Unsuck DC Metro: How Does Metro Handle the Unexpected?

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

How Does Metro Handle the Unexpected?

Did anyone else find Metro's response to the struck passenger accident on Monday inadequate?

From Meg:

While cooling my heels in a restaurant nearby Van Ness Metro, after being forced to offload and exit the station, I was the one who tweeted the "Formula" that might be used if Metro were to grant a zero-fare exit when they require it: =IF[(mandatory_offload = "yes") THEN (fare_charged = 0)] (or something like that).

Listen. I understand that stuff happens that is beyond Metro's control. I understand that Monday's man vs. train happened at the worst possible hour. I have few complaints about Red Line service - it's mostly reliable during the hours I travel. I believe the mess on the platform at Farragut North is all for the greater good and have patience when I have to pass through those very narrow areas next to the platform. I don't grouse when I have to carry my wheelie-bag down the escalators.

That said, it seems to me that if they're going to offload a train and require passengers to hop on a "shuttle bus" (placed in parentheses because I saw neither said bus nor any attempt at crowd control when I emerged from the station), they shouldn't charge you to exit. I assume they don't charge on the bus bridge - but I don't know as I've never taken one. I understand they can't just open the gates, they have to track your card, but would it be so hard to program a rule for a certain station within certain hours that those exiting are noted as exited and charged $0?

My other concern was that the best info I was getting Monday was via Twitter, and not @wmata either. The news sources had their facts confused, too. Some said single-tracking was occurring. Some said stations were all closed. Some said the bus bridge was between Van Ness and Bethesda, others said Medical Center (which made no sense). I finally decided to enter the station about 30 minutes after another rider posted a twitpic of the super-crowded platform at Van Ness. It was as if the whole thing never happened except that I got home at 8:10 instead of 6:10.

From Anna:

After the man was hit at Friendship Heights Monday, at about 5 p.m., a large crowd (maybe 30-50) formed at the bus stop outside the Tenleytown station, on the side by Wisconsin Ave.

From talking with different people, I learned the Friendship Heights was closed, and there was supposedly shuttle bus service towards Friendship Heights and Van Ness.

Well, there were a few buses going toward Bethesda, but none going downtown.

Plenty--at least 3--out of service buses went that way, though!

Van Ness is a mile away, and it was over 100 today. So, rush hour was spent on a dangerously overcrowded bus as people piled on the regularly scheduled 36 get to Foggy Bottom.

FAIL!

Comments (34)

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Soylent Green Line · 712 weeks ago

A few weeks ago, WMATA actually put out an apology for something - I don't remember the exact circumstances but suffice it to say they'd bumbled something terribly (shocker, right - anyone on the orange and blue line this morning?) and actually said that they were sorry, and on their website no less.

Now, going from them actually admitting fault to the riding public to implementing a system where they could waive fares in the event of offloaded trains is a big, big step. For now, I'm happy with the apology. There is no way WMATA would ever, ever do something so reasonable as to compensate their riders financially for one of their many mistakes that result in denial of service.

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RedLineROFL · 712 weeks ago

In a positive note, the train operator I was blessed with was fantastic. He kept us WELL informed, was very polite and apologetic. This guy was amazing. I wish I had gotten his name. He explained every single thing going on: struck passenger, red signal, single tracking, will go as soon as possible, thank you for being patient, on and on. This guy was incredible.

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Stephen Smith · 712 weeks ago

I understand they can't just open the gates, they have to track your card, but would it be so hard to program a rule for a certain station within certain hours that those exiting are noted as exited and charged $0?

Well apparently it is hard for them, considering it's taken them decades to do the same thing for the Farragut virtual tunnel.

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Ever and Anon · 711 weeks ago

These folks can't even read and write correctly. I would serious doubt they could handle that type of effort.

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Kid Charlemagne · 712 weeks ago

I was on the train off-loaded at Van Ness/UDC, which turned out to be no man's land for Shady Grove bound trains. At least 3 partially loaded trains passed our station during out wait. Why??

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Guest · 712 weeks ago

I work right at the Van Ness station and on Monday when I left my building, you would have thought the incident happened at Van Ness. PEOPLE WERE EVERYWHERE! Many said that Van Ness had closed but it hadn't. I literally had to push my way through people to get to the station.

That leads me to the MAJOR FAILURE in communication. Seeing how trains were still rolling through the stations, why were people told that they needed to exit at Van Ness for shuttle busses?

