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Performance Parking is the most important transportation upgrade

2009-07-16T14:00:00.000-04:00

Of all the transportation priorities DDOT has on its plate a full redesign of the District’s on-street parking environment using Performance Parking principles should be at the top.

Performance parking is the only transportation upgrade that is self-financing in the short term. As a refresher, Performance Parking is the principle that a city should charge the right price for on-street parking (the lowest price that ensures at least some empty spaces per block), and devote the revenue to local improvements. The policy offers clear benefits to a wide variety of groups:

Drivers: The policy would ensure that parking is available everywhere in the city, without having to drive in circles to search for it. Eliminating time limits would allow drivers to buy as much as they need without having to return to feed the meter. Because drivers spend less time searching for parking, there is less congestion.

Transit: Fewer cars on the road improves bus travel speeds. Transit riders get to their destinations quicker. The transit agency can then operate buses more frequently with the same operating subsidy. Reduced urban congestion would also improve schedule reliability.

Pedestrians: Without Performance Parking, drivers searching for parking are often paying more attention to searching than to watching for pedestrians. Hunting for parking involves a lot of turns, inviting vehicle/pedestrian conflicts. Drivers who notice an empty space (when they’re rare) may make sudden moves to claim it. If empty spaces are more common, the search will be less distracting. Additionally, the revenue devoted to the local streetscape can repair sidewalks, provide trash pickup, build tree boxes, install wayfinding signs, etc.

Cyclists: As with pedestrians, making sure drivers have parking spaces readily available reduces the number of distracted drivers. Some of the revenue from parking meters could buy bicycle racks or other amenities.

The District: Obviously in a lot of parking areas the revenue gains are substantial. If the revenue is spent wisely, improving DC’s commercial nighborhoods and destinations, DC’s bottom line in other areas such as sales and property tax revenues could be improved as well.

Local businesses: In areas that suffer from on-street parking shortages, it’s hard to argue that cheap but overcrowded parking somehow encourages more customers to come and shop than more expensive but available parking. If anything, the expectation that parking will be hard to find is a bigger deterrent than any price. Consider: Adams Morgan on-street parking is 50 cents per hour and free during evenings. Does anyone expect to drive to AM during peak evening hours and find a place to park for free? When parking is underpriced or kept free, the experience in other cities is often that employees or owners park in the convenient spaces and shuffle their cars around to circumvent time restrictions. Plus, there are some areas that have lower demand that could benefit from having lower prices or fewer restrictions. In those areas, the current parking policies are hurting local businesses.

So what’s the biggest argument against performance parking? Is it that the idea is relatively new and hasn’t been tried much before? That collecting the data and adjusting rates is more complicated than just deciding the hours and price by fiat? That there’s a more fair way to allocate street parking space other than who’s willing to pay to use it?

Coming up: What should DDOT do next?

Bus On-time performance statistics at Metro

2009-06-17T13:00:00.001-04:00

Every month, Metro’s customer service committee looks at a presentation on operating statistics, which includes a chart showing the latest bus “on-time performance” percentage. Usually, the number is around 73-75% and reflects the number of buses that arrive within a certain time before or after the published schedule.

This number is not helpful as a management tool. If the on-time percentage improves or degrades, without looking any further would Metro be able to say why? If the percentage degrades drastically, could the Board do anything other than ask Management to do a better job?

The number does not identify problems with bus bunching, especially on frequent routes. Second, the number does not improve understanding and correction of bus system problems. Management needs to be able to identify trends, detect problems with individual routes or trips, and focus their attention on the areas that might need more resources or oversight.

The reported on-time percentage doesn’t promote accountability to the public. Wouldn’t it be nice if you knew how poorly your bus line performed, and knew why Metro was devoting a lot of time to improving that other bus route before yours?

London has a great bus on-time performance measurement program. Because the bus lines in London are operated by private contractors, it’s very important for the local transit authorities to accurately measure on-time performance because there are real financial incentives or penalties involved.

