Category: CSG in the News

Fairfax County engages the community on bus rapid transit

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Fairfax County is reaching out to the community in hopes of getting residents on board with a bus rapid transit system planned for a busy U.S. 1.

 A public meeting for the Embark Richmond Highway project drew residents to an auditorium at Walt Whitman Middle School in Alexandria to hear from project planners and local lawmakers about the project’s progress.
The project would be the county’s first BRT system, running down the median of Richmond Highway (U.S. 1), with plans of linking the Huntington Metro Station to Fort Belvoir by 2028. A longer-term plan would eventually extend the system to Woodbridge.
“We want to try and make improvements to the transit system in the corridor as quickly as we can, and we know that bus rapid transit has a lot of potential for this corridor,” said Tom Biesiadny, director of Fairfax County’s Department of Transportation.
 With any possible Metrorail extensions to areas past Huntington as far away as 2040, planners say the BRT will provide an option that will get more people moving more quickly through Fairfax County from destinations such as D.C.
“We have a way to build up the highway, invest in bus rapid transit, make this a transit corridor without having to wait on Metro to get its act together before future expansions can be put in place,” said Fairfax County Supervisor Jeffrey McKay, of the Lee District.
David Storck, county supervisor for the Mount Vernon District, says residents are on board with the plan, which he says will bring in more businesses and more housing to the area.
 “Really less expensive housing than what you might find in Washington D.C. or other places that are already further urbanized,” Storck said.
The plans are being worked on in coordination with the Virginia Department of Transportation, and also call for the road to be widened to three travel lanes in each direction. Bike and pedestrian lanes will also be installed on both sides of the street.
Stewart Schwartz, with the Coalition for Smarter Growth, said there is a big demand for walkable communities, and this plan answers that demand.
“To compete, counties like Fairfax, Montgomery and Prince George’s are seeking to invest in more transit and more walkable communities,” Schwartz said.
Studies are being conducted for the project and those will last through 2017. The county is planning several more community meetings before design plans are finalized.
Click here to read the original story.

LISTEN: Your Best Advice For Coming Metro Closures – Plan NOW

WASHINGTON – (WMAL) Now that Metro has announced its year-long rehabilitation effort involving long-term single tracking and closures, commuters are being advised to start searching sooner rather than later for alternative methods to get to work.

“We all certainly need to plan ahead,” Stewart Schwartz with the Coalition for Smarter Growth told WMAL. “There’s long been programs where employers get involved working with local agencies to get information out about other options.”

Stewart recommended the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government’s Commuter Connections as a start for employers.

“All of them will have to step up their outreach to employers, and employers have to step up to help employees find alternatives,” Schwartz said.

Metro’s SafeTrack track plan involves varying degrees of single tracking and closures, mostly in above-ground sections, which are concentrated in more suburban areas of the system. The first project is set to start June 4, which will impact the southern reaches of the Blue and Yellow lines.

“For the longer-distance commuters, I think carpooling, telecommuting, and much better express bus service will be very helpful,” Schwartz said. This may be an opportunity, he said, to implement more dedicated bus lanes throughout the region.

“For those who live closer to work, there’s the option for some to even walk to work, but there’s also bicycling and bikeshare options,” he said. “I think we’ll all get healthier through this whole process.”

Schwartz recommends commuters test out their new methods beforehand, but doesn’t foresee region-wide gridlock.

“I don’t think (we’ll see gridlock), if we all work together to work on alternatives.”

Click here to read the original story. Photo courtesy of WMATA.

Metro has a year-long plan to fix the system. Here’s what people are saying about it.

Metro’s year-long plan to fix the crumbling system was received Friday with mixed-feelings, many questions and lots of skepticism about how such a major undertaking could successfully work in a region where hundreds of thousands of people depend on the the system to get around.

Many of the region’s public officials are calling the “SafeTrack” plan a “bold” and “serious” move to address Metro’s serious safety and service problems, and are calling on local, state, and federal governments to rally behind Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld, acknowledging that the impact will be painful for all.  Riders and Metro critics, meanwhile took to the Twitterverse with their own ideas, calling for fare reductions, increases to bus service and a robust outreach campaign that leaves no one in the dark about service changes.

The plan will only work if Metro gives riders sufficient advance notice of shutdowns and provides travel alternatives, they say.

The repair plan to begin next month consists of 15 major projects, including five full shutdowns and extensive single-tracking.

Here’s what some of the region’s leaders and riders are saying.

The Coalition for Smarter Growth, a group that advocates for greater transit services called the plan “a major challenge” that will require the community, riders and Metro working together.

We’ll need expanded bus service, telecommuting, flex-time, and carpooling, especially for longer distance commuters. For those living closer to work, bicycling, bikeshare and walking will be important additional options.

The management and staff at WMATA owe the public a real turnaround in their performance in communications, maintenance, repair, operations and above all safety. And we should use this as a time to increase transit funding, expand our bus fleet, provide the dedicated bus lanes we have long needed, and expand the opportunities for bicycling and telecommuting.

