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» New Leadership, New Perspective at Metro (2/17/06) from noon to 1 p.m.

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Keeping Bus Routing Up To Date?

Author	Message
Steve B	How does Metro review and revisit its bus routing and scheduling? The most glaring example in my neighborhood are the pockets of Burke/Springfield that are served only by "express" buses (which wind their way through residential streets and stop every block or two just like local buses for much of their routes) even though the Franconia-Springfield station has been open, well within normal local-bus range, for about a decade.
Dan Tangherlini	This is an excellent question and definitely an area we need to do much more work on. Luckily, our Board Chair, Gladys Mack, has declared this the "Year of the Bus." So, expect to see us looking at routes, headways, equipment, and passenger information. I will ask our bus folks to look at this particular concern.

Metrorail Headways & Unacceptable Train Equipment

Author	Message
TheCritic	First I would like to say welcome and congrats and hopefully you will be my Metro savior. I hope that unlike your predessesor (who did manage to improve some elements of Metro) you will make some huge changes that reflect what most Metro riders want instead of what Metro thinks or is willing to provide. With that said, this is sort of a two-part question. I have kind of tried to ask these questions before but Mr. White was very hesistant to answer these questions when asked and would only give vague, roundabout, indirect responses whenever a Metro rider would ask him about it. First, can you please make sense of the way Metro schedules their trains for me...in lamens terms. I rider the Green Line in the mornings and evenings to/from work. I ride the train from Prince George's Plaza Station to Downtown, DC. Please explain to me how everyday, no matter what time of the morning it is, i've seen as many as three to five Greenbelt-bound trains come in the same time frame that it takes just ONE train going in my direction to come??? How and why would that many trains be coming back-to-back going towards Greenbelt when most people are going inbound towards DC in the morning??? What kind of logic is being excercised when making that decision? And furthurmore, one would logically conclude that if so many trains are going in the opposite direction that at some point all those trains would have to bunch up at the end of the line somewhere. And one would also expect that eventually that many trains would be coming in my direction. But, no. It doesn't happen. I'll look at the next train display and I will see something crazy like 2 min, 6 mins, 12 mins, etc. But the Greenbelt-bound trains will say Arriving, 1 min, 3 min, 6 mins, etc. Please explain this and make it make sense for me. Next question...why are so many old, raggedy trains appearing on the Green Line all of a sudden? At one point the Green Line had a huge fleet of new railcars. Now I'm frequently seeing all of these old, smelly, raggedy-looking railcars from 30 years ago on the Green Line. I don't quite like that. When are all those new railcars i've been hearing about supposed to be coming on-line and on what rail lines will they be deployed on? And the Green Line could really use some of those eight car trains as well. The Orange Line strikes me as an odd choice to do that experiment with when both the Red & Green Lines has a much higher ridership. Your comments will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Dan Tangherlini	There's an awful lot of questions here, but all of them are good. I am not sure I will be able to answer most of your concerns, here and now, but I will ask our rail folks to post an answer online for you and others that share your concern. More 8-car trains are on their way. Our current schedule has us at 20% 8-car trains by this December, and 33% by next December. The Board is going to act in April on car deployment decisions, so stay tuned.
Dan Tangherlini	Hi. Mr. Tangherlini asked me to get back to you, and he was kind enough to let me log on with his password, so this probably looks like he's responding, so please forgive me. You asked about why you see lots of trains headed to Greenbelt. During the morning and afternoon peak periods, all Green Line trains operate every five to six minutes. While trains on all rail lines operate as close to their schedules as possible, trains may spend additional time at key transfer or major stations to allow passengers enough time to enter and exit. That may add time to a train's schedule, which may make it seem like two or three trains could be operating closely together in either direction. We are looking to identify ways to improve dwell time at key stations, and we plan to introduce a pilot program with platform markings that will tell passengers where to queue prior to boarding a train. You also said that you think there are older trains on the Green line. Actually, that's not the case. Between 2001 and 2004 we took delivery of 192 of the series 5000 rail cars. Those cars are distributed throughout the rail system, on all of our lines. We also are continuing to take delivery of refurbished cars known as the 2000- and 3000-series cars, which look very similar to the series 5000 cars (meaning the red, blue and yellow interior seat colors). Again, those cars also are operating on all of our lines. You should be happy to know that we are preparing to take delivery of our newest rail cars, the series 6000 cars. Currently we are testing those cars without passengers on the Green Line during the late evening hours and on weekends. We have 184 of them that we've ordered and they will be tested for quality and safety and then put into service starting at the end of this year. Those new cars will take about two years for all of them to arrive (we introduce a few to the fleet every few weeks after they pass inspection/testing). Again, these new cars will also be distributed across all of our rail lines. Finally, you asked about eight-car trains on the Orange Line. We chose the Orange Line to pilot the eight-car trains because of the challenge of trying to get trains through the portal at Rosslyn. By running fewer, but longer trains during the peak hour, we are able to move more people through that "choke-point" on fewer trains, thereby alleviating some of the bottleneck in that area. If the pilot proves successful, we will be using those 6000-series railcars thatI mentioned above to run more eight-car trains on other lines.

