Posts by Kurt Raschke

No amounts may be provided to the Transit Authority pursuant to the authorization under this section unless the Transit Authority ensures that customers of the rail service of the Transit Authority have access within the rail system to services provided by any licensed wireless provider that notifies the Transit Authority (in accordance with such procedures as the Transit Authority may adopt) of its intent to offer service to the public, in accordance with the following timetable:

(A) Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, in the 20 underground rail station platforms with the highest volume of passenger traffic.

(B) Not later than 4 years after such date, throughout the rail system.

WMATA met the first deadline, turning up a new distributed antenna system and signing on the four major carriers (AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon). But the second deadline has proved thornier. A recent Washington Examiner article described the contractor installing the system as being in "dire financial straits." Anecdotal reports from riders have shown that cellular service has been spotty, even at stations which initially had good coverage.

With October 16 just over a month away, you might think that WMATA would be forthcoming with status updates. Unfortunately, WMATA has responded to the situation with its usual opacity.

What does WMATA stand to lose if they miss the deadline? As PRIIA states, "No amounts may be provided," and the amounts authorized under the act are considerable:

There are authorized to be appropriated to the Secretary of Transportation for grants under this section an aggregate amount not to exceed $1,500,000,000 to be available in increments over 10 fiscal years beginning in fiscal year 2009, or until expended.

Clearly, this is not a deadline that WMATA should take lightly.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, like WMATA, is in the midst of wiring its rail system for wireless service, and they, too, have experienced delays. However, they've been more up-front about the situation; an article published earlier this year distinguished between delays attributable to the MBTA's contractor and those attributable to the cellular carriers.

Even if WMATA and their contractor manage to pull through and meet PRIIA's October 16 deadline, there are still best practices they can and should adopt. In New York City, the contractor deploying wireless service on the subway, aptly named Transit Wireless, has established their own presence, rather than lurking in the shadows like the contractors deploying systems in DC and Boston. Through their Web site and Twitter account, Transit Wireless reaches out directly to riders, taking questions and helping them understand what services are available, and where.

By contrast, WMATA refers questions to the carriers, who tend to either deny knowledge of service in the Metro, or refer questions back to WMATA. After WMATA's initial announcement of service at underground stations, updates have been spotty at best—and there's no list of covered stations or timetable for future service rollouts.

Simplifying directions like this helps riders internalize the route network, and encourages spontaneity. Instead of having the sense that every transit trip starts with a visit to Google Transit, riders gain the sense that they can travel whenever they want.

Jarrett Walker emphasized the value of grids, and of high-frequency transit services, during his talk last week. "Frequency is freedom," he says. A regular grid of frequent services makes it easier to get around without having to consult an online trip planner before every trip, though many riders still rely on Google Transit and local trip planners to figure out how to get around.

In fact, the worst thing a trip planner can do is recommend that a rider take an infrequent, irregular service just because it happens to be there when the rider is starting their trip. A great example of this is the Route 305 bus in Los Angeles; as Jarrett Walker explains, it's a low-frequency service which runs through a high-frequency grid:

That means that the 305 is the fastest path between two points on the line only if it happens to be coming soon. If you just miss one, there's another way to get there faster, via the much more frequent lines that flow north-south and east-west across this entire area.

Why should a trip planner ever recommend that a rider take a bus like the Route 305? Doesn't it make more sense to show them to how to use the high-frequency grid to their advantage?

Our hapless, misdirected rider will doggedly wait for that infrequent route to come along, because it's what their itinerary lists. But if they'd received an itinerary which used the high-frequency grid, they'd be on their way a lot sooner.

Of course, even in cities with the most comprehensive high-frequency grids, some trips require going outside the grid. Then, there may be no choice but to ask the prospective rider when they're travelling. But even in those cases, the trip planner's itinerary should still include information on the frequency of the services being used.

Simply put, out in the real world, things happen. A rider might get to the bus stop or train station 10 minutes or even 30 minutes after they'd intended, so doesn't it make sense to tell them up front how long they'll have to wait if they miss the planned trip?

Cross-posted at Raschke on Transport.

In the case of Metrorail performance data, Schmitt sought the raw data used to calculate the summary metrics provided in the agency's Vital Signs Report, including on-time performance. The agency claimed that the data—about 40,000 records per day, or 29 million for the 24-month period covered by Vital Signs—were too voluminous for them to produce.

