ouij

[The bulk of this post is taken from a comment I posted on washingtondc]

Apparently, WMATA has announced plans to "immediately begin random searches of backpacks, purses and other bags.

Yeah, you heard right. These will be random, suspicionless searches of otherwise unsuspecting Metro riders.

My first instinct was to think this was outrageously intrusive. Then I tried to think about how they might go about justifying random searches. I figured they might rely on some implied consent theory-- that is, persons consenting to ride a subway system have a reduced expectation of privacy compared with persons on a public street.

Unfortunately, consent may not even be terribly relevant, considering the fact that these searches are intended to deter terrorist activity.

"We realize that all Americans everywhere are at some risk from terrorism, and that those of us who live and work in the region of the nation's capital face increased risks," Metro Transit Police Chief Michael Taborn said at a news conference yesterday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit dealt with this issue recently in MacWade v. Kelly, 460 F.3d 260 (2d Cir. 2006)--and Metro is relying on MacWade. That case dealt with the New York City subway's institution of a "Container Inspection Program." MacWade, 460 F.3d at 264.

The NYPD, seeking to "deter terrorists from carrying concealed explosives onto the subway system," set up checkpoints to search riders entering the subway system. Id. Although the searches are "voluntary," all those wishing to avoid being searched are told to leave the station. Id. Officers had no discretion with respect to the particular targets of their searches; they merely searched a number of people, "such as every fifth or tenth person." Id.

The Second Circuit held these searches to be constitutionally reasonable within the scope of the Fourth Amendment. Id. at 269. The court relied on one of its earlier decisions, United States v. Edwards, in which it ruled that the use of metal detectors at airports was a reasoanble search under the fourth amendment. Since the use of metal detectors at airports was not intended "as a general means for enforcing the criminal laws," but rather to prevent terrorist hijackings, the the Edwards court upheld those searches. Id. (quoting United States v. Edwards, 498 F.2d 496, 500-01 (2d Cir. 1974)). Quoting at length from Edwards, the MacWade court noted the "jeopardy to hundreds of human lives and millions of dollars of property." Id. (quoting United States v. Edwards, 498 F.2d 496, 500-01 (2d Cir. 1974)). Thus, on balance, such searches were constitutionally reasonable.

This "special needs" exception to the Fourth Amendment entails a balancing test:

First, as a threshold matter, the search must “serve as [its] immediate purpose an objective distinct from the ordinary evidence gathering associated with crime investigation” . . . . Second, once the government satisfies that threshold requirement, the court determines whether the search is reasonable by balancing several competing considerations. These balancing factors include (1) the weight and immediacy of the government interest. . . (2) “the nature of the privacy interest allegedly compromised by” the search . . . (3) “the character of the intrusion imposed” by the search . . . and (4) the efficacy of the search in advancing the government interest."

MacWade, 460 F.3d at 268-69 (citations omitted).

Indeed, the MacWade court may have killed the whole consent issue completely by holding that the "special needs doctrine does not require . . . that the subject of the search possess a reduced privacy interest." Id. at 269.

Good law? Good question. I certainly don't like it; but then, I don't like a lot of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, either. The Fourth Amendment, intriguingly, carries a balancing test (reasonableness) in its text, making it very difficult to get good, bright-line, per se rules.

That's as much as I can give you on short notice. This really isn't my line. For a more systematic treatment of this type of issue--far more systematic than I can give in the space of an LJ comment, see Kyle P. Hanson, Comment, Suspcicionless Terrorism Checkpoints Since 9/11: Searching for Uniformity, 56 Drake L. Rev. 171 (2007).



(Intriguingly, MacWade hasn't gotten a lot of play in the legal blogosphere. Law & Society Blog dealt with this back in '05)

(Via DCBlogs)

Apparently, the Hannah Montana craze is causing parents to do, well, crazy things. PennQuarter Living recounts finding a number of weeping 'tween girls on the Metro, unaccompanied by any responsible adult:

The eldest girl (who was 13) explained that they were on their way to the Hannah Montana concert at the Verizon Center and that they were lost. I offered to help them find their way, but demanded to know where their parents were. Apparently, tickets to the concert being scarce, their parents had bought them one way tickets on Metro and sent them to the concert unescorted.

