‘Metro Emergency Call Sign’
courtesy of ‘[F]oxymoron’

I’m a fan of open and honest communication. It’s the best policy. You lay out your position, you let everyone know what is going on, you keep them informed. They might not be happy with everything that you do, but they will see that you are making an effort and that you are, at least, trying to keep them updated.

Metro seems to have a love-hate relationship with this concept. Last year, Metro tried for a little more openness. They invited bloggers into their HQ for a no holds barred talk with both the former General Manager John Catoe as well as his replacement, Interim GM Richard Sarles. We covered both events, and we were happy to see WMATA headed in a more clear and open direction.

But I’m beginning to think these things are flukes. Last week, WTOP’s intrepid transportation reporter Adam Tuss called out the agency on Twitter for not answering questions about the recent violence at L’Enfant Plaza. Metro eventually caved, but not until after he threatened to “slam them on air.” Continue reading →

‘Gakkenflex’
courtesy of ‘pnzr242’

As you might have heard by now, Metro’s longest serving board member, Chris Zimmerman, has elected to step down. I spoke with Mr. Zimmerman this morning about his decision to step down, and about Metro in general.

Despite the persistent reports that he resigned due to frustrations with funding, Zimmerman told me that he stepped down because of time constraints. At the beginning of the year, Zimmerman will become chairman of the Arlington County board. “I have a number of things in Arlington that are very important to me that I really need to spend time on,” he said. “The Metro assignment has become quite consuming, and at some point you have to decide what to focus on.”

That doesn’t mean he isn’t concerned with Metro’s funding. “My concern about Metro in the future is that we have not been committing the resources necessary to operate at the level that the region expects, and we’re seeing the consequences of that. That’s not something that can be fixed from within the Metro board.” He adds that he expects to continue to be involved in Metro and other transportation issues, and in finding a stable source of funding for the agency.

Read on for what I thought was a frank and wide-ranging discussion of the issues the board and the region have ahead of them.

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Screen capture from the WMATA youtube video of today’s first bag swabs

I know – you expect me to say “security theater” and gripe about their ineffectiveness. I may, at the end, but let’s stick to the somewhat interesting factual description for the moment.

Although the WMATA press release doesn’t explicitly say-so, the general description from observers and media indicates that WMATA isn’t doing full bag checks on everyone they wave over. Instead they’re doing a quick swab of the outside of the bag and only asking folks to open it if there’s a positive result. It’s unclear whether this is an effort to make the process faster, a recognition of how difficult it is to effectively visually inspect a bag, or an effort at avoiding constitutional challenges by allowing them to claim they only really invade your privacy if they have a slightly better cause.

Be that as it may, maybe you’re interested in how this works. Let me tell you about it.

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’30 Oct 2010 – No 377′
courtesy of ‘B Jones Jr’

Or at least the future will have mobile data.

Since my return to semi-regular Metro use, I’ve been wondering about a few changes and enhancements that have been promised (or needed). I asked Metro to comment on several items, including what’s going on with the continued roll out of cell phone service in the rest of the system.

Last year, Metro and the various mobile companies launched service inside the 20 busiest stations, and I think everyone is rather happy with the result. The agency is under a mandate to launch service throughout the rest of the system by October 2012. I noticed that at Court House, the visible infrastructure was installed, so I wanted to know if roll out was going faster than planned or if it would be phased in.
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‘Amtrak’
courtesy of ‘ep_jhu’

Today’s Talkin’ Transit is an homage to Amtrak. Well, really, an homage to all things train. Amtrak just happens to be our primary ride, here in the Nation’s Capital.

What is it about train travel? There’s an old world feel to taking the train. It seems more civilized, certainly, than air travel. It’s less stressful, too. And, while driving might be faster and more convenient, it’s also more stressful (and depending on route, not cheaper, either).

Obviously, a lot of you like the train, too. Amtrak says it has 65% share of the DC to NY air/rail market — which, even with the various bus services left out, still seems like a staggering number to me. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, though: every time I head to a business trip in NY, the Acela seems more and more full. A little over three hours from the heart of DC to the heart of NY, and no one has asked you to strip naked.
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’31/395 – Daunting Entrance’
courtesy of ‘andrew.cohen’

In the mass transit world it always seems like it’s “us vs. them”. The drivers, with their greedy, self-centered, insistence that they have to drive everywhere vs. the saintly public transit lovers who are sure that you’ll love it if you tried it. Or, another way, the drivers, with their need to drive into their jobs from far away vs. the hippies who have no idea what it takes to get into work in the morning.

Yes, those are slightly exaggerated caricatures. And, yes, there haven’t been any pitched battles (yet). But the reality is that each side in the transit game is deeply entrenched. Car owners are loathto give them up, even when they have a transit option; transit lovers want, through increasing expense, to drive more people to public transportation. For many, it’s a binary situation, good vs. evil, black and white, ones and zeros.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. There’s no sane way to remove all (most, or even a sizable small fraction) of the cars from the road. For one thing, the infrastructure isn’t there: Metro and all of the regional transit agencies together couldn’t handle the load. Metrorail is averaging about 735,000 rides a day on weekdays (over the last 14 weekdays), and system capacity is roughly a million rides. And that capacity is only when the system is running 8-car trains in automatic mode.
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‘Empty Ride’
courtesy of ‘Samer Farha’

“There is no more valuable currency to a transit system than the trust of its ridership. The accident at Fort Totten severely shook the faith of Washington area riders and the millions of tourists who visit this city. WMATA can win back that trust by taking our safety recommendations to heart, and, at its core, fundamentally changing its culture. This effort has begun, but there is still a long ride ahead.” — National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman, July 27, 2010

Trust. You can’t buy it. You have to earn it. Without it, you’re going to lose customers, no matter your business. When you get into your car, you trust the manufacturer to have tested all the design elements as well as the car you are in. You trust your mechanic to have kept the car in good working order. You trust yourself behind the wheel to keep you safe. The trust you have in each of these things comes from years of observation (by you, or by others you trust).

When your car fails in a way that should have been detected and was preventable, you lose some trust. Depending on the severity of the problem, you might decide to never buy a car from a certain manufacturer or you might no longer do business with your mechanic. And if it turns out that are unwilling to fix the problems or to get a reliable car or to drive in a safe manner, you wouldn’t expect people to continue to trust you to drive them around, time and again.

But that’s exactly what is going on with Metro. It took years of neglect, years of not caring about safety, for the system to get into a state where a deadly accident was all but inevitable. The NTSB report found that, in the words of chairman Deborah Hersman, “the layers of safety deficiencies uncovered during the course of this investigation are troubling and reveal a systemic breakdown of safety management at all levels.”
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