http://www.news8.net/news/stories/0510/735502.html (http://www.news8.net/news/stories/0510/735502.html)
As with the justification for previous fare hikes, one of the reasons cited for this increase is a drop in ridership. I don't want to sound too negative, but I'm feeling that the Metrorail riders are really facing highway robbery. So, lets say they get the increases being considered. I'm sure that even more riders who have a choice will choose to... You guessed it. They'll drive more. My wife now rides with me on some days, but she's already considering driving as the parking rates at Metro stations tend to be high and the fares are getting so expensive. We complain, but once again, I have to say that I really feel for low income people as it's a lot of money.
Perhaps, me being a native New Yorker, I'm expecting too much from mass transit. In my mind mass transit fares should be such that it's an incentive for commuters to use mass transit over driving. At this point, I don't see much of an incentive (for Metrorail). Also, I have to say that I'll always advocate for mass transit, but with the way things are going in the DC area, (other than transitfanning), I'll be staying in my car.
just my 2 cents
QuoteMetro commuter Rodney Samuels has an important, if unanswered, question: "[A]re they going to use the money to make our experience better? "If they're not, " he says, "then they shouldn't increase it at all."
This question is often forgotten as agencies choose fare increases to help cover the budget. I truly believe more (but not all) people would be willing to pay more for transit, provided that there's actually a VISIBLE improvement to the system. There have been areas where voters have voted to raise taxes to provide dedicated funding for public transit, especially for new rail projects.
The problem is that agencies are raising fares for the same old service, which is frustrating for the money-conscious commuter, especially if the commuter finds the service to be barely adequate. Nobody wants to just give more money to something if they aren't getting anything in return, especially if they end up paying MORE for LESS service. Unfortunately, this is typically the trend.
I hope that with this fare increase, WMATA will work to improve both its Metrorail and Metrobus system. At the price you pay for a Metrorail ride, the car should NEVER have a ridiculously strong smell of sweaty gym socks. Additionally, they need to brighten up the subway stations, perhaps by trying LED lights. Also, more of the platform pylons could use light bulbs as well. I thought everyone had a light bulb, but many of them were out I guess as I passed through the system.
Why should they expect an improvement with a fare increase. Every thing costs more each year just to stay where it is at. Do you expect more driving pleasure because gas topped $3 a gallon?
Sure service definitely needs to improve, in fact WMATA seem to seriously needs a huge shake-up from upper mgmt all the way down. One of my biggest issues is that Metrorail (In my opinion) is incredibly expensive. I'm focusing on Metrorail because Metrobus is an incredible bargain (again, in my opinion).
I understand the multi-jurisdiction thing, but I can't help but to make comparisons with other major cities. Again, this is just my opinion, but looking at other major city agencies, those riders seem to have more reasonable fares.
I think Metro's big problem is it's grown into something that it isn't or was never really intended to be. If any of us was to go back to 1970 and walk into Harry Weese's office, I'd bet we'd be laughed out of there with the realities of today.
I wonder how much Metro would lose (initially) if it went to a flat-fare system and how much it'd lose if it made passes a reasonable amount and tried to get people to shift over there. It's funny and frustrating that one in Boston, often for riding long distances (Riverside-Braintree isn't that much shorter than Shady Grove-Franconia), could be paying less for a monthly pass than a WMATA rider would for a weekly rail pass + weekly bus pass post-July. MBTA was in a WMATA-style downfall at the turn of the century (the long-defunct Bad (T)ransit was their Unsuck DC Metro), maybe we should ask them for advice on what to do to become respectable again.
Quote from: Antozilla on May 14, 2010, 08:17:18 AM
Why should they expect an improvement with a fare increase. Every thing costs more each year just to stay where it is at. Do you expect more driving pleasure because gas topped $3 a gallon?
When gas tops $3 a gallon, people tend to drive less, cry out for alternative fuels, and run to transit if possible. Additionally, they cry scandal with OPEC and such, and the gas coming out of the pump better not be inefficient nonsense. However, you are comparing apples and oranges, as gas is not a service, while public transportation is.
