WMATA considers increased off-peak, holiday service

Metro officials are considering ramping up rail and bus service on weekends and holidays. They've also worked out possibilities for restructuring rail service to accommodate increased passenger loads, including an extension of the Yellow Line and a "Blue Line split." This and a lot more was discussed at a meeting of the Riders Advisory Council's rail subcommittee this past Tuesday, March 14.

The subcommittee received a "Metrorail 101" class from three Metro officials. First was Steve Feil, Metro's chief operating officer for rail. Feil discussed a recent reorganization of personnel on Metro's rail side. As an organization, Metro used to focus on construction of what has become a 106-route-mile rail network. Now, however, his organization must focus on operations and, to help facilitate this focus, they've reorganized operation of the system by splitting it into three parts. Observant riders will remember that this is the "line manager" program, with the Red Line having a manager of its own, one manager assigned to the Blue and Orange lines, and a third for the Yellow and Green lines. (At an earlier meeting of the Riders Advisory Council, General Manager Dan Tangherlini said he is considering instituting a similar program for Metrobus.)

Metro's Operations Control Center, and operations planning
Feil spent some time describing Metro's Operations Control Center, a room in Metro's headquarters where supervisors oversee the rail system. Considerable information about rail operations flows into the OCC; for example, station managers must report on conditions in their stations on an hourly basis. Station managers also notify the OCC if certain situations occur in their stations. For instance, a station manager will inform OCC if overcrowding develops in the station, and OCC will dispatch additional staff to assist. The OCC also gets information on vertical traffic flows; for example, the OCC might have an escalator's direction reversed if traffic conditions in the station so dictate.

Broken elevators and escalators are a persistent complaint of Metrorail customers, and Feil assured the committee that he's always on top of the status of Metro's hundreds of pieces of vertical machinery. Each day he reviews reports regarding elevators and escalators (including any elevator entrapments!) and regarding other mechanical failures in stations.

Feil plans ahead for coming operational challenges--plans are already underway for the upcoming National Cherry Blossom Festival. When cherry blossom time arrives, Feil and his staff will establish a separate cherry blossom command center which will monitor conditions. They've also drawn up an operational plan for frequency of service and for staffing at popular cherry blossom stations, such as L'Enfant Plaza. Feil tries to plan but points out that sometimes unexpected things happen.

Infrastructure rehabilitation
The scourge of every weekend Metrorail rider is track work. Feil explained that his staff of 3800 people plans to install ten miles of welded rail, 8000 crossties, and 30 or so turnouts in the next year. All work must be planned carefully to minimize inconvenience to riders, though some inconvenience is unavoidable. Feil says that there just isn't enough time at night to do all maintenance while the system is closed. (I suppose this situation has gotten more challenging in recent years as Metro's service hours have lengthened, especially on weekends.) So Metro does some work during the day on weekends and even in some parts of the system during weekdays, in instances where single-tracking may be done with minimal operational impact.

Feil says on-time performance is at about 98.6 percent right now, which he says is pretty good considering the level of maintenance that he has to perform.

In response to a question, Feil discussed lighting in rail stations (my father always says they're too dark.) He just completed a report to the general manager on station lighting. There are some stations where lighting problems need to be addressed, but sometimes lighting upgrades are tough to carry out because of limitations in station circuitry.

Metro's short term infrastructure upgrades
The next speaker was Jim Hughes, the acting deputy general manager for customer service. He supervises bus, rail, cleaning, elevators, escalators, and more. (The previous speaker, Steve Feil, reports to Jim Hughes.)

Hughes described Metro's short-term infrastructure plans. In next year's budget is $7 million for new rail cars; 136 cars will be arriving by the end of fiscal year 2007. The new cars will start running sometime this summer. (Hopefully they're doing a better job bringing these cars in than they did with the 5000 cars, which brought a number of operational glitches.) Half of all peak-hour trains will be eight cars by the end of 2008.

Increased holiday service
Hughes explained plans to increase holiday service on both bus and rail. Holiday ridership has increased in recent years, and he will propose (? I'm not sure if the board of directors has approved this yet or not) increasing service on four holidays a year (I never got to ask him which four, exactly; however, my guess is that they are Martin Luther King, Jr. day; Washington's Birthday; Veterans' Day, and Columbus Day.) On those four holidays, Metro could begin operating a normal weekday schedule, though with fewer rail cars in service and with no "trippers."

A "tripper" is an extra train: ordinarily on the Orange and Green lines, trains run every six minutes. But every now and then Metro will insert an extra train. Some of the trippers on the Orange Line run from Vienna to Stadium-Armory, where they turn around. Metro also runs three trippers on the Green Line on weekdays, from Branch Avenue.