“As a community and as Metro riders, we need to work together with the GM and the agency to get the job done,” Stewart Schwartz, the coalition’s executive director said. “We need the ‘roll up the sleeves attitude’ of Americans who’ve worked together after major natural disasters or mobilized for war.”

Some riders say they support the effort, but with some reservations.

Dawn Keeler, a nurse living in Falls Church, Va., said she stands behind Wiedefeld and the plan, provided Metrobuses can suitably replace the lost service.

“There has been so much neglect and abandon of this system for so long,” said Keeler, who rides Metro from East Falls Church to NoMa during the week. “I think this is a great idea. It’s necessary. We have to support this guy — even if it’s inconvenient — because it’s a safety issue.”

Members of the region’s Congressional delegation said regional unity is a must to face the challenge and are calling on riders to be patient while the work is done.

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a senior member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, urged the region to give Metro “the support and flexibility needed to get the work done.”

Make no mistake, the ‘Safe Track’ plan unveiled today is going to be painful, and the severity of the remedy to what ails Metro is directly attributable to years of neglectful decisions and a failure to confront problems earlier. The losses in time, money and output will underscore just how important Metrorail is to both the federal government and Washington region, and will illustrate why Metro’s culture of safety and physical infrastructure should never have been allowed to erode to the crisis point we have reached today.

But I believe that WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld understands the enormous impact that this plan will have on the daily lives of so many people, and would not be taking these steps unless he thought they were absolutely necessary to protect and properly serve Metro’s riders. I encourage WMATA leadership to continue working with federal experts on necessary improvements and upgrades, and to take every step possible to minimize the disruption to the daily lives of Washington-area commuters. I also encourage the state, local and federal government to give WMATA the support and flexibility needed to get the work done.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said the ambitious plan “is indeed painful medicine,” but underscores the severity of Metro’s problems.

Just last night service along a stretch of the Orange/Blue/Silver Lines was suspended during the evening rush hour due to another electrical arcing incident. Such scary events are becoming all too frequent. The frustration didn’t end there as today’s morning commute was once again fouled for thousands of riders due to train malfunctions and track signal problems.

This has been a decades-long march into mediocrity and dysfunction, and we must steady Metro from reeling from crisis to crisis and get it back on track.

I ask the region’s riders and businesses that rely on Metro each day for their patience in adjusting our daily lives and routines while these urgent repairs are made, but that goodwill must be rewarded. Metro and its partners must deliver. This will require the local, state, and federal governments to coordinate with Metro to mitigate the effects of this work and to provide commuter alternatives in the short term, and it will require the region to collectively consider how we adequately fund Metro for the long-term to prevent such challenges from arising again.

D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) said she plans to question Metro’s plan at a hearing this month, saying she wonders whether the one-year period will be enough “to reach acceptable safety standards” outlined by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Transit Administration.

The announcement today should lay to rest the dispute that emerged during the NTSB’s hearing on whether the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) or the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) should be tasked with conducting direct safety oversight over WMATA. Congress, through MAP-21 and the FAST Act, authorized FTA to assume direct safety oversight of a transit system if the State Safety Oversight Agency is unable to do so. Thus, FTA has a mandate from Congress, and as a practical matter is the only actor capable of quickly taking on safety oversight of WMATA while General Manager Wiedefeld embarks on the unprecedented rehabilitation of the system.

While the safety overhaul is being conducted, the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia must not lose focus on the separate issue of establishing an independent State Safety Oversight Agency. Apparently, the D.C. Department of Transportation is working with the Virginia and Maryland Departments of Transportation to submit the necessary legislation to the D.C. Council this fall. Maryland and Virginia authorities must be ready to submit legislation in January 2017 so that a State Safety Oversight Agency can be up and running by the middle of 2017, coinciding with the conclusion of the one-year safety campaign.

Sharon Bulova (D), chairmwoman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said the county is looking for ways to realign its bus service and communicate with Fairfax residents about the coming service disruptions.

It’s important that we do what we need to do to shore up our Metro system. Fairfax County is standing ready to assist in any way that we can,” Bulova said. “People take the Metro first of all because it may be convenient to them, but some take the Metro because they need to – because they don’t drive or can’t drive. Providing alternatives to those people is something we need to try to work out.

People take the Metro first of all because it may be convenient to them, but some take the Metro because they need to – because they don’t drive or can’t drive. Providing alternatives to those people is something we need to try to work out..

Montgomery County Executive Isiah “Ike” Leggett (D) said the plan would add a great deal of hardship, especially in Bethesda, Rockville and Chevy Chase, where rush-hour congestion is already severe, and that it was vital that Metro’s plan solve the problems in the long run.

This is a great deal of inconvenience to go through. My only reaction is, once we’ve gone through this, will it do what’s necessary to get us back on track. It’s an awful lot to ask.

If the challenges of safety and maintenance overall were not resolved at the end of this process, that would be a huge blow. We would have a problem of credibility that would be very difficult to ever repair.

