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connect Prince George's County with Alexandria by running rail over the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

That kind of expansion beyond the original system would require Metro to compete for the first time with transit systems across the country for a limited amount of federal aid.

"It's going to take a considerable amount of political muscle to get the kind of resources we need to get this system to do for the next 25 years what it's been doing for the last 25 years," White said.

                                 © 2001 The Washington Post Company

Far Beneath the Street, a 'Social Success'
Area's Diverse Ridership Finds Safety, Civility -- Even Romance -- on Subway Cars

By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 25, 2001

City Paper's "I Saw You" section is filled each week with pleas like this one: "WE MET at King St. Metro station late one night, and traveled too quickly on to Huntington. I was impressed by your beautiful eyes and smile, and by the fact that you knew where Uzbekistan is. Let's meet for a drink when you get off early one night."

"You can always meet interesting people on the Metro," said Lori Pietropaoli, who last year married another rider, Bob, after meeting him on a Yellow Line platform in Alexandria.

Amid the ebb and flow of passengers through the car doors and turnstiles, most people travel alone. But in many ways, they are in it together -- a rolling community.

"The Metro is an incredible social success," said Ron Kirby, a transportation planner for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. "All kinds of people ride Metro. It's a mixture of old people, African American, rich people, visitors, everyone."

That inspired filmmaker Nick Panagopulos to make "Five Lines," an independent feature film that screened earlier this month at the D.C. Independent Film Festival. The film follows five characters who each ride a different Metro branch. There's a lawyer on the Red Line, an Army officer on the Blue Line, a college dropout on the Green, a sightseeing teenager on the Orange Line and a homeless woman whose joy is to scrape together $1.10 for a nighttime ride on the Yellow Line over the Potomac.

"I just saw the Metro as this great spine to tell the stories of these different characters," said Panagopulos, who grew up in Annapolis with a boyhood fascination for the subway. "You've got five people from completely different walks of life, and they're all connected, thrown together by the D.C. Metro system."

Zachary Schrag, a graduate student at Columbia University who is writing a history of the Metro, said he believes that Metro is Washington's great social achievement.

"Washington as a region does not have a lot in the way of really great public space," he said. "The Mall is really a national public space more suited to Boy Scouts from Missouri than a place where people from D.C., Virginia and Maryland might mingle. There's sports, but the Redskins have been sold out since before I was born. . . . The great public space here is the Metro."

And, he said, "you don't have to talk to someone else on the Metro to have an interaction with them. Traveling together gives us some sense of shared identity and shared fate."

For the most part, the passengers who make 600,000 daily trips on the Metro do so peacefully. Metro has one of the lowest crime rates among transit systems across the country. During the crack cocaine epidemic, it wasn't unusual for people to seek safety from the streets in the subway system, Transit Police Chief Barry McDevitt said.

Fare evaders are rare, said Christopher Scripp, a station manager at Cleveland Park who is Metro's longest-serving employee. "We used to get a lot 20 years ago," he said. "People would piggyback, try to get in behind someone going through the turnstile, or 10 or 12 of them would jump the gate, like a herd of deer. We don't get that anymore. Maybe people have more money."

In 25 years, Metro trains have been painted by graffiti artists on just 13 occasions. "We clean it immediately -- the train never goes into service," said Lemuel Proctor, chief operating officer for rail. Vandals likely are frustrated because no one sees their work.

"On the New York subway, you're filled with anxiety, and on the D.C. subway, it's, like, 'Ahhhhh,' " said Panagopulos, letting out an exaggerated sigh of relief.

Part of that is by design. Metro trains, with their cushioned seats and carpeting, are intended to resem

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