Posts about Service Disruption

With Metro's 30-plus year old system and a long backlog of deferred maintenance needs, some problems are going to crop up, but many riders and the Riders' Advisory Council have repeatedly faulted inadequate communication during crises.

Meanwhile, while Metro has launched a detailed campaign to explain its need for maintenance work, it has been tight-lipped about more specifics, such as timelines and costs for various aspects. Riders frustrated by multiple overlapping outages of lines, escalators and more may well tire of just hearing entreaties to be patient for a period of years, with little more to reassure them that the delays are leading to actual change.

Were you stuck in either of yesterday's problems? Looking constructively, what level and type of communication do you think Metro needs to achieve?

While closing stations and forcing passengers to use a bus may be disruptive for those passing through the work zone, they actually worked quite smoothly last time, Metro used them, on Memorial Day weekend. Many readers reported using them.

Metro also carried more passengers that weekend than the previous year, even with the shuttles. Metro spokesperson Dan Stessel said that over the Memorial Day weekend in 2010, Metro carried around 70,300 riders on the Blue and Orange Lines between Federal Center SW and Minnesota Avenue and Benning Road.

This year, the line was closed so that the interlocking at Eastern Market could be replaced. Passengers had to ride shuttle buses between Federal Center SW and Minnesota Avenue and Benning Road. Despite that, Metro carried 84,600 riders on the bus bridge.

It appears that the line closure and bus bridge did not deter riders from taking Metro. Hopefully, as closed segments and shuttle buses become a regular sight on Metro, they will continue to run as smoothly.

Let's take Rockville, for example. With that section of the Red Line closed, riders had several options to get around the closure.

Perhaps the best alternative would be Ride On route 46, which would take riders as far as Medical Center. Route 46 runs on Rockville Pike, parallel to the Red Line. It runs every 15 minutes, and covers the distance from Rockville to Twinbrook, the next open station on the Red Line, in only 10 minutes.

The "Q" Metrobuses are another alternative. They run every 10-15 minutes during rush hour between Rockville and Wheaton along Veirs Mill Road.

Rockville also has a stop on MARC's Brunswick Line. Since this closure happened during the morning rush, riders had the chance to board the last few inbound trains of the day. These commuter trains take riders to Silver Spring and Union Station.

Riders who knew about these regularly scheduled buses/trains may have been able to get around the closure even before Metro's bus bridge was set up. Knowing your alternatives can save you lots of time and frustration.

If you haven't done so already, take the time today to find alternate transit options to/from your home and work stations. You never know when something could cause a closure. If you know your choices, you don't have to be at the mercy of crowded bus bridges and overburdened station managers.

Your Plan B might be as simple as walking a few blocks to a nearby station. Or perhaps it could involve Capital Bikeshare. In many cases, you will likely need to have a bus route in mind as an alternate. If so, on your way home tonight, stop by the station manager's kiosk and pick up a bus schedule for your backup route or print if off of Metro's website.

It would be great if Metro could get some alternate routes out via twitter and email during these closures, though their communications department is likely pretty busy during unforeseen closures. So don't wait. Be proactive and find your Plan B today.

But in 1971 BART had yet to open, and the Metrorail system had only broken ground two years earlier. Operating experience in the years since has shown that while single-tracking may preserve service, it does so at the expense of lengthened headways and disruptions along the entire length of the line.

Today, taking this experience into account, WMATA has announced a new approach to weekend track work on the Metrorail system, in which entire sections of lines will be closed and replaced with buses.

Single-tracking doesn't just disrupt riders in the work area itself; it slows down the entire line, and affects riders throughout the Metrorail system.

WMATA's new approach to track work will preserve service on the open portions of lines, and avoid the follow-on effects which usually occur when trains are single-tracking.

Closing lines to speed repairs is, by itself, nothing new. In 2006, London Underground elected to close the Waterloo & City Line in its entirety for five months, in order to avoid a projected 70 weekend closures necessary to complete the major overhaul of the line.

Because of the complete closure, weekday riders who would have been spared disruption under a program of weekend closures instead had to take alternate routes. But because the complete closure was more efficient, the work was done (and the disruption ended) in 5 months, rather than in more than a year for weekend closures alone.

New York City's MTA has also been examining partial line closures as an alternative to frequent evening and weekend disruption. No decision has been made yet, but MTA Chairman Jay Walder seems to think it's a strategy that's proven itself in London, and which may prove viable in New York as well.

