Gas prices up, transit ridership up #3

From the ever colorful USA Today: Drivers switch to public transit:

Washington, D.C. Thursday was the sixth-busiest day in history on Metro
Salt Lake City. Ridership is up 50% ... from a year ago. ... in some cases, cars are becoming so packed that the doors are dragging on the platforms at stops because of the increased weight
Tulsa. Tulsa Transit's March ridership was the highest since August 2003
San Francisco. After taking a "nosedive" in recent years, ridership on Bay Area Rapid Transit is up 4.1% this fiscal year

D.C. passes dedicated funding for WMATA...

...well, sort of. D.C. will dedicate a portion of its sales tax to fund the system, but only if Maryland and Virginia also enact dedicated funding plans.

The article says "0.5 percent of city sales tax revenue," which is ambiguous; no word in there on how much this would amount to. Also, the Post headline ("D.C. is first to officially dedicate cash to Metro") might be misleading; if I recall correctly, there is a small portion of gas taxes in Northern Virginia that is dedicated to Metro.

Tunnel for Tysons?

Politicians in Washington, D.C.'s Virginia suburbs are debating whether to build a tunnel for a rail line through Tysons Corner. Several weeks ago a tunnel was eliminated from the plan due to cost concerns, with an aerial track structure planned instead. But the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors worries that a viaduct would be ugly, permanently scarring the visuals of the aspiring downtown of Tysons Corner. Some also dispute previous cost estimates for the tunnel, saying that it would be only slightly more expensive than an elevated structure.

Fairfax Supervisor and Metro board member Dana T. Kauffman says that there's only one chance to do this project right, and doing it right calls for a tunnel. Unfortunately the project is so expensive that it might not get built at all if it fails the federal bureaucrats' cost-efficiency measures. Ah, bring in the pork barrel spending--er, earmarks. (It's never "pork" when it's in your hometown, is it?)

Road exhibit: okay, it's not really transit related--it's an exhibit about interstate highways. But it is in, oddly enough, Washington's Union Station. They should have put it in an inhospitable, car-dominated place--I know where: Tysons Corner!

BART to get earthquake proofing

Being in an underwater tunnel during an earthquake wouldn't be any fun. But hopefully BART will be ready. They're spending $9.7 million to help quake proof the Transbay Tube, as part of a $1.3 billion earthquate safety program. The goal is to keep the soil around the tunnel from liquiefying in the event of a quake--I didn't even know such a thing happens.

What Major Disasters Can Teach Transportation Planners

Todd Litman of the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute has written an interesting paper on transportation policy lessons that can be learned from the responses to hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

A pleasant intercity bus ride?

Look East, young man:

Now, most of the world I have never seen, but I've been to enough places to confidently submit that there is nowhere else with a long-distance bus system quite like Turkey's. The nation has only a skeletal web of railroads, but a massive network of more than 120,000 modern, comfortable motor coaches, many of them designed and manufactured in-country, go everywhere and anywhere -- comfortably, reliably and inexpensively. If you've ever seen the mammoth otogars (stations) in Istanbul or Ankara, you have a sense of just how truly vast the system is. Inside these airport-size depots, miles of counter space are divided elbow-to-elbow among literally hundreds of independent operators, each with its own ticket stall. Garishly painted signs advertise each company's routes and departure times, while touts scour the crowds rounding up customers. "Izmir! Adana! Goreme!" There are enough billboards and hawkers to make you think each of Turkey's 70 million inhabitants has his own private bus line. For the tourist it's explosively colorful and a bit overwhelming, yet sensibly organized and easy to navigate.

Too bad there are no "Turkeytown" buses between NYC and DC or Boston.

Really, get a life

A big construction project on Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway is forcing car-loving commuters off the interstates and on to the trains, WSJ reports:

Not anymore. Massive construction work on one of Chicago's main highways has forced her to trade the peace of her sport-utility vehicle for the clatter and crowds of a double-decker commuter train.

"This was a very, very big step for me," says Ms. Schue, 42 years old, who had never been on a train in her life before she recently started taking the Metra rail service. "I'm still very...," she says, choking up, then pausing to compose herself. "I miss my car."

[...]

Despite traffic and other hassles of driving to work, many car commuters consider their trip a guilty pleasure. "You don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't do crack. [Driving] was my enjoyment for a little while" each day, says Frank Pierson, 52, who works at a bank in downtown Chicago.

Can't you derive your satisfaction from some other facet of your life that doesn't involve congestion, pollution and bad urban planning?

