Another worker fatality on WMATA

New WMATA general manager John Catoe will have his hands full when he reports to work: he'll be taking the helm of an agency with serious safety problems. On Thursday the agency had its third worker fatality in a little over a year. As with the other two fatalities, the worker was on the tracks and was struck by a train. These three fatalities equal the number of similar fatal accidents during the agency's first 29 years. Couple this with other safety issues, including 2004's horrific crash, and you have a situation that the National Transportation Safety Board chairman called "unacceptable."

Return of the CTA Holiday Train

With the holiday season fully descended on Chicago, back again is the much-loved CTA Holiday Train. Despite 2006 being marked with myriad problems for the agency, including major derailments on the Blue Line and Red Line and the closing of a key downtown subway station to construct a highly controversial airport-access station, all of that seems to be forgotten for a moment, judging by the dumbfounded, giddy looks that come across riders faces as the so-called "Santa Express" pulls into the station.

A Chicago tradition for 14 years, the six-car "L" train is wrapped in holiday lights and includes a mid-train flatbed carrying a living (and hanging-on-for-dear-life) Santa and his sleigh. The consist cruises the CTA system in regular service every weekend from Thanksgiving until Christmas. Surprised riders step aboard to equally holiday-themed interiors, with special Santa seat upholstery, ceiling lights replaced with red and green bulbs, holiday carols playing over the P.A. system, and costumed CTA "elves" passing through the aisles with buckets of candy canes.

Although not the most politically correct of municipal holiday markers, the CTA Holiday Train has proven itself so universally popular among Chicagoans that a 2004 budget proposal to cancel the train by CTA president Frank Kruesi led CTA board president Carole Brown to pull rank and order the train be operated no matter the cost.

Photos of this year's train can be found on the Chicago-based photoblog, Looper or via this Flickr search.

One route, one channel

Apparently they have installed televisions on the buses and Los Angeles now, and they play the glory of advertising that is the Transit Television Network. As if the small poster advertisements were not enough reinforcement of the demographic (beyond just riding on the bus), now apparently you get to see lots of ads in the full technicolor glory for new credit, bad credit, etc. Maybe one day Los Angeles will have a larger socioeconomic spectrum on its public transit. Maybe.

They had televisions on the double decker buses in London, but they were mostly closed-circuit camera displays, so you can see what was going on in the rest of the bus. I think they occasionally showed other things, but I was too busy looking out the window when I was last there.

No calls on the bus, please

Honolulu is banning cell phones (I can't tell if you can't use them, or you just have to turn the ringer off?) on their buses. I don't think this idea of would ever fly in New York City.

Pittsburgh in Transit Trouble

The Port Authority Of Allegheny County (and the city and the region) is at a place that many other transit systems have found themselves - years of under funding and no thought of the future in financing have run into the needs of the system and the population it serves. Where do you find the money to keep the operating budget in the black, with the newly added problem of expanded ridership and the capital needs for expansion that brings.

At least they seem to be having an open dialog about all their options, especially the notion of creating a regional transit authority to consolidate regional service and generate revenue. The problem in this situation is trying to do too much at once - it is difficult to do operationally and institutionally, and it is often extremely difficult to garner the public and political support needed for the changes.

Amtrak and California

Amtrak and the State of California run lines between the major cities in the state, and they have become more popular than ever. The article notes that they have attributed some of this to the higher price of gas, and I don't doubt it. Gasoline prices in California are often higher than even the rest of the nation.

"We now have the same frequency of trains as Amtrak runs on the Northeast Corridor between Boston and New York," he said, noting that when the line was created in 1991 it had three roundtrips and carried 270,000 passengers a year. Today it has 16 roundtrips and carries nearly 1.3 million passengers.

That growth has pushed the Capitol Corridor to Amtrak's third-busiest line, after the Northeast Corridor and Pacific Surfliner, Bronte said. The San Joaquins line is in fifth place, but may soon move up, he added. "Another big thing people don't realize is that 20 percent of all the riders on the entire Amtrak system are in California," Skoropowski said. "Twenty years ago, we weren't even on the radar screen."

