General Manager John Catoe

Transcript: June 6, 2008

Metro's General Manager John Catoe will respond directly to questions about Metro-related issues during an online chat this Friday, June 6, when he hosts "Metro LunchTalk Online" -- a live hour-long chat from noon to 1 p.m. Mr. Catoe welcomes questions about Metrobus, Metrorail and MetroAccess during his chats. Visitors may post questions before and during the chat.

General Manager John Catoe:

We’ve received a number of comments about the service disruption on Wednesday afternoon that forced us to suspend Metrorail service between East and West Falls Church Metrorail stations. Downed power lines near the East Falls Church Metrorail station made it unsafe to move trains in that area.

To make the best use of time, I’d like to discuss that incident in my introduction rather than deal with each comment individually.

The weather that afternoon caused damage all across the region, and I’m sorry that the damage caused delays for so many Metro riders. Some who’ve written to the chat about this incident talk about being delayed up to four hours that day. Others, question whether Metro is ready to react to an emergency, and others commented that they didn’t get the information they needed from Metro.

Understandably, people are angry. We all have commitments to meet and when things don’t go our way we feel a loss of control. So, you have every right to be angry, and to let us know about it. We want to hear your comments and we will use them to make our operations more efficient and effective during these disruptions.

Now, though, I’d like you to take a step back and look at the incident from a different perspective. That same incident takes a lot of things out of Metro’s control. We can’t work on or move the power lines, we have to deal with the same traffic problems caused by the weather as you do.

Certainly though, if there were bus only lanes in place across the region, our buses could move far faster and move more people during incidents like this.

Still, given that limitation, we are committed to getting you where you need to go as quickly as possible. The next problem we face is physics. Our buses can only hold so many people and can only move so quickly on the roads. Let’s say for simplicity’s sake that a bus can hold 50 people, and a train can hold 900. So, it takes 18 buses to carry the same number of people you can fit on a train, and the trains are coming every six minutes.

That afternoon we could field 15 buses to transport people between East and West Falls Church Metrorail station, and they moved about 2000 people. Fifteen buses, that’s what we could spare at that time. Remember, it was rush hour and we have service to provide all across the region.

Of course, some might say, have more reserve buses and operators. That’s fine in theory, but in practice? Nobody really wants us to pay to have a hundred buses and operators on emergency standby, waiting to respond to rare disruption’s like the one we saw on Wednesday. It just wouldn’t make financial sense.

Are we ready to respond to emergencies? Yes, we are. On Wednesday, we moved almost 800,000 people on Metrorail, even with the disruptions. Was it as smooth as our normal service? It can’t be, for the reasons I described earlier. The fact is, though, we made every effort to move as many people as we could.

Was our response perfect? No.

I can see from the comments we’ve received that there is still work to be done on communicating with customers. We won’t rest until we are getting you the information you need to make decisions in situations like this.

Right now, we’re finishing up maps for our rail stations that highlight the locations of bus stops in the area. This should allow you to find our regular service buses easier, and not have to depend on the “bus bridges” we set up between stations.

I encourage everyone to take time and plan alternate routes to and from work. That will give more control over what’s happening should something like this happen again.

In the meantime, we’ll use any mistakes we made to improve our processes, and keep our commitment. We will continue to work through the physical limitations we face during each unique service disruption. We will bring service back to normal as soon as possible, a we will get you where you’re going. It just may take some time.

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Alexandria , VA: Hi. There is construction occurring on both the Huntington and North Kings Hwy sides of Huntington Metro Station parking areas. I have not seen any publicity on its purpose or planned results. Can you elaborate on this situation? Why has it not been better advertised to its riders?

Reply: Thanks for your note. There's no new construction going on at Huntington, however, we have entered into the last phases of construction for the parking lot expansion there.

This project has been ongoing since 2006, and as we entered new phases we've put up signage and made sure that our station manager's had handouts explaining the impact to customers. The most recent update was this past March.