Beggin', part II; WMATA to extend Yellow Line

Earlier, Aaron described a beggar on a Metrorail train, which is an unusual sight. Rarely am I approached for money while aboard Metrorail. Lately though I have encountered some people with a new tactic. One of them will board a train and immediately begin distributing 4x6-inch cards printed on glossy photo paper. The card has a small photo of a family, along with some blocky text in broken English about the family's journey from Eastern Europe that has left them penniless. Perhaps lending credibility to the story, I have seen a man, a woman, and a late-teenaged girl distributing these cards, though each was working alone when I saw them.

They'll start at one end of the car and hand the cards to people, without speaking a word. Then they'll walk back through the car, collecting the cards and (hopefully for them) some money.

I don't think I'm the only one who has spotted this family more than once. I saw each of them on different occasions riding the Red Line in the late afternoon between New York Avenue and Silver Spring. The first time I saw this, many people (including me) accepted the cards and gave them a look. One woman made a comment to me about the unorthodoxy of the technique. "Yeah, these aren't cheap either," I said of the leaflets that had been printed with an inkjet on photo paper. Now, I have noticed that the rate of card uptake has dropped dramatically. Maybe the family will try a new Metrorail segment--if they haven't already.

Maybe they'll start riding the Yellow Line when it gets extended. Apparently the Metro board has approved an extension of the Yellow Line, though only during off-peak hours. This will give extra service to several mid-city Green Line stations, without requiring any additional rolling stock. Of course signage and maps will need to be changed, and some signal upgrades will be needed at Fort Totten. Operating the higher-frequency service will cost a few million dollars a year.

D.C. councilmember and Metro board member Jim Graham pushed the idea. Graham has been good at securing Metro benefits for his ward--he's also been a big proponent of Metrorail's extended weekend hours, which are great for the bars and nighclubs in his ward. Where are my Maryland board members? More offpeak service on the Red Line would be nice too...

EDIT: a few minutes later I saw this Post story; there will also be more Red service on the western leg of the line...

Today at the library I spotted Zachary Schrag's book, The Great Society Subway. As I read it I'll post notes here.

High-wire act

Sorry for the slow posting of late - all of us here at LFTTR Global HQ are very busy with our other jobs (yeah, we do this in addition to other things).

So by now you've probably heard that the least interesting transit disaster of all time has been followed by one of the more interesting ones: the stalling of the Roosevelt Island tram. Today's Times has an account of how rescue teams managed to all those rush-hour riders off of the oversided gondola.

It could have been worse (see Spiderman)

New York Transit Union Get Slapped

The New York Transit Union was fined $2.5 million for the 60-hour december strike, reports the New York Times today. Additionally, the union is no longer allowed to automatically deduct dues from members' paychecks, which they claim will limit their ability to collect money and pay their staff. Apparently, the union is not known for its ability to manage money, regardless:

In his comments from the bench, Justice Jones joked more than once that the cascade of financial records and conflicting balance sheet interpretations made the labor dispute seem like the case against the Enron Corporation.

Even so, the issue of a contract remains up in the air. The original proposal was voted down by union members in January and, while there is now a re-vote on the same proposal in progress, the MTA says those terms are no longer acceptable. And the cat-fight continues.

The least interesting disaster in transit history

The technology? It was a boring old bus. It runs on gasoline. (Well, ideally). The only thing that might make it worthy of note is a pricing scheme that cuts intercity fares to as low as $1.

The failure? They ran out of gasoline on the way from Cleveland to Chicago. Nobody got hurt, just delayed about two hours.

Isn't there an overturned hydrofoil or something to write about?

What a slow news day!

Denver Starts Rolling Again...

Denver's transit strike is over. The 1,750-person strike ended on Friday when union members approved a deal offering the same pay increase -- just with a sooner delivery date. The deal amounts to a $1.80 an hour increase in wages over three years, with the first increase retroactive to March 1st.

Redundant elevators, and SmarTricks

Metro's Riders Advisory Council and the Metro Elderly and Disabled Committee are fighting against the removal of redundant elevators and pedestrian walkways from the proposed Metrorail expansion to Dulles Airport.

The expansion of Metrorail from the Falls Church area of Northern Virginia to Dulles Airport has been discussed for decades now. At 23 route miles, the completed project would be a huge addition to Metro's network, which is currently 106 route miles. Recently the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which operates Dulles Airport and owns the land upon which the rail extension will be built, agreed to take over the Dulles Toll Road and to build the rail extension. Airports Authority proposal.