With transit jacking up the fares and providing the same "shoddy" service (or worse, less service), especially when it's primarily funded by people's taxes, people don't understand or even care about the increased maintenance costs of the system. Instead, they follow the media where they slam anyone they can, from the upper management to the union members, calling them all overpaid transit workers.
Is it logical? Not necessarily. Is it reality, especially in a time where everyone is counting their pennies? Definitely so!
It's funny. As I type this I'm watching Newstalk on News Channel 8 and they're talking about the fare hike in June. Seems they saying much of the same as I've been saying here. It's just too expensive, people are fed up, transit agencies in other major cities don't cost as much and of course this peak of the peak thing. Last and certainly not least they were saying that many people are going to say... "Heck with this...I driving" and who can blame them. They also mentioned that many people who park at outlying stations pay up to $14 per day. I don't get passionate about many things, but I think this horrible.
Sad thing is it's largely political. VA politicians don't want parking rates to rise others don't want bus fare to rise and some don't want rail fares to rise.
The sad thing is that some of the changes you guys mention that would make service better...how much do they really cost? I sent WMATA an email (through the website, since they cut off the actual email address you could use directly) about press releases and why they can't just send the entire release in the email instead of just a link to the release, because people with smartphones (a large percentage of people who need press release "ALERTS" in the first place) don't have time to wait for the site to load to read something that could have just as easily been sent in an email.
Two weeks later, I got a response from some "Consumer Representative" who ... gave me the link to where I can subscribe to press releases.
Now this isn't even service related, and it isn't gonna be the thing to make me swear off of dealing with WMATA (I'm long past that and had been sitting on top of the email issue for months before I finally broke down and decided to give it a shot), but it's definitely on the list of reasons why they are just so hard to deal with and why people are fed up: It takes weeks to get responses to complaints, if ever, and the responses don't address the problem. Bad enough people have to file some of these complaints to begin with.
As traffic gets worse and worse in our region, I can't help but say to myself "There has GOT to be a better way." Then I see an Orange Line train stalled on I-66 along with everyone else and say "There has GOT to be a better way, there just HAS to be!"
I think it might be time to look at replacing WMATA with a successor organization that doesn't have all the problems WMATA has. When the WMATA compact was written in the 1960's, it wasn't intended to govern what it governs today. Now all of WMATA's chickens are coming home to roost and frankly it's time to toss out the dirty water and start anew.
As assembled, WMATA was supposed to operate a quasi-subway/commuter railroad with a few hundred thousand riders a weekday. Not one with 800,000 riders plus a bus system. Something has to give. If we could only clone the MBTA's operations here...
Well...what do we need then? An RTA to coordinate individual jurisdictional bus systems? A spin-off of Metrobus into a separate system, leaving WMATA to deal only with rail - a la BART? A new compact for the existing agency? If serious, major, landscape-changing reform is needed, this is the time to say what that reform is because once Metro patches a few holes in the concrete, the momentum will be lost.
A lot of people on the urbanism blogs (i.e. the people who don't get how bus agencies really operate) think that Metrobus is what's killing WMATA and that it should be spun off. Good idea in theory, only problems are, let's see.
1: DDOT could run the intra-District routes (and ones that narrowly exit the district, 30's/70's/S's), but would they try to make every line like Circulator?
2: Who runs intra-jurisdiction routes like the MoCo-PG routes, the Arlington-Fairfax/Alexandria-Fairfax/etc. routes, the 80's that go into Maryland, or the 38B? This doesn't even consider if MD/VA cross-river service is restarted.
3: How could Metrobus hand over its PG routes with the reassurance they'd have service on nights and weekends.
I think that an alliance on the VA side and an alliance on the MD side might be a good solution (especially if the VA alliance got PRTC/Loudoun aboard, ditto the MD alliance getting TransIT, Corridor, and possibly Annapolis), with DDOT doing District and narrowly outside the district routes. It'd free up WMATA to focus on the rail end but would everyone get along?
Scrabbleship
I think it might be time to look at replacing WMATA with a successor organization that doesn't have all the problems WMATA has. When the WMATA compact was written in the 1960's, it wasn't intended to govern what it governs today. Now all of WMATA's chickens are coming home to roost and frankly it's time to toss out the dirty water and start anew.
