Category Archives: Talkin’ Transit

Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: Data, Data, Data

Photo courtesy of
‘Horton #9’
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

Metro is hoping that a release of their real time data to developers will help them get information about trains and buses to riders faster and in ways they want. On July 8, Metro announced that a public application programming interface (API) aimed at the developer community would be made available in August.

The agency told us it is looking to the community of developers to help solve some of the issues they currently face, including making live data available to the disabled, and helping to make regional transit information easier to access. Metro spokesman Ron Holzer says they would also be “delighted to be surprised with applications that are totally unexpected.”

Metro is also looking to “foster a better culture of transparency, customer service and performance accountability,” with the release of this data. So how will this work? What would this data look like for developers, and what should riders expect to see in the not too distant future?
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News, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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Weekend Traffic Alerts

Photo courtesy of
‘Road Closed’
courtesy of ‘Phillip Pessar’

There are a couple of big closures this weekend that you should be aware of as you plan your driving routes this weekend. The first is the 12th Street exit from inbound 395 across the Case Bridge. The ramp from 395 to 12th Street will be closed starting tonight at 9pm, and will not reopen until 4am on Monday. They’re fixing things on the ramp most of the weekend, and that will also close D Street SW east of 12th Street, too.

In addition, DDOT is doing some testing on the Frederick Douglass Bridge (South Capitol Street Bridge) from 4am to 9am on Sunday for standard monthly testing of the swing span.

You should also prepare for evening stoppages next week on DC 295 and I-295 around the 11th Street bridge project next week as they remove old sign structures and so they can add the steel trussing for the pedestrian bridge.

Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: London Edition

All Aboard
‘All Aboard’
courtesy of Samer Farha

“Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” — Samuel Johnson

I recently spent a week working in London, and got to experience, again, London’s remarkable, ridiculous, insane, and fantastic transportation system first hand. Did I say “again?” Yes, this is probably the umpteenth time I’ve worked in London for a short stint, and the umpteenth time I’ve been exposed to the system of busses, subways, and insanity that is the Transport for London (TfL). I’ve been there for strikes and breakdowns, and I’ve been there in the heat and cold. I prefer it when things are running well and in the cold.

This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive article on the differences between Metro and the TfL. It’s more about what I see as obvious similarities and differences, and where one might have done a better job.

I’ll start with station architecture: Metro has this one down cold. Huge, cavernous stations with reasonably well marked platforms. The only time you feel claustrophobic in a Metro station is when the system breaks down during rush hour. The Tube is a little different. The system gets its name from the tube-like tunnels, which extend their presence into the stations. But each platform is its own tube, and the platforms get very crowded no matter the time of day. It feels much more closed in, and you will get jostled.
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Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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Heat Kinks on Metro to Slow Evening Commute

Photo courtesy of
‘yup, it’s hot out’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

It sucks out there. It’s fit for neither man nor beast, and your evening commute is going to suck. Now, Metro has come out and said that it’s going to suck a bit more. There are some heat kinks in the rails, which Metro explains as: “Heat kinks form when overheated tracks expand and cannot be constrained by the cross ties and ballast support the track.”

The heat kink that we know about so far is on the Red Line between the New York Avenue & Rhode Island Avenue stations and is slowing trains between the two stations in an attempt to avoid calamity. Please expect the Red Line to suck more than usual, and I wouldn’t bet on any comfort on those trains at all. If you can, folks, a little extra deodorant wouldn’t kill you under these conditions.

Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: An Uphill Battle For WMATA One Year After Crash

Photo courtesy of
‘Horton #23 (26/365)’
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

Earlier Samer wrote about how his commute changed when he was able to drive to work, for me it has been a luxury I’ve enjoyed for most of my time here in the DC area. I called it a luxury because I had a parking space at an office .7 miles away from my home in Clarendon. With a parking space waiting for me at work I freely drove that .7 miles to and from my home every day.

Call me lazy but I grew up in a Boston suburb where you needed a car in order to get anywhere around town. For me driving was always a necessity and a habit I didn’t give up til my car had an extended stay at the mechanic. Now I have the opposite of what Samer had: I took a new job in Rosslyn, where parking wasn’t provided and I went from a daily driver to a daily Metro commuter.

Even before I became a daily Metro customer I’ve been a big fan of the Metrorail system. When asked to compared Washington, DC with my hometown of Boston it is the Metro and the public transportation system that leads my argument for why I love DC a little bit more than beantown. Sure Boston has their legendary T system but WMATA did things that the MBTA never had.