Here's the difference in how Metro measures on-time performance compared to London, as an example: Imagine a bus line that is supposed to have service every ten minutes, but experiences bunching. Take five buses in a row starting at 8am (see top line in the figure), bunch the middle three together and spread the other two out (see bottom line in the figure). This is a worst case, but under Metro’s on-time percentage rules, all of these buses are considered “on-time”, because each bus is within two minutes ahead of or seven minutes behind schedule (the green bar shows the range of times the 8:20 bus could arrive and still be considered on-time). A passenger arriving for the 8am bus will have just missed it (it left two minutes early), and will have to wait until 8:17 for the next bus, a wait of just over seventeen minutes for a bus that’s supposed to come every ten!

London looks at bus on-time measuring differently. They measure how often buses pass by certain points on the network and track the “excess waiting time”. All that time you have to wait for a bus that’s running late or is bunched with others is added up and averaged over the route, and the excess waiting is compared to how much you’d normally have to wait assuming you come to the bus stop randomly. In our example above, the average scheduled wait time is five minutes, and there are two buses you’d have to wait on average eight minutes, so the excess waiting is six minutes total, about 1.5 minutes per bus, or about 30% extra (note that buses don’t get credit for making you wait less than average).

This makes it easy to see when high-frequency buses are not meeting the required headways, and London applies this calculation to all buses that are supposed to come every 12 minutes or better. They even post the information on the web quarterly.

For frequent buses, Metro should change the way they measure on-time performance. The current measurement does not work for frequent buses. The London model is customer-oriented, compares various bus routes’ performance, and gives a sense of the magnitude of the problem.

In addition to this change for high-frequency bus routes, Metro should start regularly reporting on-time performance figures for all bus routes, as part of the monthly ridership report. They should also highlight the worst performing lines for each jursidiction. If the problem is somehow Metro’s fault, the route can receive the appropriate management attention. More likely, traffic congestion or other factors are at fault, and Metro Board members would then have data in hand to make their case with state and local transportation officials, to make transit operation a higher priority on corridors that are experiencing poor performance.

By identifying and improving poor performing bus lines, we can get people moving to their destinations more quickly, and reduce operating costs. Faster travel speeds and more regular schedules would drive up ridership, improving Metro’s bottom line and allowing more service with the same local subsidy. Metro has to improve the way they present performance metrics to make it possible.

All 50 States

2009-06-12T06:23:00.001-04:00

Based on Google Analytics, I’ve now had a visit from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Thanks, everyone!

Who’s using GTFS data – UniBus review

2009-06-11T14:00:00.000-04:00

After Metro released schedule and route information in GTFS format, I’ve been looking for a good schedule and route finding app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. There are two applications I found that fit the bill, iTransitBuddy (reviewed earlier) and UniBus. If you know of a great iPhone/iPod app that uses GTFS data and meets my needs, please let me know in the comments and I’ll take a look at it.

The bottom line: UniBus is much more feature-rich than iTransitBuddy, but suffers from some similar data quality issues with the WMATA GTFS feed. I give Unibus about 4 out of 5.

The features include being able to search for stop or route names, or using the location service to find stop or stations near your current location. You can designate stop/line/destination sets as “favorites”.

Once you’ve found a stop, you can see the lines that service that stop, and, if you’re connected, display the stop on the map. If more than one bus line services the same stop, this is really convenient because you can scroll through the list to see which one is departing earliest. Unfortunately, the favorites feature doesn’t work for stops, only stop/line/destination combinations (e.g., the combination “Orange Line to Vienna from Ballston” is what you are designating as a favorite). I’ll be suggesting that feature to the author since that’s how many of the lines on my “12-minute” bus map work, where you take one of a number of lines in order to get where you’re going.

You can also search for routes. In this case, many Metrobus (and some Metrorail) routes operate as short turn or tripper bus service, where the bus either ends the route early and turns around, or starts the route mid-way. This design and the way the GTFS data is coded makes the “find route” feature much less usable. For example, searching for “Metrorail Orange Line” gives “Vienna” and “New Carrollton” as possible destinations, as expected. But it’s strange that both “Stadium” and “Stadium Armory” show up (because of turn back service ending there). Even stranger is the fact that “Largo Town Cwnter [sic]” shows up as a destination for the Orange Line (possibly for the few times per year WMATA operates special service?).