I was shocked. What parent would send their sub-13-year-old daughters into Metro DC unsupervised? Surely, this had to be an aberration. But as I exited the Chinatown Metro to walk the girls toward Will Call, I saw several more groups of young girls trying to navigate the large crowd alone.

Unaccompanied kids, of course, aren't a shockingly uncommon sight on the Metro system during school days: school kids seem to take Metrobus and Metrorail unaccompanied at a very young age.

Which leads me to think: first, what is the actual risk that unaccompanied kids will come to harm on the Metro system? And, second, should they come to harm, who would be liable?

"Time!"

My study group was taking a practice Contracts exam. On any ordinary day, this would have made us the very exemplars of scholarly diligence. On a Friday afternoon, after the last class of the day, sitting in an empty classroom, we looked like we were serving after-school detention.

I'd like to think that I'm usually pretty sharp at Contracts. It is my favorite first-year course so far, after all. But I just wasn't feeling it this afternoon. I was missing issues. I spent too long making utterly irrelevant arguments. I mischaracterized the facts--fatally so. In other words, had this been the real thing, I would have failed it utterly.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I could hear my Contracts professor warning me.

"You'll either get an A or a D in this course. Don't make me give you the D."

Objectively, we had a good session. We covered all of the major issues. We were able, among the five of us, to see where we should have gone with the analysis. But no matter how productive our review session, I couldn't escape the creeping sense of dread. The exam is in four weeks. I am not yet ready. I need to be ready.

"Don't worry," says one of us. "Nobody in this room is going to fail."

We turn and look, doubtfully.

"I checked his grade distributions. OK, so he doesn't give out any As. But I'm pretty sure, given what we've done here, we're at least at Cs."

We are still dubious.

"So we're going to survive summary judgment?" I say. In the back of my mind, I hear my professor's voice, reprimanding me for missing an obvious issue:

"C'mon. I'm not asking you to win. I just want you to avoid summary judgment!"

"Yes. I think we're going to survive summary judgment."

I'm still not so sure. We adjourn. I linger in the atrium for a while, chatting. Finally I start walking for the Metro station.

Delays on the Red Line. I finally make it to Metro Center and change to the Orange line. I file onto my train. I am too upset to read, or think, or do anything. I can only sit and mull over my spectacular failure in this afternoon's practice exam.

A frail, wizened old woman shuffles onto my train. She finds a seat. We get to Farragut West, and she asks the young people sitting across from her where she is.

"Is this Dunn Loring?" Her voice is shaky, her accent doubtful. The young people can't hear her.

"No ma'am," I say. "This is Courthouse. Dunn Loring's a long way off. I'll let you know when it's coming up--I'm riding out that far."

She is grateful. "Thank you very much," she says. "All of you, thank you!"

The young people get off at Courthouse, and I slide into the seat across from the old lady. She took the Chinese bus down from New York--"the City, you know, the bus that leaves from Canal Street"--to visit her great-grandson. She'd spent the whole afternoon on the bus. Her great-grandson's mother had promised to pick her up from DC, but at the last minute had bailed out and told her to go to Dunn Loring instead.

"This has been the longest part of the trip!" She told me, exasperated. It was quite a journey for her--she was hobbling on a cane and a broken hip.

We came onto Dunn Loring. She thanked me and told me to take care of myself. Imagine that--she told me to take care! She thanked me again.

I told her to be careful. And then something unexpected came out of my mouth--I thanked her.

I had spent my whole afternoon dwelling on how terrible I was, how hopeless my exams seemed. And now all--almost all-- of the bitterness was gone. The work is important, yes, very important. The stakes are high. But there was something wonderfully liberating about doing the human, decent thing and helping a lost person get found.


