Posts in category Transit

The agency chose to give both weekday commuters and weekend riders a lot of pain over a short time, rather than stretch it out over a long time. When finished, the reconstruction project will reduce travel times between 95th Street and Roosevelt by 20 minutes and will make the Red Line more reliable. By closing the entire line at once, riders will get to see those benefits sooner.

In the meantime, riders will have many alternatives to the Red Line, including several shuttle bus options to other L stations. Because of the increased volume of riders changing from shuttles to rail, CTA has also made temporary capacity improvements to the Garfield station on the nearby Green Line, including new staircases, faregates, and bus bays.

Additionally, the Red Line itself will be rerouted over part of the Green Line, and will operate 24 hours during the closure. To prepare for this, the CTA undertook an aggressive maintenance regimen on the Green Line track and structure, since trains will be running all the time, preventing any overnight maintenance.

However, there can be trade-offs. The Baltimore Light Rail was built as a single-track system with sidings where trains could pass one another. In 2004 and 2005, the Maryland Transit Administration closed each end of the line for about 6 months to reconstruct the line with two tracks. Before the project, train headways were limited to 17 minutes. Now, trains can run much more frequently.

During that time, MTA ran local and express shuttle buses to get riders around the closure, but ridership fell by 20% due to the inconvenience and took 3 years to recover, according to a source at MTA. When riders don't have transit options for long periods of time, they make alternate arrangements, like moving or purchasing a car.

If WMATA were to close a line for a long time, the agency could help to mitigate the inconvenience to riders by working with local jurisdictions to set up temporary bus lanes, signal priority, and other transit improvements. Adding additional buses to parallel routes, routing buses to different terminals, and discounting fares are all approaches that could help keep riders on board during the work.

Metro Forward is a big undertaking, and even when it's done, weekend work may still be necessary for future repairs. But for large projects, like Metro's years-long Red Line rehab, closures might get the work done sooner. However, it would cause significant disruption and a potential drop in ridership.

The Planning Board will discuss the plan and potentially make changes to it during a series of worksessions over the next several weeks. After that, they'll vote on whether to approve it. If it passes, the plan will then go to the County Council later this year for additional public hearings and worksessions and a final vote.

Kelly Blynn of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, who live-tweeted the event with myself and Ted Van Houten from the Action Committee for Transit, compiled this summary of the hearing on Storify:

If you get trapped behind a stalled train for an hour halfway to your destination, you have two options. One is to stay put and hope you get there, all while paying full price. The other is to try and return to your origin, maybe be able to exit without paying, and then try to get to your destination another way.

Plus, are mechanical problems really beyond Metro's control? Only if they're caused by "acts of God" or by customers jamming the doors. More often than not, mechanical failure happens because of insufficient maintenance or sloppy inspections. Those are WMATA's fault, and when they result in delays, customers deserve refunds.

Other major transit systems offer customers a free future trip if they are delayed for a certain length of time. Philadelphia's SEPTA offers a free trip to riders after 50 minutes, while Boston's MBTA will give you a free trip after just 30 minutes.

Transport for London's service guarantee program goes even further, giving refunds to any customer after a 15-minute delay. Arlington resident Samer Farha explained his experiences during a recent trip to London, where he used Oyster card, their equivalent of SmarTrip. According to Farha, when his trip was delayed, Transport for London (TfL) emailed him to apologize. TfL told him the refund would go back on his card the next time he entered the system. Farha could even log in to TfL's website and choose which station he wanted to credit to go to.

With Metro's current state of repair, a 15-minute window might be a little aggressive, but the agency could at least allow customers to request a refund for delays of 30 minutes or more.

Metro should also let customers leave from the station they entered from, without having to wait for officials to declare a "major delay," as long as they leave within 30 minutes. If you bail out because the train is taking too long, what does it matter how long the delay is? You haven't used Metro for transportation, and shouldn't pay anything.

If WMATA has to refund customers when it's at fault, that could give employees and officials alike an incentive to start making the system more reliable. The number of customer refunds could become a performance metric which goes in reports to the WMATA board.

Metro promises its riders a safe, reliable means of transportation, though it doesn't always deliver. A service guarantee would acknowledge that they make mistakes and respect their customers' time and money.

"Short trip" passes were previously available only as a paper farecard. If you took a trip of more than $3.50, you would have to use the Exitfare machine to pay the exact fare when leaving. Putting the pass on a SmarTrip card is much more convenient for riders who take the occasional longer trip, because the faregates can automatically calculate and deduct the extra fare.

Next, consider discounts and even passes for even shorter trips

You can also subscribe online to have the pass automatically renew when the old one is about to expire. For some riders, this is a good option. But since the pass costs the equivalent of 10 rides, it's not such a good deal that you'd want to set it and forget it, which could mean you'd end up buying one even on weeks with work holidays or vacation. I'd like to see a monthly pass with a discount, so that more riders would find it worthwhile to just buy passes automatically even around holidays.

Now that Metro's figured out how to implement a pass where people pay and get trips under a certain amount free, they could even try offering passes with a threshold below $3.50. For example, a pass that costs $100 per month and allows all trips under $2.50 each way for free might be very popular among riders that live in DC.

Give credit for bus transfers

One downside to the "short trip" pass is that it doesn't discount transfers between bus and rail. WMATA representatives have previously said that allowing transfer discounts to pass holders would be like giving discounts on top of discounts.

However, the transfer discount used to be available for pass holders when WMATA used paper transfer slips. When the WMATA Board approved replacing them with SmarTrip tracking, there was no discussion about eliminating the discount as well.

