Posts about WMATA

The Red Line requires the most cars. At peak, it uses 288 cars in 41 trains. The Orange Line is in second place, with 204 cars on 30 trains. And in third place is the Green Line, whose 140 cars make up 20 trains.

The Blue Line falls fourth, with 138 cars making up 23 trains. The shortest line, the Yellow, requires 60 cars in just 10 trains.

In addition to the 124 trains assigned to a line, Metro positions 5 "gap trains" around the system that can be used to fill in when a train is taken out of service. These 5 trains require 30 cars.

Train length

During rush hours, the Red, Orange, and Green Lines operate with some 8-car trains, with the rest 6-cars long. The Blue and Yellow Lines use all 6-car trains.

Of the Red Line's 41 trains used during rush hours, 21 (51%) are 8-car sets. On the Orange Line, 12 of the 30 trains (40%) are 8-cars long. The Green Line uses 10 8-car trains out of 20 total trains (50%).

Systemwide, Metro operates 43 8-car trains and 86 6-car trains during peak hours. That means that one-third of trains run with full-length consists.

Off-peak

Metro doesn't need as many trains or as many cars during off-peak periods.

The Red Line requires 21 trains and 126 cars. There are 12 trains and 72 cars on the Blue Line. While the Orange needs 66 cars in 11 trains. For the Green, it's 10 trains and 60 cars, and on the Yellow, it's 8 trains and 48 cars.

Rush Plus

On June 18, Metro will start new rail service patterns. In addition to the 5 colored lines, 2 new services will be starting. One will run between Vienna and Largo Town Center (to be colored orange). The other will run between Franconia-Springfield and Greenbelt (colored yellow).

The Franconia to Greenbelt service will not require any additional trains, since 3 trains per hour that currently run as Blue Line trains are being shifted to the Yellow Line bridge. But the new Vienna-Largo service will require Metro to add several trains during peak hours.

While WMATA did not respond to requests for how many new trains it will require for Rush Plus, the 58 minute Vienna-Largo run time and 20 minute headway could be done with 6 trains.

Metro also did not provide data about how many cars this will require. If all 6 of the new trains are 6-car trains, it will add 36 cars to Metro's peak vehicle requirement. If all 6 of the new trains are 8-car trains, it will mean adding 48 cars during rush hours.

That would increase the size of the peak vehicle requirement to between 896 and 908 cars.

Fleet size

Metro has 1,104 cars that are in its active fleet. But the agency can't schedule all of those cars on any given day.

Metro aims to have a spare ratio of 20%, to account for trains that are out of service for repair or preventative maintenance. In the 1980s, as system expansion outpaced new rolling stock acquisition, Metro allowed its spare ratio to drop and that led to a corresponding drop in reliability.

What this means is that if the system has a peak vehicle requirement of 896 cars, it needs to have an additional 179 cars (20% of 896) set aside as spares. If the system has a peak vehicle requirement of 908 cars, it needs to have an additional 182 cars as spares—a total of 1,090 cars. Metro's fleet today is 1,104 cars, so as long as no major repair issue forces them to take a lot of cars out of service for a long period, they should have enough.

Madam Chairman and members of the Council,

Appointing DDOT Director Terry Bellamy to the WMATA Board of Directors represents a very significant opportunity. There are many such opportunities, such as to work with you to push WMATA to correct its stifling and longstanding stance of secrecy toward riders and simply to make sure needed repairs are on track, but specifically having the DDOT director on the board is a chance to bring DDOT and WMATA closer and foster greater coordination between these agencies.

Each controls an enormous share of the transpor­tation infrastructure that our residents depend on every day, yet the two agencies often do not work in harmony as much as needed to move transportation forward.

By far the greatest opportunity to improve transportation for District residents lies in our bus service. DC spends over $190 million per year in public operating dollars on our bus service. That is about 3½ times the amount we spend on Metrorail, and is more than double DDOT's operating budget.

Bus delays from traffic swell this cost and cause pain to our residents. For example, I recently received this email from a reader who will soon be moving to the Wisconsin Avenue area:

My wife took a bus going from Federal Triangle over to Wisconsin Ave for an appointment but also near our future new home. She became stuck in traffic on I St and is now cursing the bus. What is the outlook for the H & I bus lanes?

