No, an extreme commute isn't getting to work by daredevil motorcycle with a nitrus tank, it's what the Census Bureau calls rides of more than 90 minutes each way to get to and from work. Apparently, 3.4 million Americans do it. It's not that many people out of all 300 million Americans, but it's rising.
OK, so you've got your lawn and your house way, way, way out in the country where the liberals can't hurt you. When was the last time you saw it during the week with the sun out?
1. The train back to D.C. was a "Holiday Special" from New Jersey Transit and thus went at a top speed of 79 mph as opposed to the 125 of which Amtrak trains are capable. This alone added 45 minutes to the three-hour trip, but that was scheduled.
2. The Metroliner ahead of us, already 20 minutes behind on departure from New York, broke down in Jersey but managed to pull into Newark Airport station, where everybody left. We took on all of their passengers, most of whom ended up standing. There was a Metroliner a few minutes behind us, but they didn't split up the train, leaving our creaky commuter train to take the entire burden.
3. No new passengers at Metropark or Trenton, whether they had tickets or not. Of course, the announcement came after some people had already boarded the train. We had to wait for them to get off.
Luckilly, I had a window seat and didn't need to use a bathroom or the cafe car (there wasn't one, of course). One benefit of the slower trip was the ability to see in greater detail some of the scenery you usually miss as it blurs by on the faster train or miss entirely on the interstate if you drive. Near the train tracks in northern New Jersey is an industrial wasteland that goes on for miles and miles -- fascinating auto wrecks, strange rusting equipment that requires stretches the imagination to divine its use and other strange things. One day I'd like to check out these railside attractions with a good camera, some heavy boots and an up-to-date tetanus shot.
The other side of the coin are the houses that back up to the railroad track, partially blocked off by sound-absorbing fences. But the fences are not as high as the train windows, so you can see peoples' pools, lawn furniture and other things not really designed for public view. On public land abutting the tracks, you can see people fishing on creeks that pass below the tracks and the occasional cop pulled over next to the rail line to catch a nap. Travel at slower speeds, while frustrating, can be interesting if you care to pay attention.
Before I start this story, I should first note for our foreign readers that Amtrak's Northeast Corridor is not like the rest of the system, which is really awful. The service between Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington makes money, does not share track with freight trains, arrives on time and is much faster than driving. Unless I'm hauling something large or are particularly broke, it's my preferred method of travel between Washington and New York, a trip I take several times annually and often run into old friends in the station or on the train. It's a small world.
That being said, Thanksgiving on the NEC is a little different from normal operations. The train stations on both ends are filled far beyond normal capacity with people who rarely use public transportation and are thus confused and cranky. The 5:10, which would normally require arrival at about 5:05 for boarding, had a line at the gate by 4:30.
I eventually boarded and the train left, filled with the usual train suspects -- college students going back to New Jersey, Hill people headed to their home districts in New York and Connecticut, the inevitable clump of foreign tourists who booked under the false impression that our trains would be as fast, clean and efficient as those in their home country.
I found a seat in the clump of Japanese and all was well until Metropark, N.J., a suburban stop popular with college students whose parents would never venture into Newark or Trenton even if those stops were closer to home. As the train pulled in, I saw the people on the platform looking confused. I also saw that they were rather far away. Since the other platform had a southbound train letting off passengers, we had either skipped the previosly announced Metropark stop or we had arrived, but at the wrong track.
It was the latter, something I've never once seen before in all my years riding trains. The train backed up, the conductor told everyone exiting at Metropark to go to the second car (my car) and they let everyone off over the tracks at the edge of the platform. I saw the whole confused scene from my window.
Then, as the train started slowly leaving the station (I know train engines can't be sheepish, but that's what it felt like), it backed up again, this time on the correct track. Someone forgot a guy in a wheelchair wanted to get off.
Julie is the computerized "voice of Amtrak" who helps callers navigate the railroad's electronic answering system. But Julie is more than just an automated ticket agent. She offers a sympathetic ear and reassuring guidance. And during what is Amtrak's busiest time of year, she goes a long way in helping the railroad quell the impatient masses.
With her spunky personality, Julie is also a trendsetter among a new breed of customer service software programs meant to be a kinder and gentler replacement to the touch-tone mazes that for years left callers aimlessly pressing "one" for this or "two" for that.
Julie, I had to admit, drives me nuts, but just because she takes twice as long as a normal operator to get anything done. But, realtive to other computerized voice recognition software, she does a pretty accurate job of getting you a ticket from point A to point B.