It’s great to be able to select stops that are near your current location. The only problem with this feature is that the stops are presented to you as a list, with very similar names. There’s no feature to show these stops on a map until you’ve selected one. There’s also no feature to select a point on a map and then show transit stops near that point. It would be an improvement to list the lines that are near your current location, so if you know your line or destination you could pick that instead and it would show or tell you where the stop is for that line.

When you pick a route, direction and day (today, tomorrow or the next day), all departure times are displayed, even ones that have already departed. For a frequent route like the X2, you may have to scroll through a lot of entries to get to “now”. However, going to your favorites will automatically display the next two vehicles for each favorite, if there’s any service that day.

There are some nice features like a “back” button. On the other hand, UniBus also occasionally crashes, exiting out to the application selection screen without any error message.

Overall, I would say that UniBus is much more useful than iTransitBuddy, but some characteristics of WMATA’s service as well as GTFS data quality issues occasionally create annoying problems. Setting up a good list of favorites helps a lot. Data for other transit agencies that have GTFS feeds is available from within UniBus. UniBus is available through the apps store for $1.99.

Disclosure: the developer of UniBus provided me with a free copy of the application for review purposes, and partially as a “thank you” for GGW’s effort in getting WMATA to release GTFS data (I pointed out to him when the data was made available).

Who’s using GTFS data? – iTransitBuddy review

2009-06-09T09:00:00.001-04:00

After Metro released its schedule data in Google Transit Feed Specification format, I wanted an iPod/iPhone app that would let me find out quickly how long it would be until the next bus or train. There are a lot of transit apps out there, but not many have bus data or offline caching mode. I downloaded two apps, iTransitBuddy and UniBus (subject of a future review this week).

The bottom line: iTransitBuddy downloads, searches and displays Metrorail and Metrobus schedules. The app has some interface issues, and Metro’s data contains some problems. On the other hand, the “favorites” feature might make this 99¢ purchase worth it. I’d give it 2.5 out of a 5-point scale, with one lost point being Metro’s fault for issues with the schedule data.

For iTransitBuddy, you start by selecting a line, origin and destination.

The stops are listed in alphabetical order by the name that Metro assigned, rather than in order along the line. I found this to be confusing because it’s not always clear what Metro decided to name each stop. Is it “8th Street at Pennsylvania”? No, it’s “Se 8Th St Se D St”. It seems unnecessary to choose your destination, because most of the time you don’t need to know how long the bus will take to get where you’re going, just when the next bus is. Because of the size of the database, searches for the stops on a line take a long time, a step that is required twice because you need to pick origin and destination. The app should be allowed to just show you the next scheduled arrivals at your stop in both directions.

The app only allows you to search for one route at a time, so if there are two or three different possible routes to your destination (like the 90s, Pike Ride, the 30s or even the Metrorail Blue/Orange lines) you must search individually for them to figure out which one is coming first. iTransitBuddy lets you store “Favorites”, which allow you to quickly access an line/origin/destination search. On my iPod Touch (2nd Gen), a search for Metrorail trips from East Falls Church to Eastern Market takes about 11 seconds, and a search for Ballston to East Falls Church takes about the same amount of time. A search for a short bus ride along the 90s line takes about 8 seconds. I don’t know whether the iPod first generation or the iPhone have faster or slower access times. The newly announced iPhone 3rd Generation should be a little faster.

The app displays an unreasonable amount of data, showing arrivals that happen up to 24 hours in the future. This might be so that you can look for trips that happen much later in the day, but I think the interface could be improved to allow later searches, while allowing a “next bus” lookup that happens a lot faster.

Metro’s data appears to be out of date and has some quality issues. The N22 line is still listed, even though the line stopped service in March. The new Woodley Park/McPherson Sq and Union Station/Navy Yard Circulator routes are not listed, and the three older Circulator routes are jumbled together in one big collection that lists every stop. The Mall, 7th Street and K Street lines are all listed under “DC Circulator” in the same list. There seems to be some sort of issue where every trip shows up twice (sometimes with an offset of a couple minutes) in the list of trips for some Metrorail lines.

