New Fugly Metro Cars


New Fugly Metro Cars
Originally uploaded by needlessspaces

I stepped onto the red line this morning and did a double take, overwhelmed by this color and pattern.

AH, the ugliness! The new cloth seats, the non-carpet black and white flooring, no Metro, please no…

Katie moved to DC in 2007, and has since embarked upon a love affair with the city. She’s an education reform advocate and communications professional during the day; at night and on the weekends, she’s an owner here at We Love DC. Katie has high goals to eat herself through the entire city, with only her running shoes to save her from herself. For up-to-the-minute news and reviews (among other musings), follow her on Twitter!

15 thoughts on “New Fugly Metro Cars

  1. ew! it looks like those high school tour buses you take to Six Flags. Where is the carpet to soak up people’s vomit?

  2. The flooring I could live with. Anything at this point is an improvement over mildewy carpet.

    The seats, however… well, those seem like a step backward to me.

  3. Oh dear god, not again… those are the same ones that RTD in Denver uses on their newer buses. Same seat covers. They’re ugly there, and they’re just as bad here.

    Figures Metro can’t even get seat covers that look decent… I continue to marvel at the incompetence WMATA shows in their system.

  4. Ok, right? I feel like the cloth is dirtier, much uglier, and less sanitary than our current plastic seats. The floors I could care less, just like @fredo, but the seats? EW, just EWWWWwwwwwwaahhhhh.

  5. Yeah…it’s ugly. But it’s also hella cheaper. Floor doesn’t need to be shampoo washed or replaced every six weeks (like the old carpeting) and the seats, while ugly and less comfortable, will save thousands of dollars per car per year. You can either have (hopefully) cheaper (or at least no more increases) fare or you can have aesthetically pleasing seats/carpets.

  6. rflynn, really? you think the cloth seats are cheaper than the spray-down wipe-off plastic? you’d think it would be the opposite, same as the floors, since you can clean them without shampoo, and they’re more durable and don’t rip or fray as easily. i’m not sure i care about the ugly factor (though it’s there, i’m just saying) but more the sanitation and upkeep. cloth soaks up pee. plastic does not.

  7. Yeah. The old seats weren’t actually plastic, they were pleather. (Which I guess is like plastic?..or yeah, probably is plastic). But anyway, the pleather was incredibly expensive to replace when it was torn or drawn on, ect.

    Also, the pleather seats used to be color-coordinated to the metro line they were on. Which made cars not interchangeable. (This was a stupid holdover policy from when the metro was created back in the 7/800s that they’re doing away with).

    The multi-colored seats also don’t show age or graffiti as easily.

    And, I’m sure they’re non-synthetic fibers, meaning they’re probably easy to clean. Though I’m not sure on that.

    But I do agree. They’re very very ugly.

  8. Ha, it’s ok, I got it.

    And I sort of thought that might have been the case, the color coordinating, when I was visiting here to see if I liked it enough to move here I thought that was true. I also (and still) think they should have color coordinated flashing lights on the platforms for what train is coming. That is brilliant. But I am not queen. Weird, right?

    But back to the seats. DUM, METRO, DUM. par for the course. I firmly believe in the pleather/plastic/naugahyde as the right way to go, because i still argue that it lasts longer and is easier to maintain sanitation-wise, especially in the world of the OMGZSWINEFLOOZ. but that is logical, and when has Metro ever been logical? (see: color coordinated seats)

  9. I definitely like getting rid of the carpeting and couldn’t care less about the color. The cloth seats are just kind of meh to me. I’d be okay with getting rid of the cushions altogether and just going with hard plastic like they use in NYC. Most of all though, I wish they would get rid of those stupid arm rests!

  10. I second the armrest thing. Seriously!

    I actually like the cloth. Maybe they should get rid of cabin lights and make the seats glow in the dark in those crazy patterns. And pipe in “Dark Side of the Moon”.

  11. Ditto on the arm rests. I’m a big guy (6’5″, 250 lbs.), so squeezing myself in when someone else is already sitting in a row isn’t fun for either of us… to say nothing of leg room, which is dismal. WMATA took lessons from the airline industry on that one.