July 1, 1977
The Blue Line of the Washington Metro first went into service. This line’s inaugural stretch between National Airport station in Arlington County, Virginia, and Stadium-Armory station in southeast Washington, D.C., joined the Red Line (introduced the previous year) in forming what was then the world’s newest major rapid transit system. The Orange Line, which became coaligned with much of its blue counterpart, did not open until 1978.
Without question, the formal debut of the Blue Line was – for better and for worse – memorable indeed. More than 100,000 people showed up on that Friday to ride on the trains traveling on the route. Barry Rascovar, writing for the Washington Post, reported in the next day’s edition that the Blue Line began service “with a New York-style crush of passengers that strained the system’s 76-car capacity for hours.”
In and of itself, however, the massive turnout of humanity at the Blue Line stations did not constitute the biggest headache. That dubious honor belonged instead to the malfunctioning farecard vending machines at many if not all of the stations. An example of this involved an engineering consultant whose hapless experience was highlighted by Washington Post reporter Stepen J. Lynton in his own article appearing in the newspaper the following day.
Lynton reported, “Dennis Anderson slid a $1 bill into a farecard vending machine at the newly opened Rosslyn subway station yesterday. The machine quickly coughed up an 80-cent farecard and 15 cents in change.” Lynton then confirmed, “It refused to return his other nickel.”
A much larger farecards fiasco occurred at L’Enfant Plaza station early that morning. Somehow, none of the vending machines there had been stocked with either farecards or change. A station attendant named James Graham took it upon himself to hand out free subway passes to the numerous people already present by 7:00 a.m. to ride on the trains.
Despite the enormous crowds and seemingly inhospitable farecard vending machines, many of the people on hand seemed to bring along with them an abundance of unbridled enthusiasm for the occasion. The Associated Press (AP), in its article about the “long-awaited Blue Line” on its first day of operations, touched upon plans to make that Friday notably festive at the Foggy Bottom-George Washington University (GWU) station.
This AP article announced, “The first person into the station will be greeted by a couple dressed as George and Martha Washington and an 83-year-old Foggy Bottom resident will smash a bottle of champagne against the station wall.” It is unclear whether the Washingtons did in fact show up there or, for that matter, if an octogenarian ended up battering the station wall with a bottle. In any case, as the Washington Post subsequently noted, prospective passengers at the Foggy Bottom-GWU station encountered a tough-to-forget sight — two folk singers identifying themselves as “Mass Transit.” This duo serenaded everyone present with a song that included the following lyrics:
“Ridin’ on, ridin’ on, ridin’ on the Metro,
You can get there faster when you’re ridin’ on our rails,
Ridin’ on, ridin’ on, ridin’ on the Metro.
The city is your neighborhood when you ride on our trains . . .”
This was not the only sing-along involving the Blue Line’s debut, however. At 6:00 a.m., a large group of senior citizens — 119, to be exact — boarded the Metro trains at the Foggy Bottom-GWU station to go for a joy ride to National Airport station. En route to their destination, these exuberant individuals sang a rousing version of Happy Days are Here Again. (This song was introduced in 1929; it is best known as the unofficial anthem of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1932 presidential campaign.)
Yet another example of the day’s unabashed excitement over the new Blue Line was demonstrated by Taffy Swanby, a federal government employee who took time to board a train at National Airport station before going to work. “I’m having a love affair with Metro,” she exulted.
It was perhaps Cythia Gorney, another Washington Post reporter, who — in her own article the next day — best summarized the sky-high passion for the latest addition to the area’s public transportation network.
“Maybe the novelty will dim, and the seats will get slashed, and the commuters will retreat into the stony, silent privacy of rush hour in the city,” asserted Gorney. “Maybe after a while, Metro will just be a subway. But not yet. Now it’s a Buck Rogers dream of a ride, all wild colors, swooping arches, gleam and zip and flashing lights.” Gorney further stated, “There was Metro before yesterday, but not like this — not with the promise of a whole city a few quick whooshes away — and the first riders descended to the Blue Line yesterday with a wary delight the subway may never see again.”
Incidentally, everything turned out well after all for poor Dennis Anderson at the Rosslyn station. A Metro technician came to the rescue and unlocked the offending farecard vending machine. Lynton reported in his Washington Post article, “The farecard vendor had shortchanged Anderson, the technician said, because what he described as a ‘fat nickel’ got caught in the machine’s works.”
Photo Credit: Public Domain
For more information on the Washington Metro’s Blue Line, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Line_(Washington_Metro)
Additional information on the history of the Washington Metro is available at https://www.wmata.com/content/dam/wmata-com/migrated-assets/about/history/upload/history.pdf
Transportation History 
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