With the volume of buses that use that route, it really should be a priority. Anything that can be done to help speed up the process? My wife was spoiled by few stop Metrorail commutes and the bus is a big adjustment for her.

This type of question is far from unusual. Residents rich and poor, black and white, in outer low-density areas and inner high-density ones all struggle with bus delay if they aren't fortunate enough to have both home and work close to a Metrorail station.

There is an enormous amount DC could be doing to reduce the costs of bus travel while improving speed and reliability for our bus riders:

• Allow appropriate turning movements for buses to help them get through congestion
  
• Create queue hopper lanes that help buses bypass traffic waiting at signals
  
• Enforce illegal parking that prevents buses from making turns or bus stops
  
• Locate bus stops in ways that allow buses and customers to use them more efficiently
  
• Create bus lanes where practical
  
• Implement traffic signal priority
  
• Improve the accessibility of bus stops so that fewer riders are dependent upon, or beholden to, costly and unreliable MetroAccess service
  
• Remove on-street parking where the benefits outweigh the costs.

There are dozens of recommendations in WMATA line studies and service evaluations that have not yet been implemented. Sometimes, these just do not come up in internal DDOT discussions. At other times, WMATA and DDOT's transit staff point to the recommendations, but the engineers and traffic operations folks balk at implementing the studies.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution. These divisions work for Director Bellamy. He can bring these issues from WMATA and ensure that DDOT prioritizes implementing them.

Here are a few examples:

• WMATA was implementing bus priority on the 70s lines at the same time DDOT was planning the 7th Street streetscape. However, there was no coordination on signal technology needs.
  
• The 90s line study proposed bus enhancements along U street, but DDOT paid no attention to these recommendations while they simultaneously designed streetscape enhancements on U Street. Meanwhile, efficiency recommendations for 8th Street go almost completely unnoticed.
  
• A study about the potential for bus lanes on H and I Streets downtown was supposed to be complete in March, but still remains months from completion, with no clear path to implementation thereafter. Short segments H and I are where many of DC's most heavily used bus lines bogged down in commuter traffic wasting hours and ruining bus reliability.

WMATA isn't the only source of bus operating efficiency needs. The DC Circulator routes, for which DC bears 100% of the operating subsidy, is an ideal place for DDOT to prioritize operational enhancements.

I have spoken over several years with officials at both WMATA and DDOT. I repeatedly hear from WMATA that they are not finding the support at DDOT to implement their recommendations, and hear from folks at DDOT that they don't feel WMATA is ready to support DDOT or understands the constraints DDOT must labor under.

I am sure both groups of people are right. It is often difficult for two agencies to coordinate closely, especially when the agencies answer to different masters. I am sure many people at DDOT find it simply less work to tackle projects that don't require calling the Jackson Graham building, and those at WMATA have less trouble simply solving problems they can handle without going to New Jersey Avenue.

But this is necessary. Bus service is our best chance to save money and improve mobility for the residents of the District. We're not going to build any new Metrorail lines in the near future, and while streetcars will bring meaningful economic development, they will not be a speedy ride across town. But our bus service can and should be a desirable mode of travel for all.

There is no big megaproject to undertake that will fundamentally revamp bus service. Improving this mode of travel requires making many small and medium-sized fixes over many years that build up in the aggregate. The same applied to bicycle lanes, and tireless staff worked for years to gradually build up more and more lanes. DDOT needs to start now to put in one bus improvement at a time, then another, and another.

Right now, that is not yet happening, which costs DC millions of dollars and makes bus riders suffer, often at the expense of commuters from Maryland and Virginia who we often end up prioritizing despite clear policies at DDOT, and statements from this council, to the contrary.

The time is now. Montgomery County yesterday released their proposal for building 160 miles of a new bus Rapid Transit System, mostly on dedicated lanes. The Council, with your support Madam Chairman, just created a special fund for bus enhancements beginning in FY13, which could raise several million dollars per year if DDOT moves swiftly to implement performance parking in the downtown area.

With Director Bellamy on the WMATA Board, I am hopeful that this state of affairs can change. We will have a single person who can instruct his staff in DDOT meetings to advance bus improvements, and then head over to WMATA and push the staff there to uphold their end of whatever is necessary.

