Is Metro looking to change the name of the Georgia Avenue-Petworth Metro? An reader on the Petworth Yahoo Listserve spotted that in the proposed Metro map, it says “Georgia Ave” with “Petworth” in small letters underneath.
I can’t link to the discussion because I am not (yet) a member, but basically some folks say that’s a dumb name and should be changed.
Georgia Avenue is a very long street and actually goes well into Maryland, it doesn’t make sense to use it for a specific neighborhood. Would there be a 16th Street Metro? Pennsylvania Avenue? No. (I know there are New York Ave. and Rhode Island Ave. Metro stations, but I think those are kind of dumb names too.)
A few readers make the point that the Metro station should have Park View in the name, and considering the streets are also mentioned on the new map, Georgia Avenue is redundant. The Park View name was mentioned before and supported by the ANC. Here’s resident Brian’s post on the matter:
The WMATA goals for
updating the maps are to reduce redundancies, increase consistencies
and improve location descriptions without adding more word space. These
goals are not achieved with the current draft map.Redundant
– WMATA uses 4 words to describe the stop: Georgia, Petworth, Georgia,
New Hampshire. There is no need to use the descriptor Georgia twice
when we only have four words to work with. One instance of Georgia
should be removed to reduce redundancy.Consistent –
Each metro location stop shows the intersecting streets on third line.
We should keep Georgia Avenue as a description of the street in the
third line and remove it from the title to ensure consistency across all
station stops.Description
– Since we removed one word from the stop name, we can add another word
that describes the neighborhood metro stop without increasing word
space. Adding Park View would increase the descriptive nature of the
station stop without increasing the space on the map.Changing the Stop from:
Georgia Av [sic]
Petworth
Georgia Ave & New Hampshire Ave
To
Petworth – Park View (or put Park View on second line)
Georgia Ave & New Hampshire Ave
would meet WMATAs goals in updating the station maps.
(Full disclosure, Brian is my buddy, but it’s a good point in any case.)
Your thoughts?