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RTS · 712 weeks ago

I generally dont have much of a problem with Metro, but Monday I too was upset. it took me about 1 hour 45 mins to get from Farragut North to Rockville, and for that I am still charged $5.20.

Thats actually my biggest complain with the metro. I pay just on my commute about $230 a month ($5.20 each way). In Boston a subway pass costs $59 a month.

My metro fair here is more than my car payment.

3 replies · active less than 1 minute ago

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Soylent Green Line · 712 weeks ago

Now, be reasonable RTS. WMATA needs that extra revenue to cover the 9% raise that its workforce is getting, thanks to legal action by ATU Local.

I'll be paying those extra fares doesn't smart so much when you know it's going to a good cause, right?

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n2deep · 712 weeks ago

hey soylent. a raise thanks to legal actions by the union? it went to arbitration and the union won. metro appealed and the union won again! i think the system worked for a change. and as for that 9% raise. i guess i can expedite my mortgage payments on my summer home on the cape! and this year i pick up another week of vacation! its all good!!

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varun · 712 weeks ago

That's exactly the math we did. For two people, it cost us $17.20 to commute in and out, or about $380 in a 22-day work month. We have to have a car where we live for groceries, so the added cost was effectively gas, additional depreciation and parking. Depreciation is factored into our lease and we're charged for it whether or not we use it. So that left gas and parking. We found a garage that does monthly passes for $154. That leaves gas.

At $5/gallon, we would have to use 45ish gallons before we came out ahead for Metro. We use about a gallon a day in bad traffic. And gas isn't $5. So that left our time. Door-to-door right now on I66 is 30min on average driving. It's 40 min on Metro, assuming no flustercucks.

Though I loose some free time to read (occasionally, loose a lot of free time to read), I think we made the right call. If you have a couple of friends you can drive into work with, look up the MarcParc on 18th between Eye and K and see if you can get the same rate.

Best damn decision we've made this year.

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James · 712 weeks ago

It happened way before I came to the DC area, but what was the Metro situation like on 9/11? How did they handle that?

8 replies · active less than 1 minute ago

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Soylent Green Line · 712 weeks ago

I don't even want to imagine.

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Holly · 712 weeks ago

Metro was closed. Completely. It was a hot mess.

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Kara · 712 weeks ago

No, I took it. If you asked them some metro workers would say it was closed and some would say it was open. It was a mess and they could not communicate the most basic information to their employees.

Even about their own stations. If people are entering and leaving, with trains arriving in both directions with people, you just MIGHT be open.

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n2deep · 712 weeks ago

WRONG. metro kept running buses and trains on 9/11. the police asked metro to close but they kept running. how do i know? because i was here the whole day working and trying to get people out of the city.

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Kara · 712 weeks ago

Metro was MUCH worse than usual on 9/11. Yes, that is possible.

Metro did not even know if they were open or what. The station manager was even more useless than ever. I had no choice so I gambled and took it. From Greenbelt to Crystal City. Yes, right under the Pentagon.

My spouse was also getting conflicting information at Union Station. Which meant carpooling back with a bunch of other people in the same situation.

Ok, people can try to defend metro by saying it was an unusual day. But I normally would have gone to an appointment that afternoon but cancelled since metro could not say what was going on (I did not know if I should plan several hours more or what). It turns out they were still open that afternoon, like a lot of other businesses.

Overall grade for metro that day: F---------------------.

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Ever and Anon · 711 weeks ago

I was working at 16th street 1 block from the White House. I took Metro home that day on the orange line (as I had no other options). It ran fine with no rush hour crowd as so many were convinced it would be blown up within the hour.

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Meredith · 711 weeks ago

My dad was working at the Pentagon on 9/11 and had no other way home than to take the Metro, as did all the people in his office. It took him a LONG time to get home, but he made it and then had to turn around and head back in to work out of the parking lot for the rest of the night. From my understanding, things ran pretty smoothly. Though, I'm sure depending on where you were, everyone's experience was different.____I would also point out that Metro's deterioration was not nearly as pronounced 10 years ago. I'm not sure whether others would agree with me or not, but at that time, if you went to a Metro station, the elevators generally worked, the PIDs were normally correct, the trains ran on time, and there was less concern about safety within the system. It wasn't a glorious perfect place, but it was much better. While my understanding is that Metro handled 9/11 very well, if something similar were to happen today, it seems like they would be unable to perform up to expectations. Though I will point out that on the commute from hell we all had back in January with the snow, Metro was one of the few DC-exit routes that was working (though the bus system had trouble).