Also, you can find information on construction there at Huntington on our website's Huntington Station page:

http://www.wmata.com/metrorail/Stations/station.cfm?station=50

Please, though, if you have any questions regarding construction at our stations, talk to the station manager. They are there to help answer questions just like that.

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Silver Spring, MD: Has there been any recent study of the ridership on the Z buses out of Silver Spring? The run from Silver Spring towards Four Corners has been the last leg of my commute for a couple of months, and I have yet to see a bus that doesn't have 20-30 standees on it. It's uncomfortable at best, inconvenient for those who are left by the skipped stops, and at worst, dangerous for those who squeeze in at awkward angles to stand in the aisles.

Also, with so many different Z routes, there's no single timetable for all of the Z's. That would be very helpful!

Reply: Our ridership on many bus lines is growing, and due rising gas prices that will continue. For that reason, we have recently proposed a plan to restructure bus service in many of our heavily traveled bus corridors. The Z-line is among those we;d like to look at. We are working hard to improve the efficiency of our bus service, but it will take some time and resources.

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Silver Spring, Md: Hello:

Can we please have someone at Metro to direct traffic during rush hours (morning/evening) so that buses are allowed in and out of the station? Also, when the buses are off loading passengers as they enter the station, they pull into bus bays that are not there routes and buses will drive on by that are assigned to that particular bus bay and won't stop because they assume no one is there. The personnel that check for buses that enter the station are not helpful as buses pull into other bus bays because they are continually chatting among themselves. Thanks.

Reply: I agree that entry and exit at this terminal has been a problem. I've asked the superintendent for that terminal to begin monitoring of the terminal in the morning and evening.

Later this summer, as the 3-year renovation of the entire terminal begins, Montgomery County has committed to providing uniformed crossing guards in both the morning and afternoon, which should help the situation as well during this time frame.

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Wheaton, MD: There is currently a rail-to-bus transfer discount, and a bus-to-bus free transfer. What would you say to a bus-to-rail discount to encourage people to take the bus to metro instead of driving and parking at crowded lots?

Reply: Metro intends to institute a bus-to-rail transfer, but we just don't have a firm date for that yet. It hinges on all the regional transit operators having SmarTrip fare boxes installed in their buses. We expect The Bus service, in Prince George's County, to join the SmarTrip team later this year. Then we can begin to move forward with a bus-to-rail transfer.

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alexandria, va: What can be done about beggars on the Metro? I see the same guy almost every day at the same time on the train going up and down the cars asking for metro fair. I would think someone with Metro would have caught this guy by now. Also, teens are really violating the no food/no drink rule all the time. They just walk through the turnstiles with food in full sight, and no one stops them.

Reply:

The panhandlers in the system are frequently stopped and cited for their activity by Metro Transit Police officers. Though, for our officers to take action the panhandlers has to involve persistent, loud, discourteous behavior that blocks someone's passage or the continual following of a person to get them to give them money. The MTPD strictly enforces this.

If you see someone panhandling, aggressively or not, please report it to a train operator, station manager or to the Metro Transit Police at 202-962-2121.

As to the young people you've seen with food, it is not illegal to have food and drink in the system, but it is illegal to eat it in the system. We are always working to raise people's awareness that eating and drinking is not allowed in the system, and we are working with the public schools and local governments to better address the behavior of students in the system.

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Arlington, VA: Why is Metro's customer service decreasing while fares are increasing?

Reply:

Without some specific instances in which you've received decreased customer service, I can't respond directly to your question. What I can do, though, is give you my philosophy on customer service. I have told Metro employees that providing service to our customers is our mission. Safety and service are the watchwords for Metro.

Among the things we are doing to make sure that we are delivering the service you expect, is to institute a secret rider program. This will allow us to evaluate our service and find problems before they affect our customers.

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Ashburn, VA: If Metro is concerned with decreasing costs, why doesn't it remove the carpet from the trains? The carpets probably also pose a health risk when they get wet and moldy time and again.

I imagine the costs for cleaning those carpets regularly is considerable.

