WMATA looking at administrative cuts to save money

Washington DC - News 7 reported that Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) general manager John Catoe announced that WMATA will look at cutting jobs to save money.

Catoe stated that every position within the agency will be looked at to make sure that it is in fact a needed position.

I feel it's safe to say that if he is serious in his statement and does a proper evaluation, he'll find at least 20% of the staff positions are unneeded. Transit systems across North America are loaded with unneeded positions, especially in the offices. From creating positions when funding was less of an issue to creating positions for the sake of nepotism which is common within the public transit industry, unneeded positions abound in the administration.

John Catoe earns a Laurel for looking at all the positions within WMATA to make sure they are needed before doing any fare hike.

Streetcars for all the wrong reasons

Washington DC - Bloomberg.com reports that Washington DC is now jumping on the streetcar bandwagon. The reasons given are all of the standard boiler plate Light Rail Transit (LRT) arguments which proponents try to overwhelm the general public with.

Once again we hear about the economic boom times that are ahead once the line is built. We hear about all the development that will occur. We hear how it will reduce traffic. We hear how it will clear the air. We don't hear one word about if it will actually move people any better than a decently operated bus route could.

We even receive an environmental brow beating from Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), Washington's delegate to Congress. "Light rail is the wave of the future if you care about the environment" Holmes tells us.

As stated in an earlier Laurels & Lances article, it is unclear as to how well rail lines actually help the environment. Rail lines, like streetcars, don't reduce pollution near as much as proponents claim. The traffic will still be there and congestion will increase. Cars and trucks will be spewing more pollution into the air from the increased congestion. Pollution will still be generated to run the streetcar, albeit at a distant power plant. The environmental claims of reduced pollution for LRT and its offshoots are a dubious claim at best.

The line is planned to run by the new Washington National's ballpark set to open in 2008. The ballpark is what will spur development in one of Washington DC's poorest neighborhoods, not the streetcar line. We'll never know that once the rail proponents start spinning the facts and claim anything that is built in the area, including the ballpark, is proof that streetcars spurred the development.

What is often overlooked in these deals are that the poorest residents, the same ones that the politicians claim they want to help, will be displaced. The poorest residents will be pushed out so development can occur. This little fact is one of the most glossed over items of revitalization efforts in any city. The politicians and pro-side activist groups will end up getting the residents all excited about having their neighborhood and life quality improving so that none of them will question anything until they get a court order to move out so a developer can build a condo. Rather than actually improve the lives of its residents through proper education and proper investment in the community, cities opt for unneeded capital projects which ultimately force the "problem" out of their area and into another area.

Although the city is financing to build this line, it eventually will be dropped onto the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's (WMATA) lap to operate. WMATA is already facing a multi-million dollar operating deficit and this is just what they need, another fiscal black hole to try and fill.

Then there is the American Public Transit Association (APTA) comment from Bill Millar. "Washington seems to be following what many cities are doing: to see how the use of streetcars might be helpful in not only solving transportation problems, but in helping with economic-development issues", states Millar. His comments are typical of what I expect from APTA as they are just a lobbying group that routinely calls for "style over substance" transportation solutions as well as refusing to address the true problems facing the future of public transit.

While this streetcar line may actually work well, the reasons being cited as to why the line is needed are not the reasons it should be built. Not one reason given in the Bloomberg.com story is a good reason to pour millions of tax dollars into building and operating the line. It's all political spin that is based in conjecture rather than fact.

Such a streetcar line, as this one in Washington DC, should be built if it is the best transportation mode for the area. This line is not that and the proponents make no claim that it is. It's just another attempt to jump on the LRT/Streetcar bandwagon using the worn out pro-rail rhetoric.

WMATA considers 'congestion fares'

Washington DC - An Associated Press story in The Examiner reports that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is considering instituting 'congestion fares', better known as 'peak hour fares', to help reduce the $116 million budget gap the system has.

A congestion fare is being considered to help spread out the demand for WMATA services from peak periods to less busy times. By shifting a part of the crowd to less heavy travel times, WMATA hopes to increase the efficiency of some of the non-peak trips, eliminating overcrowding on peak trips as well as raking in more money from those that won't or can't change their travel times.

