Metro News Release

For immediate release: July 28, 2006

Metro’s Web site usage tops the charts in June

June was not only the busiest month in Metro history for Metrorail ridership, but it was the busiest month ever for Metro’s Web site, www.MetroOpensDoors.com, too. The Web site recorded more than 17.2 million page views last month, compared with 16.3 million page views in June 2005.

The most popular pages on the Web site include the home page, Metrorail system map, Trip Planner, Metrorail station pages, and the hours and fares page. The Trip Planner feature is growing in popularity as well, with an average of 40,000 itineraries generated each day.

Since first launching the Web site in 1996, Metro has continually made improvements to meet customer needs, including redesigning the site to make it easier for current and potential Metro users to find information and increasing the site’s band width to speed the viewing and downloading of large files such as bus maps.

Web site usage has skyrocketed from 1 million page views a month in 1999 to 17 million in June 2006.

In the last year, Metro has added several features to give customers more information and easier access to the information, including a Metro calendar listing upcoming public meetings, scheduled track work and other important events affecting Metro, more detailed street maps showing the location of all Metrorail stations and lines relative to major streets and landmarks, maps depicting walking directions from Metrorail stations and bus stops to specific addresses, and listing the next scheduled departures for Metrobuses when searching for service to an address or landmark.

In addition, Metro made it easier for on-the-go information seekers to get information on their Web-enabled cell phones and other mobile devices such as Palm Pilots and Blackberrys. Many Web site features were designed to work best with the screen size, memory and bandwidth of home and office computers. In response to the growing prevalence of Web-enabled mobile devices, Metro developed new, streamlined versions of select applications suitable for cell phones and other mobile devices with Web access. Mobile offerings include service alerts, next scheduled departures and the Trip Planner, which gives point-to-point travel directions. The mobile site generates approximately 4,000 visits each month.

News release issued on July 28, 2006.