(Update 8/8/09: I definitely wrote this after a bad experience on the MARC. After many more good experiences, I've written a new post on the system usage. Yes, there are frustrating commutes sometimes, but in general don't listen to my post below, just enjoy the train.)
(Update 4/21/09: Apparently some of the features that I wish the MARC system had already exist - mea culpa)
This morning, after not having ridden the train in some time, I was quite confused that I could not purchase a "10-trip pass" at the kiosk. These passes were mildly discounted from the normal fare, but not as cheap as a weekly pass. It turns out that the MTA eliminated 10-trip passes on January 9th, 2009. So what are your options?
Single trip ticket - $4.00
Weekly Pass - $30.00
10-trip pass - $32.00 ELIMINATED!
Monthly Pass - $100.00
That's it! You can buy a weekly pass, but unless you commute round-trip 4 days a week, you lose money. Or you can buy single trip tickets. As other bloggers have pointed out, all this is going to do is convince occasional riders to drive instead. Even with expensive gas, the ten-trip pass was more expensive than driving. Now that gas is cheaper, the MTA has decided that the train should be more expensive.
I'd go even further. Even if I decided to suck it up because I wanted to keep from putting miles on my car (and avoid an expensive repair for awhile), I'm going to have a buy a ticket for every trip. Either every time I walk into the train station or I'll have to buy a stack of them and hope I use them all before they expire. Also, I'll need a stack for each direction. I mean, eliminating or reducing the discount on the ten-trip pass sort of makes sense, I know the state budget is strained, but why does it make sense eliminate the existence of a multi-trip pass?
It seems like the MTA treats the MARC trains as a luxury service offered to the people of Maryland. Newsflash: people who ride the trains are part of the solution for congestion and sprawl!
The other thing that doesn't seem to register in the minds of the MTA - if the service is more flexible, people on the fence will use the service more often. And why is there still no weekend MARC service? In the morning, run a train from north to south, then back up. In the evening, repeat. I bet MARC weekend service would be pretty overwhelmingly popular. Sure, if you have a weekly or monthly pass you can ride Amtrak on the weekends, but I'm talking about making the train work for occasional users. Basically every person I know in Baltimore who has friends in DC has wished that there was some sort of weekend MARC service. I bet you could actually turn a profit on weekend service!
I am definitely a big proponent of realism and understanding that there's only so much money to go around. But mass transit is more than just a service, it's a way to reduce pollution and congestion. Better, more consistent, rail connections within Maryland should be a priority - not an afterthought in the state budget.
So I was just talking with my girlfriend about questions that I have about MARC train service that don't have real answers:
1. Why don't we know the on-time percentage of MARC trains? It's not rocket science, this is the year 2009. Surely someone could record when a train arrived at a station and then have that information put into some sort of database. If this isn't already done, seriously, why not? If it is, then why isn't this information public?
2. Seriously, what does it cost to run a train from Baltimore to Washington, DC and back? Why is this not public information? If it's so expensive that you can't offer this service, prove it! Or at least experiment with it.
3. Why can't we put a damn GPS receiver on every train? Stick with me here, this is a pretty advanced concept. Put a GPS receiver on the trains, have it transmit data back to some main server every 60 seconds or so, make this data publicly available for anyone to view. Sound difficult? It's not, you could do this with an iPhone and a free app. Maybe with something a little more advanced people could see where their train was while waiting in their nice warm car instead of freezing to death on the platform.
Here's a proposal. How about we tie the incentive pay structure in the MTA to on-time percentage? I mean, why not expand this to figuring out if the Light Rail runs on time or even the buses? GPS units are not that expensive and if you don't go wild and hire too expensive of a contractor to implement the software it wouldn't kill you to even outfit the buses.
I think the reason that MARC train riders are always so frustrated with the MTA is just the lack of transparency. For me, it's the lack of vision. The Baltimore-Washington metro area is not going to get any less urbanized. If the suburban park-and-rides are already overcrowded, it's not going to get any better. It's time for some real leadership and vision. I'm talking about an elected official willing to stand up and say "Hey, this costs money, but we're going to need this in 25 years, so we have to spend the money now." Then, they'd actually have to think about how to re-design public transit to lay the infrastructure for the next 50 years instead of just tacking on bus routes after the people are already there!
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2 comments:
Openness and accountability on public transportation systems? GPS units providing real-time location and ETA data? What year do you think this is, 2000? Our country is under attack by people who hate us for our freedom. They want to hijack these trains and crash them into skyscrapers. Our only defense is to make actually riding the train as inconvenient as possible!
Seriously, though, I bet you a bright, shiny nickle that the phrase "GPS Tracking" is going to get you a "national security" response.
Dude! Saw this on Facebook today. Transit and land use have recently become pet issues of mine, so I'm happy to see other people talking about them.
You might be surprised to hear that pretty much every piece of data you are asking for is in fact public information, and is available on the MTA's web site. This stuff isn't always easy to find, but I've rarely not been able to find a piece of data after some determined google searching.
You might want to check out the MTA's long-term plan for where they see MARC train service going in 30 years. There really are people actively thinking about this stuff. Weekend service is in the wish-list, as well as service headway improvement and lots of other cool things. One major problem, as always, is money, although there are other impediments as well -- trying to get Amtrak and CSX (who actually operate the service) to agree to proposed changes can often be difficult.
I am going to attempt the impossible and answer some of your questions that don't have real answers:
1. They absolutely do track on-time performance. This is a really basic piece of data that every transit agency calculates. The MARC long-term plan PDF I linked to up there has the MARC on-time performance for FY 2007. It was around 90% for each of the lines. You can probably google up some other PDFs that have more recent data. It would be nice if this data were more easily accessible, but the reality is that if you are looking for inside-baseball statistics, you're going to have to dig for them.
2. As far as costs go, there are lots of different ways to quantify them. One place to start would be to google for things like "farebox recovery ratio" (fares pay for about 60% of MARC train operating costs -- there's absolutely no way MARC weekend service would be profitable at current ticket prices if they're not even making money during peak commuting times) or "operating costs per passenger mile". The data's out there.
3. Why can't they put GPS trackers on every train? Well, they can, and they have. Check out the MTA's MARCTracker website. It's rudimentary, but all the information is there. You could write a fancy iPhone app to scrape that data if you wanted.
I do agree with your point that politicians often show a lack of vision for transit infrastructure issues. Transit and smart planning often take a back seat to roads and sprawl. This is slowly changing -- down here in the DC area, in particular, we're starting to see lots of local politicians fighting for more diversified transportation infrastructure and more intelligent planning. There's certainly a long way to go, though.
Oh, and happy birthday!
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