So, how well will this strategy work for Metrorail? At the extremities of lines, complete closures will probably be superior to single-tracking. Work will go faster with no trains running through the work areas, and the unaffected parts of the line won't have to contend with the bottleneck caused by single-tracking. In the core of the network, though, where ridership levels are high even on weekends, shuttle buses may end up swamped with passengers, leading to delays for riders traveling through the closed areas.

In the end, riders will face disruption whether trains are single-tracking or replaced with shuttle buses—but in this case, replacing trains with shuttle buses means a faster end to the work, and a quicker return to normalcy.

Starting tonight, Metro will close the Blue and Orange lines between Metro Center and L'Enfant Plaza. Metro Center and L'Enfant Plaza will still have Blue and Orange Line trains, but Federal Triangle and Smithsonian will be closed. They'll reopen on Tuesday morning.

All riders should keep in mind that the last train on all lines will depart 20 minutes earlier than usual throughout the weekend.

Like all line closures, Metro will be providing free shuttle bus service around the closure. These buses typically can't handle the number of passengers that exit the stations in large clumps as trains are offloaded. So passengers generally are forced to wait for a bus they can fit on.

This delay and being forced to exit the system and wait on a street corner in the elements is a major, though necessary, hassle.

Metro could reduce demand for shuttles by letting riders know how close Federal Triangle is to Metro Center and Archives and how close Smithsonian is to L'Enfant Plaza. They've done this in the past for major events, by encouraging riders not to change lines, and instead walk from the nearest station.

For those continuing longer distances, since each separate section of the Blue and Orange Lines connects to other Metro lines, many riders may well choose to avoid the shuttle buses and simply take the Green/Yellow and Red lines around the closure.

Unfortunately, the Green, Yellow, and Red lines will be operating typical weekend frequencies. The Red Line will be the most frequent, despite 2 different work projects on either end of the line. Red trains will be coming through Metro Center every 7-8 minutes, but the more frequent service will only be between Grosvenor and New York Avenue.

This means passengers will risk a long wait at 2 transfer stations if they attempt to take Metro around the work zone. If Metro could run a few more trains, they could make this easier, though that would also cost money they don't really have.

Running more frequent Red Line service at least between Farragut North and New York Avenue could virtually eliminate the wait for passengers transferring at Metro Center and Gallery Place. And wait times on the Green and Yellow lines between L'Enfant and Gallery Place could be alleviated by adding special Blue Line trains from Franconia-Springfield to Mount Vernon Square. Or as a cheaper option, just running shuttle trains from Pentagon City to Mount Vernon Square.

While beefing up Metro service on the unaffected lines would make getting around the closure easier, it would probably not completely eliminate the need for shuttles. Some passengers may want or need direct service to Federal Triangle or Smithsonian.

Metro officials did not respond to our inquiry about beefing up rail service as an alternative or plans to communicate about nearby stations.

If you have to travel around this closure, a choice between the bus shuttle and a hop on the Red and Green lines is likely to be a crapshoot.

Metro has recently been working to announce track work for the entire month at the beginning of each month. Yet in January several other track work projects were announced throughout the month. The work Matt is referring to in particular was announced on January 25 and is scheduled to last until February 11.

If the work is lasting so far into February, why didn't the agency reiterate that it would be doing mid-day work on the Red Line in its press release on Monday? The title, "February's planned work on all lines to improve safety and reliability," certainly indicates that it should contain all of the month's maintenance work.

Of course, there is no reason to re-announce every maintenance project at arbitrary intervals with respect to when they started, but if WMATA wants to establish a precedent of giving customers a full outlook of trackwork for a month, it needs to be sure to include all projects, not just those that begin in that particular month.

Supplement, don't replace:
These new full-month charts are good step in the right direction on the part of Metro's communications department. Metro is ecognizing that it needs to communicate the minimally necessary information to the vast majority of its customers without getting bogged down in unnecessary details.

Simplification is a great thing, no doubt, but it appears that Metro is creating a false choice between simplicity and more information, replacing the information-laden press releases with the new, simplified chart, rather than supplementing them.

Metro's new format for monthly scheduled maintenance is definitely simpler to understand than the text-heavy press releases of the past. But, it no longer includes the amount of information the old format did. The agency should continue to announce each project in detail, at the same time it explores ways to compile the projects into a simpler format, not do one at the expense of the other.

The general work description, and ultimate benefit columns are a very good idea for customers who don't care that WEE-Z bonds are being replaced or new light bulbs are being installed, but ultimately want to know what the benefit to them will be. But some of the vague benefit descriptions will inevitably beg the question "what does that mean?" from a fair number of customers.

