January 7, 2008
Morning Roundup: Here Comes the Flood Edition
Good morning, Washington. So how did it feel when that extra 30 cents was drawn down from your SmarTrip balance as you exited Metro this morning? Did you even notice or think about it? The Examiner says about 5 percent of Metro riders are expected to decide to drive in to work this week because of that 30 cents (or 60, for a round trip). The paper also quotes experts who are concerned that people "aged 24-35 are most directly affected” by the fare increase, since they are more likely not to have access to a car and also make less money. Hey! Most of us are between 24 and 35, and we're all still planning on sticking with Metro, though we might check and see if the now much cheaper Metrobus can get us where we're going without losing too much time. What about you, commentariat?
New Flood Zone Maps Include Southwest: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has proposed new area flood maps which include an area in Southwest Washington from the Lincoln Memorial to Fort McNair. The Post says that if adopted, the new maps would result in mandatory flood insurance and stricter building codes within the flood zone. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently found that temporary levees designed to protect downtown Washington from high water in the Potomac and the Tidal Basin are inadequate, which caused FEMA to redraw the maps as if the levees did not exist. Should permanent levees be erected, the flood zone maps would revert back to their previous version. As of now, there are no plans to build such levees.
Council Measure Would Protect Injured Firefighters: A new rule to be introduced in the D.C. Council on Tuesday would give injured firefighters up to a year to recover before they would be forced to retire. Current law only gives a D.C. firefighter up to 64 workdays at an injured status before retirement paperwork must be filed. If adopted, the change would be good news for Sgt. Michael LaCore and firefighter Charlie Shyab, who were both badly injured while fighting a rowhouse fire on Capitol Hill in October.
Briefly Noted: Husband of D.C.'s former chief management officer killed in car accident ... Del. Bob Marshall (R-13) will run for Warner's Va. Senate seat ... D.C. police are investigating a small fire at their First District Headquarters on Sunday ... Apartment fire in Northwest kills a 78-year-old woman ... Man found shot to death Saturday morning in Northeast.
This Day in DCist: In 2007 a Yellow line train derailed near Mt. Vernon Square, injuring 20 people, and in 2005 the GALA Hispanic Theater celebrated its grand opening at the Tivoli space in Columbia Heights.
Photo by {ryan}
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Ugh. "FEMA", "Army Corps of Engineers" and "Levees"... not three things I like to see in the same sentence.
Seriously? 5% will decide to drive because of the fare increase? It's hard to believe that 1 in 20 people who previously thought that Metro is the best way to get to work will suddenly start paying for parking and gas at 3 bucks a gallon (which at 20mpg, an optimistic figure in traffic, gets you 4 miles for 60 cents, and that's just gas), not to mention traffic, over 60 cents a day.
Metro either works or doesn't for most people based on where they live and where they work. I would be surprised if even 1% changed their mind over the fare increase.
I gotta wonder how the mandatory flood insurance is going to affect all that waterfront development that's going on in Southwest. That whole area from the Maine Avenue fish market past the boat docks, including H2O, is due for major revitalization over the next decade.
And really, isn't FEMA the number three killer of black people after soul food and menthol cigarettes?
Let's put things in perspective. 60 cents a day is $3 a week and, assuming 50 work weeks a year, is $150 more spent on metrofare in a year.
Yeah, no, it still doesn't seem like a lot of money to me.
The whole metro article talks about a decrease in ridership and people driving to work and then the last sentence says:
“There won’t be much of a shift for people driving into work in D.C., because there are only so many parking spaces,” Ross said.
Well written....
Start building the Ark downtown.
From the Post:
"I suppose if the city was annihilated, and there was no one to fill sandbags, I guess they'd have a point," he said.
Parsons should wait more than three days after seeing I Am Legend before commenting on such issues.
It is really $.60 (the max increase, .30 is the min) each way and $1.20 round trip; plus the extra $.75 a day for parking...we are talking about the riders who use the max fare (end of line to into city). So it really is $1.95 a day increase, which according to the above math is $487.00 increase. Which maybe the tipping point for someone to take the care in and not deal the metro bullshit; even if it means paying a little more to drive. And if you are an early morning commuter, the traffic really isn't that bad.
@RJ:
That argument I'll buy. I imagine anyone commuting from the end of a line (or really, anyone who has to drive, park then metro) has a really inconvenient metro commute to begin with, and probably cuts their commute time half by driving straight to work.
So 5% doesn't sound that unreasonable, although I suspect few DCist readers would be affected.
What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was living on the waterfront, today I'm living in a flood zone. Better get that inflatable raft out of the attic.
My main change is that I'll be parking at the Metro parking garage twice a week instead of 3 times. The rest of the times I'm walking from a nearby neighborhood where I can park all day.