The discount isn't really a "discount," anyway. It's a recognition that a trip that uses bus and rail is really one trip on two modes, and the fare probably shouldn't be the same as two totally separate trips. You don't pay double the rail fare if you transfer between rail lines. In many cities, like New York, a bus plus rail trip costs the same as just one trip alone.

WMATA should restore the transfer discounts for all pass holders, and give riders with a rail pass the same reduced fare on the bus as any rider coming from a rail trip. Similarly, all riders should get the same fare when they transfer from bus to rail, whether or not they have a Metrobus pass.

All in all, "short trip" passes on SmarTrip are a great option, and I expect to subscribe to them in the future.

Here is the full list.

Transit projects:

• $100 million for MARC enhancements, including Penn Line weekend service, 2 new Camden Line weekday roundtrips, and new locomotives.
  
• $280 million for final design for the Purple Line.
  
• $170 million for final design for the Red Line in Baltimore.
  
• $100 million for final design for the Corridor Cities Transitway in Montgomery County.

Road projects:

• $125 million for construction of an interchange between I-270 and Watkins Mill Road in Montgomery County.
  
• $100 million for construction of an interchange at Kerby Hill Road and Indian Head Highway in Prince George's.
  
• $49 million for widening US 29 to three lanes from Seneca Drive to MD 175 in Howard County.
  
• $82 million for construction of an interchange on US 15 at Monocacy Boulevard in Frederick.
  
• $20 million for design of a new Thomas Johnson Bridge between Calvert and St. Mary's counties.
  
• $60 million for reconstruction of in interchange at I-695 and Leeds Avenue in Baltimore County.
  
• $44 million for BRAC-related construction near Aberdeen Proving Ground.
  
• $54 million for construction of a new interchage on US 301 at MD 304 on the Eastern Shore.

Of course, cars aren't held to the same standard.

There also aren't many drivers on the ICC. Around 21,000 cars per day use the road. The state says that meets projections, but the projections seem to change. At one point they were as high as 71,000.

But is anyone proposing the state shut the road? Nope. Instead, the strategy is to try and boost car use.

Lawmakers hoped to induce more traffic with lower tolls last year, although that proposal was never accepted. This year the state raised the speed limit to make driving more attractive.

When it comes to bikes and transit, it's cut and run at the first hint of a problem. For cars, it's roll out the red carpet and hope for more traffic.

This isn't the first time this has happened. When Virginia's I-95 HOT lanes were first proposed, the firm hoping to expand the highway called its proposal "BRT/HOT lanes," but of course nothing resembling actual BRT was ever built.

Transportation advocates should remember this the next time someone proposes a "multimodal" highway. Odds are they won't deliver.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

The BRT line will run south from Pentagon City through Crystal City and then into Alexandria. It will have dedicated lanes, with large rail-like stations. The line will run every 6 minutes during rush hour and every 12-15 minutes at other times.

In a few years it will be upgraded to a streetcar line. But in the meantime, it's the DC region's first bona fide BRT.

WMATA selected the Metro Way brand and livery following a survey this past March that considered several options. The blue livery, although clearly unique, reflects the blue Metro uses for its MetroExtra express buses.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

I worked with Kelly Blynn of the Coalition for Smarter Growth to create a video about why we need BRT in Montgomery County:

In some parts of the county, especially in the congested Downcounty, we don't have the room to move everyone in cars now, let alone in the future. Keep things the way they are and they'll get worse. Provide a dedicated lane for transit, as this plan proposes in many areas, and people will gain a fast, reliable alternative to sitting in traffic.

Don't get me wrong: I love driving, and I love my car. But I'd rather spend my time in the car having fun, not sitting in traffic because there's no better way to get around. Some will insist that transit doesn't work for them, and that's okay. However, there are places and times when transit is the best tool we have to get people moving, and we have to take advantage of it.

Expanding our transit network is really the only way that Montgomery County can continue to grow, and the county will grow, whether people want it to or not. This plan will provide improved transit service in areas where people already use it, like along Route 29 between Silver Spring and Burtonsville, where thousands of apartments were built in the 1970's and 1980's in anticipation of light-rail line that never materialized. And it will support future development in places like White Flint, where BRT along Rockville Pike will form the spine of a new urban center.

Of course, many questions remain about this proposal. Elected officials have asked how we'll pay for it. Residents are worried about impacts to their individual neighborhoods. And there's a larger, philosophical debate about Montgomery County's transition from being the "perfect suburbia" of 50 years ago to a slightly more urban place.

We're not going to answer these questions today, not do we have to. There are still a lot of details to consider, and there are smaller, incremental improvements we can make to our transit network sooner rather than later. What this plan can do, however, is begin a conversation about getting transit on equal footing with cars.

Growing up in Montgomery County, I was taught to value diversity. We may have different backgrounds, different perspectives, and different lifestyles, but we still come together to form one community. Building a transportation network that acknowledges that not everyone drives is a statement that we value all residents of Montgomery County, not just those who drive.

The Planning Board will hold a public hearing on the Countywide Transit Corridors Functional Master Plan this Thursday at 6pm at the Montgomery County Planning Department, 8787 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring. To sign up to testify or send written comments, visit their website.

If you're interested in learning more about Montgomery County's BRT plan, the Action Committee for Transit is hosting a talk with Larry Cole, the county's head planner for BRT, at their monthly meeting this Tuesday at 7:30pm at the Silver Spring Civic Center, located at the corner of Ellsworth Drive and Fenton Street.