WMATA summer track work

Not the usual yada yada. There are the typical weekend single tracking projects, but this summer will also see the weekend closure of some segments of the Red and Orange Lines. Details.

MTA Bus

With the stadium and the MTA capital budget taking up so much bandwidth, this slipped in under the radar: the MTA finally reached agreements with all of the private New York City bus companies, so the new entity called MTA Bus will be taking over their operations over the next several months.

Some people have criticized the decision for the MTA to take over these private bus companies, with the added costs for an already overburdened agency. Ignoring the fact that the MTA needs money for just about everything, I think this is a great plan:
- most of these companies were on the verge of going under
- transit service from and around the outer boroughs is absent elsewhere in the capital plan
- the MTA will replace most of the clunky old buses used by these companies (mostly old MTA stock), increasing rider comfort and decreasing pollution
- better system-wide schedule coordination

Fulton Street Station Gets Smaller

Gothamist reports that the planned Fulton Street Transit hub designed to link nine different subway lines is both behind schedule and getting scaled down. It's a shame, really. I was looking forward to seeing what a 110 ft. steel and glass dome peak would look like with graffiti scribbled all over it.

D.C. "Circulator" bus to debut

A few months ago I saw a bus with an unfamiliar paint scheme parked in front of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's headquarters. Today the bus was again parked on 7th Street NW in Chinatown. The D.C. Circulator will begin running in July, and the bus was open for inspection. Two men were inside to answer questions and distribute brochures.

Two routes are planned. An east-west route will connect Union Station with Georgetown, via the convention center and K Street. A north-south route will connect the convention center, the MCI Center sports arena, the National Mall, and the Southwest Waterfront. Two more routes will open in the future. The bus website is www.dccirculator.com.

Fares will be low, at $1. Transfers from Metro services (rail and bus) will be free, and the SmarTrip smart fare card will be accepted for payment. Hours will be fairly generous, at 8:00am to 9:00pm every day.

This service strikes me as a marvelous idea, especially if the appropriate government officials ever get around to redoing K Street and giving it dedicated bus lanes. There will likely be winners and losers from the service:

WINNERS: all tourist destinations, especially Georgetown, which will now have a cheap and publicized mode of access. (I do wonder what will happen to the so-called "Blue Bus", which also serves Georgetown. However, the Blue Bus takes different routes to get to Georgetown than the new bus will. I would think the two will complement each other nicely.) Tourists themselves will benefit, as will conventioneers.

LOSERS: cab drivers. Tourmobile might also take a hit, though it mostly serves different locations than the Circulator will.

I think this will be a major hit. I'm glad this will be a bus rather than light rail. The massive capital investment rail requires seems to me to be such a waste when all the trains will run nowhere other than on the street. Probably the strongest argument I've heard in favor of light rail is that its massive capital investment spurs more real estate development because landowners are convinced the rail isn't going anywhere. (Unfortunately, sometimes the rail "doesn't go anywhere" in a different way, but I digress...) Yet the Circulator proponents say the bus will spur economic development. We'll see.

Snapshot

Keep taking those underground pictures, fearless photobloggers, the MTA finally announced they would not ban the taking of pictures in the subways and related places.

IMTS Photos

Because I am that guy who takes pictures of trains, links to pictures of the IMTS previously discussed are below.

Oh, and as will become eminently clear, I have no photography ability whatsoever. Any semi-decent pictures were likely taken by DCFUD's zaf.

Exterior Pictures
Picture 1
Picture 2

Interior Pictures
Interior Picture 1
Interior Picture 2
Interior Picture 3
Interior Picture 4
Interior Picture 5
Interior Picture 6
Interior Picture 7

Station Pictures
Station Picture 1
Station Picture 2
Station Picture 3

Music of the underground type

I always wondered how those sometimes amazing, sometimes awful, always interesting music performers in the NYC subway stations became officially blessed with signs. Now I know.

