Subway

How do you plan for a transportation tsunami? Where do you park 10,000 charter buses? How do you accommodate a possible 1 1/2 million would-be riders on a subway system with a capacity of about 1 million? How do you explain to people who are used to driving everywhere that their cars aren't welcome in downtown Washington? What happens on the roads, at the airports and aboard the trains when millions of visitors flood the capital region to witness history at the Jan. 20 inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States?

NEW DELHI -- The streets of India's sprawling capital are not for the faint of heart. Platoons of motorcycles, ramshackle buses, fume-spewing trucks and struggling bicycle-rickshaw riders jostle for space with wandering sacred cows, motorized rickshaw taxis, legions of cars, magazine-waving vendors, horse-drawn carts and the occasional plodding elephant. Motor-scooter drivers, fed up with traffic jams, roar down the sidewalks, threatening to flatten pedestrians. Everybody honks, all the time.

The Penn North subway station was closed for three hours last night as authorities investigated the explosion of two bottles filled with an acidic substance, a Maryland Transit Administration spokesman said. MTA police initially responded before 7 p.m. to a report of a suspicious package found on the station's platform level, said the spokesman, Richard Solli. They determined those items were not a threat, but as they were leaving the station, they heard two loud pops that sounded like a car backfiring about 7:10 p.m., Solli said.

NEW YORK - Concerned about a series of slashings and robberies along the A line, janitor Jesse Atallah began carrying Mace last month on his ride to work at Kennedy Airport. Yakobzol Lyudmil, a Brooklyn hospital worker, avoids the B line because, she says, there are never officers around to break up teen-agers' fights. And Sophia Adams, a retired teacher, recently stopped riding the subway at night."Beginning last year, you could sense the change," says Adams, who lives on Roosevelt Island in the East River.

"I think 'In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson' by Bette Bias Lord is a good book. I like it because I never knew that Jackie Robinson was the first African American to ever play baseball. I also like it because a girl named Shirley Temple Wong had moved from China and at first she had friends, but then she didn't have any (except for Mabel and Emily). Another reason I liked it is because Shirley moved from China to Brooklyn, N.Y. The last reason I liked it was because it was a very emotionalbook."

Maryland's mass transit agency might reduce light rail, subway and suburban commuter bus service in the Baltimore area if the legislature forces it to address a revenue shortfall, its chief says.The light rail and subway systems are failing to cover enough of their expenses, prompting a legislative analyst's proposal to withhold $10 million from the agency's $270 million budget.If the Mass Transit Administration loses the funds, Administrator Ronald L. Freeland said this week, he will have to eliminate some weekend subway and light rail service and some commuter buses into Baltimore.

"Anatomy of a Homicide: Life on the Street" is a disappointment.The PBS film about the making of an episode of NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street" is not so disappointing that you'd go out of your way to avoid it. In fact, if you're a "Homicide" fan, you'll probably enjoy seeing some of the backstage business with screenwriter James Yoshimura. It's also visually interesting, with cinematography that mirrors the jumped-up look of the series itself.But the documentary is built on a hyped narrative constructed out of misinformation that suggests -- and there is no nice way to say this -- ignorance on the part of filmmaker Theodore Bogosian as to how network television works.

Two men posing as customers robbed a Laurel restaurant at gunpoint of an undisclosed amount of money Wednesday, county police said.Gloria M. Jones, 29, clerk at the Subway in the 3400 block of Laurel Fort Meade Road, told police a man walked into the store shortly before 9 a.m. and left. A short time later, he returned with another man and placed an order, police said.While Jones was taking the order, the second man went behind the counter, pulled out a black handgun and demanded money, police said.

Baltimore's own TV showcase may make you think twice about taking the subway.Vincent D'Onofrio guest stars as a salesman who falls between the cars of an oncoming subway train in tonight's installment of "Homicide: Life On the Street" (10 p.m.-11 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11). The police suspect his fall may not have been an accident, however, which explains why the homicide cops are called in. What is certain is that this man, while alive when the show begins, is going to be dead when it's over; the only thing keeping his insides from spilling outside is the subway car that's practically sliced him in half.

There is no drive-through window at Howard's Subway restaurant and bar in Linthicum. No "lite" menu or microbrews. No ferns.Visitors to this Hammonds Ferry Road landmark might think they have descended into a memory of the family club basement -- what with the dark paneling, red vinyl seats, half-windows. All that's missing is the Ping-Pong table covered with folded laundry.Yet this comfortable familiarity draws patrons back to Howard's year after year, notes owner Norman Sensibaugh. He should know -- his father was Howard, the same Howard whose dream of owning a restaurant and bar came true in the basement of his home.

On Sept. 6, 2006, Mark Lomax, 37, jobless and destitute, a ninth-grade dropout, a string of robbery and drug convictions behind him, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for holding up the same Subway sandwich shop on North Charles Street three times in eight days. After serving less than four years behind bars, he walked out of prison in June. Four weeks later, city police said, Lomax, who is now 39, started another robbery spree. They suspect him of robbing 17 shops and restaurants, all this month and most in Mount Vernon, Fells Point and downtown, including the same Subway shop he had targeted three times in 2005.