Reply: You're right, the cost of maintaining the carpet is considerable. Right now we are testing several different types of flooring in trains, to determine which we will use to replace the carpeting.

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Oakton, VA: Many people have quit driving their cars into the city and are now taking the Metro. The Orange line has become extremely crowded. The trip in and out of the city is a nightmare. Are you adding more trains to accomodate the increase in ridership?

Reply: We are adding rail cars, and we expect to have 50% of our peak period rail service provided by 8-car trains by next summer. Our long range plans call for further additions to our rail fleet, but we must get funding.

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Alexandria, VA: How will the mystery rider project be announced once you've chosen a company, so that people can apply?

Reply: Once we select a company to do this work for us, we will issue a news release. So, I expect that you'll hear it on the local news, but you can also keep an eye on our homepage. We will post the news release there as well.

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Alexandria, va: In an article that I had found in TUG-(Transit Users Group) tidbits, it is said that the Metro board has approved the purchase and delivery of 22 60 foot articulated buses from NABI-(North American Bus Industries) that will use CNG fuel with piggyback options from a transit agency in Los Angeles. Can you gaive more information regarding this. Will this be the first NABI product in Metros fleet?

Reply: Well, this won't be the first time we've bought NABI buses. We bought 45 of them in 1995.

The new Compressed Natural Gas NABI buses are scheduled for delivery later this summer, and will be housed in our Bladensburg bus garage.

The article is correct. We bought buses through an option in a contract that Los Angeles had. Doing this saved us both time and money on this purchase.

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Washington, DC: Hello Mr. Catoe. Instead of having the proposed streetcars/light rail running on city streets, has there ever been a thought about having them run above city streets (like Chicago or New York)? I ask this for two reasons, DC drivers aren't used to and/or will have a harder time adapt to "right away laws" that the streetcars will have (not to mention traffic accidents can always delay streetcars) and also, with streetcars running on a elevated railway will make them more reliable.

Reply: The street car project is actually under the supervision of the District Department of Transportation. They would be best able to answer your question. They have a great deal of project information on their website. You should find this link especially helpful:

http://www.ddot.dc.gov/ddot/cwp/view,a,1250,q,636429,ddotNav_GID,1746,ddotNav,%7C34060%7C.asp

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Washington, DC: Has Metro ever consider operating trains 24/7 (like New York)? Between 12:00 midnight and 5:00 am MON-THURS Metro could run 4 car trains on the Red, Orange, and Green lines every 20 minutes and 2 car trains on the Blue and Yellow Lines every 30 minutes if money is a issue in this case. And on Friday and Saturday nights just run 4 cars trains on all lines from 1 am until 6:30 am with trains running less frequently during these hours.

Reply: Actually, the main issue here is having time to do maintenance within the system. Track maintenance is a real issue we face at Metro because we only have two tracks in our rail system. If we are to minimize the impact of track maintenance on our daily service, we really need those hours when no service is running to do this maintenance.

Due to the design of the rail system, 24/7 operation is just not something we can do.

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Silver Spring, MD: The Trip Planner function on the New York City Transit Web site (http://tripplanner.mta.info/advancedSearches3.aspx) offers the ability to get point-to-point schedules for its services. Since many transit users have specific locations such as home, work, or closest Metro station that are frequent arrival or departure points and are served by multiple transit lines, this capability would be useful so that this information doesn't have to be researched and merged from several separate schedules.

As more people are considering mass transit as a viable alternative to driving, it would provide a quick way to determine its suitability for their needs without trying every possible combination of times, as the current Metro Trip Planner system requires. Having a printed copy of this information available would also reduce the need to access the online Metro Trip Planner whenever a user's travel circumstances change.

Reply: We do have point-to-point service built into the trip planner. The itineraries that are generated have options to display departure options 15 minutes before or after the selected time. Also itineraries include links to timetables from which the customer can choose departures at any other day and time.

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Martinsburg, WV: I am a recent high school graduate who will be entering college this fall, and I am interested in a future career at Metro. I applied for the summer student internship but was not accepted, are there any other programs that you offer that I could take advantage of?