The old lady couldn't see very well, but she made me see a little more clearly.

It's 1:30 AM on a Friday night on the south side of the Vienna Metro.
The more alert revelers are making their way to their cars. At the
entrance, a man in his late middle age stands, silently, holding up a
placard:

WITNESS? If you were a witness to the beating of a young man here on
January 12, talk to me.

I talk to him. He's looking for witnesses to the beating of his son,
allegedly by a Metro transit policeman.

I wish I had the presence of mind to have taken the man's name and
e-mail address, but if you were a witness to a beating on January 12 at
the Vienna Metro, please identify yourself to the relevant authorities.

Thanks to a helpful comment by roses_rejoice, I've been able to track down some further anecdotal evidence to my cold RFID theory. It would appear that the denizens of much colder cities report (sporadically) similar problems. Picking up on a story from Boston, Chicagoist wondered if mittens could solve their cold RFID problem. Apparently, however, there's a great deal of debate as to whether there is such a phenomenon:

After first hearing about the gloves this morning, we were quite excited, as we thought it might be an excellent way to keep both our cards and ourselves warm. Why keep the card warm, you ask? We’ve been having infinitely more trouble using our Chicago Card Plus on the bus ever since the weather took a turn for the worse, often having to try to re-scan the card for several stops. A discussion in the Chicagoist offices suggested that no one else had experienced such problems, and that RFID chips in the cards are built to withstand very cold temperatures.

A discussion from the CTA Tattler, however, brings up some anecdotal evidence of RFID freezing problems. One commenter said:

. . . seems if the temp drops below 30, my card stops working well. I keep my CCP inside my fleece glove, take it out and blow a rush of warm air on it right before the turnstile(I know this sounds dirty but true!) and only THEN does it maybe work!!

What I don't have is rigorous testing and hard evidence. The "I have a problem" brigade seem to be taking buses rather than subways. The "I have no problem" brigade seem to keep their cards inside their wallets.

Hypothesis: the "no problem/in wallet" brigades' cards are significantly warmer, having been either warmed by subjects' body heat or insulated by the other contents of their purses/handbags. It should be trivial to determine the temperature at which a SmarTrip fails to register--all we have to do is cool SmarTrips to various temperatures and observe their behavior.

I drive to the metro and park there, preferring to metro to DC rather than fight my way on the roads. Since I have to have my SmarTrip out to get out of the Metro parking lot, I tend to leave my SmarTrip in my car overnight.

The car is parked outside on the street. Lately, on freezing mornings, my commute to work has an added hassle: the metro faregates will refuse to recognize my SmarTrip card, even after several passes. However, on the ride home, I have no such problem.

The only change between the two situations is that the SmarTrip is cold, nay, frozen in the morning. It seems to work better when it's been kept warm all day, as it would be at work.

Intrigued, I kept my SmarTrip in my (warm) house last night. Morning came, and I had no problem with the Metro faregates.

Can anyone else report a similar phenomenon? For those of you who know more about this sort of thing, why would an RFID tag like the SmarTrip be affected by temperature?

Blind me with science.

EDIT: Preliminary googling turns up a number of papers discussing the effects of high temperatures and electrostatic discharge on passive RFID circuits, but not much on lower temperatures.

FRIDAY, 18:00h, Metro Center.

A gaggle of kids--teenagers, maybe 15 years old-- gets organized on the Orange Line platform at Metro Center. One does a headcount, and discovers there’s one girl missing.

“I’ll go see if she’s over there,” volunteers a floppy-haired boy, rather too eagerly.

“No, don’t, wait,” says the headcounter. It’s too late: floppy is already rushing up the stairs to the Shady Grove platform. “Don’t sacrifice yourself for her, she’s not going to give you anything.”

