Comments on Will WMATA get cell service online or lose funding? - Greater Greater Washington

Comment by Anthony S Jennings

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 11:11:52 EDT

Something's going on. The T-Mobile 1900MHz spectrum refarm is starting to show up for me in subterranean stations in Maryland (Forest Glen and Glenmont [but oddly not Wheaton]).

Comment by Sachchit

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:09:45 EDT

Oh bother... posting before coffee (late start today.) I meant L'Enfant, not Gallery Place as the station at which I no longer get service through Virgin Mobile / Sprint.

Comment by Sachchit

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 11:47:37 EDT

Thanks Wags.

I have actually noticed a change since the first stations came online... on Virgin Mobile (Sprint), I used to have service at Gallery Place but it no longer works.

Comment by wags

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 10:16:55 EDT

Good find Sachchit.

My experience has been that I noticed the first 20 stations come online a couple years ago, and have seen no changes since then. Metro needs to publish their schedule so we can at least see progress, even if it's slow progress.

Comment by kk

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 23:05:17 EDT

We just need one incident to happen where the person has a phone but cant call due to having a carrier other than the one that is supported in the station or tunnel.

Comment by Turnip

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:04:12 EDT

The best thing for the region would be for Metro to fail to comply with the legislation, and for Metro to stagger and then cease operations from a curtailment of funds. This would give the tri-state compact an uncontroversial chance to dissolve WMATA and

Comment by Sachchit

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:01:35 EDT

The continuing resolution poised for approval by Congress includes a provision extending the deadline for system-wide wireless access to March 27, 2013.

See section 155, on the last page of the resolution.
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hjres117ih/pdf/BILLS-112hjres117ih.pdf

Comment by Geoffrey Hatchard

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 10:15:38 EDT

Service does not exist in the underground Green Line stations south of Gallery Place, and coverage drops entire aboveground at Suitland for me most of the time. I'm sure it's extremely low priority for WMATA, and there's no way in hell they'll get it done in the next month. Guaranteed.

Comment by Aaron

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:34:44 EDT

My own experience is that I had 3G service with Verizon inside the Crystal City metro station last spring, but at some point over the summer the 3G disappeared. My experience also is that I never have any reception in the tunnels unless I'm close enough to a Metro station to pick up a signal. I'll be shocked if I suddenly have a cell signal in the tunnels in 1 month. While I certainly don't plan on talking on the phone much while on Metro (it's often too noisy to hear someone on the phone), the opportunity to be able to send emails, texts, use the internet, and listen to streaming music such as Pandora would be great.

Comment by MLD

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:20:13 EDT

@Alternatives

[Deleted] No doubt Ken knows about Bluetooth. But he also knows, as would anyone who followed the link in that article, that hands-free talking on the phone while driving is just as dangerous as holding a cell phone up to your ear:

The study... found that drivers talking on cell phones, either handheld or hands-free, are more likely to crash because they are distracted by conversation.

Comment by rdhd

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 08:17:40 EDT

I really doesn't care if there is cell service inside the tunnels. As long as EMS and police can communicate, I'm fine not having a bunch of people on their phones on metro.

(FYI, the new Metro map-Catcha is working for me this time.)

Comment by Matthew

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 23:06:22 EDT

Fire Richard Sarles?

Comment by Alternatives

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:17:03 EDT

[Portions of this comment were deleted for violating the comment policy.] This is one of the reasons that led us to drive - amongst many others detailed some months ago. Using the built in Bluetooth system in my car, I can both reliably contact people, making more productive use of my time in the car, and reliably connect to emergency services in case I need to. Especially given WMATA's well-documented woes with their radio system, that personnel and customers do not have a way to contact emergency services is very, very scary.

As an aside, to link this to the other side of the coin, I was more than a little baffled by the article earlier today about not calling while driving that appeared here ... [because of] Bluetooth, a 15 year old technology...

Comment by charlie

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:20:44 EDT

Glad we agree for once.

This was a good find; I don't mean any disrespect to Kurt by pointing out there is a larger context.

Another question that should be asked is if telecom companies are willing to overbuild the wireless infrastructure here.

Comment by MLD

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:01:35 EDT

Ahh, so you meant they will not cut off the funding. I agree, for that reason and a whole host of others, a big one of which is the fact that there was a reason for another big capital investment that occurred after this bill was passed (red line crash). Also given the sensitivity of transit-related stuff in this area recently, which the secretary had to get involved in to solve, I don't think they will cut off the funding.

Comment by charlie

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:55:22 EDT

You really think Tim Kaine wants his best buddy to have the Washington Post and a few others (like GGW) scream "Adminstration cuts off WMATA funding". a month before an election. And this after Obama removed federal pay increases.

Almost as much fun as Obama's chief executiioner in a fight with unions.

If only we had a credible opposition party. Sigh.

Comment by MLD

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:32:19 EDT

How would cutting off money for WMATA have any impact on either the Virginia senate or presidential races?

Comment by charlie

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:31:01 EDT

@MLD; thanks.

However, I strongly suspect that a month before election day -- with an open Virginia seat and Virginia up for play -- the DOT is going to be serious about cutting off money.

Comment by MLD

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:17:39 EDT

I should have elaborated more:
In 2008 Congress passed PRIIA and authorized $1.5 billion over 10 years for WMATA, contingent on the compact jurisdictions providing a matching $150m per year from dedicated sources (determined by the WMATA funding formula I believe). This is what McDonnell threatened to withhold (VA's portion of the match) when he had his hissy fit over seats on the board.

Comment by MLD

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:01:38 EDT

@charlie
Yep, shovel ready.
So, 1.5B. Multiple systems? Over 10 years.

I'm guessing a few million for WMATA this year?

No, that is all for WMATA. It's $150 million per year in federal funding for capital projects that they agreed to in 2008.

The underlying cause of this is the underlying cause of all of WMATA's problems - they have no systems in place to actually track what is going on in their transit system and so they have no way of delivering anything on-time. Escalators don't get fixed on time, no oversight on projects like this, etc. It's just dysfunctional management from top to bottom.

Comment by charlie

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:55:12 EDT

Yep, shovel ready.

So, 1.5B. Multiple systems? Over 10 years.

I'm guessing a few million for WMATA this year?

Comment by Falls Church

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 15:06:50 EDT

There's no chance WMATA is going to meet the October deadline. Seems lately they've been moving backward... service in stations seems to actually be getting worse.

The thing is they could surely get an extension on the deadline from the Feds, especially since they have the reasonable excuse that their contractor is underperforming. However, getting an extension requires asking for it months in advance to allow time to get it through the byzantine review & approval process.