Eleven Metro stations will get official nicknames by next summer under a new Metro policy to shorten the unwieldy names. The transit agency will use a concise primary name for those stations, putting the rest of the existing name underneath as a secondary name. So the system’s longest name, U Street/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo, will become U Street, with African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo treated as the secondary name.
The agency is timing the changes with its plans to realign the Yellow and Blue lines service in June 2012. The agency has to make new station signs and update maps systemwide anyway, so it is tacking the name changes on to the work.
| 11 stations getting name-trims |
| The bolded names will be the primary names, under the change, with the rest of the name considered a secondary name. |
| Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan |
| New York Ave-Florida Ave-Gallaudet U |
| Mt. Vernon Sq/7th St-Convention Center |
| Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter |
| West Falls Church-VT/UVA |
| U Street/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo |
| Vienna/Fairfax-GMU |
| Georgia Ave-Petworth |
| Grosvenor-Strathmore |
| Dunn Loring-Merrifield |
| Rhode Island Ave-Brentwood |
The idea for secondary names came from the blog Greater Greater Washington, which sponsored a fantasy map contest earlier this year, asking its readers to submit redesigns of the existing Metro map.
Other stations also could get shorter names — or be renamed entirely — as Metro is encouraging jurisdictions to propose changes. They will need to come up with proposals by September to make the new June 2012 map. But they’ll have more chances in December 2013 and late 2016 when the new Dulles Rail line is slated to begin service, requiring new maps once again.
Any new names have to follow rules, though, even though similar rules were broken in the past. Fifteen of the 86 existing stations violate the 19-character limit, Metro says, and seven of those have more than one hyphen or slash mark separating the names.
The new names cannot be more than 19 characters, even with secondary names included.
Any landmark listed must be within half a mile of the station so that someone could reasonably walk to the landmark.
The agency also plans to conduct customer research as part of any name change to make sure the names work for riders.
But don’t expect lots of changes. The jurisdictions that propose the name will have to pay for all the sign and map costs of any changes not already being done.
And don’t expect Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport to change easily, either, despite having 37 characters. The long name is federal law, according to Metro Assistant General Manager of Customer Service Barbara Richardson.
