Metro asks you to sit your lazy butt in a non-priority seat if you're a non-priority rider

Metro has "launched" a "campaign" to force lazy ragamuffins out of priority seating by hanging signs "with arrows pointing to the priority seats have been installed in each rail car as a reminder to customers that those seats are designated for people with disabilities and senior citizens."

Metro will also put signs in station, and a recording will join the overly perky, incredibly irritating "reminders" in circulation. No word yet if this recording, to get out of the seat upon request without judgment, or simply because it's the right thing to do, will last seven minutes like the other recordings to stand to the right on the escalators, move to the center of the car, and lean on anything but a door.

Metro's also handing out pamphlets. Seriously. And its press release expounds on the profound sadness WMATA suffers because the American Disabilities Act prevents Metro from ejecting the non elderly and allegedly obvious non-disabled riders from the seats. (Kind of glad, because when I was sitting there a few months ago, and a confrontation would have spilled a lot of digital ink in this blog, wouldn't it?)

Get There bloviates on the issue as the Great Receiver of missives from frustrated riders:

Metro says it also is placing ads inside the train cars and the stations and making announcements about the need to give these seats to elderly or disabled people. (We don't have to wait for them to ask. Some are reluctant to do that. Some tell me that when they do, the seated person will look them up and down before deciding whether they qualify for the seat.)

I guess it's sort of charming that Metro wants its riders to practice better etiquette, but Metro and WaPo's transportation team can wag its finger all it wants, but guilting DC residents isn't really going to work, is it? The street safety campaign hosted by DDOT doesn't seem to have instilled greater care by motorists toward pedestrians or cyclists, and I'm sure pedestrians still jaywalk, cyclists are still on the sidewalk, and the priority toward "safety" hasn't changed.