Hughes also discussed increased holiday bus service. Currently on holidays Metro runs a Saturday schedule for buses, meaning that they run only 136 of 340 routes. He will suggest running regular weekday service on four holidays.

Hughes is also considering running the same train consists all year long. Currently during lower ridership times such as wintertime, some train consists run with four cars rather than six during the mid-days and weekends. But ridership has picked up.

Yellow Line extension
Hughes described the possibility of running the Yellow Line to Fort Totten instead of to its current terminus at Mount Vernon Square. This is being pushed by Metro board members from the District as well as by other District officials. Currently the stations on the mid-city Green Line (Fort Totten, Georgia Avenue - Petworth, Columbia Heights, U Street, and Shaw) are the only ones in the District where trains run as little as four times an hour. A possible fix is to run the Yellow Line to Fort Totten, but only during off-peak hours. Hughes explained that he can turn trains around east of Fort Totten, but that the maneuver takes so long that he couldn't do it during rush hour without causing backups for the Green Line trains coming from West Hyattsville. (Hughes says that from an operational standpoint it would be easier to run the Yellow trains all the way to Greenbelt, because it's easier to turn trains around there. But he says Maryland officials have little interest in increasing frequency on that segment of the Green Line and that they instead are more interested in more service on the west side of the Red Line.) In addition, Metro currently uses all its available cars during rush hour, but there are some extra cars that can be used to increase off-peak service.

The Yellow Line extension would require some improvements to signaling systems at Fort Totten. It would also be confusing for the public--not only would maps change, but also service would be different depending upon the time of day and day of the week.

Red Line extension
Hughes says there's been a lot of growth in traffic on the Red Line between Shady Grove and Grosvenor. Now only half of all Red trains serve those stations, leading to crowding--sometimes trains have only standing room when they leave Shady Grove. So Metro is considering running all Red Line trains all the way to Shady Grove, but only during the off-peak (equipment shortages again.) This would cost $3 million. Of course he could also run all trains to Shady Grove even during peak hours, but this would require more cars.

Blue Line split
This is the most complicated operational change that Hughes is considering. It would address a considerable operational problem at Rosslyn: trains from the Orange and Blue lines often back up when approaching Rosslyn because of the large amount of train traffic there. Metro did an engineering study and determined that the highest number of trains they can run through the tunnel under the Potomac is 26 per hour. Metro currently runs 27 trips per hour, though there were 29 per hour before the agency cut the number of trains slightly and extended other trains to eight cars.

A possible solution to this is something that Hughes calls a "Blue Line split" but that he also explains would really create a whole new line. Under the new plan, all Blue trains would originate at Franconia - Springfield, as they do now, and they would follow their present route to Pentagon. At this point, half the Blue Trains would follow their present route to the next stop, Arlington Cemetery. The other half would then follow the Yellow Line bridge across the Potomac and would then run all the way to Greenbelt. Somehow he would do all this without reducing the number of Blue trains originating at Largo.

This "Blue Line split" would help ease the traffic crunch at Largo, but of course it would be awfully hard to explain it to anyone. (I remember standing on platforms in New York, reading the signs explaining the train routings that varied depending upon time of day. I would typically give up and figure "I think I'm standing at the right platform...") The Blue Line split would operate only during rush hours.

Infrastructure improvements
The last speaker was Takis Salpeas, head of Metro's Planning, Development, Engineering, and Construction department. His department was in charge of constructing the Metrorail system, so understandably he's proud of what they achieved. Metro's first five stations on the Red Line (from Union Station to Farragut North) opened on March 29, 1976, which will be thirty years ago this year.

Salpeas discussed improvements at many stations, including Ballston and King Street, and the replacement of the PIDS (the information displays on the platforms.) Now staff can monitor the entire PIDS system from headquarters. He briefly touched upon other construction projects, such as new parking garages at many suburban stations and a new station for the Metro Transit Police. He also talked about the automated teller machines that are in stations. This shouldn't have surprised me, but it did: ATMs are allocated to preserve the sectional balance between Metro's three member jurisdictions--that's right, there are an equal number of machines in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Within each jurisdiction the machines are allocated depending upon traffic at the station and other factors, such as whether the station manager can see the machine from the station manager's kiosk.

Some capital improvements have been made in order to accommodate more eight-car trains, such as improvements to traction power substations (what a typical above-ground traction power substation looks like) as well as improvements to train stopping systems, to ensure that eight-car trains don't overshoot the platforms.

A Live from the Third Rail exclusive!
See, I really should have gone into television news...here you'll find Takis Salpeas' slides of capital improvements. This is a 100MB download that will make good use of your high-speed Internet. Also, here are Jim Hughes' slides about Metro's operational plans.

Coming up for Metro...
Attend a public information session for Metro's 2007 budget, on Tuesday, March 21 at 7:00pm at Metro headquarters.