Reply: Once you are enrolled in college, make sure to apply next year for our college student internship program. There will be up to 15 slots available. Good luck and study hard.

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Costa Mesa, CA: We use to work together at OCTA,John you have loss your hair, what happen to you, you look eighty years old, may god bless you.

Bruce Cherry

Reply: Good to hear from you. The responsibility of running the second largest rail system and the fifth largest bus system will do that to you.

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Washington, DC: Why is WMATA not working more closely with organizations such as Google, which provides information on several other public transit systems in the US. Specifically, did WMATA opt-out or were they unaware of the Google Transit, which provides information similar to WMATA Trip Planner. Considering Google Maps has over 5 million hits per day it might be wise for WMATA to include information on our system, so that potential visitors/tourist can plan their routes ahead of time using a familiar system, which is also available via mobile devices such as Blackberries, Treo, Windows Mobile devices etc.

http://www.google.com/transit

Reply: We have been pursuing this with Google and have supplied our transit data to them for testing purposes.

At this point, Google Transit's itineraries and walking maps generated from our data are not accurate enough to release to the public.

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WASHINGTON , DC: Why is metro eliminating paper transfers in Jan. 2009? D.C.'s older residents may have difficult using a Smartrip card, as well as residents of D.C.'s lower income communities.

Reply: Electronic transfers via SmarTrip cards allow Metro to collect fares for transfers more efficiently. Using the SmarTrip card is actually a benefit to everyone. Using a SmarTrip card saves you 10 cents on bus fares and it saves 10 cents on rail to bus transfers. When the paper fare is eliminated the bus to bus transfer will be extended from two to three hours.

The SmarTrip is the way to go, and to help people with lower income, Metro provided 50,000 SmarTrip cards to the social service agencies in our regions. If senior citizen's in our service area are having difficulty using SmarTrip cards, I'd encourage them to ask their bus operator or station manager for help. They will be happy to help their customers use these cards.

SmarTrip has come a long way since it was introduced in 1999. In addition to Metrorail and Metrobus, passengers can for on regional bus systems including ART, CUE, DASH, Ride On, Fairfax Connector, Loudoun County Transit, PRTC and the DC- Circulator, and for parking at Metro parking facilities.

You can buy a SmarTrip can be purchased on Metro's Web site, at Metro sales offices at Metro Center, the Pentagon and Metro headquarters, at the Northern, Western, Landover, Royal Street and Four Mile Run Metrobus divisions, from vending machines at Metrorail stations that have parking facilities, at regional transit stores and at select Giant stores.

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Alexandria, VA: How are you addressing increased use of public transportation during this oil crisis? I've noticed packed buses and metros, but the frequency of both stays the same. Is there some reason you can send more frequent buses and trains?

Reply: We are ordering new buses, but it takes a year to 18 months to get a bus delivered. Unfortunately, there aren't lots you can go to and drive away with a bus.

Recently, I've made the point that the region needs an energy contingency plan. If we see a massive shift of riders into our system we need to be ready. That means if cowding gets too bad we may need employers in the region, to include the federal government to mandate flex shifts to spread commuters out, and we need the local DOTs to have the authority to designate bus only lanes.

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Philadelphia, PA: I was always curious as to why Metro never had any type of skip stop service like here in Philadelphia during rush hour periods. Is there any reason as to why this wouldn't work on Metrorail?

Reply: We just can't do that because of the way the system is designed. We only have two tracks and we run the trains at a high frequency. Without the ability to move around trains, we just couldn't make it work.

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Washington, DC: When do you think you'll get the NextBus system back up and running?

Reply: We estimated that it would take about 18 months to bring it back on-line and off the top of my head I think that will be in mid-to-late 2009.

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General Manager John Catoe: That's all I have time for today.  I hope everyone has a safe weekend.  Please remember that we will be doing a switch replacement on the Yellow and Green Lines in the downtown area.  Please factor that in to you travel plans.