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Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: Drive

Photo courtesy of
‘twilight drive’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

Through a very lucky break I’ve had a free parking pass for my office building over the last month. It’s given me a chance to drive into the office on a regular basis, and to compare that commute to my regular Metro commute. The things I do for you fine readers!

First, let me make it clear: I think that a viable public transit system has to be at the heart of any reasonably sized community. We just cannot afford another half-a-million cars on the road.

Having said that, from time to time (at least once a week) when I ride Metro, I get the urge to drive again. Every time I look at Metro’s site and see “delayed” (as I write this, the Orange and Blue lines are delayed) I want to get in the car and go.
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Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: Flat Fare

Photo courtesy of
‘Hole to the Sky’
courtesy of ‘Samer Farha’

There’s a giant hole in the Metro budget, and there is a plan for plugging it. Of course, it’s going to require fare raises and service cuts, and it’s not likely to be fun. Metro’s choice of a complicated set of charges based on distance and time of day (and peak-of-the-peak!) leaves my head aching for something less complex.

New York’s Subway has often been held up as the simplest way to do fare collection: each and every trip is the same price ($2.25). Sounds good to me, but would it work here, and what would it cost?

Let’s do some math, based on Metro’s proposed 2011 budget numbers (PDF – Table 3.8).
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News, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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16th Street Near Scottish Rite Temple Closed

Photo courtesy of
‘House of the Temple’
courtesy of ‘NCinDC’

16th Street between S & R is currently shut down for police investigation of a second suspicious package there this morning. I’m not sure why you’d want to blow up the Masons, really, unless you’re deep into conspiracies…oh. I see. Well.

Buses are being stopped (including all of the S buses that run down 16th Street) around the area, and you should probably steer clear from there for now. From what I understand, buses were being offloaded and checked for suspicious packages by MPD in the area, as well.

Talkin' Transit, The Features, WMATA
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Talkin’ Transit: Back to Basics with Richard Sarles

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘erin m’

Last night’s blogger roundtable with interim WMATA General Manager Richard Sarles was instructive for where the organization’s focus is right now: it’s all about “back to basics” for the interim GM, who is intent upon shoring up his priorities of Safety, Reliability and Fiscal Stability.  The system has, in his view, suffered massively in the last few years, and as long as it took to get there, it will take that long to get it back.  That starts, according to Sarles, with a return to the basics.

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Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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Chris Zimmerman: Panic! On the Metro

Photo courtesy of
‘Now Panic and Freak Out!’
courtesy of ’emilydickinsonridesabmx’

Arlington County Commissioner and WMATA Board Member Chris Zimmerman has an editorial in today’s Post that begins: “You may now panic.“

Generally, that’s not a good sign.

Zimmerman’s point is clear: Metro’s current funding plans run out soon, and there are no firm commitment from any of the member jurisdictions to match the $11.4B that Metro needs to function for the next decade. Zimmerman is looking for a commitment from each of the region’s jurisdictions to fill the gap, and is also turning to the Federal Government, suggesting that their voting rights on the Board are also a responsibility to add funding for the system, and that a regional tax be enacted to provide more secure funding for Metro.

Zimmerman’s not wrong, but it’s hard to see how Northern Virginia could enact a tax to pay for Metro when they can’t do this for anything else in their budget, so it’s a hard sell for me to hear his remarks when they’re ignorant of how we get the broadest of strokes in place.

We’ll be asking Metro’s Interim GM Richard Sarles questions tonight about Zimmerman’s editorial, as well as about maintenance schedules, getting back to normal, and other topics. Got something you think we should ask? Tell us in the comments.

News, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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McDonnell Orders Magical Cameras

Photo courtesy of
‘Surveillance’
courtesy of ‘ep_jhu’

Get off 66 at the DTR, and you have two choices: go directly to the Airport and pay nothing, or take the road with exits, and pay as you go. Apparently, though, there are enough people who are driving out to the airport and thence hitting the private roads. Gov. McDonnell has signed a bill to act to prevent this, which is great, the main airport road is for airport business, and I get this. The problem, though, is that they want to automate this process.

Yes, they want to put a camera out there to do photosurveillance and detection of who is and who is not on Airport business. I’m not exactly sure how that would work, and none of the initial reports seem to indicate how this machine would hand out its $600 tickets to the masses. How the heck would this work?

Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: Wishful Thinking

Photo courtesy of
‘tunnel vision*’
courtesy of ‘mofo’

Metro has a new (interim) general manager, and what follows is my “welcome to DC, please fix Metro” letter. Some of it is needed work, but admittedly, some of my wishes are wishful thinking.

Dear Mr. Sarles,

Welcome to Washington. I hope the city and the mild weather we’ve been having agrees with you. I trust you are slowly learning the ropes over at Metro HQ, and that you’re keeping your promise to ride the system (at least once in a while).

I’m sure that you’ve been briefed by some of the best and the brightest at Metro, already. I hope you’re well on your way to understanding some of the major issues facing Metro, and that you still have some space on your plate for some of the less critical items as well.

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to drive into the office. It was a smooth, fast ride at 5:30 in the morning. Faster than Metro could have got me there. I did have to pay for parking, and at $12, it wasn’t steep but not something I could afford to do every day. More and more, though, I find myself contemplating paying that every now and again. In the evenings, especially if I stay downtown for a leisurely dinner, I tend to cab it home.

It didn’t always used to be that way, Mr. Sarles. Until the last few months, it was rare for me to cab anywhere. Now, I’m trying to wrangle a deal for parking and taking taxis over half the time. The problem? Well, it’s item one on my list.

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Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: Institutional

Photo courtesy of
‘good morning’
courtesy of ‘volcanojw’

Last week we told you about Metro’s board having voted to give preliminary approval to change their privacy policy in order to be able to provide SmarTrip data to users over the internet. The press release outlining what was to happen later this year set off my “I-can’t-believe-we’re-having-this-conversation” alarms.

In that release, Metro points out two things that set me off. First, there’s the reason for the change. It seems that after SmarTrip was introduced in 2004, the board approved a privacy policy in 2005 that seems not have considered the possibility that people would want access to their data over the internet.

Let me repeat that: five years ago, almost 15 years after the world wide web was invented and a decade after “information superhighway” entered the general lexicon, Metro’s board didn’t consider the internet when making their plans. Add to that having to have the board act in order to change the privacy policy because, it seems, the policy is written so narrowly that delivering the same data online and offline requires a change.
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Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: Last Week on the Job

Photo courtesy of
‘WMATA Blogger Roundtable’
courtesy of ‘Samer Farha’

Metro General Manager John Catoe will be ending his three year tenure at the transit agency on Friday, but his legacy will be debated for a while yet. As he transitions to the world of transit consulting, there’s a natural break for us to look back at Metro and at his tenure.

During his three years at the helm, there were many positive changes. The Metro system saw huge, record breaking number of trips during Obama’s inauguration, 1.12 million on the rails in one day (PDF), and performed admirably. Also during Catoe’s tenure, Metrorail stopped using four car trains (though they kept threatening to go back to them).

But positive is not how most people will look back on Metro’s last three years. Catoe oversaw the deadliest and most accident filled years in Metro’s history. We’re all painfully aware of the impact of the June 22, 2009 accident which left 9 people dead and the system on the brink. But despite an increase in focus on safety, there were three incidents which killed four Metro employees after that date, and a derailment earlier this year. And let’s not even mention the number of accidents and deaths caused by Metrobus.

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Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: Snow Blower Edition

Photo courtesy of
‘South Smithsonian Escalators’
courtesy of ‘william couch’

It’s going to be in the sixties and sunny for the next few days, and memories of record snowfall and Metro closures are quickly fading. But I want to take you back a month, to twenty-inch snowfalls and closed federal offices. Every time that we’ve had a massive snowfall in the area over the last 22 years that I’ve been here, someone suggests that Metro should buy equipment to deal with big snow falls. And every time the idea gets shot down with an argument about how we can’t afford to be prepared for once every seven years/decade/lifetime storms.

With each mounting inch of snow, and each dollar that it costs to dig out, I began to doubt that, and I decided to see how much it costs to buy equipment that might help Metro fight the snow. I contacted the friendly folks at the Chicago Transit Authority and asked them about their equipment and what they do to handle the snow.

Metro closes all above ground stations when snow reaches between six and eight inches. They do this to protect the undercarriage of the trains and for fear that trains won’t be able to get power from the electrified third rail. In contrast, CTA has no such predetermined parameters and try and maintain normal service until it is unsafe to do so.
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Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit

Richard Sarles at the groundbreaking of the Mass Transit Tunnel in June 2009. Courtesy former Gov. Jon Jon Corzine's office

Richard Sarles at the groundbreaking of the Mass Transit Tunnel in June 2009. Courtesy former Gov. Jon Jon Corzine's office

Greater Greater Washington and the Washington Post both have the news that Metro is hoping to name former New Jersey Transit Executive Director Richard Sarles as interim head of the agency on Thursday. The Post reports that Metro Board Chairman Peter Benjamin confirms they do not currently have a contract with Sarles, but that he “is certainly a person we would like to appoint.”

