I visited all 91 D.C. Metrorail stops in one day. Here’s what I saw.

I set out to ride Metrorail to all 91 stations in one day. The idea sparked when I read about Jody Avirgan, a podcast host and producer for FiveThirtyEight, who rode the New York City subway for almost 14 hours on one September day.

Along the way, I planned to document all of Metro’s defects. Delays, breakdowns and communication failures were all targets.

The journey began at 7:20 a.m., at Court House metro station just outside the District in Northern Virginia. I rode west out to Vienna, then to Wiehle-Reston East. Heading back toward downtown during morning rush hour, I began encountering my first delays. One minute at Greensboro, a minute and a half at Clarendon, nine minutes back at Court House. The Court House delay was my longest of the day, with little to no communication from the operator about how long the delay would last.

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In the context of riding Metro for 10 hours, a nine-minute delay isn’t much. But it would have caused problems had it happened during my typical 20-minute commute from Court House to McPherson Square. A nine-minute delay would have been annyoing, and the delay probably would have gotten worse if I had been trying to go downtown.

Alas, I stuck to my planned route, transferred one stop later, and rode out to Franconia-Springfield.

I eventually covered all the stations in Virginia, then rode the Yellow line north and covered the Green and Red line branches in the northeast corner of the Metro map.

Overall, Metro had been performing surprisingly well. At one transfer point, I thought to myself “Are you kidding me?” when I noticed my next train was only one minute away.

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Getting out to New Carrollton, at the end of the Orange line in Prince George’s County, Md., posed a slight problem. Thanks to a September transformer fire, Orange line trains aren’t stopping at Stadium-Armory during rush hours. So I was forced to take the Blue line back one extra stop to Potomac Avenue, where I waited almost 20 minutes for the next Orange train. If Orange trains had been stopping at Stadium-Armory, I could have made an earlier train and saved a lot of time.

Around 4 p.m., on my way downtown from New Carrollton, the operator announced that the train would be skipping the Stadium-Armory station. “It is rush hour …,” she explained. With only two other riders in my car, I begged to differ. Regardless, passengers pay rush hour fares from 3pm to 7pm, even if their train is empty.

I took a break to visit the Washington Examiner office at McPherson Square, then set out for Shady Grove station, the end of the Red line, departing at 5 p.m. Despite the evening rush, the trip was largely without incident, with crowded cars and several minutes of delay only on the way back into town.

I could have been home by 7 p.m., but I went to Chinatown to cover the first public meeting of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Riders’ Union. I left the meeting around 7:15 p.m., 12 hours after my Metro adventure began. I was ready to go home. Fortunately, my last two stops were on the way: Farragut West and Foggy Bottom.

Still, Metro wasn’t going to make the finish easy. My train encountered delays at and between every station from Metro Center to Foggy Bottom. What should have been a five-minute trip took 15 minutes. But I finally reached the promised land: All 91 metro stations in one exhausting day.

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To be fair, Metro service exceeded my expectations. Outside of rush hours, service was mostly smooth with only short delays.

When not under the heavy pressure of rush hours, Metro does well. But Metro can’t seem to handle the intense pressure of morning rush hours, when riders need it most. What good is it for the afternoon train with five riders to run on schedule if the crowded morning train with a thousand riders can’t get workers to the office on time?

In total, I spent 10 hours and 19 minutes on the Metrorail system, 49 minutes of which (or 8 percent of my time) were on delayed trains. I rode 24 different trains, stopping 28 times for delays between stations, and 12 other times stopping too short on the platform and having to pull forward. I spotted several broken escalators and elevators, but didn’t get off to count at every station. At least three times the speakers on my car were broken. Not once did I ride in or see the four brand new trains that entered service this year.

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Metro riders can be characters, and I saw several on my trip. At one point, a group of teenagers boarded the train and started swinging on the poles. Only once did someone walk through the train asking for money. Twice, fellow riders had their music so loud in their headphones that I could make out what they were listening to. Even rarer on Metro trains, I saw someone walk through the train trying to sell something, though I couldn’t decipher precisely what (the price was one for $5, or three for $10!).

Having entered and exited the Metrorail system for four different trips, my total fare for the day came out to just $8.50. Metro charges more the further you ride, but it only knows where you exit and enter the system. For example, I entered at Union Station and exited at nearby McPherson Square. In between, I stopped 54 times, but the system assumes I rode the shortest route between the two stations and charged me a low fare.

When I reached Foggy Bottom at 7:36 p.m., I got off to observe the moment. While waiting for the next train home (eight minutes away) I saw one more thing to add to my list of WMATA complaints — a staple of subway systems around the world: a rat.

This is part one of a series on WMATA. Click here for part two and here for part three.

Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.