Thursday, June 4, 2009

Metro's Best Season Ending?

There were a few weeks this Spring during which Metro had scant complete rush hour meltdowns. Apart from a few jerky rides, our commutes were, well, what they were supposed to be. There, we said it.
Even Twitter was running low on rants against Metro during this time.
Our first inclination was to think this little blog had served its purpose--unsuck accomplished--but before we pressed "delete blog" button, we looked at last year's numbers (PDF, pg. 6), and Spring appears to be the time of year when Metro "shines." Relatively speaking, that is.
Granted, during the week of May 6-13, there were still 42 disruptions, making it one of the worst weeks since we've been keeping tally, so there's still plenty of sucking, but perhaps it's better timed.
In April of FY 2008, Metro nearly achieved its goal of 95 percent on-time service during peak hours (not sure why they only measure peak hours), but performance began to wane, falling to roughly 92 percent by June, when Metro's fiscal year ends.
The bad news is that summer appears to be the worst, with August and September on-time rates in FY 2008 at roughly 89 percent.
That still sounds pretty good, right? A solid B+. Metro sure doesn't feel like a B+ to us. We don't think this way of measuring really captures the epic quality of failures like Monday's.
Metro, according to its stats, is doing better so far in FY 2009, but recent screw ups point to a long, hot summer.
We think we'll keep the site up for now.

Don't forget about track maintenance this weekend. Red and Orange.

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1 comment:

  1. A Commuter's Haiku

    If you are running
    underground, I am laughing,
    am laughing at you.

    Rush for the honor
    of a crammed stinky hot ride
    on a Metro train.

    Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha!
    Keep running! Or you'll be late!
    Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha!

    ReplyDelete