WMATA, the Washington, D.C. metro authority, will be offering free rideson the morning of December 16, 2004, courtesy of ING Direct. Riders entering the system between 5 and 9:30 a.m. will ride for free, without farecards or SmartTrip cards. Metrouser over at Oh Metro! seems distraught by this:
A commercial company (I'm certainly not going to give them free publicity) is going to give all subway (but not bus) riders a free ride during the morning rush on December 16, in return for Metro turning the system orange, the color of the company....Coming next from Metro - brothels at stations (but not at bus stops), liquor stores on every platform (but not at bus stops) and strippers (male and female) to entertain subway riders who have to wait more than ten minutes for their train (bus riders will just have to think dirty thoughts to entertain themselves).
While Metrouser is mostly upset by the fact that its only Metro riders - not bus riders - getting in on the promotion, rather than the promotion as a whole, I'd like to point out the promotion itself isn't without precedence. BART did a similar co-promotion with ING last year, which must have worked exceptionally well, considering that ING is now offering free riders to a much larger audience. According to NBC4, ING will be paying about $600,000 for that morning's commute.
As for not paying for free bus rides, too, I can understand ING's perspective on that. Ignoring the demographics of bus riders -- who, even in middle-class bus-riding D.C., tend to be poorer and less likely to open an online savings account -- it's much harder to blanket a bus system with advertising than to blanket the metro system. With Metrorail, there are 84 stations and a finite number of trains. It's easy to turn the system "orange". Metrobus has 12,435 bus stops and 2,038 bus shelters...and 1,460 buses. There's no way ING could cover the entire Metrobus system to make their advertising worthwhile. It's just not feasible.
Lower tax revenue and fiscal crunches always bring bad news for transit riders. And it looks like the new year will bring no respite -- many transit authorities are looking to raise fares in the near future, including:
You know your standards as a transit agency are low when you celebrate going 23 days without a collision between one of your trains and a car, beating the previous record of 16 days. This has been serious problem since the line opened, with accidents stopping a train every few days.
With one line.
That runs a little over seven miles.
But it isn't the fault of Houston's transit agency, really it's not. Nearly all accidents involving the new light rail system are the fault of car drivers, who don't read the signs that flash when the trains are coming. Annie Hall may have reinforced the stereotype of New Yorkers who can't drive, but it turns out that auto-nutty towns like Houston produce drivers who are even more careless.
In a highly entertaining article, New York Times reporters stake out a meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board to see whether or not the board members use public transportation. While many do, at least one (who owns an auto dealership, ironically enough) drove away in an illegally-parked SUV.
If the subway is good enough for the mayor, why isn't it good enough for the people who decide on the fare?
Amtrak is now conducting random ID checks "as a precaution against terrorist attack", according to a CNN.com article. The program is designed to ensure that the name on the ticket is the name of the individual traveling on Amtrak.
This, to me, seems more designed to keep people from reselling Amtrak tickets than from keeping terrorists off trains. The only way I see this being a "terrorist deterrent" is if Amtrak is checking people against the terrorist watchlist. Given the low-key nature of train security in the U.S., however, I have a feeling that Amtrak is simply using the terrorism cover as a way to increase profits and keep people from using tickets that they had not originally purchased.
"Actually, it's the smallest tax increase in history."
-Lisa Simpson
The Philadelphia Inquirerreports on a plan to save Pennsylvania's public transportation systems from massive service cuts and fare increases by raising some of the fees paid by drivers when they register their cars each year. Rural residents are crying foul, Republicans are freaking out about tax increases and the transit agencies are preparing draconian plans.
It's the fees that are the problem, not the plans to raise them:
"Existing fees in yesterday's proposal have not risen since the early 1980s, [Gov. Ed] Rendell said. They include a hike in the motor vehicle rental fee from $2 to $4 and a $1 to $3 surcharge for the purchase of new tires. Evans proposed raising the $5 fee for a driver's record to $12 and a new $2 fee for the auto-emissions sticker."
In this age of politics by distortion and gut feeling, that's four tax increases for Rendell should they pass, making an inconsequential revenue adjustment seem like the Death Knell of the Middle Class. When he runs for re-election, those fee increases will be added into a number of other smallish service charges that get hiked occasionally to keep up with inflation and rolled into an ad that accuses Rendell of "increasing taxes 163 times on working families" or some such similar nonsense. It's disingenuous, but it works.
Politics aside, why should there be 20 little fees every time you go to the DMV? How come you have to pay for every little sticker and stamp that comes along with owning a car? Flat fees are a form of regressive taxation that don't take into account the cost of the car and create a situation where more DMV workers are handling cash than is probably ideal. Why not assess a fee as a percentage of a car's Blue Book value that covers all testing and permits for the year? It saves time, administrative costs and the automatic legislative donnybrook of increasing the fee with inflation every few years.*
This should probably be done for transit fees as well. Bus and subway fares stay the same for years and are then raised by transit officials who threaten the imminent death of the system without a fare increase. Every consumer, commuter, poverty and civil rights group comes out of woodwork to complain. A few public comment meetings are filled with shouting and charges of racism, the fare gets raised anyway, and the process begins anew. Why not just raise the fee with inflation, rounded to the nearest dime? It prevents massive budget gap projections that hinder planning ability and cuts out most of the shouting.