Leggett said Montgomery would add buses, make changes in traffic lanes and adjust signals to deal with the impact, but traffic congestion is so bad already that it’s difficult to make up for the reduced Metro service.

“You’ll be putting buses into traffic that already cannot move,” Leggett said. “In an area that is already congested, it will have only a limited effect.”

Malcolm Augustine, who represents Prince George’s County as an alternate member on Metro’s governing board, said he is particularly concerned about the total shutdown of the Orange Line between Eastern Market and Benning Road for more than two weeks from Aug. 20 to Sept. 6. That will disrupt service for people traveling between the District and six stations in Prince George’s.

The work of getting people around that is going to require obviously a significant amount of planning and consideration and coordination…It’s the right call to give people a significant amount of time to prepare for that.

It’s the type of bold move that’s needed after so much time of letting the system deteriorate. But it’s definitely going to be hard times that we’re going to have to work through.

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments said it would work to add travel alternatives for commuters through its Commuter Connections program while portions of the Metro system undergo the intensive work. The site offers resources and information on carpooling, vanpooling, commuter rail, bus, telework, bicycling, and walking.

The COG’s chairman Roger Berliner, said Wiedefeld’s decision signals bold leadership to address Metro growing safety and reliability issues.

General Manager Wiedefeld’s draft plan to comprehensively address Metro’s core issues of safety and reliability over the course of the next 12 months is ‘tough medicine’ for tough times. The entire region has suffered because of the failure over many, many years to make the hard decisions necessary to maintain the system. The consequences of inaction are now crystal clear. As a result, our regional leaders have asked the new WMATA leadership team, led by the General Manager, to do what is necessary to fix it. Mr. Wiedefeld is answering that call with a 12 month plan to provide safe and reliable service.

“Executing this plan will not be easy. There is no question that single tracking will seriously inconvenience many already-frustrated riders. But stretching this work out over many years would create more serious impacts for riders and the region. The safety issues we are experiencing today would worsen while we wait. Our local governments and the federal government must work together to provide interim adjustments, such as additional buses, telecommuting, and other measures. The vitality of our region depends on our working together to support Metro’s efforts to provide safe and reliable service.

Still some riders and advocates for workers worry about the impact on commuters, particularly those who aren’t able to find alternative modes of transportation or can’t afford other options such as Uber or Lyft.

The plan would add a great deal of hardship on workers in the service industry, many who staff restaurants and hotels and clean office buildings and depend on Metro to get to shifts at odds hours, labor leaders say. They say they hope a robust outreach campaign would go beyond social media and reach segments of the region’s labor force, including Spanish-speaking workers, not in tune with Twitterverse.
“This is going to have a major negative impact on these workers,” said Jaime Contreras, head of the SEIU 32BJ, which represents 18,000 workers in the Metro region, including cleaners and security officers and is organizing airport employees.

The weeknight and weekend shutdowns are particularly troubling for the lower-wage workers who go home hours after most white-collar workers have settled in their homes. Many of them commute from the outer suburbs via Metro, can’t afford to drive or ride alternative modes of transit such as Uber or Lyft. In previous service disruptions, including the recent weather-related shutdowns of the system, many of these workers have been left stranded, unaware of the changes.

“My hope is that Metro will do an extra effort to reach out, and let people know what to expect early so they don’t find out about the service changes on the day of,” Contreras said, urging that extra efforts are made to reach out to the non-English speakers in the service industry. “As long as they do this, people should be able to plan ahead and how to get in and from work.”

“At the end of the day these problems need to get fixed so people don’t have to deal with these messes, but it’s important that Metro do the extra outreach,” he said. “It is going to be a little bit painful for a period of time, but I think people understand that we need to fix these problems once and for all.”

And if you missed it, SafeTrack even got some reaction from the White House. President Obama, answering questions from reporters on Friday, called the Washington Metro’s problems “one more example of the under investments that have been made.”

“The D.C. Metro historically has been a great strength of this region, but overtime we under-invested in maintenance and repair,” he said. “Obviously safety comes first and we want to make sure that if there are safety concerns that they are addressed.”

Faiz Siddiqui and Robert McCartney contributed to this report.

Click here to read the original story.

How Governor Hogan Slimmed Down The Budget For The Purple Line

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has touted his Purple Line cost-cutting as a victory for taxpayers. On March 2 the state hired a private-sector team, Purple Line Transit Partners, led by the firm Fluor Enterprises, to build the light rail system at a construction cost of $1.9 billion, about a half-billion less than earlier estimates.

The administration estimated its new total costs would reach $3.3 billion after six years of construction and 30 years of passenger service, with the majority of the funds paid in annual installments to the company that operates the light rail system.

The deal led the Maryland transportation secretary Pete Rahn to defend the decision to put the project on hold last year to negotiate a lower price with the private contractor teams competing for the bid.

“Absolutely this was worth the time that we took in which we are saving $550 million for the taxpayers in delivering an excellent project for the Washington area,” Rahn said.

What was lost in the savings?