Dan Stessel, the agency's spokesman, told the Examiner that WMATA objected to "mining 29 million data points", but sought to fulfill the request in other ways. Unfortunately, when it comes to computing on-time performance, there's no substitute for the raw arrival and departure data.

WMATA's fear of the volume of data also betrays a lack of good data management practices on their part; while 29 million rows might seem like a large quantity of data, in this era of "big data" and petabyte-scale databases, it sounds more like a smokescreen.

Schmitt also requested information about the Metrorail signaling system, its safety, and changes made in the wake of the 2009 Red Line crash. Here, WMATA denied the request due to the agency's involvement in ongoing litigation connected to the crash.

Yet, as Schmitt noted in a message to the RAC, a great deal of information on the subject has already been released to the public, through NTSB reports and other publications, and the agency's response is indicative of an unwillingness to sort out information which actually must be protected from disclosure from other information:

In the case of the ATC data, assuming for the sake of argument that a PARP exemption does apply, WMATA has a duty under its policy to segregate exempt from non-exempt information. WMATA has made no effort to fulfill its duty, and it is not credible to claim that every item of information regarding ATC and collision avoidance in WMATA's possession is subject to exemption. At the least, considerable information maintained by WMATA is already in the public domain, such as via NTSB reports. If information is publicly available, it cannot be withheld as exempt. Therefore, WMATA's position is unreasonable on its face.

Regardless of the reasons for the agency's denials, they are merely symptoms of a much larger, more serious problem: an ongoing lack of transparency and meaningful oversight at WMATA.

WMATA's board is unable to provide independent oversight, and, under the agency's "performance-based management" program, receives only summaries of performance data. The WMATA Office of Inspector General conducts audits, but the recommendations in their reports seem to go mostly unheeded. The Tri-State Oversight Committee, a group which became prominent only after the 2009 Red Line crash, is independent of WMATA, but lacks the staff and funding to conduct the most detailed of investigations; beyond that, their remit covers only safety issues.

After an accident, the National Transportation Safety Board has the jurisdiction to conduct an investigation and issue a report; their criticism of WMATA is routinely scathing, yet the accidents continue. The NTSB cannot compel compliance with their recommendations, and so the same recommendations to WMATA appear in NTSB report after report.

That leaves the Riders' Advisory Council, the group Schmitt sat on. The RAC lies somewhere between being merely a glorified focus group and an actual oversight body; they lack independence from WMATA and, in the wake of these events, apparently have no real investigative powers of their own.

In his resignation letter, Schmitt criticizes the RAC for having gotten too cozy with WMATA and for failing to press hard enough for real transparency. He's perfectly right to do so, and yet at the same time, there's no way that a group created by an act of the WMATA board, operated and funded by the agency, can ever have real independence. As Schmitt notes in his letter of resignation, however, the agency desperately needs independent oversight:

Taken together, the denial of the information requests, the resultant loss of the RAC's independence, and the unwillingness of the RAC to defend its own interests mean that there is no institution within Metro dedicated to transparency and aggressive pursuit of information that is of significant rider interest.

Despite some limited improvement, Metro remains a deeply troubled agency, rife with problems that demand accountability and transparency, and which are too numerous to enumerate here. I hope that in the future, a greater dedication to meaningful information access will develop. This would be a starting point for necessary reforms, as well as for establishing the RAC as an independent, robust voice on behalf of riders.

Given that the organizational structure of the RAC effectively precludes meaningful and independent oversight, transit riders in the region should consider forming a completely independent oversight and advocacy group akin to the Straphangers Campaign in New York City.

The campaign, a project of NYPIRG, independently advocates on behalf of New York City's transit riders. But more importantly, the Straphangers are able to conduct their own investigations, including a survey of announcements in the subway and a survey of payphones in the subway.

Though the Straphangers Campaign performs political advocacy, similarly to groups like the Action Committee for Transit and Greater Greater Washington do locally, it also has the ability to collect its own data and form its own judgments, rather than being limited to carefully-selected and carefully-screened presentations like those the RAC gets now.

This means that the campaign is able to independently assess the performance of the transit authority over time, rather than being dependent on the agency's own (potentially flawed) data.