New Congressional Alignments

With the new Congress coming in January and the Democrats taking over, a bunch of new people will be in charge of various committees that control the funding for transportation projects. This article (or here) has a short roundup of some of the more important ones.

De-anonymizing the subway

Awhile ago I wrote of the virtues of electronic payment methods for transit. Instead of the old-fashioned token, you can now wave your smart-chip embedded plastic thingie at the turnstile or farebox. Seems mighty convenient, but is there a hidden price to pay?

One Slashdot commenter points out that new payment methods de-anonymize the use of public transit. Previously in New York, riders purchased tokens and popped them into turnstiles. Usage was un-traceable. Now riders must purchase MetroCards, and the agency can stick a camera in the MetroCard vending machine to record you as you make your purchase and, then, track your usage of the MetroCard. The new Citibank fare payment card available for use on the Lexington Avenue Line offers even more potential for tracking, as records could then possibly be matched up with your name and address. I don't know whether NYC Transit actually does this sort of data mining.

I can tell you that WMATA tracks usage of your SmarTrip card. I once lost mine and when I called to reclaim the lost value, the operator told me the stations I had visited recently. I believe this information also pops up on the computer if a station manager examines your card for some reason (which often happens if the card is not working.) Again, I don't know what use, if any, the agency makes of this information. Perhaps this data could be useful to analyze ridership patterns, but it could also be used for marketing or for other nefarious purposes.

The Slashdot commenter also points out that commuter rail agencies encourage you to purchase tickets by mail, slapping you with penalties if you purchase them onboard the train.

How would you feel if WMATA or MTA made information about your transit use available to marketers? What if the agencies aggregated your data with that of other riders in order to analyze ridership patterns, or for sale to marketers?

Not just talking the talk, but riding the ride

The LA Times reports that despite his transit friendly talk, Mayor Villaraigosa rarely actually rides LA's public transportation (via Planetizen). The Mayor is quoted as saying, "You've got to use public transit. You can't keep on pointing to someone else and saying it's their responsibility." But the reality is that the Mayor's main transportation is a police-chauffeured Yukon (certainly not the most eco choice available). Planetizen points out that NYC's Mayor Bloomberg makes a point of riding the subway to work everyday – both leading by example and taking the opportunity to connect with his constituents (voters). Does Menino ride the T to work everyday? How about Daley in Chicago or Williams in DC? If you want the voters to take you seriously as a visionary leader, you've got to show your commitment – actions speak louder than words. And Bloomberg demonstrates that you're also missing out on a valuable political opportunity.

Kontroll

Apparently a pretty decent low-budget Hungarian film set mostly in the subways, this film played last week here in New York City -- but unfortunately I missed it.

A slapstick tale of redemption set in the Budapest subway system, Kontroll centers around the brooding, charismatic Bulcsú and is return to grace. Once a promising young professional above ground, Bulcsú now spends his days and nights wandering the tunnels as the reluctant leader of a ragtag group of ticket inspectors. Lower, even, then the traffic police, they dally forth daily to fight sad and hilarious uphill battles against hostile straphangers, abusive punks, pimps, pickpockets and drunken tarts. Other, more troubling antagonists include rival gangs of inspectors, and a malevolent hooded angel of darkness hom Bulcsú confronts in the film’s final showdown. A selection of the 2005 New Directors/New Films festival and the Critics’ Week in Cannes, Kontroll is a poignant tale of one lost soul’s journey toward love and salvation.

BART gets approval for Warm Springs

Another one of those dashed lines on the BART map might finally become solid. The Federal Transit Administration gave its approval to the environmental analysis accompanying the 5.4 mile extension in the South Bay through Fremont.

Indian Traffic

And in other news, some German businessmen really think that the big cities in India could use more mass transit. An urban economy definitely suffers when people can't get anywhere.