The largest single cost-saver in Hogan’s slimmed-down Purple Line can be found in Silver Spring. That is where the Purple Line was supposed to arrive in an elevated structure between Metro’s Red Line station and the Silver Spring Transit Center, a new bus hub.

Under the new design, the Purple Line stop will be built on the opposite side of the transit center, saving $30 million. Advocates who once feared the governor might cancel the Purple Line altogether are willing to accept the changes.

“It’s possibly a bit of wash,” said Greg Sanders of the group PurpleLineNow!

“It saves about $30 million. There’s a longer transfer, but if you have been to New York, let alone Tokyo, there’s any number of places in both systems where you have a longer walk between transfer stations than here.”

Also among the money-saving decisions, the railcar supplier CAF, a Spanish firm, will build single-car trains at a reduced length of 136 feet instead of two-car trains. And because of the earlier decision to lengthen the headways (intervals between trains) from six to seven-and-a-half minutes, fewer railcars will be needed when the Purple Line in expected to open in 2022.

“This was something the private concessionaire proposed” Sanders said. “A lot of the savings are things lay people wouldn’t necessarily see, but the concessionaire has the option of putting through. That is the kind of deal where we are getting the benefits of private enterprise for a public purpose.”

The Maryland Department of Transportation also touted other “new elements” of the Purple Line contract: significant reduction in the number of traction power substations, new entrance into Glenridge Shopping Center from Veterans Parkway, and reuse of site-excavated materials.

“If we get the line built, if we get construction started this year, and we get these communities connected and people moving, I am entirely willing to make this sort of compromise,” said Sanders.

Fewer stations = smaller price tag?

The Hogan administration did not consider eliminating some of the 21 stations along the 16-mile route running east-west between Bethesda and New Carrollton. Cutting stations could have reduced construction costs and, by speeding up operations, would have required purchasing fewer railcars to maintain the headways.

Ten of the stations are forecast to serve no more than 2,000 passengers per day even 25 years out, according to theproject’s final environmental impact statement. Two stops have ridership projected below 1,000 per day. For instance, the Dale Drive stop is listed at 960 boardings in 2040. By comparison, the Bethesda station is expected to serve 14,990 passengers per day.

The stations were estimated to cost $109 million, or 10 percent of the construction cost, according to a 2013 technical report. So cutting a few could have trimmed several million dollars of the Purple Line’s price tag.

Why build a light ridership station at all? The answer, according to land use experts, is the development potential around the station. The federally approved ridership estimates are based on each locality’s current zoning rules, not on potential future changes to allow mixed-use development of residential, office, and retail space.

“The important thing to keep in mind is we don’t build transportation to move people. That is not the goal. The goal is economic development. The means is by moving people,” said Chris Leinberger, a real estate expert at The George Washington University.

For instance, the stop in the Chevy Chase Lake area is forecast at about 2,200 daily passengers by 2040. But Montgomery County has approved big plans for the area, including condos, rental apartments, and office high-rises near the station.

“They have a lot of potential to build out more development that will increase the ridership,” Leinberger said.

That is why transit advocates have gotten behind the project, whose total estimated ridership is listed at about 70,000 by 2040.

“The Purple Line is perhaps the most significant economic investment that Maryland can make in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.,” said Stewart Schwartz, the executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.

“It’s really important to think of this investment in the context of where the market is going now. The demand to live in urban, walkable, and transit-accessible areas is booming and there is no end in sight.”

It is also important to remember that ridership estimates are often wrong, according to transportation policy experts. It is more art than science, said Joshua Schank, the former head of the Eno Center for Transportation who is now the chief innovation office at the Los Angeles Metro.

“It’s very difficult to predict any number of things that can happen: economic downturns, changes in gas prices, where the development is going to be. There are so many variables…The mistake is we think whatever the ridership number is, that is what it actually is going to be. It’s just a guide,” said Schank.

Two recent studies of new transit projects, cited by the Washington Post, actual ridership often falls short or even exceeds the initial estimates.

A Federal Transit Administration study in 2008 found that estimates improved, but that “only half of 18 recently built U.S. transit projects had reached their projections or stood a “good chance” of getting close,” the Post reported.

A Maryland Transit Administration study examined seven light rail systems that opened in the past decade. They “averaged 8 percent higher ridership than predicted.”

But individual systems produced figures far from the average. Three projects’ “riderships were as much as 45 percent below forecasts while four exceeded projections — one by as much as 79 percent,” according to the Post’s report.

The Purple Line’s ridership estimates also have grown over successive gubernatorial administrations, with the O’Malley administration coming to the highest figure of about 70,000 boardings per day.

High ridership forecasts are necessary to win federal grant dollars. The Purple Line was approved for $900 million under the FTA’s New Starts program.

Photo courtesy of PurpleLineMd.com. Click here to read the original story.

Officials tout East End street project at Fulton Hill meeting

The proposed design of a nearly $8 million street project that officials say will improve the East End of Richmond’s transportation network and parking while providing better access to the riverfront went before the public at a meeting Wednesday night in Fulton Hill.