I hope you will ask Director Bellamy questions such as these:

• Do you agree that bus efficiency must get much higher priority from the department?
  
• Will your participation at WMATA represent a turning point to get long-awaited, significant progress going on these bus projects?

If the answers to both are yes, then Director Bellamy's presence on the WMATA Board will not just mean yet another voice contributing to already crowded debates, but a very positive step toward getting these two agencies working together to exploit our greatest untapped mobility opportunities.

Bottigheimer and former real estate head Steven Goldin advanced many significant projects for transit-oriented development on WMATA property, including at U Street and an agreement with GSA to develop around many suburban Metro stations, especially in Prince George's.

While there have been many frustrating developments from the operations side, the work we've seen from planning has been almost universally terrific. Of course, many top-notch planners remain in the group, so we can expect much good work yet to come.

In a memo, CEO Richard Sarles announced the change. Also, Chief of Staff Shiva Pant is retiring, and current customer service head Barbara Richardson will take over. She will oversee a number of functions at WMATA including planning, while parking and real estate development will be under CFO Carol Kissal. Lyn Bowersox, head of PR, will take over Richardson's job as Assistant General Manager for Customer Service, Communications and Marketing.

Bottigheimer will continue to advise WMATA on the transit plan and real estate issues through the fall as well.

Jeremy Faust, who runs the DC Council's Committee on the Environment, Public Works and Transportation for Councilmember Mary Cheh, is leaving to move to Cincinnati. Jeremy became an expert on transportation policy very quickly once his boss took over the committee, and before that did great work on streamlining the government when running the Committee on Government Operations and the Environment.

Fortunately, Cheh recently also hired Will Handsfield, who as a Capital City Fellow helped roll out Capital Bikeshare, among many other things. Cheh will continue to get very good advice on transportation policy.

Finally, Aaron Overman is leaving DDOT's transit group and will start working for Cambridge Systematics, where he will manage planning projects in the Washington region and around the United States. Overman helped push for better bus service and for a successful streetcar program at DDOT, and sadly losing him will force DDOT to find another person of high caliber to help keep its transit operations moving forward smoothly.

WMATA planned the single tracking between Eastern Market and Cheverly to accommodate a range of repairs and reconstruction in that segment. Half-hour headways may have been necessary to ensure worker safety and maximize efficiency, so that the work could be completed prior to Monday's rush hour. That's all perfectly justifiable.

But there was absolutely no reason for riders along the entire length of the Orange Line to be left with such terrible service. Metro's track schematic clearly shows there are crossover tracks between Federal Center SW and Capitol South stations. Trains coming and going west from Federal Center SW could have used that crossover track to turn around, ensuring regular weekend headways through downtown Washington and in Virginia.

We know trains can turn around using the crossover tracks since they do it every day at Mount Vernon Square and Grosvenor, so why couldn't they have done so last weekend at Federal Center SW? This simple solution would have prevented thousands of Metro customers from being greatly inconvenienced.

It's possible that Metro had repairs under way elsewhere along the Orange Line, but the press release didn't communicate that. In any event, there are crossover tracks every few stations all throughout the system. Trains could have turned around at McPherson Square, Foggy Bottom, or Clarendon, and at least riders west of the turnaround wouldn't have been faced with 30-minute waits.

Sometimes officials forget that keeping the rail system in proper order is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. If the system isn't serving customers then it's not working. The next time Metro has to perform single tracking, they should use one of the system's many turnarounds to ensure short headways along the rest of the line.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

WMATA is trying to encourage more people to bike to their stations, and providing a secure place to park is an important aspect of achieving that goal. By 2020, the agency hopes to triple the number of people cycling to their stations.

Parking costs 5 cents per hour during the day and 2 cents per hour overnight. Riders gain access to the facility and pay for parking with an access card from a company called BikeLink. There are no annual fees, only a one-time $5 fee for customer ID verification.

BikeLink will manage the facility for WMATA, and has the incentive to encourage bicycling to the station, since they take home the revenue generated by the facility. WMATA will win by getting additional rail and bus fare revenue from those who chose to College Park because of the facility.