It is figured that if WMATA can shift 5% of it's peak hour patronage to the fringe periods of just before and after the peak period, overcrowding issues could be eliminated for awhile at least.

There is a gamble in doing such a move at many transit systems. With WMATA, the gamble is less due to more captive riders that enter the congested zones of Washington DC. Due to parking issues and greater parking expenses than in many other cities, what many would call a choice rider elsewhere are more or less a captive rider on WMATA. It is important to note that this particular type of captive rider still can abandoned transit far easier than a true captive rider.

Many critics of peak hour fares consider the increased cost as a punishment to those that choose to ride. Critics charge that it drives away ridership and is more of a cash grab by the system than tool to use to equalize demand and eliminate overcrowding. In many cases they are correct. Peak fares do punish the rush hour ridership and do keep some from riding but there is a flip side to it as well.

Transit systems are designed around the peak period. While off peak carries far less in terms of ridership, transit systems need to be set up for peak period which is the bulk of their ridership and where most of the fare box revenue comes from. To be set up for peak period service means more employees, more vehicles and more cost to operate the system. Even a bus or rail vehicle that is just sitting at the depot costs the transit system money.

That is part of the reason that various transit systems across the country have charged peak fares at one time or another from as far back as the days of the horse cars. It costs more to run peak service than it does to run off-peak since you have to have the additional infrastructure in place to handle peak periods.

While higher ridership tends to offset the higher operating costs, it doesn't offset enough of the costs. With fuel, insurance, wage and other associated costs continuing to rise, the offset between revenues and expenses continues to grow.

This is where a balance needs to be struck between off peak and peak service. Tough ridership standards need to be implemented where if a route doesn't meet its minimum ridership numbers, it needs to be cut. Too often, transit systems tend to chop the peak service and leave the unproductive off peak service alone. That trend has to stop.

If your going to charge a peak fare, riders will be less tolerant of route cuts in peak periods. In addition, riders will hold the peak service to a higher level which most transit systems these days can't meet. Riders will be even less tolerate of missed trips, crowding, etc.

To impose a peak fare requires the transit system to look at peak periods differently. This is because your now operating more or less two different operations. In a standard fare system, your just adding more vehicles for peak periods. In a peak fare system, your not only adding more vehicles but also a different fare structure and having to adjust routes more often for services like express and limited stop routes.

In some cases, peak fares actually generate more costs for the transit system in order to hold the ridership. A general rule of thumb is that for each 25 cent increase in fare, you lose around 5 percent of your ridership. This holds true with peak fares and to try and keep that peak ridership which the transit system depends on, the transit system usually ends up spending more money in various improvements such as extra buses or creating new express routes.

While WMATA hasn't decided if they are going to do the congestion charge yet, I suggest they look very closely at the issue before making the decision. It is still a gamble and if they lose the gamble, they could end up losing more money and ridership than if they just did an across the board fare increase.

Personally, I don't think the congestion charge will do what WMATA thinks it will.

Whoops! WMATA needs to learn math...

Friendship Heights MD - The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has an expensive mess on its hands. The Washington Post has an article on the WMATA Friendship Heights bus terminal which recently underwent a half million dollar renovation and resulted in a lower ceiling level than the terminal previously had so many of Metro's buses no longer fit.

The result of nobody paying attention is that WMATA may have to abandon the terminal and spend millions more in taxpayer money to build a new terminal.

WMATA officials claim that Federal regulations for a new terminal would set the ceiling level to be slightly over 14 feet above the road. The defense WMATA officials are using for this royal screw up is that the Federal regulations for new terminals didn't cover rehabilitation of old terminals. They also claim that they relied on 1980 plans to do the rehabilitation of the Friendship Heights terminal. Ummm, the project started in 2004 so why were you using 20 year old plans?

Also, how many brain cells does it take to figure out that if a third of your fleet is over 12 feet tall (and more coming in the future that are taller than 12 feet) that the ceiling of the terminal needs to be higher than 12 feet?

WMATA, the architect as well as the contractor messed up badly on this and each receive a Lance for their lack of attention to the details. Nobody was on top of what was going on and the result will cost millions more in taxpayer dollars to correct a problem that should never have happened in the first place.