By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 10, 2006; B01

Next time you ride the Metro, consider what lies beneath: The cushion on which you sit costs $17 to $35 and is made by Virginia prisoners; the wool carpet under your feet comes from Taiwan and costs $5,200 per rail car.

For the comfort of passengers, the transit agency spends more than $1 million a year to replace worn cushions and filthy carpet. That doesn't include the cleaning.

Metro is one of a few major transit systems in the country to have cushions and carpet. They were luxurious touches included in the system's original design more than three decades ago to lure suburbanites out of their cars.

But now, Metro is the nation's second-busiest subway system. Riders took 739,525 trips on an average weekday last month. Three of Metro's busiest days ever were recorded during one week last month. Nothing special on those days -- no ballgames, no rallies.

Metro's new interim general manager wonders if it isn't time to rethink the comfort of your feet and, maybe, your tush.

Does it make sense, Dan Tangherlini wants to know, to spend money on carpets and cushions? Could that money be better used to make sure the system "goes where and when people want it to go"? Is there some other material cheaper and easier to maintain?

Riders, brace yourselves: Metro may go vinyl. The agency will test a slip-resistant vinyl flooring this summer -- in one pair of cars. No sense rushing out of the lap of luxury. "Maybe there's some room for experimenting," Tangherlini said recently while riding the Red Line. He's also open to cushion alternatives, but because Metro riders seem more wedded to the padding for their posteriors, there aren't any experiments in the works.

The carpet question, though, has come up often. Metro Board member Chris Zimmerman, who represents Arlington County, recalled that the board was always told that carpet was cheapest. It will be interesting to see, he said, if Tangherlini "comes up with the same answer."

Visitors are often stunned to see upholstered seats and carpet.

"There's no carpet in any of the subways in Europe," said Suzanne Liritis, 58, a photographer, riding the Red Line downtown. Liritis lives in Athens and travels extensively. She said she couldn't believe her eyes when she stepped on a Metro train and saw carpet. Shaking her head, she added: "It's a waste of money."

The decision is not as simple as it might seem: Carpet absorbs road noise. And Washington's riders can be quite attached to the amenities. At the same time, carpet absorbs water, which can damage a car's substructure and affect operation. And dirty carpet smells gross.

Bottom line: Metro managers say customers are not aware of how much work it takes to maintain the 952-car fleet. In fact, riders get downright surly about upkeep.

During a washingtonpost.com online chat last month, a Yellow Line rider complained about carpet stains on the previous evening's commute. "It can't cost that much to CLEAN THE CARS," the rider wrote.

Actually, it costs about $6 million a year to clean the rail cars, plus $500,000 for equipment and supplies.

Crews remove trash and spot-clean at the end of the morning and evening rushes and when a train is taken out of service at day's end. The carpet in every rail car is vacuumed once a week, shampooed every two months (more often during a bad winter, when platforms are salted to de-ice them). Carpet is replaced every five years. Seats, windows, walls, poles and light fixtures are washed by hand every 60 days.

Metro's no-graffiti policy means defaced seats are removed immediately. The normal life span on cushions is "years and years," according to Eugene Garzone, who is in charge of rail-car maintenance.

This spring, Metro is working overtime replacing carpet. At the Shady Grove rail yard on a recent Saturday morning, six mechanics, working two shifts, ripped up the floor covering, removed seats and installed replacements on a pair of rail cars. The work has to be done in the middle of the night or on weekends, when the system isn't busy. The mechanics who fix the wheels and brakes also fit cushions and lay carpet.

Mechanics such as Simon Jules, 40, say they come across all sorts of stuff in the process. One time, he found skimpy red-and-white underwear wedged between two seats.

Fellow mechanic Lentre Arnold, 49, who has seen the orange cushions slashed by knives and scarred by graffiti, offered this explanation: The color, he said, brings out people's worst emotions. Riders "don't know how much has to be done on the rail cars, but I hope they appreciate it," Arnold said, wedging a new blue seat back snugly atop a matching bottom.

Mechanic Billy Gannom, 26, wearing a mask and gloves, pulled up ratty carpet amid clouds of dust. Another worker scraped glue from the floor and tightened loose floorboard screws before 70 square yards of new carpet ($48.95 a square yard) could be put down. Total cost per rail car: $3,700 for material, $1,500 for labor.

"We don't have carpet in New York," said Brian Gibson, 37, while sprawled on his stomach, slicing carpet edges with a box cutter. Running his fingers over the red, yellow, green and blue tweed known as Taiping Option, he added: "This is really, really nice."

The old carpet is chucked into dumpsters, but the cushions are trucked to the Lunenburg correctional facility in Lunenburg, Va., three hours away. At the low-medium security facility, nine inmates work full time refurbishing Metro seats. In assembly-line fashion, they strip off the dirty vinyl, steam the flattened foam to restore it to a three-inch thickness and glue new vinyl to a metal backing. Each cushion takes about 18 minutes. The line turns out about 200 cushions a day.

The orange and brown vinyl is being replaced with the newer color scheme Metro calls Potomac Blue, Colonial Burgundy and Chesapeake Sand.

Lunenberg has 1,250 inmates and operates several workshops. The Metro work pays the most -- 62 to 80 cents an hour -- and is year-round. And as Charlie Beach, who runs all the workshops, pointed out, gluing seats is "not as dusty as the sanding pit."

"It's an excellent job, yes, ma'am," said Henry Walker, 48, the gluer. "I'm doing the time instead of the time doing you."

For all the fuss about cushions and carpets, some riders say they don't really notice.

At the Farragut North Station on a recent morning, a man in a business suit rifled through his thick file folder for a document. Did he remember the color of the carpet on his train? He paused for a moment, then replied: "Drab."

But some regular riders see everything. They notice if the armrests don't match the seats. Or if the carpet is the new hue, but the seats are still orange and brown. Or if there are carpet fuzz balls.

Most said they did not want Metro to become like the New York subway, with hard plastic benches.

"Keep the seats," said Matt Thompson, 24, a graphic designer who lives in Germantown. He rides from the Shady Grove Station, at one end of the Red Line, to his office at the Farragut North Station in downtown Washington. It takes 32 minutes, and he appreciates a comfortable seat.

Riders are ambivalent about carpet. The important thing is to keep it clean, said Christina Haslinger, 53, who gets on at Forest Glen, on the other end of the Red Line. She said she'd gladly give up carpet if Metro bought heaters for outdoor platforms.

Then there's Daphne Nedd, 74, a cafe attendant who takes Metro from the Rhode Island Avenue-Brentwood Station. Carpet prevents slips, she said. And it absorbs annoying sounds. "You don't want to be listening to heels on metal," she said.