Improving the trackwork "calendar":
The format, too, leaves something to be desired. WMATA could make the charts available as a simple webpage. Although the PDF format is nearly universally accessible these days, it is still a barrier to some. In a webpage format, the data can be entered in XML that would allow it to be accessed by developers who want to incorporate it into apps.

A webpage could also be easily programmed so that users can sort the projects by line, date, or any other category for that matter. Additionally, in a webpage the colored rail line dots can have alternative text attributes assigned to them for people with screen readers, which is not always possible in Acrobat.

This is particularly important because currently people with visual impairments will not be able to tell which lines are affected by each project. While some would recognize, for instance, that Takoma and Forest Glen are on the Red Line, not all necessarily would, particularly if they are not end stations. A transit agency should always build communications tools that don't make any assumptions about its users' knowledge or familiarity.

The most logical way to communicate scheduled disruptions to Metro riders is in a calendar format. That is, after all, why we created our Scheduled Service Disruption Calendar that can be accessed from any page in the sidebar. It is in no way perfect, but it operates on the open Google Calendar platform so that people can import the feeds to their own calendar programs and allows riders to view all disruptions or show only those on lines that are relevant to them.

Finally, Metro needs to improve the way this information is accessed on its website. Scheduled disruptions should be available from the front page. As far as I can tell, the only way to access track work schedules is to find the press release in the News archive. Metro has a calendar page, that includes a "Track Work" category, but none of the track work is actually in the database. Even if it were, this "calendar" is still only in a list format and is not exportable to any other platform.

Delayed trains or delayed people?
Reader Matt raises another point in his e-mail which indicates a larger problem with the way WMATA handles and communicates maintenance-related disruptions.

The indication that there is no delay is very misleading. Over the 6 days I have experienced this singletracking, 3 of the days I have had to wait more than 10 minutes for a train, with today requiring a wait of approximately 18 minutes. This is certainly much more than normal - and it shows with a much more full platform. The extra 5-15 minutes is not a major delay, but it does matter.

Though I can only speculate, it would appear that by "no delays," Metro is indicating that trains are moving through the single track area on the schedule that was established during the maintenance plan.

This is a symptom of Metro's often operating more like a logistics company than a person-oriented transit agency. Saying that there are no delays during single tracking indicates that WMATA treats delays with respect to moving trains through the system rather than moving people.

While a train may be maintaining the established schedule during track work times, this will still manifest itself as a delay to the customer standing on the platform at one of the affected stations. Matt is right that Metro should communicate this to its customers.

Make no mistake, the new track maintenance format is a very good sign from Metro's communications office under Sarles' leadership, because it shows that they're willing and able to be creative in how they communicate information to the public. When talking to Lisa Farbstein, WMATA's director of media relations, on Wednesday at the blogger roundtable, she said she hopes this new format is only the first iteration and that they'll continue to improve it over time. We hope they'll consider some of our recommendations.

Metro still has a long way to go until they have created a truly transparent operation that fully communicates with its customers, but, with developments like PlanItMetro and these new trackwork calendars, they are making serious efforts to improve in this area.

Here's a chart of how many trains were taken out of service, divided by cause:

Here's the coded data and the spreadsheet. The analysis method is described here.

Typical weekend frequencies fall between 10 and 20 minutes, and ridership is much lower than an average weekday. On top of that, engineering work to make necessary repairs often disrupts service and creates even longer waits for trains.

Since Metro on a weekend is closer to a traditional weekday commuter rail system than a subway, Metro could organize its weekend service more like such a commuter rail system and introduce timetables specific to each weekend. Through proper distribution, timetables would introduce a level of confidence in the system that would be extremely useful to all.

Riders would have a more predicable journey, including the ability to plan ahead and forecast their arrival time. Metro would better utilize its resources, by not only avoiding lengthy delays but also through increased ridership.

Additionally, track workers and engineers would have better predictability on the work than can be done, leading to better efficiency in the allocation of resources and a decrease in engineering related costs. Workers could for example perform simple track inspection within an allocated time period without compromising their own safety. Metro engineers might also be able to schedule more single track operations for heavy maintenance such as track renewal without the disruption sometimes seen today.

Perhaps most helpful would be better transfer timing. Proper scheduling would allow riders to make seamless connections at the main transfer stations, especially Metro Center, Gallery place, and L'Enfant Plaza. Currently, riders sometimes get upstairs just in time to watch their train pull away from the platform. With a schedule that takes into account low frequencies and construction delays, Metro could design timed transfers.

If Metro took steps to implement these ideas, riders would see a decrease in average trip time, Metro would increase ridership, and could also benefit from fewer engineering-related operational disruptions.