PRO: Private Transportation Is the Way to Go

Due to the Continued Complications and Developments of the Metropolitan Area Transit System, Many Students Are Choosing to Find their Own Way to Get Around

Jackie De Melo, Opinion Managing Editor

When DMV residents think of public transportation, our automatic thought is the metro. Ask anyone in DC and they will tell you about using the metro to get to one place or another.
However, for a while now, the metro has become slow, overcrowded and even unsafe. Private transportation is safer and more efficient to use.
The truth is the metro’s popularity has gone down over time. Safety has been an issue with reports of fires, as well as trains switching tracks and almost colliding with other trains.
“Scores of passengers were sickened, one fatally, in a smoke-filled tunnel; a fire in a Metro power plant slowed and canceled trains for weeks,” Washington Post writers Robert McCartney and Paul Duggan reported in their article “Metro sank into crisis despite decades of warnings.”
After these accidents and continuous debate over the safety of the metro, do you really want to continue using it as a primary transportation method?
Specifically, the timeliness of the metro is completely off, with trains arriving tens of minutes late. Even the metro tracking app meant to estimate the timeliness of the metro has been highly inaccurate. There is no reason to wait so long for transportation to arrive when you can hop in the car and make the distance in a much shorter period of time.
For some students, like junior Tomas Kehus, biking is an easy way to get to school.
“I bike half the time to school, because then I can get home easily,” Kehus said.
His decision to use private transportation as means to get to places is reflected in the Rockville community, as private transportation has been observed as more favorable among students. After a poll was taken on the Rampage twitter account, 75 out of 82 students (91 percent) sampled in the poll voted that they prefer to take their own methods of transportation, whether it be walking, biking or driving.
Even among the staff community, private transportation is more favorable. Krista McKim either walks or drives to school each morning. Methods such as biking or walking are much more environmentally friendly and are a convenient go-to when traveling a short distance. The metro system doesn’t provide these benefits.
“But driving gets you there faster!” Some will say, not keeping in mind that gas can be saved by walking or biking.
“I don’t want to waste the gasoline,” McKim says when asked about why she chooses to walk to school.
Private transportation easily surpasses in convenience, safety and timeliness when compared to public transportation. Opting out of using the metro is more beneficial for the daily commuter and anyone attempting to make a safe journey to DC.