WMATA to announce new "line managers"

WMATA will announce new line managers for the Red Line tomorrow (Wednesday, May 18.) This new program will start with just the Red Line, though they hope to expand the program later. There will be one line manager and one customer service manager for the line. Supposedly these individuals will have responsibility for everything that happens on the line. That will include rolling stock, escalators and elevators, fare vending machines, station managers, train operators...

Have you seen Metro's organization chart? If not, see page 8 of this document (sorry, it's a PDF, I hate PDFs too.) There is a separate person to manage rail car maintenance, a person over "rail transportation" (how's that separate from "rail services," I don't know) a person for plant maintenance (that's facilities like stations) and a person whose sole responsibility is escalators and elevators. Perhaps WMATA plans to eliminate these bailiwicks and reorganize them by line. If not, I don't see how the line manager program will work. I can't imagine that the program will work if the single "escalator and elevator" manager suddenly has to answer to three line managers as well as to his current boss (who is, it appears, the deputy GM for operations.)

Unless WMATA substantially changes its organization chart, the line managers will have responsibility over nothing at all. But they'll be a great place for riders to vent their complaints.

IMTS: Transportation of the Future?

To explain my personal lack of posting (although not that you would have noticed, as massyset is doing a better job than I've ever done of keeping you up to date), I'm currently travelling outside the U.S. and will be for the next several months. You'll be getting lots of transit reports from abroad because, well, I'm just that big a transit nerd.

Report one from the field is on the Toyota IMTS (Intelligent Multimode Transit System) that we talked about here many, many months ago. Toyota bills this system as the future of transit technology. It's, for lack of a better description, a hybrid bus system that runs without a driver on dedicated roads and is handled by a driver on standard roadways.

The system is currently operating at the 2005 World Expo in Aichi, Japan. At the Expo, it runs on dedicated roadways for three stops and then manual operation for one. The dedicated path has actual stations, which resemble some of the tube stations on the Jubilee line, with glass doors that block you from the cars (and/or roadway). The roadway itself is standard asphault, although it appears to have some form of magnetic and/or electronic guideway in the middle. The IMTS cars resemble large buses but done up in a more futuristic manner.

The system itself runs well; on straightaways it operated at 30-35 km/h; curves were significantly slower. The system is computer controlled, so it's not being forced along by a metal guideway (at least not obviously) and the ride is very smooth.

The final verdict? Interesting technology and likely a good long-term intermediate. It would be especially useful for BRT applications. I can't see it replacing local bus systems or train lines, however, unless they can get the system to work at significantly higher speeds.

NYC cop shoots self at subway stop

A police officer shot himself (accidentally, one presumes) at a Harlem subway station. He was taken to the hospital with a wound to the abdomen.

The "wrapped" rail cars: photo and correction

Here's a photo of WMATA's new ad-wrapped rail cars. I previously reported that even the windows of the rail car are coated with the ad. I based that statement on a Metro press release, which says that

"The windows on the rail cars and the front of the lead car have a 'screened' coating so passengers can see through them."

But if you look at the photo, it seems (to me at least) that not all the windows on the car are coated.

By the way, if you hate those links to the Washington Post or any other "registration required" site, try www.bugmenot.com.

WMATA announces "wrapped" rail cars

WMATA has announced that a married pair of rail cars has been completely coated in a McDonald's advertisement. The cars will travel the Orange Line. Even the windows have been coated with the advertisement, but it is screened in a manner that should allow occupants to see outside of the car.

If I had photos of this, I would link to them or put them up, even though this would be giving McDon--um, the advertiser--even more free publicity.

I am unsure what to make of this new advertising initiative. On the one hand, I'm sure it's dreadfully tasteless and ugly. On the other hand, Metro could use the money. Overall, I am sad and upset that poor management of our nation's fisc and underinvestment in its people and infrastructure has forced various government entities--from school districts to transit agencies--to make these commercial arrangements.