These issues are unfortunate considering one of the reasons Metro didn’t participate in Google Transit was a concern about Google guaranteeing the information would be accurate and up-to-date. I think that it’s more likely that Metro was unable to produce GTFS data of sufficient quality for Google’s needs, and Metro was forced to punt, publishing the data with a broad disclaimer. I’m going to speculate that the schedule data in Metro’s databases works well enough for Metro, but when they try to use automated processes to extract the data, there must be problems with the export.

iTransitBuddy makes Metro’s scheduling data available, and with the “favorites” feature you can have your favorite bus stop and line data at your fingertips, though you will have to wait a long time to get a too many results. The interface could use some improvements.

With a few tweaks, like listing bus stops geographically, having a “settings” feature to limit search results to at most a couple hours in the future, and being able to combine bus routes or find all bus routes for a stop, iTransitBuddy could be what you’re looking for in a GTFS-searching iPhone or iPod app. There are some interface and data quality problems. On the other hand, it’s a bargain at only $0.99 (for a limited time).

Metrorail budget has been flat over the past 10 years

2009-06-08T09:30:00.000-04:00

Ever waited 20 minutes for an on-time Metrorail train? If you regularly ride after 9pm, you have. But it doesn't have to be that way. If the Metrorail subsidy had increased with the rate of inflation over the past 10 years, there would be enough money to just about eliminate all 20-minute headways before midnight.

As Metrorail continues to rack up ridership gains, especially during off-peak periods, WMATA has continued to operate off-peak headways more appropriate for a sleepy, commuter-only city. Increases in passenger demand since 1999 have been managed by running longer trains, which is less expensive than running more frequent trains.

The Metro budget is divided into three operating modes. As I discussed in an earlier article, changes in fare policy have been very different between Metrorail, Metrobus and Metroaccess. The fare increases, which have been primarily aimed at rush-hour rail commuters and parking, have kept the subsidy needed to support rail from increasing, staying flat in nominal dollars over a 10-year period, which is actually a decline when you take into account inflation.

But what if the regions' support of rail had been kept at least even with inflation? According to my calculations, there would be an extra $20M per year available, which is enough to run trains more frequently in the late evening (every 15 minutes instead of every 20).

Of course, that’s not the only thing WMATA could do to improve service. Instead, they could reverse some of the budget gimmicks used to balance this year’s budget, and perform capital maintenance under the capital budget. There’s about $10M of that. That would free up some of the capital budget to purchase more farecard machines, more faregates, or even make some station improvements.

This would mean that the local jurisdictions would be asked to chip in more, but I think it’s a reasonable request that our successful Metrorail system not suffer from a long-term decline in spending. A lot of people made the choice to live near metrorail, and many jurisdictions are building new housing near stations so that people can live car-free. Why not reward these decisions by improving Metrorail service during off-peak?

Longer headways off-peak is a big reason not to ride Metrorail for a lot of people, especially when the headways get really long. A 20-minute wait added to another 20-minute wait, combined with relatively low traffic congestion at night and on weekends, and the trip gets very long compared to driving. As I argued earlier, once people make the decision that they need or want a car for at least some of their trips, it becomes easier for them to decide they want a car for all of their trips, because once you own a car, additional trips are relatively cheap.

So longer headways contribute at the margin to increased car ownership, which contributes to peak hour congestion. WMATA should use some of the increased fare revenues from the past 10 years to eliminate the 20 minute headway from the Metrorail vocabulary.

Arlington Democrats to select candidate for 47th District - Vote June 9th

2009-05-28T15:08:00.000-04:00

After serving since 2004, Delegate Al Eisenberg is retiring. Thanks to Mr. Eisenberg for representing my district these past five years in Richmond. His staff was responsive to my questions and concerns during legislative sessions, and for the most part I agreed with his votes and proposed legislation.