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@Hell_on_wheelz · 711 weeks ago

I was working in Rockville, same building as now but different company (such is the world of IT). One of my co-workers was married to an NPR reporter, so everyone at our office was getting "real time" updates - literally before news was released to the general public from NYC to DC.

I had later office hours then but insomnia had me up and through Pentagon on rail by 5:30am. I waited until VERY late to head back home and used ALL buses - timing the commute so I was on the very LAST scheduled bus for my last transfer. Got home a little after 10. Stayed home for a week.

It was a very scattered time for everyone.

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Soylent Green Line · 712 weeks ago

Breaking (at least on DCist).
http://dcist.com/2011/08/transit_police_arrest_me...

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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varun · 712 weeks ago

Don't worry they'll have their jobs back before I finish this commen... what's that? They've been reinstated with a 3% increase and backpay?

DAMMIT.

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guest · 712 weeks ago

several years ago, when the guy jumped off the mezzanine at grosvenor, by the time i got to twinbrook however many hours later, they had managed to reprogram the faregates so that they charged off peak instead of peak, and the card readers at the parking lot exit had been reprogrammed to charge $4 instead of $4.75. it wasn't zero fare, but it clearly *can* be done.

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jcs · 712 weeks ago

Would it be so hard to program a rule for a certain station within certain hours that those exiting are noted as exited and charged $0?

Most likely, yes. Never underestimate the difficulty of reprogramming a 33-year-old computer system.

We Information Technology workers rip our hair out when co-workers and bosses make ignorant statements like that one. Laypeople tend to grossly underestimate the difficulty of making changes a legacy system.

8 replies · active less than 1 minute ago

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Anony · 712 weeks ago

Did you really call us "laypeople"? Really?

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RedLineROFL · 712 weeks ago

my favorite to use is "lay user", or abbreviated as "luser"

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Ever and Anon · 711 weeks ago

I have "internal customers" instead of staff I call them Inter-cussers. ;D

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MadAsHeck · 712 weeks ago

Well THIS Information Technology worker likes challenges, and would welcome the opportunity to make positive changes to Metro's system. In IT, there is always a solution.

If you "rip your hair out" when your co-workers and bosses request system upgrades, I can tell you that you're in the wrong field. If you want a job with no responsibility or challenges, I'd recommend applying for a job as a Station Manager at WMATA.

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Mary B. · 711 weeks ago

Sometimes the best solution is not to apply patches to an existing system but to build a new one though. After the old system has been in place a long time it eventually has so many exceptions built into the code that it is far less efficient than if it were designed that way (not to mention incompatibilities with the OS and other software). An old system often is not always just feature-rich .... it is the original code with a lot of other things tied on that over the years where the attachment was done with shoelaces, duct tape, rope, or spit.

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Mary B. · 712 weeks ago

Tell me about it. I am rewriting an old program whose original author left years ago. Every time a user has a change they think it is 'small' and I approach it with dread. I know it will take a long time, risk breaking everything written before, and that the old code is holding back all kinds of system improvements.

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@Hell_on_wheelz · 711 weeks ago

2 statements that always have IT people writing copious notes in meetings:

1. "We have this one little change"
2. "We will NEVER, EVER need to do 'x' "

SLDC - systems development life cycle - project people do NOT want to know that eventually systems out live their usefulness. At some point redesign is required.

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VeteranRider · 711 weeks ago

Sure, I get it - no one should expect that type of a change could be put together on the fly. But, it would make sense for Metro to develop, in a non-emergency setting, a method that would allow quick changes, like the one suggested, to be implemented when needed in these emergency moments. I am sure the programming is complex, but given time and space it would not surprise me that it could be done.

It's one of those instances where WMATA needs to plan ahead, and think about its customers, but doesn't. So the ill-will grows.

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MsKat · 702 weeks ago

I was in that Friendship Heights mess...after we waited on the train platform for about 30 minutes, they told us to leave and shuttles had been established... once above ground, every single Metro employee I asked about these shuttle buses gave me the dumb blank stare and had no clue what I was talking about. They just told us that in the station to get us to leave, I think. The driver on the bus I ended up on was great though. By the time we got to the next closest station it was closed too, glad the driver told us there was another station on his route. We shouldn't have had to pay that bus fare though.