I can tolerate the wrapped cars. But if I get in a car that has the next thing Metro is planning--TV monitors with advertisements--I will move to the next car or wait for the next train.

Transfer here for the O, M and G!

Disney's first dedicated train line will run to its soon-to-be-opened Hong Kong amusement park.

(via BoingBoing)

WMATA new, LONG station name signs

Something that occasionally inspires gripes among D.C. folks is some of the very, very long station names that pop up on Metrorail. By my count, the longest name is "U Street / African-American Civil War Memorial / Cardozo" at 56 characters, though "New York Avenue - Florida Avenue - Gallaudet University" is a close contender at 55 characters.

And the longer names proliferate: the newest additions are "Penn Quarter" to Archives-Navy Memorial, and "Brentwood" to Rhode Island Avenue. I took some photos of the new signs at Rhode Island Avenue - Brentwood station and went into a long discussion (much longer than even I had expected) about the oddities of this station's name.

By the way, the shortest name is Takoma, at six characters.

NYC transit e-mail alerts

Could it be? The city with "Northern charm and Southern efficiency" has an idea that will be copied in the Big Apple?

MTA New York City Transit has announced a pilot program which will send e-mail notifications of subway service interruptions. WMATA has had this service in D.C. for some time. I've found that the e-mails are not much use for minor delays, but for major ones (e.g. a "purple purple" when someone jumps in front of a train) the e-mails can be quite helpful.

But then, it seems Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road already had this service, so we Southerners can't take all the credit...

WMATA reports increased reliability; hopes for dedicated funding source

WMATA has reported that rail service reliability has improved in recent months. Officials credit better track and railcar maintenance for the improvement. Metro says the new CAF cars (readily identified by their 5000-series car numbers and, if you are quite geeky, the distinctive sound of the cars' propulsion systems) are finally reaching the reliability level they were supposed to attain years ago.

The Post story linked above stated the the CAF cars are readily identified by their red, white, and blue interiors. This is only partially true. Though all the CAF cars do have these new interiors, there are also many old Breda cars that also have been rebuilt. To the untrained eye these rebuilt Bredas and new CAFs look the same, though there are some small differences (the outsides of the rebuilt Bredas are not nearly as shiny as the new CAFs, and the rebuilt Bredas have additional signs on the emergency exits.) The rebuilt cars may also be readily identified by their distinct sound and by the "AC" appended to the end of the car number. (Old 1000-series Rohrs also have the AC, but they have obviously old-style interiors.)

I give this lesson in car identification because I have been wondering if Metro has had many problems with the rebuilt Breda cars. Some Metro people have said that, with new cars, you have to "work the bugs out." I wonder if the rebuilt cars also have bugs? I haven't heard about any. The Breda rebuilds were done by a different company (Alstom, instead of CAF, which built the brand new cars) and maybe Alstom did a better job?

In other WMATA news, talk of a dedicated funding source is bandied about, just as it has been for the past decade...

Bus on tracks: update

The Washington Post reports that Anacostia residents are "irked" by a proposal of the D.C. Transportation Department to route light rail through Anacostia streets. Residents fear reduced on-street parking, more traffic, and a negative impact on economic development.

Transportation department officials say the light rail would be intended to transport residents within the ward, rather than to other parts of the city. (Considering the abysmal average speeds of street-based light rail, that's all it would be good for anyway.) They did make an interesting point I hadn't considered: light rail trains can make turns on narrow streets more easily than buses. (Is that worth millions of dollars, I don't know...)

As folks pointed out in comments to a previous post on this topic, street running of light rail can make sense sometimes. In Denver, for instance, most of the track is grade-separated. Downtown, the Denver rail runs on city streets, which is cheaper than elevating or burying the line. But I don't understand the appeal of the D.C. Anacostia rail proposal or of the entire proposed rebirth of D.C. streetcars, as it seems all of them would run on the streets.