As an agency formed by interstate compact, WMATA is subject to even less scrutiny than the average transit authority in this country. While an independent riders' group would be no more able to compel action than the RAC is now, they would have the advantage of being able to conduct their own investigation and advocacy work, independent of WMATA and its constituent jurisdictions.

Christopher Schmitt sought for the RAC to become "an independent, robust voice on behalf of riders," but riders may be better off finding their own voice.

The open houses will run from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM at these locations:

• Tuesday, November 1, 2011
  University of Maryland
  Adele H. Stamp Student Union, Prince George's Room
  College Park, MD 20742
• Wednesday, November 2, 2011
  National 4-H Youth Conference Center
  7100 Connecticut Avenue
  Chevy Chase, MD 20815
• Monday, November 7, 2011
  Silver Spring Civic Building
  One Veterans Place
  Silver Spring, MD 20910
• Thursday, November 10, 2011
  Beacon Heights Elementary School
  6929 Furman Parkway
  Riverdale, MD 20737

One of these stations is East Falls Church, where all westbound Orange Line trains from downtown terminated this past weekend due to the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project. Thus, Orange Line trains bound for East Falls Church display "SPECIAL" all the way from New Carrollton to East Falls Church. This work has been going on throughout 2011, and will continue in 2012, based on Metro's track work schedule.

Because the PIDS (the in-station "next train" display boards) are also driven by trains' destination codes, more often than not they only display "Train".

Regardless of the destination code set, the train operator can manually override a train's side destination signs, forcing them to "SPECIAL" or "NO PASSENGERS" with the use of a switch in the cab. In certain circumstances (especially when there's no track work going on), it may be the case that the train operator has the right destination code entered but has failed to set the train identity control switch appropriately. In those cases, a kind word on the intercom or through the cab window will often get the problem resolved.

The situation is an accessibility and wayfinding nightmare. While operators of "SPECIAL" trains are supposed to make frequent public address announcements with regard to the train's route, they're often inaudible to the majority of passengers, and at their best, they still do nothing for hearing-impaired riders.

Where a station without a destination code is a frequent terminal due to work (like East Falls Church), the best solution would be for WMATA to revise the destination code table plugged into each railcar's display system. Unfortunately, that requires bringing every railcar into the shop, an expensive and time-consuming proposition.

In the meantime, riders may find it helpful to know that if, for example, there's track work on the Orange Line, but not the Blue Line, then westbound trains at downtown stations that display "SPECIAL" are almost certainly operating on the Orange Line and terminating at East Falls Church.

Even if Metro can reduce the use of "SPECIAL" destination signs for frequent work, these trains will always exist. Not every station can have a destination code; there simply aren't enough codes.

Sometimes trains will need to terminate at a certain station due to work very infrequently, and for them it's probably not worth it to reset the codes for a one-time event. That was the case this past weekend, when Green Line trains from Greenbelt terminated at Georgia Avenue. Their destination signs displayed "SPECIAL" while going southbound, but the switch replacement work on the Green Line at U Street was a one-weekend event.

In any circumstance, since they're going to continue to exist, Metro should make more of an effort to communicate the route and destination of "SPECIAL" trains to customers.

The reports provide a monthly overview of key performance indicators (KPIs) for Metrorail, Metrobus, MetroAccess, and the Metro Transit Police Department. The report contains not only the KPIs themselves, but also explains, for each KPI, why the information is relevant, why the performance has changed since the last reporting period, and shows the steps being taken to improve performance.

This is all valuable information, but should not be the only glimpse the public gets into how the transit system is doing.

An example of the current framework's shortcomings is that the public lacks access to statistics on the performance of the most heavily-used escalators, such as those at the seven transfer stations in the system. Burnside's response to the RAC was that the Vital Signs Report was only intended to convey system-wide statistics.

There's a great escalator status page showing current outages, but not their past performance. Having the raw data available would make it possible to analyze things like escalator malfunctions at transfer stations, and generate more specific performance indicators than those Metro unveils in the report.

The benefits of releasing raw performance data are substantial. An enterprising software developer could, for example, build a customized dashboard which would allow riders to view statistics specific to stations and routes they use. This would empower riders by allowing them to better understand the agency's performance in a personally meaningful way.

Unfortunately, WMATA's strategy for reporting performance indicators (pictured above) entails releasing only the least detailed of reports to the public, while the General Manager receives an intermediate level of detail, and heads of individual departments receive the most detailed data.

