Search Results for: washington metro

10. Los Angeles Metro’s New Climate Strategy

By | | Policy brief
4 Comments

Los Angeles is “hemorrhaging bus riders,” worries the Los Angeles Times. This is supposedly “worsening traffic and hurting climate goals.”

Click image to download a PDF of this policy brief.

L.A. Metro buses “have lost nearly 95 million trips over a decade,” the paper notes. This “25% drop is the steepest among the busiest transit systems in the United States.” Actually, Sacramento’s Regional Transit District has lost 43 percent of its bus riders in the last decade, but the Times probably doesn’t count it “among the busiest transit systems.” Continue reading →

DC Metro’s Regressive Transit System

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
2 Comments

The sales and other taxes recently imposed to help restore the DC Metro rail systems are highly regressive, according to an op-ed in the Washington Post written by scholars from the Maryland Public Policy Institute. The op-ed didn’t say so, but Metro’s ridership is equally regressive in that the riders are increasingly wealthy.

As can be found in Census Bureau data posted by the Antiplanner a month ago, Metro ridership has been growing fastest among people whose incomes are $65,000 and up. In 2010, the median income of DC transit commuters was 94 percent of the median income of the DC region as a whole. By 2017, it had increased to 112 percent of the region’s median income. So poor people are being forced to subsidize rides taken by high-income people.

The tilt towards high-incomes among transit commuters is celebrated by transit advocates as a good thing because it makes it easier to convince high-income people — who tend to have more political power than poor people — to support transit boondoggles. But anyone who thinks that government transit is anything but a way to swindle taxpayers out of their money for the benefits of a few well-off people simply hasn’t been paying attention. Continue reading →

Metro’s Unsurprising Derailment

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
2 Comments

Washington Metro officials pretended to be shocked when a Red Line train derailed due to a broken rail on Monday. In fact, the break should not and probably didn’t surprise any of them.

“It’s like, God, didn’t we do all of the fixing, the bad areas, SafeTrack?” rambled Metro’s board chair, Jack Evans. “All that stuff was intended to prevent stuff like this from happening.” Actually, Evans knows perfectly well that the SafeTrack work was superficial and the system still needs $15 billion to $25 billion of maintenance and rehabilitation work.

“This rail was manufactured in 1993, which may sound old but actually rail can last 40, 50 years,” said Metro general manager Paul Wiedefeld, “so it’s not particularly old in the railroad business.” Actually, it is. Continue reading →

DC Metro More Reliable But Riders Are Not

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has blamed much of the rail system’s ridership declines on the system’s reliability problems and all of the track work it did in 2016 and early 2017 to fix those problems. Now, the system has become more reliable, but riders don’t seem to be returning.

The Federal Transit Administration has published month-by-month ridership data for all transit systems through June, 2017. The numbers show that Metro rail ridership in February, March, and April of this year were all about 10 percent less than in the same months last year. In May, however, it was only 1.5 percent less, while June 2017 ridership was actually more than in June 2016–though only by 0.6 percent.
As per a recent study it order viagra http://frankkrauseautomotive.com/testimonial/great-service-great-selection-of-cars/ was noticed that erectile dysfunction was mainly caused to those people suffering from these intestinal diseases, because traditional medical treatments are somewhat disappointing. All About Intagra Intagra order viagra no prescription frankkrauseautomotive.com is a drug whose main effect is to enhance sexual performance and pleasure. Erectile dysfunction sufferers of course do not feel confident to come out and talk about it properly in earlier days, this has also affected badly many relationships as well. online purchase of cialis The women are demanding has started to decrease. 5, 61-70 years: the sexual of both sides tend to decline, but the loving couple’s sex life can occur because of stress, fatigue, anxiety and unhealthy diet. cheap cialis from canada
While that’s grounds for a bit of optimism, Metro rail ridership still has a long way to go before it returns to its 2009 peak, which was 28 percent higher than the year ending June 2017. I don’t like making predictions because there are too many unknown variables, but I suspect ridership will never return to those levels partly because many former riders have lost faith in the system and partly because the band-aid work done on the system in the last year won’t solve its long-term reliability problems. Time will tell.

LaHood to DC Metro Board: “You’re Fired!”

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
2 Comments

Washington DC’s Metro system has a multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog, declining ridership, and serious problems with labor unions. The systems problems are so bad that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe asked former Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood, one of the least credible people ever to hold that office, to lead a search for new funds for the agency.

Now LaHood has come out with his proposal. Has he found a billion dollars stuck in the seat cushions of Metro trains? Nope. Has he discovered a treasure map at the White House that leads to a city of gold? Nope. Has he found any money at all? None.

Instead, he proposes to replace Metro’s current sixteen-member board of directors with a “reform board” consisting of “five members who are solely responsible to the transit system, not the parochial interests of the local officials who would appoint them.” Continue reading →

DC Metro: Less Service for More Money

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
1 Comment

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) was pleased to announce last week that it would not be delaying any rush-hour trains due to maintenance work for a few days. However, starting this week, rush-hour frequencies on the Yellow Green Lines would be reduced by 20 to 50 percent, and part of the Green Line will be completely shut down for two weeks.

