The Animals on the Metro

WMATA's ears must be burning. Blogs have been pondering the transit system from several angles.

On Greater Greater Washington, Michael Perkins considers why the budget always comes up short. The projected shortfall for 2012 is $121 million. The short answer is ridership is declining, but Perkins considers several initiatives to improve service. Local jurisdictions could be asked to pony up more funding to help get them started. 

At DCist, Martin Austermuhle reacts to a post on The Atlantic Cities about a WMATA study considering what the D.C. area would be like without the transit agency. Short answer: Lousy commutes.

Great summation: "While it's fun -- and terrifying -- to play around with these hypotheticals, no one should base their existing opinion on Metro solely on the idea that if it weren't around commuting would suck way worse than it does now. If that were the case, it would certainly say something about how far popular opinion with the region's mass transit agency has fallen."

Though the human opinion of Metro may be falling, animals seem to like the idea of a subway, according to a University of Maryland study that got an article in the Washington Post. Said BeyondDC: "They clearly show why this behavior is as beneficial to humans as it is to animals: no car driver wants to hit a giant horned buck or a stinky skunk."

And it looks like animals are riding the Metro, too, judging by some photos on Unsuck DC Metro. One of the blog's readers, Jill, says: "There are a lot of things wrong with Metro, but one thing you used to be able to count on was that it was pretty clean."