The project includes widening East Main Street and potentially adding a roundabout at its intersection with a relocated Dock Street. Dock, currently alongside the James River, would be moved north, potentially opening the doors to more development and public access near the river.

East Main would be widened to include parking, sidewalks, bike lanes and landscaping, and to accommodate bus rapid transit pullouts.

“That area of the city is growing. There’s a lot going on over there, and we want to make sure that it’s able to accommodate the volume of traffic as it continues to increase,” said Sharon North, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Public Works. “We also want to make it an area that people go to, that they have access to the riverfront and businesses.”

City engineer M. Khara said a new Dock Street would run north of its current footprint and connect with East Main at Ash Street, where a roundabout is proposed. The shift is needed because of the closure of Water Street between Nicholson and Ash as part of the Stone Brewery Development.

The relocated Dock Street would have bike lanes, sidewalks and two vehicle travel lanes, officials said.

During the public meeting, illustrations of the proposed plan were on display and experts were on hand to answer questions from the few dozen residents who attended.

The project is designed in part to better connect downtown with east Richmond as far as Rocketts Landing, creating links by vehicles, mass transit and bicycles, while also recognizing the river as a major attraction.

Kimberly Winn, who lives on Dock Street, said that the project will have a major impact on the city and that she would like for the community to be more involved in the process.

Stewart Schwartz, a board member of Partnership for Smarter Growth and the executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, said a big concern is that city has been asking the public to look at bits and pieces of the riverfront plans separately. He suggests the city do a better job of explaining all of the pieces of the various proposals along the riverfront and how they tie together.

“Why isn’t the public being shown the big picture of what is being considered?” Schwartz asked.

Elsewhere in the plans, the widened portion of East Main, which would run from its intersection with the new Dock Street to Gillies Creek, would sport parking spaces on each side, bike lanes, a 6-foot median and sidewalks.

Also included: sidewalks and landscaping along Nicholson Street to the railroad bridge and bus rapid transit pullouts on Main Street between Gillies Creek and Nicholson Street.

The project is expected to go before the city’s Urban Design Committee and Planning Commission for a preliminary meeting in May, with final approval possible in July.

Construction is expected to start in February or March of next year, with completion tentatively scheduled for December 2017.

Click here to read the original story.

After a Metro shut down, new ways to move from Point A to Point B

 Chances are if you’re reading this, you or someone you know was affected directly by last Wednesday’s transportation nightmare in the D.C. area. Just months after being ranked the No. 1 transit system in the country, hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians were forced to find a new way to commute to work – be it via car, taxi, bike, bus or what have you – as an unprecedented 29-hour Metro shutdown ground the entire system to a halt.  Many chose to telework or take off altogether. While it’s impossible to quantify, the loss in business productivity must be staggering. Imagine if this took place during the Cherry Blossom Festival.

Fortunately, Metro has resumed normal service, but not before delivering a gut-check to those that rely on its services every day.  The shutdown exposed flaws in the system and demonstrated a clear need for investing in our current infrastructure and supporting innovative and alternative modes of getting around, whether for everyday or emergency use. Merely maintaining our existing fixer-upper infrastructure isn’t likely to make the difference we seek. We need an all-of-the-above strategy.

To ease the literal gridlock on our roads, we need to look critically at all modes of transportation, including public transit and rail, as well as new and disruptive concepts such as ride-share and bike-share services.

We need to listen to voters, those clamoring for new solutions and sparking a transportation sea change with their life choices. And we need to emulate and encourage the cities and companies that have taken steps, collaboratively in some instances, to begin to meet that demand.

At the center of this new world of transit is an idea, two words, a mouthful: Multimodal transportation.

Some businesses in cities across the country are already doing this.

DART – the Dallas Area Rapid Transit authority – has partnered with ride-hailing company Uber to streamline commuting via its GoPass app. You can order an Uber ride and buy a train ticket all in one place, eliminating questions of how to get from point A to B if conventional transportation lacks flexibility — all through the convenient use of smartphones.

Advances in mobile technology are certainly driving innovation. GoogleMaps automatically updates with local transit information, helping you make an informed decision regarding whether you should hop on the train or a bus or hail a ride.

Carshare services like Zipcar and Car2Go stash their vehicles along public transit lines. Inside the Beltway, you can overlay a map of Zipcar’s inventory on a map and easily identify Metro stations by the concentrated clusters of cars.

With carshare on the scene, cities like Boston and Chicago have seen a significant uptick in public transit ridership, decreasing the number of private cars clogging the roads. Chicago in particular has embraced this, marrying the two modes with an all-in-one transit card that allows access to both Enterprise CarShare and the CTA.

Ride-hailing company Lyft has built an entire campaign around connecting you to transit systems, such as in Friends With Transit, with an eye toward filling the first mile/last mile void in your public transit itinerary.

Lyft rival Uber has taken ride-hailing to the next logical step by slashing its taxi-slaying rates still further with UberPool, a several-minute blind date that gets you to dinner 40 percent cheaper than the default UberX.