WMATA chose College Park for the pilot program because it's already one of the top stations for cycling. In the 2011 bike parking census, it came out in third place systemwide. Additionally, the space in the garage was available, and a third of people parking at the station come from three miles away or less, which means many are already within biking distance.

Also demonstrating their commitment to bicycling, Kissal, Assistant General Manager Nat Bottigheimer, and several other WMATA employees biked to College Park from the WMATA headquarters near Judiciary Square.

This facility is a great addition to the Metro network and promises to be the first of many similar secure bicycle parking areas around Metro.

As Michael explained 3 years ago, WMATA is basing this decision on a 2 DC district court cases, Judicial Watch, Inc. v. United States Department of Justice and Electronic Privacy Information Center v. Department of Defense, where courts denied "news media" status to these organizations in 2000, 2002 and 2003.

WMATA's Public Access to Records Policy (PARP) says that it follows the federal FOIA, meaning that this law clarifying FOIA also applies to WMATA's PARP.

The WMATA denial, which just copies the previous one from 2009, claims that, "A representative of the news media must itself disseminate the information not merely make it available."

But, as Michael Perkins notes, the Open Government Act of 2007 clarified a broader interpretation of "news media" as:

any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience.

And:

These examples [newspapers and broadcast radio or television] are not all-inclusive. Moreover, as methods of news delivery evolve (for example, the adoption of the electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities.

Greater Greater Washington "disseminates" information via the web, email, Twitter and other means. Some people, like the subscribers to our daily email, do get it "delivered" directly (though electronically), while others request the information via the web. Newspapers today also do the same; some people get a copy on their doorstep, others get a daily email, while others go to the website.

Back in 2009, the media relations team wasn't sure they should talk to blogs such as Greater Greater Washington, but since then, that group has started to treat us as "news media" and help answer questions that will go into articles. Perhaps they should speak with the legal department.

If you can help us formulate a more detailed legal argument to make to WMATA and, if they don't see the light, pursue the matter in the courts, please email info@ggwash.org.

Here is the full text of their email from Keysia Thom at WMATA:

Dear Mr. Perkins,

This acknowledges receipt of your request for a copy of the survey, results, and weights used by the JCC to determine the fare model for the Metrorail rider survey. This also responds to your request for a fee waiver and requires an advance payment by May 16, or your request file will be closed. Your request is being processed pursuant to the Public Access to Records Policy (PARP), which can be viewed on our website at http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/public_rr.cfm, under the section marked, "Legal Affairs." Generally, we aim to issue decisions on a request for records within 20 working days after the date of receipt of the request.

We note that you requested a fee waiver for search time because you are an author for Greater Greater Washington. Pursuant to federal regulations, a representative of the news media is any person actively gathering news for an entity that is organized and operated to publish or broadcast news to the public. 28 C.F.R. § 16.11 (b)(6) (2012). Examples include television and radio stations broadcasting to the general public, publishers of periodicals that disseminate news to the general public, and freelance journalists who can demonstrate a solid basis of publication through a news organization. Judicial Watch v. United States Dep't of Justice, No. 99-2315, 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19789 *9-12 (D.D.C. August 17, 2000). Your request consists of a conclusory statement that you are a member of the news media, but does not provide any details about your editorial skills and how you intend to distribute the records to the public at large. We have viewed Greater Greater Washington's website and it appears to be a blog. Judicial Watch, an organization that promotes transparency in government and operates a website that includes news on that topic and its activities (including those reported by the media), has been found not to qualify as a representative of the news media. Judicial Watch v. United States Dep't of Justice, No. 99-2315, 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19789 *9-12 (D.D.C. August 17, 2000). A representative of the news media must itself disseminate the information not merely make it available. Judicial Watch, Inc. v. United States Dept of Justice, 185 F.Supp. 2d 54, 59 (D.D.C. 2002). For these reasons we have denied your request for a fee waiver under the media category.

...

We estimate that it will cost $261.00 for 3.0 (5 hours of staff time - the first two hours of staff time, which are provided free of charge) to retrieve and review the records that are responsive to your request for exempt material. Please remit a check for the full amount made payable to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority to my attention by May 16, 2012. The records will be provided as soon as possible after receipt of payment, along with reimbursement of any excess payment or request for additional payment. If we do not receive the payment by May 16, we will close your request file.