All of which has just become business as usual in Washington. The real news is that WMATA plans to raise fares and cut service by up to 25 percent on July 1. Rush-hour fares will go up a dime, non-rush-hour by a quarter, and trains will stop running at 11:30 pm most days, instead of the current 12:30 am.

The big cut, however, will be to rush-hour service. Trains that now operate 10 times an hour will be cut back to 7.5 times an hour, effectively a 25 percent cut in service. Passengers can therefore expect a 33 percent increasing in crowding. Or, more likely, the system will lose even more riders.

Continue reading →

Metro GM: “In 2018, the Game’s Over”

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
1 Comment

The Antiplanner has been writing about Washington Metro’s downward spiral for nearly two years, but the end may be in sight. According to Metro’s general manager, Paul Wiedefeld, after 2018, “the game’s over.” Or, as Metro board chair Jack Evans says, if the problems aren’t solved by then, “the only option I see is to cut back on service enormously.”

That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing. Census data indicate that, in 1970 before any Metro lines were built, 17.61 percent of DC-area commuters took transit to work–virtually all on buses. In 2015, between buses, Metro rail, and Maryland and Virginia commuter rail lines, transit’s share was 17.58 percent. In the years since 1970 in which the census has surveyed people (every decennial census and every year since 2005), the highest it has ever been was 17.70 percent in 2005. So going back to buses wouldn’t need to reduce transit ridership. Since bus riders don’t have to worry about broken rails or smoke in the tunnels, replacing trains with buses might even increase ridership.

All of the delays suffered by passengers so Metro can do maintenance hasn’t seemed to improve reliability. Just a few days ago, trains on three lines were delayed so much that one rider tweeted, “An hour and 45 min into my @wmata commute, I’m finally BACK WHERE I STARTED! Gave up and went home.”

Selective Mutism Treatment The specific characteristic cialis samples of selective mutism is mostly undertaken by professional clinicians. The mellow side issues incorporate queasiness, stomach inconvenience, regurgitating, migraine, stuffy or a get more cheapest levitra runny nose and facial blushing. These types of allergies can be minimized which is the order levitra leading reason for inviting erectile dysfunction. Yes, I have buy viagra in canada used Blogger blogs in the past, and I know that many people do not know. Continue reading →

DC Metro’s Downward Spiral Continues

By | | Transportation
2 Comments

Third-quarter 2016 ridership on the DC Metro rail system was 13.5 percent less than in 2015, according to the American Public Transportation Association’s recently released ridership report. Of course, the Metro had frequent delays due to the “surge” maintenance work, but many of the riders lost may never come back.

More immediately, lower ridership means lower revenues, and that means Metro is forced to consider cuts to both rail and bus service. To fill in the gaps, Metro’s general manager, Paul Wiedefeld, has proposed to apply some of the federal dollars that are supposed to be dedicated to capital improvements to operating costs instead.

Worse, the agency’s inability to fix its poor safety record has led the Federal Transit Administration to punish it by reducing federal support by 5 percent. Five percent doesn’t sound like much, but when you are in a deep financial hole with a $6.7 billion maintenance backlog, every dollar counts.

Continue reading →

DC Metro Rail Far from Fixed

By | | Transportation
13 Comments

Washington Metro has been interrupting service for various “safety surges” (they call them “surges” because it sounds better than “slowdowns”), but according to the Federal Transit Administration it has a lot more work to do. The FTA says that the rail system’s power supply is “in a deteriorated condition” and the tunnels and tracks have numerous defects that haven’t even all been identified, much less put on the schedule to be fixed.

Not surprisingly, the American Public Transportation Association’s latest ridership report reveals that Metro ridership in the second quarter of 2016 was 11.5 percent less than the same quarter the year before. As the Antiplanner has previously noted, this decline took place before the delays caused by the maintenance work, so most of it is because people have found other means of transportation due to Metro Rail’s low reliability.

Washington is not alone. Rail rapid transit systems in Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia are just as bad off, and New York’s and San Francisco’s aren’t far behind. APTA’s president even issued a rather desperate-sounding op-ed begging for money to repair obsolete and dying forms of transportation.

Continue reading →

DC Metro’s Accelerating Decline

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
2 Comments

Washington Metro Rail ridership in the second quarter of 2016 (the fourth quarter of Metro’s fiscal year) declined a whopping 11 percent. The drop in ridership started before major service disruptions in order to do track maintenance began in June: ridership in May, for example, was 9 percent lower on weekdays and 20 percent lower on weekends than in 2015.

Bus ridership for the quarter was 6 percent lower than in 2015. For all of F.Y. 2016, rail ridership was 7 percent lower and bus ridership 4 percent lower than in F.Y. 2015.

Metro officials offered several explanations for the decline, including lower gas prices, loss of public confidence in the system’s reliability and safety, and the early blooming of cherry blossoms that normally attracts many tourists. But ridership has declined in every year since 2012, suggesting that at least some of the decline is irreversible.

Continue reading →