75 cents is peanuts but it adds up day after day, so I can't afford parking there daily. At $4.75 a day, that's $23.75 a week JUST for parking, then you slap on my now $6.90 (used to be $5.85) daily fare (which is now $34.50 weekly). Ay.
I wish I could metro...
Although there is about zero traffic, commuting from home in Takoma to Hanover, MD everyday is no fun.
SmartTrip bus riders are still paying $1.25....suckers!
Sure, drive to work. Sure, gas is three bucks a gallon, but you can always park for free in your cubicle, right?
What a bunch of whining, penny-ante dorks.
I started driving.
It was great!
Metrobus sells unlimited use weekly passes for $11.00. Generally the bus isn't all that bad, but you will see a lot of humanity.
If those marginal riders are not city-centric but more into the burbs and thus have friends off the lines, the additional hassle of a fare hike may change their mind. ESPECIALLY if they are paying parking at a kiss and ride as they come in versus paying parking in a lot outside their office.
I wish VA (and thus MD) would pay more into the system so that rideship doesn't shoulder the burden/hassle.
"What a bunch of whining, penny-ante dorks."
Ehrm, yeah. Let's see here...if you're metroing to Metro Center from Shady Grove, that's $4.60 each way, or $9.20 per day in fares. Tack on an additional $4.75 for parking, and you're talking essentially $14 per day to take--for those commuters, at least--what is a rather inconvenient mode of transportation.
Since many Shady Grove commuters are in their cars when they get to the station, I imagine more than a handful of them will decide to simply stay in their vehicles and drive on into the city. There is a value question at play here--the Metro isn't unlike any other consumer product whereby a cost-demand equation exists. Metro *can* price people off of the trains, and I think you're starting to see the point at which that transformation takes place. $14 is a lot to pay for an hour long train ride that you have to drive to get to in the first place.
Seems to me that alot of these calculations ignore the cost of parking downtown. If it costs $20/day to park (Union Station is $22/day, not sure what garages around Gallery Place/K Street/Dupont cost, but I would guess around the same) then it is still cheaper to take Metro, unless you can find someone to carpool with. And if you're getting on at the farthest out stations, you're more likely to get a seat. Add in all the traffic (which may not be "that bad" but is still not fun -- I often see pretty long tailbacks on 50 and 66 on the few occassions when I take my car to Arlington in the mornings) and it still makes sense for alot of people to stick with Metro.
@14thandYou,
interesting suggestion, pricing people off the metro. although pricing out the users of extremity metro stops undermines the utility of there BEING said stops, no?
what i don't understand, is the parking rate hike... unless metro station lots fill to capacity, then the cost benefit to wmata is greater than the prospected 5% loss of commuters.
@14thAndYou: Have you ever driven into DC from Shady Grove? 270 is a parking lot for hours every morning. I suspect most people who do that commute save a lot of time.
I understand that this could mean a few hundred dollars more a year for end-of-line commuters. But chances are, they are taking metro not to save a few bucks, but to save time.
Beyond that, compare the additional cost to the cost of fuel and parking intown. If driving from Shady Grove to work is 15 miles more every day, each way, you're spending probably 6 bucks more _just in gas_ (since you probably won't get more than 15 mpg in bumper-to-bumper traffic) to drive the rest of the way. Not to mention parking in town, and headache of sitting in awful traffic for 45 minutes or more.
I just don't see this putting many people over the edge. Gas is really damn expensive. Traffic is really bad. A few dollars gets eaten up very quickly by driving a few miles in traffic.
"@14thAndYou: Have you ever driven into DC from Shady Grove? 270 is a parking lot for hours every morning. I suspect most people who do that commute save a lot of time."
I did, actually, as I used to live in Gaithersburg, back in da' day. The drive sucked, no two ways about it, which was why I frequently ended up taking Metro. But even back then, when the cost to park and take the train in every day was less than it is now, it was still a great hassle, and more often than not the days I drove I made it into work in a time equal to or less than the time it took me to Metro in. It cost me $12/day to park in a garage just down the street from my building.
I suppose my ultimate point is that Metro should be doing everything in its power to keep people *off* of the roads; the driving alternative should be so resoundlingly inferior as to be a distant option. For a lot of people, it still is--but if the cost of Metroing into the city continues to climb without comparable increases in service quality (in other words, if Metro continues to increase fares simply to account for an existing budget shortfall rather than long term enhancements), then the gridlock will only get worse. A lot of this burden falls on the governments of MD, VA and DC to ante up sufficient funding for Metro, since there are only so many times Metro can dip into the pockets of its riders to make up for financial shortfalls.