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Red Alert Politics

Shock Study: Millennials hate the DC Metro

By Rebecca Downs
Published January 13, 2016 5:13am ET
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[caption id=”attachment_157186″ align=”aligncenter” width=”590″]Image via screenshot.

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It’s no secret that the DC metro system, WMATA, flat out sucks. And so it should come as no shock that, as the Washington Business Journal reported, most millennials drive to work, and most do so alone. This may very well have to do with WMATA, since when asked about the DC metro, respondents described it as “terrible,” “unreliable,” and one person said “our Metro seems to catch on fire or derail more often than it runs on time.”

The respondents were part of the American University Kogod School of Business report on “Greater Washington Index: Millennials.”  The report studied millennials on numerous topics, but transit and commuting is of specific relevance not just for millennials, but for those in the DC area.

The topic is categorized under “Commuting to Work,” with a subheadline noting that “Getting to those jobs is another story. Ease of commuting is almost as important to Millennials as salary levels.”

The relevant part of the report starts off by mentioning:

The greater Washington area’s performance is woefully sub-par – 31% below national norms. Survey respondents had choice words to share about the traffic and congestion on greater Washington area roads. While Millennials are often cited as heavy users of alternative transit options, like bike shares and car shares, the reality from our study is that 60% of greater Washington area Millennials are driving alone to work often or always. That’s three times the number who are using the Metro to commute!


Any resident of the DC area, or knows people who are, know grumbling about the system is a common occurrence. There are entire sites and social media accounts dedicated to such complaints in fact. This includes @unsuckdcmetro, @dcmetrosucks  and How Fucked Is The Metro? There’s also a safe for work version, How Screwed Is The Metro?  The latter sites offer an option to “Tweet from the Tracks: Report metro incidents since wmata doesnt! [sic]”

Millennials do care about public transit, especially because it has to do with a cause many of them champion, climate change. A recent USA Today/Rock the Vote poll noted that:

By an overwhelming 80%-10%, those surveyed say the United States should transition to mostly clean or renewable energy by 2030, an ambitious goal that would surely require the leadership of the next president. By more than 2-1, they say the government should invest more heavily in buses and rail.


And President Obama certainly addressed such a concern, in that very context, in his State of the Union Address Tuesday night:

Now we’ve got to accelerate the transition away from dirty energy. Rather than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future — especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet. That way, we put money back into those communities and put tens of thousands of Americans to work building a 21st century transportation system.


If the president and such a key demographic care about public transportation, there’s no better place to start than right in the nation’s capitol.

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