Photo by el swifterino.This afternoon, WMATA General Manager/CEO Richard Sarles addressed his agency’s Board of Directors and announced specifics on several long-awaited initiatives, touting the transit agency’s “change in culture.”
The address comes approximately six months after Sarles was handed the full executive reins of the organization. In his report, Sarles noted that serious crimes in the Metro system were down by a third in the first part of this year, including a decrease in robberies of personal electronic devices.
“While our massive rebuilding effort to improve safety and service reliability is underway, we are also taking every opportunity to make navigating the system a little easier,” Sarles told the board.
Among the the initiatives Sarles mentioned:
>> There’s confirmation that there will finally be a “virtual tunnel” between the Farragut West and Farragut North stations in either late September or early October. The “tunnel” will allow passengers to transfer between the two stations by leaving one and walking on ground level to the other. (In short: no more having to ride all the way to Metro Center to get between the Red, Blue and Orange Lines.)
>> Sarles said that the SmarTrip® Online Reload program, currently in pilot phase, will be launched to public at the end of August.
>> Metro’s efforts to increase communication with riders via social media was a big part of Sarles’ report. The GM/CEO also announced that the system would institute a mystery shopper program at some point, though there wasn’t a lot of details immediately available about what that program would look like. Metro has approximately doubled the number of people following them via Twitter and Facebook since the beginning of 2011.
>> Metro has installed a new ELstat application, which will allow riders to automatically receive alerts on elevator status via email or text message. Riders can select specific stations — a good thing, since I can imagine getting emails every time an elevator goes out at every station in the system could be tiresome.
In addition to hearing Sarles’ report, the Metro board also adopted some governance reform measures — including a clarification of its ethics code — and officially swore in new D.C. board members Muriel Bowser and Thomas J. Bulger.
