The Voice of Metro

Neat!

Randi Miller, a 44-year-old Woodbridge resident, is the new voice of the Washington Metrorail who will tell riders "the doors are closing" on every Metro train after every station stop, transit officials announced this afternoon.

The honor brings no cash prize -- just bragging rights as her voice is piped into subway cars 33,017 times a day. Miller, who is not an actor or voice-over professional but works instead for a local car dealership, will enjoy a peculiar type of celebrity as her voice becomes one of the distinctive sounds of Washington, intimately familiar to Metro's 700,000 daily subway riders.

Officials said the change was needed because the old message was stale and no one listened to it.

"We repeatedly observe passengers treating the current announcement and chime like a yellow light on a traffic signal. They run for the doors when they hear it, rather than stepping back and letting the doors close," said Jim Hughes, acting assistant general manager for operations in a statement posted on the transit agency's Web site. "We hope the change in voice and message will get people's attention and change their behavior to make for a smoother, faster trip for everyone."

Of course, it would help if you could actually hear the message. Maye they need to install new speakers as well.

Better yet, if they ran longer trains more often . . . . (yes, yes, I ride the Orange line, I know about the 8 train demo project. Problem is they only added two cars to each train, but cut down on the total number of trains. As a result, the trains have seemed much more crowded this week.)