Category Archives: WMATA

News, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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Gorgeous Comparison of Rail Systems

wmata.png

Good has an incredibly sexy graphic comparing WMATA to other large transit systems including CTA, BART, MBTA and MTA, including length of commute averages and other sweet statistics. This is nothing short of sweet, sweet infoporn. How does Metro compare? Right in the middle of the big five transit systems for average commute length, percent active vehicles, ridership and speed.

Like porn, though, I’m not sure if the graphic is representative of reality: how are there really 1M riders on Metrorail + Metrobus on an average day, when an average day has 1.2M trips (not riders) between the two systems and likely a total passenger total of much less than half that number. But hey, we’re probably still ahead of Boston and SF. That counts for something, right?

The Daily Feed, The Hill, WMATA, WTF?!
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Metro to Boost Bike Locker Fees 185%

Photo courtesy of
‘Bikestation’
courtesy of ‘Dendroica cerulea’

The news came this afternoon from Wash Cycle that Metro is considering a proposal to increase fees by 185% for its bicycle lockers at various Metro stations from $70 a year to $200 a year. The increase would make it, per square foot, more expensive to store a bicycle than it would be to store a car in one of the WMATA garages.

While Metro’s certainly in a hard place financially, is almost tripling the fees of cyclists who ride to Metro the way to handle things? Surely $70 was too low, but trebling the cost? We’ve asked Metro what their argument was for such a dramatic hike. We’ll let you know what they say.

Update: Metro’s Doug Karas sent on the budget for FY2011 (which did confirm the hike), but wrote: Ultimately, the Board will decide what will go on the docket for public hearing. So any changes will be announced officially. I am sure if such a change is being considered it will be discussed at a Board or Committee meeting.

The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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Don’t Freak Out: It’s Just a Drill

Photo courtesy of
‘Lotus #37’
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

Tomorrow morning between 7:30 and 8:30, or, as we know it the heart of rush hour, WMATA will be conducting a terrorism drill in a crowded Metro station. So, don’t freak out if you see the bomb squad or a series of K-9 officers in your Metro station tomorrow morning.

Now, I understand it’s not really a good drill if you announce all the particulars ahead of time, but is needlessly burdening an already overburdened system in the name of preparedness a good idea? Why can’t you do this sort of drill at 10am instead of right in the middle of rush? Is rush hour a real necessity here?

News, Talkin' Transit, The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Metro Board Votes to Raise Fares $0.10

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘mollie emm’

The Metro Board voted early this afternoon to use fare hikes, and not rail service cuts, to cover a $40M budget gap for the rest of FY 2010, which ends in June. The fare increase will go into effect on 1 March 2010, raising the minimum fare on Metro to $1.75 during rush, and $1.45 during offpeak. The move is just one of a group of measures that will cover the budget gap, and was said by GM John Catoe to potentially raise $9-11M in extra fares.

Also included the measures adopted by the Metro Board were staff cutbacks at the transit agency (mostly open positions) and other measures, but significantly absent from them was a transfer from the capital budget to operating funds, which could have jeopardized future purchasing for Metro.

In addition to the fare hike, the council also elected Peter Benjamin from Maryland to the chairman’s position, replacing Ward One councilman Jim Graham who is cycling off the chairmanship.

News, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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Metro Board Hears All The Options

Photo courtesy of
‘Metro HQ’
courtesy of ‘tbridge’

Last night was your turn to talk back to the Metro board, and talk back DC did. The meeting was a standing room only affair, with many turned away who hadn’t signed up to come to the meeting, and more still turned away to the satellite viewing center. It wasn’t always the politest of audiences, we’re told that the loudest cheers and applause came from the commenter who suggested the whole board resign, but it was mostly a civil discourse at Metro HQ.

The best roundup we’ve seen so far has come from Unsuck DC Metro’s coverage, which said that though all choices were bad, but unequally so. Metro has a hard road ahead, and last night was just a preview before the budget for FY 2011 comes. Were you there? What did you see?

News, The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Metrobus to Detour Around State of the Union

Photo courtesy of
‘Metro’
courtesy of ‘mofo’

Tomorrow night is the State of the Union address, and as such, there’s a planned motorcade from the White House to the Capitol and back again, and heightened security in the area near the Capitol. In addition, there will be street closures. Metro has announced the following changes:

Metrobus routes 32, 36 (Pennsylvania Avenue Line), 34 (Naylor Road Line) and the 96 (East Capitol Street/Cardozo Line) will be rerouted from 7 p.m. until the President leaves the area.

