I have *never* had a trip between Silver Spring and National take only 36 minutes.

I'm all for anything that prevents dumb/confused/overwhelmed tourists from screwing things up on the Metro, though. A 10-minute seminar should be required of all unaccompanied first-time visitors from places without transit, 4 minutes of which would consist of explaining how the Metro is not crawling with muggers and terrorists.

The Metro would blow my parents' minds (if they could put thoughts of being mugged or blown up by terrorists out of their minds long enough to ride it while visiting me).

I'm sorry, but if you can figure out a highway map, a Metro map should be a piece of cake.

I completely agree. I used to live near an RV campground outside of College Park so I rode the bus to the Metro station with tons of tourists in the spring and summer months. It always amazed me that these people could successfully manuver a 25 ft RV along 95 and the Beltway without getting lost of killing fellow drivers, but getting to Metro center proved an insurmountable task. I think it had something to do with the red and green lines intersecting twice.

Oh, and Randloph, keep in mind that you are slamming Vietnam vets here. There could be a myriad of reasons these people have problems with the metro.

You know, I didn't even notice they were Vietnam vets. Yeah, that whole tunnel thing.

I think the mechanics of riding the Metro (farecard machines, the fare gates, switching trains and getting one in the proper direction when the platform is not in the middle) and the horrible things 80% of America hears about subways outweigh the map concerns. My main associations for the word 'subway' before I moved up here were 'crowded,''dangerous,' and 'dirty.'

However, the stylized not-to-scale Metro map can also be a bit perplexing to long-distance drivers who are accustomed to looking at roughly to-scale systemwide maps of highways within individual states and for the country as a whole.

Plus, long-distance drivers feel more in control of their destiny on an unfamiliar highway in a car they are operating than in an unfamiliar transit system in a train with lots of unfamiliar people that is operated by someone else.

Just one of my theories why people who can make it from the middle of the country to Baltimore and back driving with no problems at all will only deal with the MARC if someone they know well is accompanying them and will not deal with the underground Metro.