As assembled, WMATA was supposed to operate a quasi-subway/commuter railroad with a few hundred thousand riders a weekday. Not one with 800,000 riders plus a bus system. Something has to give. If we could only clone the MBTA's operations here...
You assumptions of the facts are incorrect. A net income analysis done in 1974 predicted total combined boarding by 1990 at 2, 857, 924. That figure come from page 61 of the 09 1975 WMATA Final Environmental Impact Statement (http://www.wmata.com/pdfs/planning/FEIS_Aug_1975.pdf) (112 MB PDF file).
Quote from: Tristan on May 19, 2010, 09:02:42 AM
Well...what do we need then? An RTA to coordinate individual jurisdictional bus systems?
Actually, with all of the small yet "heavy duty" transit systems that have popped up in the last 30 or so years, that may not be a bad idea. Someone needs to keep everyone together, perhaps offer guidance, so that transfers between the different services can be as efficient as possible. This especially comes into play when you start running the streetcars and Purple Line type of projects.
In regards to Metro Station parking, I shall never park there. Thankfully there are many park and rides in the area, but many of them are served by routes with limited off-peak service, if they run during off peak hours at all!
I think a RTA may be good, but I've never heard of one with just one agency??? Perhaps a RTA could act on behalf of all metro area riders instead of the various jurisdictions who each seem to have their own agenda??? I don't know. Remember, I'm an IT person:-). In my opinion, first and foremost WMATA needs a serious shakeup from top to bottom. They need to get rid of the dead weight and accountability needs to be established at all levels. After listening to various people (some here and some employees) over the years, it's clear that WMATA has a bunch of supervisors/managers who don't know the first thing about managing. Then a lot of the low level managers who were promoted from bus or train operator seem to have a chip on their should because they're now in white shirts. These people are making the MTA in New York look almost normal.
I'm personally afraid to allow WMATA another "management shakeup" -- I mean the radio commercials say that everyone at Metro has a new commitment to accountability and blablabla...I guess I've equated the phrase "management shakeup" with "typical lip service" after seeing 3+ shaking General Managers come and go since Dick White left. Then there were the stand-downs.
I'm generally more conservative in my views (not political, but in my actions) on what needs to be done, but I really think it's high tide to make some serious changes to the organization itself. Even if WMATA ran perfectly, we still have huge issues in coordinating local buses, the conflict between WMATA both supporting and competing with (in a sense) the local agencies, etc...
I wonder if the Bolt Bus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BoltBus) or Dumbarton Express (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbarton_Express) examples could work on a much larger scale here in Washington -- that is, operated as consortiums? It sounds like a mess, but I feel like it could be done right.
I think a consortium could work right if there were splits on jurisdictional lines. Have all the Maryland agencies cooperate, have all the Virginia agencies cooperate, and have DDOT do routes that operate inside DC or just narrowly leave the District. The Maryland and Virginia consortium can collaborate for cross-river service on the Wilson and American Legion bridges* and there would be an allowance to let suburban providers into DC for cross-jurisdictonal routes (such as an ART-run 38B). It'd put the burdens on the proper jurisdictions themselves rather than have everyone on the hook.
* This also would allow for a hypothetical Leesburg-Frederick route via the Point of Rocks bridge if Frederick and Loudoun counties joined their respective consoritiums.
Echoing Scrabbleship:
- The large number of jurisdictions that participate in the WMATA compact will make any alternative governing body a serious challenge to implement. Not to mention that the unions will go ballistic. My very oversimplified approach would be:
· WMATA would still be the responsibility of compact members but limited to:
o[/size] Metrorail operations and funding
o[/size] Coordination of regional transit planning
·[/size] DC Metrobus service to DCDOT
·[/size] Montgomery Metrobus service to RideOn
·[/size] PG Metrobus service, The Bus, Connect-A-Ride to Maryland MTA
·[/size] VA Metrobus service including cross-river:
o[/size] ART: Those primarily operating in Arlington
o[/size] ATC: As is
o[/size] FFC: Those primarily operating in Fairfax
This will allow each jurisdiction to operate/fund bus service based on local needs, ability to fund, and be directly operated or contracted out.
Of course the ultimate fantasy (delusion, nightmare) is for WMATA to become a Federal agency since it is the principal beneficiary of Metrorail operations.