So, if you’re heading in that direction on the bus tomorrow night, plan to go a little earlier, or a whole lot later. Streets are likely to be closed south of Louisiana and Mass Aves to the north, and north of Virginia Ave and North Carolina Ave to the south. Full closures will be announced likely this evening.

Update, 4:15p: As expected, the road closures are out, and match up largely with what we’re talking about above.

Downtown, Talkin' Transit, The Features, WMATA
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Talkin’ Transit: Short and Sweet

Photo courtesy of
‘Metro – Track Work – 6-27-09’
courtesy of ‘mosley.brian’

Of course, WMATA and GM John Catoe, Jr.’s resignation announcement continue to dominate most area transportation headlines. Tom already posited some questions that Metro needs to answer in their quest for a new GM (and for the Board to consider); I don’t see a reason to rehash it all. Mainly because, well, I’m just tired of Metro.

So a couple of short-n-sweet transportation notices you should be aware of…

WMATA: For the upcoming President’s Day holiday weekend, Metro plans to close the Rosslyn Metrorail station from 10 p.m., Friday, Feb. 12 to closing, Monday, Feb. 15. (The notification is at the end of the linked press release.) During the closing, Metro will install two new rail switches at the Rosslyn Metrorail station. Metro will operate free shuttle buses between the Court House and Foggy Bottom-GWU Metrorail stations and between the Pentagon and Foggy Bottom-GWU Metrorail stations. Riders should an extra 40 minutes to their travel plans if they need to pass through Rosslyn.

March for Life: This Friday is the 37th Annual March for Life on the Mall. (Map of the route is here.) The rally site is on the Mall at 7th Street NW and progresses along Constitution Avenue up to Capitol Hill and the Supreme Court. The rally starts at noon and usually is over by afternoon rush, but plan accordingly as the cross-streets along the path will be closed.

Featured Photo, WMATA
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Featured Photo


‘B&W Train Tunnel’
courtesy of ‘MikaAltskan’

What a year it has been for Metro, and the first month isn’t over yet. Service on the rails has been particularly messy this January, and just when it looked like Metro had decided to take the fight to the people, its general manager calls it quits. Despite last year’s tragedies and this year’s very rocky start, there’s still a magic about the system. Architect Harry Weese‘s vision for the Metrorail stations is iconic, modern, and yet still brutalist in nature.

For me, the best part of the system is the interface between the public parts of the station — the platforms, mezzanines, and escalators — and the inaccessible areas, especially the tunnels and the rail bed. Teenage photographer MikaAltskan managed to snap this shot looking into the tunnel from one of the stations. It shows off the curves of the concrete and rails, and the lights punctuating the distance before veering into an unknown, yet familiar place.

The next time you are waiting for the train that seems to never want to arrive, take a look around you and notice the cathedral-like look of the station where you happen to be waiting.

Talkin' Transit, The District, The Features, WMATA
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Quo Vadimus, Metro?

Photo courtesy of
‘bumpy concourse’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

Thursday afternoon’s resignation of Metro’s John Catoe came as a shock. Having been in a room with Catoe not 24 hours before, I was especially surprised. Catoe did not look like a man defeated by the challenge. Instead, I felt he had likely thought of a plan of action, and stood ready to implement it.

Instead, we are here, rudderless, facing a transit system in its biggest crisis moment. Metro has four very large looming problems that need to be solved in the next calendar year:

  • Finish the Realtime Train Detection System

  • Receive the NTSB Recommendations and fix what hasn’t yet been fixed

  • Deal with a $40M shortfall this FY, and a $160M deficit for 2010-2011

  • Figure out how to fund 300+ new 1000-series cars

And that’s just the subway side of things. Add to that the (largely in good shape, but congested) bus system, and you have a job that should be roughly on par with the Augean Stables. There’s a lot to get done, resources are at a premium, and they’re likely not to expand. So, where do we go from here? Continue reading →

News, The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Metro To Issue Rider Refunds To Those Experiencing Lengthy Delays

Photo courtesy of
‘good morning.’
courtesy of ‘volcanojw’

Frequent Metro riders have reason to jump for joy today. Metro Deputy General Manager for Finance and Administration Carol Kissal told the Washington Examiner that “it is time for the agency to give something back.”