This makes it impossible for members of the public to independently analyze the data, whether to create their own more localized metrics, develop charts and maps to better visualize the data, or to merge the data with outside information, such as weather patterns or traffic conditions.

Performance data also should to be released more often. WMATA intends to cut the Vital Signs Report's production from monthly to quarterly, saying that many of the actions being taken to improve performance are difficult to measure on a month-to-month basis. Expecting to see results one month after a change is implemented, Burnside said, is unreasonable. However, this change also means that there will be times that the latest publicly-available data will be at least three months old.

While monthly reporting is a good start, WMATA should begin to take steps towards making vital information available on a real-time or near-real-time basis. Many indicators, like bus and rail on-time performance, and the availability of elevators and escalators, are based on electronic records that the agency already uses for operational purposes. So it's only a matter of developing the necessary analysis tools for riders to be able to, for example, examine the on-time performance for each day's service at the end of the operating day.

WMATA released service reports daily until February 15, 2011. These detailed Metrobus and Metrorail ridership and summarized Metrorail service disruptions. Metro discontinued these, maintaining that they were too labor-intensive to produce. Metro should make daily service reports available once again, and they should be enhanced to provide additional valuable data.

San Francisco Muni's exemplary Service Delivery Daily Reports provide a considerable amount of information about the previous day's service: the availability of each type of vehicle in the agency's fleet on that day, operator absenteeism, and precise information on accidents and any incident causing more than 20 minutes' delay to a line. They detail the start and end times of the incident, the location and nature of the incident, actions taken to restore service, and the identities of transit vehicles, staff members, and police units involved in the incident.

As fantastic as Muni's daily reports are, they can't be put to their most effective use because they are released in rigid PDF format. If one wants to conduct an automated analysis of the data, as our own Michael Perkins did with Metrorail disruption reports, one cannot simply load them into a spreadsheet or database without time-consuming copying and pasting of each individual number.

Releasing Metro's monthly Vital Signs Report to the public is a good first step, but it should release information to the public on a daily basis which is already gathered electronically, to encourage different types of analysis. Summaries like the Vital Signs Report, which take time to prepare because of the depth of analysis involved, are best released on a monthly or quarterly basis. But raw performance data, including service disruption reports, should be posted considerably more frequently.

But the market has grown substantially in the past few decades. These days, transit agencies don't want to be locked into a single vendor. Instead, they want to be able to buy some of their faregates from one manufacturer, and some from another. And, they want them to see those faregates work with ticket vending machines from yet another supplier.

Open standards, like ISO 24014 and the ITSO specification, enable this kind of interoperability. By using open standards, transit authorities can procure fare collection equipment from multiple vendors and rely on it to work together seamlessly.

The use of open standards also enables better cooperation between neighboring transit authorities, even if they use fare collection equipment from different manufacturers. Existing regional smart cards for transit, like SmarTrip, TAP, and the ORCA card, have required all of the participating transit agencies to use the same equipment, from the same manufacturer.

By contrast, with open standards, riders can use the same ticket or smart card to pay their fare on multiple transit authorities as long as their fare collection systems adhere to relevant standards, regardless of manufacturer. In addition to the convenience of having a single card for fare payment, this enables benefits for riders like discounted transfers between transit systems.

Open payment represents another major shift in thinking for transit authorities. Historically, transit authorities have been the sole suppliers of what is known in the industry as 'fare media'—that is, the token, ticket, or smart card you use to pay your fare. While you may be able to reload your smart card or buy tokens at a location that is not directly controlled by the transit authority (such as a convenience store), ultimately the transit authority is responsible for supplying the fare media, no matter where you might buy it.

Open payment changes that. Open payment systems make use of smart cards and similar devices that riders already have, rather than requiring them to use a card dedicated to a specific transit authority (like New York's MetroCard or the SmarTrip card). In an open payment system, riders can use existing contactless credit and debit cards (like MasterCard PayPass, Visa payWave, American Express ExpressPay, and Discover Zip) to pay their fare directly, by tapping the card on a faregate or bus farebox.

Other contactless smart cards, such as university, government, and corporate IDs, and even some smartphones, can also be used by open payment systems, as well, allowing transit users to pay their fare using cards and devices they already carry. In addition to providing a new level of convenience to riders, open payment systems enable transit agencies to spend less distributing fare media, because more riders will opt to use personal cards and devices, rather than relying on fare media provided by the transportation authority.

