Ballou HS Rocks the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
Morning Roundup: Black Friday Edition
Photo of the Day: November 27, 2009
Caps Thankful for Varly in 2-0 Win
Thanks to This Week's Advertisers
A typical weekday morning for yours truly involves catching the next train out of Van Ness-UDC to Dupont Circle. And more often than not, there's a train waiting for me at the station when I get there. No problems, right?
Well, we've noticed recently that there's been a slight issue with the pacing of trains in the morning on the Red Line - namely, (and we never thought we'd say this) that there's just too many trains running too close together. Obviously, the highly-trafficked corridor should be able to maintain a large capacity, but trains which are awkwardly scheduled creates tiny backups which eventually evolve into less frequent trains and, eventually, lowers capacity. The weekday morning schedules are constant, and follow a simple pattern:
Train A ARR
Train B 2
Train C 5
Train D 7
Three trains in seven minutes sounds good, right? But that's just one way of looking at it. Two trains in two minutes might just be too many. If they run too close together, passengers on trains riding the second of the two-minute interval trains have to hold at stations or in tunnels for between 30 to 60 seconds due to a train ahead sitting at the platform, unloading and loading passengers. Factoring in any sort of divergence in operator speed only magnifies the problem.
There should be a Gladwellian tipping point at which the trains run more smoothly, but yet still maintain the efficiency commuters need. It's a tiny issue, but one that could make things slightly better. One possible solution: rush hour Red line trains could run at a fixed three minute interval. Barring other external forces (i.e. a power outage), that Metro is still able to provide four trains every nine minutes, but every other train's journey wouldn't be so herky-jerky.
So, what say you? What's the right level of train frequency during the morning rush hour - should Metro change the fixed time, or even go to a more flexible schedule so that bunching doesn't occur?
Photo by Terecico.
Because Knowledge Is Power: On the heels of all of June's service disruptions, plans are in the hopper to create a network of communication between authorities in Maryland, Virginia, and the District, and Metro. The system - which would likely start up sometime around the turn of the year - would use a program designed by the University of Maryland in 2002 which enables authorities from different jurisdictions to access a large database of transit information simultaneously. Maryland and Virginia currently can share information using the database, but, like a PB&J without the jelly, it's of little use until D.C. and Metro get on board. Officials claim that the possibility of public use is "likely." Maybe it'll lead to an updated version of Tom Lee's picture frame timer?
Also, it could possibly give a much-needed shot in the arm to WMATA's currently dormant NextBus system. (Hey, if New Castle, Delaware can implement a similar system, so can we.)
I Mean, You Can Probably Just Bike Back: Just a reminder - as notices which have quixotically been covering up other signage (including an advertisement for Wolf Trap at the Van Ness station - go figure) show, you won't be allowed to carry a bicycle onto Metro trains on the Fourth of July. This isn't a new rule (and frankly, we're not sure as to why you'd even try to bring one onto an train obscenely filled with tourists), but, as always, we thought you'd like to know. Additionally, Metro will only run until midnight on the Fourth, even though it's a Friday night.
Engines and Cabooses: Howard County residents who need to get to work have the following options: get up at 4 a.m. to ride the bus, pay $4 a gallon for gas and sit in traffic, or park illegally at park-and-ride facilities and take their chances - under-served transit market, anyone?... There are thousands who ride Metro for free. Are you one of them? Oh yeah? Well are you also exempt from tolls?... MTA looks to increase commuter bus services... Va. officials surprised at brevity of HOT lane construction - the money quote? "We got the letter saying the HOT lanes were coming, but as one of my board members said, the government never works that fast."... Metro should probably work on its ability to communicate with hearing-impaired riders... Metro to unveil a new SmarTrip card for senior citizens... A large section of I-395 could be headed to the graveyard.
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closing at midnight on a Friday night on a three day weekend??? uh.. yeah.
I only wish we had such problems on the Green Line, with our 7-minute headways. Too many trains, oh boo hoo!
well, there goes my friday night plans . . . we were going to stay in the city until way late after the fireworks to not have to suffer smelly-tourist sardine cans.
thanks, metro.
wow, aaron, the potential closing of 395 from mass to ny ave is a HUGE story. almost deserves its own entry. i know this is just part of an EIS at this point, but that would really have a HUGE effect on traffic in that area.
of course, i think they'll find that there is a lot of through traffic there...
Closing early on the 4th must be part of Metro's grand plan to get more federal funding. Once all the tourists become outraged at crappy Metro service and an early closure during their trip-of-a-lifetime to the Nation's Capital on the Nation's Birthday, they'll BOMBARD their senators and reps with demands to increase Metro's funding!!
Oh Metro, you're almost too clever for your own good!! Almost...
IMGoph:
I wholeheartedly agree - and obviously, it's something I'm keeping an eye on. But as you said, the idea to close it is still part of something that's really just getting off the ground. I think that in a month or so, we'll really know whether or not the closure of that section of 395 is a legit possibility or not.
If it is, you know we'll be here with DCist's Unabridged Guide to Navigating the I-395 Shutdown.