(This of course being the time where the happy dance starts…)

With price hikes in the works for Metro this upcoming fiscal year (Kissal says any permanent fare increase will take place on or around July 1), it only seems fair that talks about refunding loyal riders take place.

There is no official course of action at the moment, but  in the mean time, refunds for those experiencing long wait times on Metrorail and Metrobus can browse the other options available on the Metro website.

The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Holiday Weekend Service Changes on Red Line

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

Red line riders beware — this weekend is not going to be pretty, so start planning now.

NBC Washington reports that there will be some major service changes over this holiday weekend.

For those of you trying to get anywhere between White Flint and Medical Center, guess what — you can’t get there via rail. But there will be a shuttle service running. You can check out times for that on WMATA’s website here.

What’s Metro up to with the red line? They’ll be splitting the line into two parts. Grosvenor-Strathmore station closes at 10 p.m. tonight and will reopen until Tuesday at 5 a.m.

For more information regarding the closures, visit WMATA’s release about the changes here.

The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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Metro GM Catoe to Resign

Photo courtesy of
‘WMATA Blogger Roundtable’
courtesy of ‘Samer Farha’

Update 2:00 p.m.: We put in a call to our WMATA contact, Ron Holzer, who indeed confirmed that Catoe has tendered his resignation to WMATA’s Board. Apparently, the announcement took everyone by surprise, as no one at WMATA had in inkling this was coming. Needless to say, neither did any of the area bloggers last night. Catoe played his stepping-down pretty close to the vest.

This news alert came as a COMPLETE SHOCK to me. Lena Sun at WaPo has broken the story that WMATA GM John Catoe, Jr. will be resigning as General Manager of the agency, effective April 2, 2010.

What’s completely shocking about this is that it comes on the heels of what, by many blog accounts today, was a very successful face-to-face meeting with area bloggers last night. Our own Tom Bridge covered the meeting in depth and even came away with some healthy respect for the man. (As did I, after reading several accounts of it.)

Catoe announced his intentions to resign after a special board meeting this afternoon. He said he realized that the tragedies at Metro in the last year had created “an unhealthy distraction” and that good leaders should know when it is time for a leadership change.

More as details unfold.

Talkin' Transit, The Features, WMATA
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Talkin’ Transit: Face to Face With John Catoe

Photo courtesy of
‘WMATA Blogger Roundtable’
courtesy of ‘Samer Farha’

[Editorial update: We had no idea Catoe would tender his resignation today. And apparently, neither did anyone else at the meeting, except for Mr. Catoe.]

Wednesday afternoon at Metro HQ, we had a chance to sit down with the General Manager, John Catoe, along with ten of our closest blogfriends here in the District. No limits, all on the record, just our recorders and our questions and him. Before we get into the rest, I’d like to thank our contact at Metro, Ron Holzer, for putting this together. Getting direct access to the head of the transit agency is a pretty special thing, and I thank him for the opportunity.

If you’ve ridden Metro in the last few weeks, you’ve experienced the worst that the system has to offer: long delays, packed trains and stations, the system is at a boiling point. Tempers flare from riders and employees, and things are out of hand. We talked a bit about the root causes of the situation we’re in, and much leads back to the Crash of June 22nd. Metro relies on its Automatic Train Operation (ATO) system to operate at its highest efficiency levels. ATO allows for higher speeds, better control in a delayed operation situation, and right now it’s not available to the operations staff. That’s a choice made by Catoe and the Metro Board, until such time as they have the final NTSB report, and until they have the realtime detection system in place and operating. That’s months away at this point, with no clear timetable in place other than “this year.”

Better than that, Catoe admitted that they’re having an engineering problem since they went to mixed-model trains (to move the 1000-series cars to the center of trains) with doors not operating properly and sometimes not accepting the proper signals to close or open, which has lead to some of the platform crowding that we’re seeing on a daily basis. So that’s where we are. And we’re likely facing that sort of delay well into the Spring, when we’re looking at potential fare hikes and service cuts. But what about that shortfall? Continue reading →

Downtown, Fun & Games, People, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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Damn, Crowded Metro Station! You Scary!