New Perspective/Unions

Author	Message
METROEMPLOYEE	Welcome Dan, all the best in your new capacity as General Manager/CEO. Approximately 85% of WMATA's 10,000 employees belong to unions. There has been a long history of poor management/union relations. I believe if you manage a heavily unionized organization, you should work well with the unions and foster an atmosphere of cooperation, not contention. Workers need to put in a full and fair day of work and be rewarded with decent pay and benefits and reasonable increases in pay each year (think about the Federal government). What is your history with unions and what will be your guiding philosophy with WMATA's unions?
Dan Tangherlini	I can't say I disagree that our success is linked - we need to work well together if we want to provide the highest quality service. The service our customers expect and deserve. I am the son and grandson of union members, and two of my brothers have been in unions as well. I understand why people organize and the role labor plays. I came from a public agency with a strong union and I worked well with them.

Web site

Author	Message
Redwalker	Welcome to your new job, and good luck with it. I'd like to see the map of the Metro lines more readily available on the Web site -- one click instead of two. Also, the maps of the neighborhoods around the Metro stops are very important, and should always be available. Sometimes they are not, and other times they load v-e-r-y slowly. Metro's Web site should be way beyond that stuff. Cheers!
Dan Tangherlini	I agree and we will work to make this easier.

NextBus...

Author	Message
W McGee	Recently, NextBus issued a press release announcing they were given the contract to equipt the Metrobus system with the GPS tracking system as to provide in real-time bus position and schedule information. Press release: http://www.nextbus.com/corporate/press/index.htm#wmata They provide the same service for the CUE Bus in Fairfax, and for the AT 3 & AT 4 lines for Dash in Alexandria. Should this system work as it does in Fairfax, this will be great for the Metrobus system. For instance, it would help alleviate the anxiety of wondering the bus that was due 5 minutes ago is (has it broken down? is it just stuck in traffic? did it leave early). That said, they had earlier provided the same for the 38B Metrobus for Arlington County, but Arlington had ended that project two or three years ago, citing cost and reliability concerns. Arlington release: http://www.commuterpage.com/cnews/column.cfm?ID=4369 With that, my concern is how this service would be rolled out and implimented. It appears that if you accept and roll it out on the entire fleet, the WMATA system would be the largest and most complex system to be handled by NextBus. What seemed to help kill the system in the demonstration project by Arlington is how Metro dispatches buses (where some buses running the route didn't have NextBus equiptment) and where some drivers didn't know how to operate the NextBus tracking equiptment. Now, in light of the difficulties experienced by Arlington those many years ago, how are you and NextBus working on mitigating those difficulties?
Dan Tangherlini	I think having next bus information is one of the most important improvements we can make on the bus system. I have stood many times at bus stops wondering when that bus would come. Not knowing makes it a less attractive transportation choice. I know DC has included NextBus in their new bus shelter contract, and that Arlington experimented with it. I think we are going to work to learn from their experience to make ours a model deployment. This is just the sort of initiative our Board is looking for in this, the Year of the Bus.

Signs

Author	Message
Margaret Nydell	One of the most important and cheapest improvements would be signs at the top of all escalators that say: STAND ON THE RIGHT. Just some kind of inexpensive sign is good enough. Tourists never stand on the right, and people have to yell at them all the way down the escalator. This has gone on for years. If you ride Metro regularly, you will see how disruptive this is.
Dan Tangherlini	I have often wondered why we haven't done this, myself. As part of the passenger flow intiative we will be putting stickers next to the escalator railings reminding folks to stand to the right. We will be kicking this off this spring.

Extending Yellow Line to Greenbelt

Author	Message
TheCritic	Don't know if this question will make it to the board since I already asked a question but in case it does, how hard would it be for Metro to run the Yellow Line past Mt. Vernon Square to Greenbelt? I've never really understood why the Yellow continued to do that after the Green Line was completed. Your reponse would be appreciated.
Dan Tangherlini	That is an issue we are looking at already. Board member Jim Graham has asked us to consider extensions to Fort Totten (which would connect the yellow to the red) and Greenbelt. There are funding and operational issues to be worked out, but its definitely on the table.