*Of course, locking Grover Norquist in a basement with duct tape on his mouth would help ease the fee-increasing process as well. While impractical, it never hurts to dream.
As you can tell, Live from the Third Rail has updated our site design. The new site is designed by BinarySpark Graphics, who we highly recommend for your web and graphic design needs. Please let us know your thoughts and feedback on the new site!
Additionally, in an attempt to reduce spam, we've added a security code to comment posting. At the bottom of each comment entry, you'll see a six digit code that must be re-entered in the box below to confirm that you are a real, live human being, rather than an evil spam bot. If you encounter problems, please contact us via email at amg [--at--] smorgasblog.com.
An interesting article on how the artists from the peak (or nadir) of the New York subway graffiti era are making big money selling their work to serious art collectors now that the system has been graf-proofed:
"Its influence is such that some techniques originated by graffiti writers are now commonplace. Ivor L. Miller, author of "Aerosol Kingdom" (University Press of Mississippi, 2002), noted how the sides of buses in some cities are covered with a single advertisement. Even in New York, celebratory signs for the Mets and Yankees have festooned trains.
"It has been co-opted by corporations to sell products," he said. "Those advertisements subvert the very logic of the system. When you see whole cars covered with an ad, that's O.K. because it's paid for. It's not done by kids from the street."
He added that money - or the lack of it - might explain why officials refuse to admit that some of the subway painters actually had talent. Rather than buy space, they were visual squatters. "It is class warfare," he said. "These are self-taught kids who did not go to school to do what they did."
It should be said that writing on trains is against the law and that most of the graffiti consisted of ugly tags, not the large murals you see in photographs. While a serious program to get young artists to decorate trains may have fostered creativity, the chaos of the 70s and 80s instead made the system look unsafe and fostered a climate of lawlessness.
Even China Does Intercity Transit Better than the U.S.
China plans to build a high-speed rail line connecting Beijing and Tianjin by 2007, according to a report in the ChinaDaily. The run will take approximately half an hour to cover a distance of about 85 miles. As a reminder, the current Washington to Baltimore commuter line takes 55 minutes to cover the 45 miles between those two cities -- and even the fast, direct Amtrak train takes about half an hour.
How can you tell if they're pretty from behind tinted glass in an SUV?
Gothamist reports on a hacked sign in the NYC subway alleging, well, you can see.
What do they ride? The 5th Anevue bus? Perhaps, but only if you mean the prettiest girls over the age of 80. While the uber-pretty supermodels may choose not to take public transportation (they'd get crushed or whisked by a slight breeze onto the tracks) there are plenty of pretty girls on the train, especially in New York, where you have your pick of college students (1/9 from Columbia), post-sorority yuppie chicks (4-5-6 from the Singles Ghetto), hipsters (the L or F from Brooklyn) or J.Lo (also "On the 6").
But while that message may not be accurate, there are some other sineage hacks worth doing:
Transit riders in Arizona are getting a free ride as part of RideShare week. Theoretically designed to encourage people to try bus lines and BRT lines, the Valley transit authority is giving away 2,004 day bus passes for free. Unfortunately, they're giving them away to the first 2,004 people who register for them on their website, meaning the people who get the free bus passes are those people who would be taking transit already (and would be visiting their website) rather than people who haven't used the bus system and need a reason to try it.
An unusual DJ night at a D.C. bar last night featured two large screens playing 1979's The Warriors, a movie about a street gang from Coney Island making their way back home via subway from an all-city gang meeting in the far north Bronx where they had been accused of killing a leader plotting to unite the city's gangs in a battle against the police.
It looks pretty post-apocalyptic and empty, but the trains run, the lights are on and the cops are around, even if they're inaffectual against ludicrously dressed street gangs roaming around as packs of psychotic baseball players, killer mimes or Indian warriors. It isn't the far future - it's 1979, and the subways actually did look like that.
Yours truly has seen bits and pieces of The Warriors more than a few times, and can't help but get agitated when the eponymous Brooklyn crew gets out of an LL train (now the L) at what's obviously a bi-level IND station, only to emerge from underground at 96th and Broadway on the IRT. But for everybody else, it's a fairly interesting flick to watch with no sound in a bar while trying to appear like a hipster who is so in tune with urban living that they don't flinch at the site of grime, afros and men in overalls wielding chains.
