Subway Adventures

This morning seemed pretty normal. I woke up, took care of my pets and plants and left for the train on time. The Red Line train arrived at Universal City station as expected. Somewhere along the way between Universal and Hollywood and Highland while I was enjoying music on my mp3 player, I heard the driver announcing something. I didn't think much of it as they frequently announce train stops and what train and direction you're riding in. A guy standing near me suddenly had a taken aback expression on his face, so I pulled off my headphones only to find out the announcement was over. We gradually slowed down, a horrible smell began permeating the air and then we stopped.

Everyone stood and sat in the train quietly as the driver announced he was going to see if he could repair the train. The air turned off an on as he ran up and down the side of the train along the subway tunnel walkway. When the air was off, the car was oddly quiet. Considering everyone was sitting there silently save for the occasional cough or sneeze and the quiet buzzing of people listening to music that's maybe a little too loud. At one point the guy that made the expression that first alerted me to the situation said "Why can't we go? I thought they said it was a power problem. The air is on."

After about 30 minutes, we got an announcement saying we would evacuate the train and walk to the next station or a cross walk. Although I could sense some people were starting to get anxious, this was suddenly getting more exciting. They gave us some general direction on only opening one door of each car and everyone exiting from the car, one car at a time. As soon as the announcement stopped, one woman got up from her seat and started walking towards the end of the car where I was standing and most everyone else on that end of the car followed.

While standing around trying to figure out what was going on, I noticed a stream of riders walking along the outside of the car. Someone asked what was going on because based on the evacuation announcement, we expected people to walk through the middle of each car to the front car and from there, exit through a single door onto the pathway, however the people walking outside of the car were walking toward the front of the train. People inside of the car I was in stood with their cameras flashing, taking pictures of the stream of people walking by and periodically stopping.

I heard some noise on the end of the train car with the driver area and some metro officers appeared and told us to travel through the middle of the train cars. 2 guys in front of my walked their bikes through, but I wondered how this would have worked with some of the people I've seen in wheelchairs in the past, as there were decent sized gaps between the doors on each car. It was an odd sensation to walk in a line through the middle of each train car (I think we went through 3 cars) while watching people travel along a somewhat dark path in a parallel line on the other side of the train windows.

Finally we got to the front of the train where more metro officers were standing and we had to exit the train and integrate into the line of people traveling on the walkway. Since I had just traveled through the train up until then, I have to admit I felt a little nervous as I stood in the tube shaped tunnel with the 2, maybe 2 1/2 foot wide walkway pressed against the left side and nothing on the right. It's somewhat surprisingly clean and empty outside of odd patterns all over the walls. Maybe every 20 feet along the walkway on the wall is a florescent light tube and along the entire way there is a railing. The floor was bare concrete and there was a straight drop to the tracks below. Just like walking along the train tracks in the station, but with a somewhat narrow walkway and less lighting.

A girl behind me said "I bet no one was expecting this today!" and another girl in front of me had out her video camera and was recording the whole walk. The walk was stop and go and occasionally I'd look back at the train and try to look ahead. I didn't realize that we were walking uphill until we were almost to the station and when I looked back to the train, it was suspended there shining it's crazy train light-eyes at us. I forgot to look for the little plaques telling you how many feet in either direction to the nearest station, but I think we probably walked between 600-800 feet before we walked down some steps and past a weird metal cage looking area that allowed you to see through to the train on the other side of the tracks and a giant marked area on the wall that said "DANGER DO NOT DRILL HIGH VOLTAGE" with giant yellow lines over it. We then walked up a few more stairs and we were at Hollywood and Highland on a jammed platform.

In all, the trip between Universal City and Hollywood and Highland took about an hour. I know some people were agitated with the delay because they were late, but in all I don't feel like it was a bad experience. In fact, I thought it was fun in some ways and outside of the horrible smell at the beginning (I didn't smell it when we walked through the trains) and a little bit of discomfort when the air was off on the train. I image the experience might have been a little confusing for people that didn't speak English as I only heard English announcements and no one did any sort of translations on the car I was on. Walking along the tunnel was exciting if not a little scary as well. Not that I'd want to do this every day or anything, but I felt reasonably safe throughout the process.