Hmm, where do I start? Trains should conitinue to be paced every two minutes. If a train has to wait, it should wait an additional 30 seconds to a minute at the last station, not in a tunnel. For riders who use double served stations, any increase in waiting time would not serve them well as they would have to wait even longer for their train.
No bikes on the train...boo, how about no bike on trains from 7-10 pm?
Trains until midnight? Boooooooo! WTF?!
The HOT lanes are made to make money, who are the idiots that thought there would be any wasted time, esp. when the private sector is involved.
That 395/NY Ave stretch is loaded with speed/red light cameras. I thought they liked taxing the through traffic.
highly trafficked does NOT take a hyphen
If there are too many trains on the red line the green line will be happy to take them. We won't complain about them coming too often. In fact we'll be thrilled that we no longer have to wait 10 minutes between each one!
Woah that 395 news is huge.
In my most anti-car moments I've suggested that, but didn't think it was ever actually possible. 395 is a huge scar across that neighborhood. I know Ackridge has the air rights over the lower portion and and should do something with them, but that clusterf*ck that is New York and 395 will always prevent much of a walkable neighborhood there.
I'm not even going to look at the WTOP reader comments on this. I'm sure I could write them all. The aneurysms experienced by Maryland and Virginia drivers over this proposal will more than demonstrate who it is that benefits from this pointless (to residents) stretch of highway.
thanks aaron, i'll be waiting excitedly for that guide.
personally, i hope they find reason to eliminate that stretch. if they had unlimited money, i'd like to see the tunnel that had once been proposed that would connect the tunnel under the mall to new york ave. near the bridge over the red line. but that ain't happening...
People need to hustle on and off the trains, and the operators need to initiate the door closings sooner. Its the dwell times at the station that take too long. It doesn't need to be a chaotic crush, but people need to get up and out of their seats faster and not wait until the car stops and the door opens.
And metro finally needs to modernize their car design once and for all, instead of creating replicas of the original rolling stock. It's time for 4 doors per side, not 3.
Unless I'm reading this wrong, that stretch of 395 runs from NY Ave to Mass Ave. That's about 4 block tunnel. Hardly a "major" closure. But it will certainly spill traffic out onto Mass and they'll just navigate through side streets to get onto NY Ave, so they've succeeded in creating a much larger neighborhood mess. And last time I checked, the only access to southbound 395 from Mass is a single winding lane off ramp. That's going to create a much larger choke point, with resulting backup onto Mass. They're basically moving the New York Avenue backups a few blocks south.
A thousand years from now, some archeologist is going to be staring up at some big honking Mixing Bowl style highway cloverleaf and wonder WTF is this thing for? And they're going to think it's some kinda Easter Island monolith head that people worshipped and they'll be right. We've become a cargo cult: we think salvation will arrive on four rubber wheels from SOMEPLACE ELSE. God forbid people actually grow their own food or generate their own energy. And like Easter Island, we've cut down all the trees and turned our ecosystem into a rancid hellscape. We've started brush wars with rival tribes over scarce resources. Soon we will resort to cannibalizing our enemies and expiring in pools of our own filth.
I mean, just look at Reston Town Center.
highly trafficked does NOT take a hyphen
That's not what your mom said.
Midnight on a Friday? Why couldn't metro compromise for at least 1am...... sigh.......
395 closure - so I guess DC is banking on the 'if you unbuild it they will stop coming' school of transportation thought?
Where exactly do they suggest all those vehicles go instead?
Metro to unveil a new SmarTrip card for senior citizens
With 45-point font I assume.
As someone on the opposite end of the Red Line from you -- ie, going from Union Station to Dupont Circle, they bunch our trains in weird intervals. You'll have seven minutes between trains at 8:50 am, and the platform fills to overflowing, then followed by one in four, one in three, one in two. Whenever the trains are more than three minutes apart, the platform gets too crowded and people try to jam onto the train.
It's really been overflowing lately. And there seems to be an even heavier load of tourists. Guess a lot of them decided to park their rental cars...
"Where exactly do they suggest all those vehicles go instead?"
I would suggest they stay on 295. Or better yet, stay on 495. Or even betterer, stay off the roads period. Frequently people drive because it's faster than the alternative. I say we make that a closer call. No one has a god given right to a highway between point a and point b.
oh but we do Reid! it's the seldom recognized 17th commandment- Thou shalt not have to drive more than 20 minutes to any fast food restaurant, shopping center, or gas station and thus everything shall be connected by a highway consisting of not less than 3 lanes in either direction.
I hate it when they stop in the tunnel. It's never smooth and peeps are always falling over, steppin' all up on my shoes. Seriously, though, if you are switching to blue/orange at metro center and you arrive on the second train, you usually miss the blue/orange waiting downstairs, and it's pretty annoying.
I really wish they would bring NextBus back sooner rather than later (WMATA’s website estimates another 4-10 months). As a commuter who works about a fifteen minute walk from the nearest metro station I regularly used NextBus from my blackberry to make my walk or wait decision.