Americans are finding themselves, more than ever, engaging in multimodal transportation, even if they don’t know it.  They’re walking to Metro stations, using ride-hailing services and arriving at airports in one smooth motion, dramatically changing the way we move about — and it’s never been easier.

So easy, in fact, that millions of Americans increasingly view car ownership as entirely optional; however, this is only possible with a robust transportation system. Convincing an increasingly mobile population to leave their cars at home takes significant coordination, but some of the country’s smartest cities, transit agencies and businesses are finding the benefits of that effort.

So, if you’re among the countless people frustrated by lengthy Metro delays or seemingly endless gridlock on our area’s roads, it’s in your – and all of ours – best interest to encourage development of some of these alternatives.

Fortunately, local organizations such as Voices for Public Transit and the Coalition for Smarter Growth are helping our policymakers think about the next generation of transportation and the need for input from the community.  If we can take any lesson from the gridlock on the roads and in Congress, it will take all of us to make a difference.

Click here to read the original story.

Metro is dead. Long live BRT! (Or so some say)

Metro’s total shutdown Wednesday forced many people onto buses for the day.

But maybe that’s just the way things should be. All the time.

So say some transportation analysts anyway. They argue that Metro’s climactic failure is another sign that the bus–the lowly bus, so often seen as the clumsy and homely understudy to light or heavy rail–should once again play a starring role in mass transit.

An analyst from the right-leaning Maryland Public Policy Institute went so far as to suggest that Metro is dead, and it’s time to pull the plug in favor of bus rapid transit (BRT). But so did an analyst over at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, who suggested that rail – and maybe even buses too – should be scrapped for private sector solutions coming into widespread use, including ride-sharing (like Uber) and driverless vehicles.

“Why isn’t now the time to ask whether we should keep investing in this system?” asks Thomas A. Firey, a senior fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute. “Any reasonable metric shows it’s not a good form of transit compared to other ones. ”

If Firey had his way, he said he would close Metro and fill its tunnels with dirt.

Clifford Winston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, also thinks public subways and bus systems have been so mismanaged for so long, it’s probably time to find alternatives.

“Both urban bus and urban rail are socially undesirable in most cities–that is, their operating and capital subsidies exceed benefits to users,” Winston said.

Both argue that Metro represents the transit option of yesteryear, and that the vast capital investments and operating subsidies that governments must plow into fixed rail systems no longer make sense compared with the flexibility and relatively low cost of BRT or ride-sharing and other innovations. This is particularly true at a time when buses and cars are cleaner and more fuel-efficient than ever. How much carbon, rail skeptics ask, went into the atmosphere to build the underperforming Silver Line?

In this view, the love affair for Metro is a holdover from the days when monumental projects were equated with the public good, and the preference for rail over buses was driven at least partly by middle-class tastes and anxieties. A federally-funded study by the National BRT Institute of mass transit options in Los Angeles suggests buses have an image problem that’s affected more by intangibles, such as perceived comfort, than tangibles, such as their reliability moving people around. Those intangibles also depend at least in part on the “urban context” a bus network serves – that is, the communities it transits — and this can be affected by the perception that the buses travel through low-income neighborhoods, the study says. You find Ralph Cramden behind the wheel of a bus; you find Tom Cruise on a train.

In a paper published in the 2013 edition of the Journal of Economic Literature, Winston argued that the United States has almost always been in flux between public and private approaches to maintaining its transportation infrastructure. But the time has come to either overhaul government’s stewardship of public transit or allow the private sector more of a share, because the current system is riddled with inefficiency and inequality.

Despite the notion that Metro is egalitarian, for example, studies show the federal government is subsidizing rail systems for riders who already have above-average incomes, compared to those who use the bus. The average income of a bus rider is $42,550 (in 2008 dollars); for rail, it’s $85,100. The 2016 median salary for Washington is $69,235, according to the Census Bureau.

Federal employees alone receive, free of charge, up to $255 a month to ride Metro. That’s the maximum a pretax subsidy anyone can receive; for people outside the federal government, it’s deducted from his or her pretax wages. For a federal employee, that’s the equivalent of a $3,060 annual bonus for them and $15 million a year for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. (The average pay for a federal employee is about $79,000, according to the Office of Personnel Management.)

Low-income commuters, or those who make less than $15,000, use rail for only 9.6 percent of their work trips – probably because transit reaches less than one third of metro-area jobs, Winston found.
“Fortunately, innovations in the private sector, including Uber in the short run and autonomous vehicles in the medium run, can improve urban transportation, and will likely eliminate public transit’s drain on the public purse and its patience,” Winston said.

Firey spelled out his reasoning along these lines in a policy paper that he admits sounds “radical.”

In his view, Metro is a dinosaur, built when 1960s urban planners and engineers still harked back to the hundred-year-old success of the London and New York subway systems and believed that electricity – thanks to things like nuclear power, among other things – would be the cheapest source of energy in the future.

Come ride with me: Washington D.C.’s Metro in the 1970s and ’80s
View Photos A look back at D.C.’s Metro to commemorate the Silver Line opening.
People are still habituated to the idea that trains can carry more people and at greater cost efficiency than buses when, he argues, the opposite is true.