However, not all riders may have a contactless credit or debit card, or other smart card, that they can use to pay their fare. For most transit agencies which are looking to adopt open payment (including WMATA), the solution is to continue to distribute some type of prepaid card (similar to the existing SmarTrip card). While many riders will choose to use a contactless credit or debit card, the prepaid card will remain an option for users who prefer a more traditional way to pay for their trips.

Together, open standards and open payment reduce the cost of a fare collection system and increase flexibility for transit authorities and riders. With these two innovations in place, transit authorities no longer have to worry about the vendors of proprietary equipment going out of business or making a system uneconomical to maintain. Instead, they can take advantage of a growing marketplace of innovative, interoperable solutions. These solutions give riders new, more convenient ways to pay their fare, and they allow transit agencies to create new programs like frequent rider rewards and cross-promotions with local merchants.

WMATA may be the largest transit agency in the area, but it's far from being the only one; many riders make their daily commute using bus service provided by agencies like Montgomery County Ride On and Fairfax Connector, while others use MARC and VRE commuter rail. For commuters who ride a bus or drive, road conditions are also a factor.

Several large metropolitan areas have created single, regional points of contact for transit and travel information through the 511 telephone number. Some of the best include the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York.

511 services are designed to provide transit and travel information across agencies and modes of transportation. While 511 systems were originally envisioned to provide information by phone, many have expanded to serve as a single source for transit and travel information online, over text messaging, on Twitter, and on Facebook and other social media.

A 511 system in the DC area could give travelers information on road conditions, bus and rail service, and even carpooling and bikesharing, all without requiring them to remember which agencies operate which services, or how to get in touch with each particular agency.

Such a system would have to reach out from DC into Northern Virginia and Maryland. VDOT currently operates a 511 system for Virginia, but it's principally focused on road conditions. By creating a single regional system, transit riders and commuters would be able to access the same transit and travel information no matter where they are in the region.

In order to achieve this, the system would have to be operated at the regional level, either by a group like the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, or a new coalition of DOTs and transit agencies created for the purpose of operating the 511 system.

These systems aren't cheap; estimates from the U.S. Department of Transportation show that 511 systems cost between $500,000 and $1 million to implement, but the return on investment is substantial. The DOT study found that 511 systems, on average, have high levels of customer satisfaction, and the information they provide helps to encourage travelers and commuters to consider transit alternatives, reducing congestion and travel times.

A regional 511 system would also give smaller transit operations an opportunity to make real-time information available. A transit agency without its own real-time information system, like Montgomery County Ride On, would be able to log in to the regional 511 system and enter service status messages. This information would then be instantly available over the phone, on the Web, by text message, and through other channels (such as electronic displays at bus stops and transit centers). Yet, by being part of a regionally-integrated system, these agencies would have little infrastructure of their own to maintain.

WMATA's new Director of Communications, Dan Stessel, has pledged to improve information for bus riders by hiring staff to issue text alerts using the same system currently used for rail alerts. Text alerts are a great step, but not everyone can use them. WMATA's information line isn't available late at night, but 511 systems offer information 24/7.

A regional 511 system would offer information on all of the area's transit systems, along with information on road conditions, bikesharing, carpooling, and more, and make it available through a wide variety of channels, reaching the greatest possible number of transit users and travelers.

When the second phase of Metrorail, the Blue Line from National Airport to Stadium-Armory, opened in July 1977, automatic fare collection was introduced. Then, only one other transit system in the US had introduced similar technology: BART, in San Francisco, which opened in September 1972.

At that time, other cities had begun to use magnetically encoded tickets (like the London Underground, in 1970), and many cities had long used simple mechanical turnstiles to collect tokens and coins. But only BART and Metrorail used a card which actually stored cash value, as well as faregates which computed a distance-based fare and deducted it from the value on the card as the rider passed through.

Since 1977, the technology has received incremental upgrades, but until now it hasn't gotten a complete overhaul. For example, farecard vending machines have been augmented with the ability to accept credit and debit cards and reload SmarTrip cards. However, at their core, the farecard vending machines, exitfare machines, and faregates are still the same technology that was introduced in 1977.

