood automatically worsens. This means that a technical failure occurred at some station and now all trains on this line are running late - it could be 10 minutes or an hour. Getting stuck on the subway is a typical Washington problem. 2-3 workers are late for the office at once - something happened on the “red line”, and the next day later the “orange” ones arrive - those who use the orange metro line. When you have an interview or meeting in the morning, and you’re sitting underground like a mole and can’t even call, there’s little pleasure.

Cheap fare

The Washington metro is very expensive even by American standards. The fare differs depending on the distance, time of day and whether it is a weekday or a weekend. For example, a trip from Vienna station (Vienna) to the center will cost $3.85 at 11:00 am on a weekend, but $5.55 at rush hour on Monday. It costs $6 to cross the entire city by metro up and down. If you consider that you also have to pay for parking near the station - about $5 depending on the station - then your hand begins to reach for the application "Uber"On the smartphone.

In Kiev, travel by metro costs 5 hryvnia, regardless of the distance and time of day.

At the same time, in Washington, even under Obama, they came up with such a cunning thing - the travel of federal government officials on the subway is paid for by the state. Each bureaucrat is given a card on which “Uncle Sam” puts exactly the amount of money needed for travel to and from work, with the exception of parking.

Buy tickets just

To buy tokens and cards for the metro in Kyiv, you just need to hand the money to the woman at the ticket office. The machines, which compete with or have already replaced cash registers at some stations, are also easy to use. In Washington and its suburbs there are only automatic machines (you can also top up your card on the Internet). Considering that Washington DC subway fares vary depending on the distance, and there are other options such as top-up cards, day passes, etc., purchasing a transit ticket is not such an easy task for the uninitiated. There is only one station manager and cannot always help everyone. Almost every day I see people at the machines with a confused look on their face.

I have already come to terms with the fact that my “face” looks more friendly than the interface of a subway ticket machine, and I regularly help visitors pay for their fare. Of course, the machines save the metro money, but a system that depends on an army of volunteer assistants is wrong.

The vast majority of passengers are familiar with the rules of conduct in the subway

Although the rules of conduct in both metros like, in my experience, passengers observe them better.
In Washington, especially during school holidays, there are many people on the subway for whom public transportation is a completely new concept. On the escalator, a group of children and their parents firmly took positions on both the left and right sides. On the train, friends sit in chairs on opposite sides of the aisle and talk loudly. And when there is a crush on the subway, some people begin to resent the fact that someone is standing close to them. Moreover, a person can sit and puff that the passenger next to him, hung with bags, who is struggling to hold on to the handrail, is interfering with his personal space.

To remove the backpack, which occupies the space of one adult person, is also not everyone comes to mind. I was just outraged by the girl who expressed a claim that I was standing close to her backpack, with which she was pushing me at every stop of the train.
Also here it is very rare to take children in your arms, even small ones. Parents will put the child, and themselves or sit down next to, or will stand. And you can save a whole place!

Stations are more beautiful

Subway stations in Washington are gray concrete, from which almost everything is made - walls, ceilings, partitions - and red-brown tiles on the floor. The stations are similar to each other, and sometimes you can only understand which one you are on by reading its name.

There are many stations in Kyiv that are works of art. Even tourist guides advise tourists in Kyiv to go down to the Arsenalnaya station - the deepest station in the world - and visit the Golden Gate station - one of the most beautiful.

However, there are several very weighty reasons that distinguish the Washington subway, and some of which are more important than everything mentioned above.

The metro is accessible to disabled people and parents with wheelchairs.

Each station is equipped with an elevator, with which you can get to the platform. Every time I go down the subway at the Kharkovskaya station in Kiev, I think with horror what will happen if a disabled person really decides to use these rails, which are fastened to the stairs. Even a primitive understanding of physics makes it possible to guess that, having moved down from such an angle, it will pick up the speed at which it will no longer be able to manage a wheelchair.

There is calmer, less stress on the nervous system

Although there are no tiled panels in the Washington Metro, there is clean, good sound insulation, and advertising is limited to a few posters on the walls of the cars and exits. The seats in the cars are arranged like in electric trains, it gives a bit of private space when no one is hanging over you. Very rarely, in comparison with Kiev, in the carriages one can meet beggars, and there are no sellers.

With the exception of rush hour, and not every day, there are not so many people on the subway. In recent years, in Ukraine, I worked close to the Golden Gate station, and getting to 8: 45 in the morning in an incredibly dense crowd was a real challenge for the psyche.

On the graph you can see how many more passengers are carried by the Kiev metro, although it is smaller in size.

A common problem with the metro is safety. Advantage - simple circuit

In Kyiv there are robbers who can steal a wallet from a bag. In Washington, there are young hooligans who pick on people in the evening at some stations.

But unlike, say, New York, the layouts and principles of operation of both subways - in Kyiv and Washington - are easy to understand.

By the way, I once had to talk with the general manager of public transport in Washington and the suburban area, Paul Wiedefield - not as a journalist, but as an ordinary passenger. He had just been appointed to a leadership position, and he came out to talk to the people. In the conversation, I brought up several advantages of the Kyiv metro, to which I heard that his wife’s parents are from Ukraine and he will definitely go to his other half’s homeland to get acquainted with public transport.

The original column is published on the website of the Ukrainian service.VOA".

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