This is partially because the real cost of rail is hidden from Metro users, whose fares cover less than half of the system’s operating and maintenance expenses and almost nothing of its capital costs, he said. Plus, now that Metro’s critical infrastructure is sputtering toward the end of its 40-year functional lifespan—as has become more and more obvious to the public –the cost of rebuilding the system will be daunting.

“WMATA officials can try to nurse it along, but that will be costly and riders will face many more disruptions like today,” Firey wrote Wednesday. “Ultimately, costly and environmentally damaging reconstruction will be needed.”

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, thinks they’re both wrong.

Metro is the primary reason for the revitalization of the District and its inner suburbs, from Silver Spring to Bethesda in Maryland all the way over to to Arlington and now Tysons Corner in Virginia, Schwartz said. If anything, Metro’s troubles stem from a lack of concerted government attention and funding, Schwartz said. He agreed that the emergency shutdown this week demonstrates why the city should expand its reliance on dedicated bus lanes, but as a supplement to Metro, not a substitute.
“As our region grows, we need an efficient surface transportation network with dedicated right-of-ways to the maximum extent possible,” Schwartz said in an email. “It’s important for reaching areas Metrorail doesn’t go and is also an important [complement] to Metrorail.”

A network of dedicated bus lanes might even allow WMATA to shut down an entire Metro system for repairs. But Schwartz also said buses could never take Metro’s place, and the emergency shutdown Wednesday has now given people a taste of what it would be like if there were no subway system.

In other words, Metro isn’t dead. It just looked like it on Wednesday.

Photo courtesy of Jessica Gresko. Click here to read the original story.

Subway safety shutdown makes for a very long day in capital

Thousands voted, with more than three quarters saying no.

Metrorail tweeted out early Thursday morning that service had been resumed to all lines after the 29-hour shutdown. It was the first time since 1976 that Metro had shut down for something other than a hurricane or blizzard. He says the walk from Metro Center to Roslyn will take him more than an hour.

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, said this about yesterday’s closure of Metro: “It took years for Metrorail to end up in this situation, where maintenance underfunding left us with the problems we see today”. “The whole system shuts down, the whole city shuts down”. “What are folks waiting for?”

Metro’s Safety investigators are reviewing the history of the damaged boots and cables, and all findings will be shared with Federal Transit Administration and National Transportation Safety Board.

“Throughout this intense inspection deployment, our focus has been on effectively mitigating fire risks”, said Wiedefeld.

For years, Metro has failed to spend all of its allotted money for capital improvements, and Wiedefeld has said Metro needs more realistic goals.

A sign at the Rosslyn, Va., Metro station notifies riders that the system is closed for emergency inspection Wednesday, March 16, 2016.

Brian Kirchner, 46, a federal contractor, said he was delayed by two hours getting home to Hagerstown, Maryland, on Monday because of the fire.

Wiedefeld said the alternative of having workers “crawling around” while the system continued to operate would have resulted in weeks of work.

Many riders were eager to get back on the transit system and, while occasionally frustrated that it had closed for an entire day, were pleased that Metro appeared to be serious about addressing riders’ safety. On Wednesday, they didn’t have that option.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management said in a statement that federal agencies will also open, with employees able to perform “telework” from home or put in for unscheduled leave.

The work is scheduled to be complete by the time Thursday’s commute begins at 5 a.m. WMATA spent the day inspecting all 600 “jumper cables” in the Metro system. Some of the connectors were improperly constructed and installed, allowing moisture and other contaminants to build up, it said.

In addition to the electric cables, Foxx said he is concerned about red-light running, the use of emergency brakes, and track integrity.

Commuters in the nation’s capital can return to their regular routines after an unprecedented daylong shutdown of the Washington subway system. But he said no progress has been made on the issue of a dedicated funding source for Metro. “And your solution is to cut?”

“It’s always slow, always crowded”, Bob Jones, 26, of Arlington, Va., told the Associated Press about the troubled transit system he’s not too fond of on a normal day.

In addition to the death a year ago, a crash in June 2009 killed eight riders and a train operator. One user joked that the city should flood the subway tunnels to the level of the platforms and rely on Venetian gondolas rather than trains. A track circuit, part of an automated-train control system, failed to detect the stopped train.

Click here to read the original story.

Editorial: More Than a Day To Fix Metrorail

Yesterday’s unprecedented closure of the full D.C. regional Metrorail system to examine and make critical fixes to the system certainly disrupted the routines of many thousands in the region. While the move was affirmed by every responsible public official, even seasoned commuters who’ve grown dependent on the system have had to concede that there can be no serious complaining about fixes done in the name of safety.

But the one-day interruption could be raising more questions than it answers. Can WMATA’s new general manager Paul Wiedefeld say with confidence that the corrections made in that one day were really sufficient to fix everything wrong or potentially dangerous that should require attention? Concerns may actually arise in the face of this action that it was merely a band aid, or even simply cosmetic.