Although the traditional web service was suspended on October 31, 2007 the mobile NextBus (at wmata.nextbus.com/mini.jsp) continued to work until about a month ago. It was generally reliable too. I guess I’ll just play the bus guessing game until it comes back.
Does anyone know how many minutes the trains are supposed to be spaced apart on the Red Line? I feel like they're typically spaced more like 3-4 minutes apart, and when they're bunched together closer than that I tend to assume that it's due to a back-up earlier during rush hour.
I strongly support adding another set of doors next time Metro orders new cars. Something that sweeps passengers waiting to board to the side so that passangers getting off can do so two at a time instead of one at a time would be great too.
I-95 goes through every major city up the Ease coast but when it gets to dc WHOA don't drive through MY city, don't you know we totally mismanaged the highway design?? You're lazy anyways. You folks better swing way out to the beltway.
carl3000: hate to tell you, but 95 doesn't go through boston, it was re-routed around town the same as DC.
plus, it never went through new jersey all the way, because the rich folk around princeton were able to keep it from getting built north of trenton.
DC Chica: The trains, at least on the Red Line, are generally supposed to be 3 min apart at rush hour, 6 min non-rush hour, and 12 min late at night. But I think a panel they had review things a year or two ago said that even at 3 min there's potential for problems. All you need are a couple of extra long station stops here and there (like from people block doors) and pretty soon trains are stacking up.
I-395
What bone-head came up with the idea of closing I-395 between Mass and NY Avenues? As a DC resident who takes Metro to work but still uses I-395, that's one of the dumbest ideas I have heard from d. Could this be a secret plan to get crazed motorists to run down Georgetown Law students? (In the interest of full disclosure, I live on a street that would probably pick up a lot of the traffic.)
If d. wants to eliminate through traffic, why not just take out all the river crossings? (Don't forget the new Wilson bridges. All the traffic there is through traffic.) We could put up Trinidad Blockades where major roads cross from Md. "Sorry Sir. Work is not a good enough reason."
The answer to the traffic problem is $10/gallon gas and d.'s planned improvements on the NY Ave corridor to the B/W Parkway. The answer to neighborhood division (which is also caused by railroad tracks) is building over the highway/tracks.
Metro
The solution to the Red Line problem is fewer trains overall with more (all?) 8-car trains. Even during rush hours the ends of 8-car Red Line trains are often uncrowded.
I'm not sure if this works on the other lines where trains share tracks. Limiting stops to a fixed period of time before the doors close will encourage people to get off faster, but it may also discourage people on the platform from letting people off the train.
Why do Metro retirees get a free ride for life? That's messed up. And I'm not thrilled about employees getting free rides either (except to go to work)
"Every Metro retiree gets a lifetime pass on the transit system.
In addition to lifetime passes, Metro also provides free rides for all of the agency's approximately 10,000 employees.
Agency officials say it is a good thing employees are allowed to ride for free because it helps them spot problems that crop up on the transit system."
Oh hey, y'know what spotting problems is called? Your freaking job!!!!
At least I can rest assured that there's no abuse of the system. [Taking Bets that some dead employees are riding right now]
And on the 395 closure... I smell a skateboard park
I think they'll wait to close that section of 395 until after the reconstruction of the 11th St Bridges in 2010-11, which will finally provide a two-way link between 395 and 295. This will be the new route through DC and keep through traffic away from the tunnels.
jyindc: and as much as i hate the securicrat establishment, i'll bet you could sell them on this by telling them that it would mean eventually being able to eliminate traffic under the mall, keeping all of the scary terrorists from driving their truck bombs under there.
I'd be more upset if 395 actually went somewhere, instead of just emptying out onto an already choked NY Avenue. Same with the SE Freeway. Past the exit to Anacostia, it just dead ends at Barney Circle. So you either wait at the light on Pennsylvania to get on 295 or you navigate through Capitol Hill to get onto East Capitol. And yeah, once you can go nonstop from 395 to 295, that stretch of tunnel will be irrelevant. It's all induced demand: you build more roads, more people use them, and you end up having to build even more roads.
The nimbys got their way in the 1960s: "no white men's roads through black men's homes." So you got highways that go nowhere. Just shut down the ones that serve little purpose, build on that pricey real estate, and start getting yourself some tax revenue that you can put towards keeping your mass transit from imploding.
amen, monkey.
I emailed WMATA about the midnight closing on the 4th (per its website), and they wrote back:
"On Friday, July 4, Metrorail will
run from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. to carry riders safely to Independence Day
celebrations on the National Mall and around the region."
The email response never acknowledged that WMATA's website was then incorrect.
"No bikes on the train...boo, how about no bike on trains from 7-10 pm?"
Just another reason to get a folding bike -- those you can take on any time. (And you can carry them on Amtrak).
Also, having lived in plenty of cities that are carved into pieces by highways that run right through the center of the city, I'm thrilled that D.C. is full of highways going nowhere. It makes it more of a pain to get out of town, but life in the city is much more pleasant without them.