However, the rail project has been running over budget, and it teeters on the edge of cost effectiveness measures that the federal government has set. If the project flunks the cost efficiency measures, it might not get federal funding, which would probably kill the project. (I say "might not get federal funding" because the cost efficiency measures are in the province of bureaucrats. Congress can always override the bureaucrats by making an earmark--a.k.a. "doling out pork barrel spending.")

So, in an effort to cut the costs of the project, planners have made some cuts. Instead of a tunnel through Tysons Corner, an aerial setup is now planned. More critically, however, planners have removed some of the redundant elevators from the plan. Planners have also cut the width of some of the pedestrian bridges and are considering removing some of the other bridges entirely.

In response to these moves, the Elderly and Disabled Committee and the Riders Advisory Council have sent letters to the Metro officials, and the letters were discussed at the April 5 meeting of the RAC.

Elimination of some of the redundant elevators stirs up passions, and with good reason. A single elevator that's out of service can greatly increase trip time for someone who depends on elevators. Metro does provide shuttle bus service, but this takes much longer than a train ride.

I still do not understand exactly which redundant elevators have been eliminated. Apparently there will still be redundant elevators between station mezzanines and platforms; however, the current plan eliminates redundancy at station entrances. The move would save a few million dollars (from $3 million to $30 million, depending on whom you ask) which is a small budget savings that could cause considerable inconvenience for many.

Metro is not designing the Dulles project; this task is up to the commonwealth of Virginia. If Metro were designing this thing, it's likely that all the redundant elevators would still be in the plan. As was discussed at the meeting, Metro's current design standards require at least two elevators for every change in elevation at the station. Thus the three newest stations (New York Avenue, Morgan Boulevard, and Largo Town Center) all have two elevators each inbetween the street and the platform.

New tricks for SmarTrip
Also discussed at the meeting is the possibility of new features for SmarTrip. A rider from Greenbelt brought up the idea that riders could be allowed to run a small deficit on their SmarTrip cards--rather like a credit card. At least one member of the RAC was cool to this idea; however, a Metro staff member later addressed the council about SmarTrip. He says that a plan is in the works that would allow riders to link their SmarTrip cards to a credit card so that the SmarTrip automatically replinishes when its balance gets low. This would be similar to the automatic refill option that many toll roads offer with their transponder accounts.

Other bits...
If you think Metro's stations are too dark, the interim general manager has heard your complaints. He's got some sort of plan in the works to, as he says, "punch up" the lighting in many stations. Also, there are two openings on the RAC. One member resigned because he couldn't make it to meetings, and another member will be kicked off because she hasn't come to meetings. Metro's Board of Directors will ultimately decide who fills the vacancies; however, the RAC will recommend that one of the seats be filled with someone "from the Hispanic community." (I think the agency could really use that. Lots of Spanish speakers ride the buses and trains, yet only recently did Metro begin making the "watch for unattended bags" announcement in Spanish.)

Still striking in Denver

Denver is in its third day of a transit strike. I don't really know much about their local politics, or even their transit system, so I can't comment too intelligently about their situation. Please submit any useful tidbits below.

I will say that probably unfortunately for the striking union, Denver - unlike New York City, and like most cities in the nation - has a majority of its citizens commuting by automobile (87.1% by car, 4.3% by transit, Census). Lack of a large part of its transit service does not seem to have affected road congestion, at least from what the article says. The ridership that is affected is generally in the lower income categories, which doesn't translate into much political influence (read: the governor is staying out of this fight?). These things would not seem to bode well for the union, or for the strike ending quickly. But like I said, I don't know what I am talking about.

The new transit challenge: self-driving cars.

PRT, as we love to say here, isn't going to work because, well, people have cars. And GM is getting ready to put the final nail in the coffin. In 2008, GM claims it will launch a vehicle with a self-driving system. The system will be part of the 2008 Opel Vectra and, according to sources, will be able to pilot itself at up 60 mph, in heavy traffic.

This is what we knew was coming for a long time. Once cars have the ability to pilot themselves, transit is going to have to re-invent itself, as things like Amtrak NE corridor, which can sell itself on giving people "time to work/play/etc" on the train, may no longer be able to make the argument that you can't do that in your car. And, of course, PRT becomes meaningless, because once you can send your car to go park itself..and pick you up...why would you care about a personal pod-based transit system?

(And yes, I realize this is old news, but some of us have just gotten around to catching up with our blog reading...)