Of course, a lot has changed since 1979, and the possible remake seems strange, given that today's subway has no graffitti and too-bright cars that tell you what station comes back in the voice of a reassuring news radio announcer (WBBR's Charlie Pellett). While I marvel at how far MTA has come since the days of fiscal insolvency and Studio 54, DCist, also at the bar, sees a future for my current city of residence in the nastiness of The Warriors' transit nightmare.
Atlanta's MARTA system is considering a plan to raise fares for people boarding through the airport station, according to an AccessNorthGa.com article. Currently, the MARTA system functions like the New York subway and other similar systems, where a $1.75 fare gets you on to the system and takes you anywhere within the system. Under the proposal, people boarding at the airport station -- and only the airport station -- would pay $3.50 to board the train. The plan is designed to add $2 million to the organization's operating budget.
It's an interesting idea. The airport station is at the end of one of the MARTA lines, so the argument could be made that it's a separate 'zone', requiring a more expensive fare. But because the fare is only one-way -- and because it won't be charged to people traveling on weekly or monthly passes -- it's clearly designed to get extra money from tourists (and potentially business travellers, although they generally take cabs into the city). And as we all know, tourists aren't going to stop visiting a city just because they have to pay more at the airport. They might, however, start taking cabs and SuperShuttles, so the question is how to balance the extra revenue from fare increases with the possibilityof lost revenue from tourists fleeing to other transportation methods.
This article on adjustments to the length of new subway built in Shanghai is not so interesting in itself, but this photo of riders looking at a map posted on the ceiling of a train caught my attention:
How many times have you tried to look at a map in New York or D.C., only to have some big burly guy sitting right in front of the neighborhood you were looking to get to, getting angry at your intent staring? If the map is above your head, nobody blocks it.
A new Federal Transit Administration report says that changing housing demographics are encouraging transit-oriented development, as people hope to get out of their cars and be able to ride the train to work or walk to the nearest shopping center. The fastest growing groups in the U.S. -- singles, aging baby boomers, minorities, and young couples -- all tend to like city living better than suburban living, so developers are building more housing in the city or closer to transit for these groups, according to a USATODAY.com article.
Toyota Motor is working on an Intelligent Multimode Transit System (IMTS) to allow visitors to move within the 2005 World Exposition (March 25 to September 25, 2005), Aichi, Japan.
Each IMTS unit will feature a "Z-CAPSULE" design that gently embraces passengers. The IMTS combines the advantages of rail and bus: on main roads, the buses run in automated platoons on dedicated roads, while on ordinary roads, each bus is manually driven.
So, to travel from central cities to outlying regions, people won't be obliged to switch buses.
I have a feeling that people will still be a little freaked out at the prospect of riding a bus operated by a machine, if only for part of their journey.
If there was ever a day I just wanted to get home and take a nap, it was today. I got about three hours of sleep, had a morning of actual work followed by being forced to listen to the concession and victory speeches on the office TV.
If it was about the war, I'd understand, but it turns out that the half of the country that likes watch cars go around in a circle as sport is deathly afraid that their subdivisions will start looking the West Village if our founding documents aren't modified. It's not my main issue, nor is it one that will change my life one way or the other, but I'm more than a little surprised how scared people are of living near people who aren't exactly like them. Strange how that becomes an urban planning issue.
But anyway, Washingtonians got another big unpleasant surprise:
Twenty injured.
Metro is running shuttle buses between Dupont Circle and Van Ness and the escalator at Dupont isn't working, neither is the elevator. While this isn't really a problem for me, the long walk up (it takes over 2 minutes to ride from end to end) it's trouble for the elderly people who live in places like Van Ness and Friendship Heights. So when granny needs to take a breath, the whole line behind her backs up. There has to be a better way.
Seriously, f*ck WMATA, f*ck the driver who didn't know one track can't handle traffic in two directions, f*ck the red states.
Transit is on the ballot in Phoenix, Seattle, Denver, Fairfax County, Va., and elsewhere. Even if your pet issue isn't up for a vote this year, get to the polls. The lines are so long, you can pretend you're on the security line at an airport, waiting to go somewhere nice.
All Site Information and Content Copyright by Live from the Third Rail and the Entry Author
Site Design by BinarySpark
Graphics A member of the Smorgasblog family of blogs.
It's an interesting idea. The airport station is at the end of one of the MARTA lines, so the argument could be made that it's a separate 'zone', requiring a more expensive fare. But because the fare is only one-way -- and because it won't be charged to people traveling on weekly or monthly passes -- it's clearly designed to get extra money from tourists (and potentially business travellers, although they generally take cabs into the city). And as we all know, tourists aren't going to stop visiting a city just because they have to pay more at the airport. They might, however, start taking cabs and SuperShuttles, so the question is how to balance the extra revenue from fare increases with the possibilityof lost revenue from tourists fleeing to other transportation methods.