New York - The playwright and performer Anna Deavere Smith left Baltimore in the late 1960s - though such a meek little verb is hardly adequate to describe an act so urgent and impassioned, so freighted with family turmoil. She's barely been back to her hometown since, though she's starting to think that it's time she returned. Not for good, but long enough to look for answers to the questions rustling through her mind. "After this play, one of the first things I'd like to do is go back to Maryland," she says, during a chat in a rehearsal room of Manhattan's Second Stage Theatre, where she's preparing her new play.

WASHINGTON -- Before June's deadly subway crash, no federal agency stepped in to ensure that the Metro commuter rail system found and fixed the electrical circuits now suspected of contributing to the worst accident in the system's history. That's because none is authorized to. Although the federal government regulates the safe operation of buses, Amtrak, airplanes and even ferries, it cedes primary oversight of subway safety to local panels - in the case of Metro, the little-known Tri-State Oversight Committee.

WASHINGTON - -Five days before last week's deadly Red Line accident, a Metro crew replaced a key piece of equipment designed to prevent rail crashes, but the circuitry malfunctioned and no one in the subway system detected the problem, investigators and transit officials said yesterday. The findings raise new questions about whether Metro officials should have discovered the hazard before one train rammed into another June 22, killing nine and injuring 80. It also puts a spotlight on the Metro's maintenance crews and the design of a highly automated subway system that is supposed to be fail-safe.

A Maryland Transit Administration official said early Wednesday morning that Baltimore's Metro subway had passed a round of tests of the reliability of its control and collision prevention system conducted in the aftermath of the fatal June 22 crash of two Washington Metro trains. MTA testing engineer John Forbes said a third night of so-called "integrity tests" was completed about 3:30 a.m. and the examination had found "no anomalies whatsoever" in the speed controls on one of the two tracks from Johns Hopkins Hospital to Owings Mills.

When one subway train crashed into the rear of another in Washington this week, killing nine, it quickly raised a question in Baltimore: Could it happen here? Maryland Transit Administration officials aren't taking any chances. Just to be safe, MTA Administrator Paul J. Wiedefeld has ordered an "integrity test" to see how the Baltimore subway's train operation and collision-avoidance systems would perform in a crisis. MTA officials, who don't think an accident like Washington's could happen in Baltimore, are designing a series of tests to simulate potential problems.

The deaths of nine people in the crash involving two Washington Metro subway trains Monday evening was, as more than one person on the scene described it, a horror. It seems all the more so because such an event is so uncommon on commuter rail systems, particularly compared to the automobile-related carnage that takes place on our nation's highways each day. While it will take some time for investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board to determine the exact cause of this tragedy, myriad troubling questions have already arisen.

John Travolta plays a brawny, brainy thug, chugging down New York streets into the bowels of the city with a grim, directed bravado that's the opposite of his gleeful swagger 32 years ago in Saturday Night Fever. Denzel Washington plays the subdued, out-of-shape subway supervisor who improbably becomes the chief negotiator for the city when Travolta and his gang commandeer a subway cab and two passenger cars and hold a score of hostages for $10 million. That rat-and-cat game isn't enough reason to see The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. It's a remake of the effective 1974 suspense film that starred Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau in, respectively, the rough equivalent of Travolta's and Washington's roles.

Preakness transit service Light rail service * Take Light Rail to the Cold Spring Lane stop. * Take the connecting shuttle bus to the track. Shuttle bus service ends at 2 p.m. * Return service begins at approximately 6:15 p.m. and operates until 7:30 p.m. * $3.50 day pass required Metro subway service * Take Metro Subway to the Rogers Avenue Station. * Take the connecting shuttle bus to the track. Shuttle bus service ends at 2 p.m. * Return shuttle bus service to Rogers Avenue Station begins at approximately 6:15 p.m. and operates until 7:30 p.m. * $3.50 day pass required Local bus service * Nos. 27, 91, 44 lines, plus No. 54 via Park Heights Avenue all stop near the track.

Light Rail service * Take Light Rail to the Cold Spring Lane stop. * Take the connecting shuttle bus to the track. Shuttle bus service ends at 2 p.m. * Return service begins at approximately 6:15 p.m. and operates until 7:30 p.m. * $3.50 day pass required Metro Subway service * Take Metro Subway to the Rogers Avenue Station. * Take the connecting shuttle bus to the track. Shuttle bus service ends at 2 p.m. * Return shuttle bus service to Rogers Avenue Station begins at approximately 6:15 p.m. and operates until 7:30 p.m. * $3.50 day pass required Local bus service * Nos. 27, 91, 44 lines, plus No. 54 via Park Heights Avenue all stop near the track.