Benjamin goes on to praise Sarles’s background, and calls him “solid on safety.” Sarles was appointed head of NJ Transit in 2007 after five years as Assistant Executive Director for Capital Programs and Planning there. He retired in January. Before working for NJ Transit, Sarles was at Amtrak where he led development of the Northeast Corridor High-Speed Rail program. He also has an engineering and project management background that spanned 20 years at the Port Authority.

Salres obviously has the chops to deal with the problems facing Metro. We aren’t privy to the interview process, and not living in the NY/NJ area, are not as familiar with his thinking on transit. Luckily, Sarles participates as a panel expert on the National Journal‘s transportation blog, commenting on many of the issues facing transportation planners. Read on for a little bit of insight.

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Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit

Snow covers trains at Metro's Brentwood Yard (courtesy of WMATA)

Snow covers trains at Metro's Brentwood Yard (courtesy of WMATA)

Snow. You remember it, surely? Anywhere between two and four feet over the last week. It crippled our roads and sidewalks, and it’s left several small mountains in most of our neighborhoods. I’m sure you aren’t surprised that it also crippled Metro.

The bus system has to rely on local municipalities to clear snow from the roads. Many snow emergency routes were cleared fairly quickly, but the conditions on secondary streets varied wildly, leaving many buses running on altered routes, even today.

The subway system was also hard hit. Above ground service had to be shut down, and only fully came back online on Friday afternoon. By that point, the Federal government had reopened to one of the worst commutes (by car or by rail) that I’ve seen in 22 years here. So what happened and why, and what should Metro be doing differently in a storm?
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News, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed
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Metro Moves 14 Bus Routes to Snow Emergency Routes

Photo courtesy of
‘Snow’
courtesy of ‘Amberture’

14 Metrobus routes in the DMV are now operating only on Snow Emergency routes:

In the District of Columbia, the U5, U8, D2, G2, and H8 are operating on snow emergency routes. In Northern Virginia, the 1 (A,B, E, F, Z), 3A, 3T, 4(A, B), 16 (A,D), 16G, 17H, 28 (A,X), 29 (H,G) are operating on snow emergency routes.

WMATA suggests that you use NextBus to find your nearest bus during the storm.

Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit

Photo courtesy of
‘Horton #23’
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

Some of you might know me from my photo posts here, and I hope you’ll humor me as I branch out to talk about a subject I love. Or, well, more accurately, a subject I love to hate. As anyone who follows my Twitter stream can attest, I’m not exactly happy with the state of Metro Rail at the moment. But I thought I’d start my new contribution to Talkin’ Transit on a more positive note.

Many times, you’re on the platform waiting for a train and it breaks down. You’re headed home, tired, impatient. The big board was saying ten minutes until your train; now it says “No Passengers,” instead. The announcer makes some vague pronouncement of a problem that is now cleared, “and all trains are moving normally.” When the next train arrives, though, you see it is jam packed — a Caps or Nationals game was just wrapping up, or worse, it’s still rush hour.

A few years ago, Metro installed big expensive signs in every station. They were there to tell you a few bits of information: which elevators were out, when the next train was coming, and so on. On the screen that displays the trains, it also told you what color line the train was servicing and how many cars made up that train.
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News, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Metro Board Votes to Raise Fares $0.10

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘mollie emm’

The Metro Board voted early this afternoon to use fare hikes, and not rail service cuts, to cover a $40M budget gap for the rest of FY 2010, which ends in June. The fare increase will go into effect on 1 March 2010, raising the minimum fare on Metro to $1.75 during rush, and $1.45 during offpeak. The move is just one of a group of measures that will cover the budget gap, and was said by GM John Catoe to potentially raise $9-11M in extra fares.

Also included the measures adopted by the Metro Board were staff cutbacks at the transit agency (mostly open positions) and other measures, but significantly absent from them was a transfer from the capital budget to operating funds, which could have jeopardized future purchasing for Metro.

In addition to the fare hike, the council also elected Peter Benjamin from Maryland to the chairman’s position, replacing Ward One councilman Jim Graham who is cycling off the chairmanship.