hahhaha. i was a redliner at the time and just thought, lord, i’m lucky to get ON the train at rush hour.

i havent taken the red at rush hour since 2002 or so, and it was crowded as hell then, i’m sure its way way worse now.

And as an Orange line rider, but in the MD direction, trust me, the Red Line is ALOT busier. I normally can get a seat on both my ride to and from work; some days I get two seats to myself. The only reason the Orange line comes close to the red line is because of the VA area you all mention.

And as someone who used to do the Vienna to Metro Center commute, the time spent on the Orange line certainly seems longer than my more recent Union to Bethesda commute. So time spent in crowding without any way to move may be longer on the Orange as well. At least with the Red there is more frequent turnover and chance of better positioning!

The Clarendon buses run in two directions, away from the Orange line as well as towards it.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by mvngmomentarily: Great article from @welovedc on Metro’s most crowded stations and buses. Where does yours rank? http://bit.ly/3pi3ae...

Anyway, interesting stats nonetheless.

I for one hated my standing-room-only Orange line commute from Ballston to Farragut West when I lived in VA. It was a somewhat-regular event to not even be able to get down to the platform at Farragut West in the evenings because it was so packed with people that the station manager had shut down the escalators for safety reasons.

To anyone wondering about where all this data came from, check out the 2009 Metro Media Guide. Pages 13-18 provide lots of interesting numbers.

Additionally, interesting to see that the X2 is the busiest un-grouped bus line. Makes a good case for the street car line under construction.

If you have 10 rail cars on both lines, but they do 5 trips on the orange and 4 trips on the red, then you have 50 instances (trips) of cars on red and 40 on orange. (Purely hypothetical made up numbers obviously).

That is, my guess would be that, for people coming from outside the city in the morning (and going back in the evening), there’s probably a pretty good split of people coming from the Glenmont and Shady Grove branches. Assuming most of those people are getting off downtown, there’s a good chance that many of the people from those two branches aren’t on the train at the same time (e.g., if they all get off at Metro Center).

For the Orange Line, though, my guess is the vast majority of the ridership comes from one direction — Vienna inwards. So the majority of Orange Line riders *would* be on the same train at the same time.

Basically, this is a long way to say that both sides may very well be right — the Red Line has more riders, but the Orange Line may be more “crowded.”