MetroAccess

Author	Message
Miika	Greetings, When the rider numbers of MetroBus and MetroRail increases, WMATA's response is to add more buses, and 8-car trains. So why is WMATA's response to an increase in MetroAccess rider numbers to turn around and tighten the eligibility requirements in such a way as to reduce the number of riders eligible? The revised criteria no longer consider if a rider can use regular services to go anywhere, but instead only whether or not the rider can use regular Metro. Just because someone can get onto a bus or train it doesn't mean they can use that to complete their trip. WMATA are experts at fixed route public transportation. They are not, however, experts at dynamic irregular services such as MetroAccess provides. That would be why WMATA isn't running MetroAccess itself, instead bringing in outside contractors to do so. If that's the case, why is WMATA trying to micromanage MetroAccess as if it were a fixed route transportation system, instead of allowing the contractors to do what they do best? Why is WMATA refusing to make "reasonable accomodations", as required under the ADA, to a subset of its MetroAccess ridership with the criteria regarding notifying riders their transport has arrived? There is no flexibility in the policies to adjust for the wide range of disabilities that make a driver going to the door and announcing the arrival of the transport a necessity. Why are MetroAccess riders required to face the risk of the "Grand Tour" trip? The easiest analogy is a rider going from Metro Center to Gallery Place/Chinatown, a trip of one stop, but being required to go there via Greenbelt, Largo Town Center, then Rockville, first. Riders of regular metro services would not stand for such a trip, why are MetroAccess riders being forced to do so? Why does WMATA's media relations department continue to trivialize and attempt to characterize MetroAccess rider complaints as being some sort of disaffection with the loss of some kind of "privilege"? Whilst we realize that WMATA is on the defensive regarding MetroAccess at the moment, do you feel it is appropriate for WMATA to attempt to defuse the situation by marginalizing and playing on the basest of human prejudices as the media relations department's recent utterances have been, with their unspoken dismissal of riders? Didn't we have enough of that with mr White accusing riders of lying? This is a small subset of the questions we have been asking at http://www.DCParaTransit.Info for some time. We wonder if they will finally be answered. We are, after all, customers of WMATA too.It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.
Dan Tangherlini	These are all excellent questions - MetroAccess is a front burner issue for me. In fact, when I finish here online, I am going out to the MetroAccess operation to discuss service problems and how we can make it better. I will bring your questions along with me and work to get some answers.

Pls improve this forum

Author	Message
Redwalker	I think the Post chats are the most accessible and easy forums to maneuver. Metro's is not easy, is cumbersome and not user friendly. Please add this to your 37 single-spaced pages of important things to fix! Cheers!
Dan Tangherlini	You should see what I have to go through on this side! I was just telling the very helpful web guy who is sitting with me the EXACT same thing. I will put it on "the list" - toward the top.
Dan Tangherlini	Hi. Mr. Tangherlini let me use his password to get back to you about our online chats. We are working to make the format of our chats more "user-friendly." We hope to have something new next month. We're working on it!

Pls improve this forum 2

Author	Message
More METRO in DC	by posting and answering more questions.
Dan Tangherlini	I hear you, but I am getting used to this. I'll get faster...

AIR CONDITION

Author	Message
CONCERNED	Welcome Aboard Mr.Tangherlini: One of the main concerns that I have about Metro is the lack of air conditioning in the Metro stations particularly at Farragut North, it is hotter then a sauna on hot humid summer days. Its literally hotter and more humid in the Metro station then it is outside, and when there are delays on the red line its gets worse because of the extra bodies on the platform, what can be done to fix this problem? I was told last year that the cooling system is set at a specific temperature, but I think Metro fails to realize that it is damp and humid underground and when the cooling system is set at 78 degrees you don't feel it. I hope we can change this before someone collapses due to a heat stroke.
Dan Tangherlini	Ever try to air condition a barn? Big open spaces, lots of people, trains pushing through and taking all the cool air out - it's a challenge. I have spoken with the rail facilities folks about some programs to improve our older chiller plants and other ways to get some relief - but there are limits. And I will see what I can do.

Clever Device Announcements

Author	Message
H5 Rider	Good afternoon & welcome: Several times I have asked this question and it is always avoided. I want to know why so few of the bus drivers use the Clever Devices voice annunciation system anymore. Many transits purchased this system because drivers were failing to call out stops and transfer points but now the drivers have found clever ways around using this valuable system. I refuse to believe they are suddenly all broken or no longer work. Thanks for your time.
Dan Tangherlini	I'm the new guy, remember. So, I am not avoiding your question when I tell you that I will find out what is going on. If we have it, we should use it. Thanks for the heads up.