The age of the system makes it inflexible, compared to newer systems. For example, when peak-of-the-peak fares were introduced, they taxed the faregates' limited processing capacity, resulting in slightly slower farecard and SmarTrip processing. Features like online top-up and passes on SmarTrip have also taken longer for WMATA to implement.

As an early adopter, WMATA has not had the benefit of the decades of technological development which followed the introduction of the paper farecard on BART. When the New York City Transit Authority introduced the MetroCard in 1993, they were able to use a plastic card which is more resilient than the paper Metrorail farecard. The ticket vending machines used in New York City are more advanced, too, with an easy-to-use touchscreen interface. Neither of these were available to WMATA in 1977, and would have been costly to add as the system aged.

WMATA has also been criticized for its dependence on a single vendor for its fare collection system. This, too, is a factor of the system's age. Open standards for fare collection systems are relatively new. The introduction of automatic fare collection in 1977, and even the introduction of the SmarTrip card, predate these standards. In fact, when launched in 1999, SmarTrip was the nation's first contactless smart card for transit.

Since WMATA intends to replace its fare collection system, with phased implementation of the new system beginning in 2014, the current system will see only limited upgrades in the interim. Riders now have the ability to reload their cards online, and automatic reload is scheduled to arrive in the fall.

More substantial changes will likely have to wait until the implementation of the New Electronic Payments Program, WMATA's name for the next-generation system. As described in this presentation to the WMATA Board of Directors, a pilot program could begin in the summer of 2013. As the pilot expands, riders will gain the ability to pay their fares directly using credit and debit cards, certain mobile devices, and identification cards like those issued by universities and the federal government.

The New Electronic Payments Program will also make it easier for WMATA to sell new kinds of passes, like Smart Passes, as well as to operate loyalty programs or cross-promotions with area merchants.

In the future, we'll delve more deeply into the new fare program.

When I arrived in Montreal in 2005, the STM struck me as being, well, good enough. The buses and metro ran (usually on time), and most buses ran frequently enough, but there was still a lot of room for improvement. STM's old trip planner was a fiddly home-grown affair. There was very little real-time information available for rail passengers, and no real-time information for bus passengers.

This was before Twitter, but the STM didn't post disruption information on its Web site—even in the case of major disruptions. The fare collection system wasn't ancient, but it wasn't modern, either. There were some new buses in the fleet, but no hybrids or articulated buses, and the new buses were catching fire.

Then, in May 2009, the STM launched Mouvement Collectif. Mouvement Collectif signified big changes at the STM, not just a marketing gimmick. How has the STM changed? Its bus fleet now includes hybrids and articulated buses, improving the STM's carbon footprint and increasing capacity on high-ridership routes. They've fixed the incendiary problems with the first-generation LFS buses, too.

The OPUS fare collection system was launched, providing riders with a contactless smart card which can be used across the services of the STM, as well as other regional bus systems: STL, RTL, RTC, and others. The subway doesn't have new rolling stock yet, but the MPM-10 rolling stock is now in the design stage.

The STM has a public presence on social networks, and a new Web site which is a lot better than the old design. Passenger information is getting better, too; there are now MetroVision screens in more stations across the network.

The STM has made tangible improvements to its bus network, with the réseau 10 minutes max (a network of bus lines boasting 10-minute headways), a better night bus network, and an airport shuttle which is more convenient for riders than previous options and which has proven to be a real success in its first year of operation.

It takes longer to make real changes to a rail system than a bus network; it's going to be a few more years before the MPM-10s start running. But the STM continues to work on renovating the rail system, too; elevators have been installed at key transfer stations, among other improvements. Tous azimuts ("Full Circle" in English), the STM's trip planner, is still there (although it, too, has gotten better), but more importantly, the STM's schedules are in Google Transit now.

Mouvement Collectif is also about making public transit a more attractive option. Sustainability is a major component of Mouvement Collectif: not only mass transit as a sustainable transportation choice, but also the sustainable operation of transit services, through the use of biodiesel and other energy-saving measures. This advertisement conveys the authority's green messaging:

Thanks to Metro Forward, tomorrow's WMATA has the potential to be a far better transit agency than it is today. For the STM, Mouvement Collectif has paid off; in 2010 the STM was recognized as an Outstanding Public Transportation System in North America.

Metro Forward puts WMATA on the right track to celebrate a similar achievement six years from now. It will take time, and there will be a lot of disruption along the way, but we'll get there.

Crossposted at Raschke on Transport.