Photo courtesy of
‘not goin’ anywhere?’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

Was anyone else at the Chinatown Metro station yesterday evening at around 6:15? I was, and I was pressed into the mass of humanity unsuccessfully attempting to move around the station. It all started because a red line train, which I was on, had to offload at Judiciary Square, thereby causing a delay that resulted in platforms down the line filling up. I got to Chinatown, got off the train and proceeded to work my way through a human traffic jam for 20 minutes. New trains would come in, but the platform was so crowded that passengers could barely get off and the doors would close before anyone waiting could board. This exacerbated the crowding problem and the platform just got more and more full. I’m pretty sure that no one died or anything, but I was witness to a few fights. The best part: this was just a Monday evening. Nothing special was happening.  I really do love mass transit.

(Yes, I know the picture’s not of Chinatown.)

All Politics is Local, Business and Money, Life in the Capital, News, The Daily Feed, The District, WMATA
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Another Near Metro Disaster & Potential Price Hike

Photo courtesy of
‘It has been a long day’
courtesy of ‘spiggycat’

As if WMATA hasn’t been in the news enough, today comes word that on December 10, 2009, a team of independent safety inspectors were nearly struck by a metro train at the Braddock Road Station. According to the Tri-State Oversight Committee, the inspectors “were forced to quickly scramble out of the way to avoid being struck.” Fortunately, no one was hurt.

The incident occurred shortly after Metro lifted a six-month ban on monitors accessing live subway tracks, and was only one of a long list of safety violations reported by the committee.  A summary of the report by The Washington Post stated that “Metro’s safety training was inadequate and that the transit agency needed to take “immediate, short-term corrective action” to ensure worker safety.” The Post also reported that WMATA is taking action to correct the situation and will hold a safety session with multiple transit agencies.

Additionally, we hear that the Metro Board will hold public hearings (to take place before a Jan. 28 vote) on adding a 10 cent surcharge to Metro fares. The increase in fares (from March to June 2009) would be an attempt to cover a $40 million dollar shortfall and to prevent significant cuts to both metro and metrobus service. Continue reading →

The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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Metro is NOT Exploding

Photo courtesy of
‘and boom goes the dynamite’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

…no matter what it sounds like. Metro’s going to be doing structural integrity testing on the new pillars they’re putting in between I-66 and the DTR this afternoon around 1pm, and it’s going to sound like an explosion, but really, nothing should combust quite like that.

Should. Remember, this is Metro, after all.

News, People, Special Events, The Daily Feed, WMATA
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Live Metro Chat on Friday

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

WMATA is hosting a live chat with John Catoe this Friday from noon-1pm. This chat will be in the wake of the Thursday board meeting, during which general cuts to service are expected to be announced.  Metro is dealing with a $40 Million deficit, which the blame largely on decreased ridership due to the economic downturn, and in the wake to the train crash in June of last year.  Expect questions on how individual routes, particularly bus routes, will be effected by service downgrade.  You can join the chat here.

Entertainment, Fun & Games, Talkin' Transit, The Features, WMATA
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Metro Singalong 2009

Photo courtesy of
‘Navidad en el metro’
courtesy of ‘Daquella manera’

With apologies to purists of the Twelve Days of Christmas.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Johnny Catoe and Metro gave to DC…

12 budget shortfalls of 22 40 175 million dollars!

11 pole hogs hogging

10 SmarTrip card upgrades … no, wait … here we go … um, maybe … yes! … no, this one’s correct!

9 tourist tip guidelines (plus ancillaries, corollaries and exceptions)

8 doors opening to nowhere

7 not-so-hard questions

6 sweatbox stations

FIIIIIIIVE customer friendly operators!!!!!!

4 busted escalators

3 in-the-dark Metro board members

2 Metro shower curtains

and one disillusioned, disgruntled rider!

Have a great holiday, everyone! See you in 2010.

News, The Daily Feed, WMATA
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WMATA Back to Strength

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

Not Full strength, mind you, as Metro Access is closed today except for medical trips for dialysis, etc, but buses and trains are all running today, to all stations. They dug out 106 miles of track below the 8″ mark to let trains pass safely, and thanks to the works of the DDOT Plows, the bus routes are clear enough for passage. Be safe out there.