Metro Unveils New Lights at Stations, on Buses

IF YOU TRAVEL through the Gallery Place-Chinatown station on the Red Line, you might be seeing red — blinking red lights, that is. Metro is testing a new lighting scheme for the flashing lights embedded in the granite platform edge.

On Saturday night the flashing red spots caught this writer off guard. Metro's standard white lights have always seemed to blend in well with the perpetual twilight of Metrorail's concrete coffered ceilings. The use of red makes the platform less serene and more threatening, something to avoid. And that's part of the reasoning.

Metro General Manager John Catoe had some details in his Friday LunchTalk online chat:

Yes, we are testing new LED lights as pilot program at the Gallery Place Metrorail station. A few weeks ago, Metro installed new amber yellow LED platform edge lights on the lower level at Gallery Place on the Yellow and Green Line. Last night, we installed red platform edge lights on the Red Line platform to Shady Grove. We hope to install the edge lights on the other platform. The decision to test these new LED lights is threefold. We wanted to find a technology that would lower our maintenance costs and reduce the number of times we must take a track out of service to install the platform edge lights. Another benefit is reducing energy consumption, which has a direct benefit of lower electricity costs for the authority. And we want to see if there are any potential safety benefits. For example, we hope to see if customers will behave differently if there are red lights on the platform edge instead of the traditional white or other colors such as amber.

Not to be outdone, Metrobus, too, is getting a flashier look. Following a string of fatal bus accidents involving pedestrians, some Metrobuses have been getting new flashing lights to make the vehicles more visible to drivers and pedestrians, especially at night.

Yesterday on Missouri Avenue in Northwest, this writer saw an Ivy City-bound E2 bus making its way down the busy roadway with its new lights flashing. The treatment is fairly simple, nothing too, ahem, flashy. Live From the Third Rail spotted the lighting system, called Seymore (get it?), on one S2 bus on 16th Street NW.

» "Gallery Place Metro Station Gets Red Lights" [GP Living]
» "Red Lights on the Red Line" [Bluey Blog]
» "Transcript: General Manager John Catoe" [LunchTalk/WMATA]
» "Metro Testing New Bus Technology to Reduce Collisions" [WMATA]
» "KITT Driving WMATA Metrobuses?!" [Live From the Third Rail]