Why WMATA bus riders don't use SmarTrip

WMATA's SmarTrip smart fare payment card has been very popular among Metrorail riders. Stand in any station during commute times and you'll see many riders touching their wallets and purses to the faregates: typically the customer doesn't even need to take the card out of a wallet.

Bus riders have not embraced the card so eagerly. My very unscientific observations would peg bus usage of SmarTrip at less than one out of ten passengers. This can make bus boarding a time-consuming process as customers dump change into the farebox and receive transfers. This low SmarTrip bus adoption rates seem to puzzle Metro board members, and a member of the public raised the issue at a Metro budget comment session a few weeks ago.

I don't find this nearly as puzzling. SmarTrip just doesn't offer many benefits to a typical bus rider. Thus here you'll find my unsolicited explanation for why bus riders don't use SmarTrip:

Bus customers pay at the door; rail riders don't. Rail riders cannot pay at the faregate. Whether a rail rider pays with cash, a credit card, or a pass, she must make a separate trip to the fare vending machine (or perhaps to a supermarket to buy a pass) in order to buy her farecard or pass or to fill her SmarTrip card.

For me, this means that I have to go to a separate machine anyway, so I might as well use the SmarTrip.

Bus customers on the other hand pay at the door. Using a SmarTrip saves them very little time. They don't have to go to a separate machine to pay; so, when they file past the farebox, they might as well pay cash at the box.

Intertwined with this is that SmarTrip's restoration of lost value has less benefit for bus riders. If you lose your SmarTrip, Metro will replace it and restore the lost value, minus a five dollar charge for the new card. This benefits me as a rail rider. I load up to $300 at a time onto the SmarTrip card. This saves me trips to the fare vending machine.

But using SmarTrip doesn't save the bus rider much time, because it doesn't eliminate trips to a machine. Therefore, why would the bus rider add $300 at a time to the SmarTrip card? Instead the bus rider will do the rational thing and pay $1.25, one ride at a time. Adding $1.25 at a time to the SmarTrip card would be silly. Thus, the rider ignores SmarTrip altogether and pays cash.

Not all regional bus systems take SmarTrip. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think Metrobus is the only bus system that takes SmarTrip. I know Montgomery County, Maryland's RideOn bus does not accept it. One benefit of SmarTrip is paperless transfers. However, many bus riders have to ride multiple bus systems. Since the other buses don't take SmarTrip, the rider needs a paper transfer anyway. Therefore, why use SmarTrip?

SmarTrip does not work with passes. Passes are worthless for many rail riders. They're still a good deal for bus riders though. Unfortunately passes do not work with SmarTrip. That actually would be a handy feature, because then if a bus rider loses his pass, he could get it replaced without losing all the value.

Thus, bus pass customers use paper passes. This is less convenient than a SmarTrip might be for bus passes; however, on the bright side, boarding for a bus pass customer takes even less time than for a SmarTrip customer.

SmarTrip costs $5. Sure, $5 is not much to a lot of people. But to a lot of bus riders, $5 is some real money. I remember reading in a Washington Post article that some bus riders were discussing cutting back their ridership when bus fares increased by something like 25 cents. People like that aren't going to pay $5 for a plastic card, especially when, as the above paragraphs show, it doesn't benefit them anyway.

In a similar vein, one reason I like SmarTrip is because I can load so much money onto it at a time. Lots of bus riders can't afford to put $300 at a time on the card--not that they would anyway, because it wouldn't benefit them much.

There is no SmarTrip discount. I'd imagine it costs Metro more to process cash than to process SmarTrip payments. In such a case a SmarTrip discount would be helpful. In the past, there was a 10 percent "bonus" for farecard purchases over $20. A frequent bus rider could get this discount only by using SmarTrip (Metro paper farecards aren't accepted on buses.) Now there is no discount.

Some have suggested that more SmarTrip sales outlets would increase bus rider adoption. Perhaps this is so, but rail SmarTrip usage was high even before Metro sold the cards in rail stations.

So, how could Metro increase SmarTrip adoption by bus riders? Get the other regional bus systems to accept it. Institute a discount for SmarTrip riders. Allow passes to be loaded onto a SmarTrip card.

In other Metro news, the Riders Advisory Council meets tomorrow, April 5 (PDF warning); Tunnel ads debut; hearings to be held for Silver Spring transit center, Glenmont parking structure, and bus service changes; Spring track work announced.

The way to JFK

This Sunday's New York Times had a good contributed op-ed (PDF) with some ideas on how to make the Air Train service more user-friendly (to both JFK and Newark).