I was listening to my music on my headphones when I heard a heavily-accented baritone cut through a quiet section of a Portishead album:

O little town of Bethlehummm hmmmHMMMhummmHMMMm humm lieeee

Yes, today, my Orange Line train was graced by none other than the famous Korean Hymn Dude himself! This gent--of indeterminate (middle?)--age appears every year at about this time. He steps onto the train car with a polite "Good morning." He opens a well-worn, black leather-bound hymnal, and begins singing. Having finished two verses between Ballston and Virginia Square, he closed his hymnal, said "Thank you. Merry Christmas!" and shuffled off the train.

My advent season is now complete.

Fort Totten, Green Line platform, 22:00, Friday.

Branch Ave. train pulls in. Two white girls disembark: identical short white skirts, heels. Bottle blondes. The Branch Avenue train riders watch thieir skirts swish towards the escalators.

“They look hot.” A countertenor’s voice from a heavyset black young black man--a college student? --in a Jamaican-flag jacket.

“They look cold” deadpans another rider, sympathetically. He certainly seems dressed for wind in a long black leather coat and matching black leather flat cap--think Lawrence Fishburne of the Green Line.

I'm sitting on the Orange Line on my way to work Friday morning. Somewhere right after Farragut West, someone taps me on the shoulder.

"Hey, I know you!"

The familiar voice turns out to belong to bassist extraordinaire and Welbilt alumnus Nick Briscoe! Turns out Nick's working downtown at a political nonprofit.

It was really nice to see him, even if I didn't recognize him at first without the hair.

I miss hearing him on the bass for the Welbilt boys, but I was really happy to see him, and to hear that the family's doing OK.

Metro Center, Orange/Blue line platform

Riddle me this: of three escalators at Dupont Circle (south), only one functions--and why is it the DOWN escalator?

Orange Line ~08:00, between Vienna & Dunn Loring:

I've seen people do a lot of things on the metro. I certainly have seen them eat and drink (more than I really want to). I've seen them litter.

But today is a first, my friends. I saw someone dipping on the metro.

I heard a slapping noise and looked up from my newspaper, thinking something had gone wrong with the train. Nope. It was a man slapping a can of Copenhagen around. Opens the can, takes out a large wad of tobacco, and puts it in his mouth.

No spittoon in sight. Thankfully, he got off at Dunn Loring.

Orange Line Westbound to Vienna/Fairfax, ~18:00, Tues 30 May.

Best motorman, EVER.

Pulling out of Metro Center: All right, y’all. I’m gonna cycle the doors again. Somebody up here in the first car’s messin’ me up.

Pulling into Farragut West: Next station...Foggy Bottom, gee-double-U-U.Silence Sorry, folks. Next station: Farragut West. They both start with "F".Silence, Hope I didn’t shake anybody up.</i>

Pulling into Foggy Bottom Oh, look--PEOPLE!

On the way to Rosslyn Next station....Rosslyn...First station....in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Silence....Under the river and through the woods.</i>

On the way to Courthouse Next Station....Courthouse....destination of A LOT OF FOLKS. And if you hang on ‘till Ballston, you might even get a SEAT....EVERYBODY gets off at BALLSTON!</i>

At Clarendon We lost a MOB at that last station...!

Ballston EVERYBODY’S been waiting for this....Next stop...Ballston!

Towards East Falls Church Next stop....East Falls Church...OUTSIDE! Doors SHOULD open...left side.


This guy totally made my trip home.

Hey you. Yes, you there, miss. You were on the Orange line yesterday afternoon, bound for Vienna, at Rosslyn. I sat down in the seat behind your row; you were standing, and talking to your man who was seated. I don't know what the hell you were talking about, because I turned my music up really loud to drown you out. Frankly, I don't care.

But you DEFINITELY crossed the line when you started discussing the sore/pimple/pustule that you had on your belly. How did I know you were talking about it, since I had by now turned my music to deafening levels? Because you saw fit to lift your shirt and show your man that disgusting pustule. You pointed at it. You discussed it at length. And, more to the point, you compelled a whole crowded Metro car to consider your dermatological ailments.