It cannot be stressed too much that the public must demand the WMATA leadership not try to cover up for the stingy U.S. Congress that needs to bear the burden for keeping the system going. Underfunding on infrastructure in this nation is a scandal, whether it is in Flint, Michigan or anywhere else. The idea of burdening local jurisdictions with the cost of maintaining vital components of major infrastructure projects is also a joke. Passing the buck like that is almost like not funding at all.

Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, said this about yesterday’s closure of Metro: “It took years for Metrorail to end up in this situation, where maintenance underfunding left us with the problems we see today. Clearly, we have a ways to go to repair Metro’s aging systems….We hope that the ongoing challenges facing Metro will prompt our elected leaders to work together to provide the funding necessary to fix longstanding maintenance and rehabilitation problems. Failure is not an option.”

Underfunding has not only led to an aging system sorely in need of rehabilitation and maintenance, it has also led to the general under-performance of the system from the start. The system has been held back terribly by underinvestment, especially to be able to provide the necessary frequency and extension of hours of operation to make it a genuine alternative for many, many more in the region than use it, or rarely use it, now.

The biggest difference between the Metrorail here and the subway system in New York, where it really works for a population five times larger than here, has nothing to do with the amount of graffiti on its station or rail car walls. It has to do with the fact that the system is extremely passenger-centric, offering a frequency of trains and expanded hours of operation to make it indispensable to the average New Yorker.

The problem with WMATA and other mass transit options and plans around here is that they pull their punches badly and thereby present a shadow of what the region really needs. No one-day patchwork fixes can solve this endemic problem.

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Is The Metro Closure A Good Idea Or A Really Bad One?

Yep, Metrorail is closed for all of Wednesday for an emergency investigation into the safety of the cables.

Was this a responsible decision or an insane one?
GOOD
“While I am disappointed that the closure of the Metro system has become necessary, I support the new management’s decision to take whatever steps are necessary to keep Virginians safe. Metro is essential to the economic health and quality of the Northern Virginia region and our entire Commonwealth – it’s time to make it the safe, accessible and dependable asset Virginia families deserve.”—Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe
“As civil engineers, we applaud the General Manager’s dedication to safety, as we believe and take an oath to protect the public’s health, safety, and welfare. This emergency closure demonstrates the immense investment and maintenance needs of our aging infrastructure.”—American Civil Society of Engineers

“It’s sad that it’s come to this, but hundreds of thousands of people depend on the safety of the Metro system. We need to take it seriously. I’m glad that Metro’s new leadership is treating system safety with an appropriate sense of urgency.”—Senator Mark Warner (VA)
“Whether they know it or not, Metro riders would rather have one day without Metro than an open-ended series of breakdowns, meltdowns, and potentially fatal incidents, like the one that killed Carol Glover in January 2015, when a stalled Yellow Line train filled up with smoke from a nearby track fire … Metro’s move is the right one. It will be painful temporarily, but if it works out, it should reduce the number of future delays because of shoddy third-rail wiring.”—Washingtonian
BAD
“Metro is a national embarrassment … It’s utterly hopeless for residents of the Washington area to think they can rely on Metrorail as a dependable form of transportation.”—Washington Post Editorial Board
“For a long time Marylanders have been denied the safe, reliable and efficient Metro system that they deserve. It is deeply disturbing that the system is in such a precarious state that it must be entirely and abruptly shut down during the middle of a workweek. This is a stark demonstration of a total agency failure; now is the time for every stakeholder in WMATA to demand better performance and improved safety.”—Maryland Congressman John Delaney
SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
“Certainly, we will see on Wednesday just how important Metro is to our region – to our transportation system and our economy. We may also realize amid the expected traffic gridlock tomorrow why dedicated bus lanes would offer a great way to move more people, faster and more reliably than the current bus in traffic model.”—Coalition for Smarter Growth
“Metro’s safety record has been a longstanding and well-documented concern for residents throughout the entire region. While I do not discount the challenges that lie ahead for WMATA, I am deeply concerned by the recent decision to close the entire Metrorail system. As Chairperson of the Committee on Education, my primary concern is ensuring that our students can get to school safely. As many of you know, the District of Columbia does not have a traditional school bus system and many of our 87,000 public school students rely on public transportation to get to school on time. I understand that this is a significant disruption for many of our families.”—At-large Councilmember David Grosso
“I appreciate that General Manager Paul Wiedefeld’s actions, while drastic, are being taken first and foremost to protect Metro Rail riders’ safety. At the same time this unprecedented action highlights the fundamental cultural change that needs to take place at Metro. Instead of Metro riders being constantly inconvenienced and put in danger, Metro management throughout the entire system needs to be shaken to its core and be rid of its culture of incompetence. New accountability measures must be put in place.”—Virginia Congresswoman Barbara Comstock
GIVE US MORE!
“WMATA needs to consider shutting down large portions of its rail system for a lot longer than a day. Several months may in fact be required for each line in order to perform complete safety and reliability overhauls.”—CityLab

Photo courtesy of Dan Lawrence 62. Click here to read the original story.