It is a wonder that I didn't vomit at the sight. Perhaps I didn't because I would have been ashamed to throw up on the Metro--even if you obviously were not ashamed to flaunt your open sore.

Please, ladies. If you're going to lift your shirts on the Metro, do it for the right reasons.

That is all.

So I’ve been costing out my commuting options lately, in light of the recent rise in gas prices.

PER DAY

All Public Transport: CUE Bus + MetroRail: $8.05
Driving to and parking in DC: $15.63
Driving to and parking at Metro, MetroRail to & from DC: $12.65

PER WEEK

All Public Transport: CUE Bus + MetroRail: $40.25
Driving to and parking in DC: $78.17
Driving to and parking at Metro, MetroRail to & from DC: $63.25

( methodology and math under here )

It was a beautiful afternoon today--clear skies and fair weather--so right after work, I decided to hang around Dupont. I wandered back into Second Story and picked up a couple of books (about which more in another entry, possibly),

I went down into the Dupont Circle metro station. Seeing that my SmarTrip card was low, I emptied my pockets of change and small money to top it up. While I was feeding the Farecard machine, the P.A. crackled to life. I didn’t hear much of it, but I caught the important bits: “Customers.....Orange Line....direction of Vienna.....delays....disabled train....Deanwood.....advised to board any Blue Line train and change at Rosslyn...”

Well, shit. I took the escalator back up onto 19th Street and considered my options.

I could get back on the Metro at Dupont, change at Metro Center, fight my way through the crush, grab a blue line train, then join another crush on the platform at Rosslyn. Forget that; two transfers was too much to ask.
( Read more... )

The controversial MetroWest development--which would bring closely-packed condos, office, and retail space to the south side of the Vienna Metro, was approved yesterday after a contentious public comment/planning process.

The project drew some influential detractors, including Chairman Tom (that'd be U.S. Rep. Tom Davis III, R-Va 11th), who has consistently cited concerns about the nature of the growth such densification would bring:

Those who argue against new roads and bridges in outlying areas generally do so because they believe it will only spur additional residential development far from employment centers. These people will still be working in D.C., and expanded infrastructure will only serve to funnel additional traffic to already-clogged roads inside the Beltway. If this is the case, how smart is it to overload a terminus station with thousands of commuters, most of whom will be traveling to the city center?

Metro's most pressing need is for new rail cars to respond to expanding growth. This fact is reflected in my bill, which would authorize funding for 340 new cars, enough to run eight-car trains maximum capacity -- 100 percent of the time during peak hours. Yet even by Metro s own estimates this extremely large purchase would not adequately address the demand on the system. Riders on the Orange Line and all the lines, I should add will frequently be unable to board trains due to crowding.

The point is that Metro has fundamental capacity limitations. Buying new rail cars will help the situation, but there is a point after which the system cannot accommodate any more riders. So building enormous developments on top of stations should not be viewed as inherently good. If that is the development pattern, then this region needs to be prepared to expand capacity on the core 103-mile system laying new tracks, digging new tunnels extremely expensive, if not cost-prohibitive propositions.

While Chairman Tom is right about fundamental capacity limitations on Metrorail, I don't think we're really running up against this yet. Most days, I can still get a seat on the train at Vienna during rush hour.

I believe the bulk of Chairman Tom's opposition has been based in the observation that increasing densification would bring overwhelmingly Democratic voters, threatening him in his usually invulnerable 11th district.

Of more concern, however, is the local congestion that such a development might load onto Nutley Street and the surrounding highways (Lee Highway and Arlington Boulevard) and suburban arterials. The metro might take care of the 9 to 5 transportation of many of the new residents, but I'm guessing they won't walk everywhere. They will drive, and drive into Vienna, to Tysons', and elsewhere, and load up the roads.

That's the cost, as I see it, and an inevitable short-term consequence of the first phase of densification. If the project is successful, it might trigger more pedestrian and transit-centered densification like we've seen in North Arlington.