Five Democrats are competing in a primary for his seat. No Republicans have filed to run against the winner of the Democratic Primary, so this primary looks like it will determine the winner of the seat. These elections are typically very low turnout (around 2000-5000 votes compared to 10,000 to 25,000 for a general election), so your vote could be very important in this race.

If you’re a Virginia Democrat, please remember to go vote on June 9th. There’s also a three-way nomination contest for Governor, between Creigh Deeds, Brian Moran and Terry McAuliffe.

The 47th District (map below) stretches from the East Falls Church metro station, where I live, all the way down to Columbia Pike, over to Ballston and Virginia Square metro stations.

View Virginia House of Delegates District 47 in a larger map

I sent questionnaires about transit to all of the delegate candidates for the 47th District, Miles Grant and Alan Howze responded (links to their responses on scribd). I’m still waiting for Patrick Hope, Adam Parkhomenko, and Andres Tobar.

Miles' experience comes from his blog "The Green Miles" and groups like Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment; his strong suit is definitely the environment. He's got Greater Greater Washington in his blogroll, and he appears to be running his largely self-financed campaign on a shoestring. Miles has pledged to keep his campaign carbon neutral, and states publicly how he is minimizing his impact through using recycled materials and reusing things as much as possible. He updates regularly on twitter (@milesgrant), and responds to questions fairly quickly. He seems the candidate most comfortable personally with Web 2.0 technology.

Alan comes to the campaign an experienced political director for Governor Warner, and liason to the House and Senate Delegations. He’s worked closely with the Democratic leadership in Richmond. His environmental credentials are no less sterling than Miles’. He started his university’s first comprehensive recycling program, and is a member of the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club. He worked directly with the Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources, and is starting a home energy audit business. He lives with his wife and two children in the Westover area. He is a regular bicycle commuter.

Both Grant and Howze are supportive of the Columbia Pike streetcar project, and both acknowledge that the local residents are apprehensive about the changes the project will bring. Grant states that the issues can be managed, while Howze more specifically states that the County Board should address some of those issues. While Grant expressed support for other transportation improvements like Lee Highway and a Beltway metro (in the very long term), Howze did not mention any additional transit lines in his response.

Both candidates stated that BRT was a valuable option, but only Grant specifically mentioned the development advantage with rail transit: “Would a business set up shop on the Pike because there’s a rapid bus as opposed to a regular bus”? Howze mentioned that there was no one right answer and the mode decision would have to be made on a case basis.

Howze had a much stronger response to a question about how to raise more money for transit, being able to cite his experience working for Governor Warner, and passing legislation through the General Assembly. Grant is basically only able to say that he’ll make the case that blocking transit funding is blocking economic growth. It may be true, but it might not be enough to convince the house GOP, which has until now blocked any new general taxes for transit.

Both candidates gave similar responses to a question about how we make sure transportation funding goes where it’s most effective, essentially committing to striving to get Northern Virginia its fair share, but other than that neither candidate’s answer really stood out. Grant cited the need for a “radically different set of policies”, and Howze cited his experience working at a statewide level.

Both candidates oppose widening 66, citing that increasing highway capacity will just encourage more use. They both support increasing transit capabilities as a tool for reducing highway congestion. Grant more directly mentioned affordable housing as a method of reducing congestion, mentioning that he’d prefer making it easier for a teacher to live in Arlington as opposed to commuting from Warrenton.

Both candidates were for allowing localities to require building standards similar to LEED, and for allowing localities broader powers to address their local concerns. I think both candidates pointed out difficulties with LEED but were supportive of LEED’s intent. As part of his training to be an energy auditor, Howze has studied for the LEED certification.

Both candidates support an increase in the gas tax. Grant supports if the money is carefully appropriated, with a concern that the tax revenue could be sent to other parts of the state. When asked whether fixed-cost fees like licensing and titling were preferable, Grant said that he preferred mileage-based fees because they affect the occasional driver less than the daily long-haul commuter. I think Howze brought up a great point that any fees or taxes need to be stable so that the Commonwealth can raise bonds against them.

I’m split between the two of them. Both candidates have been responsive to questions, understand Northern Virginia’s transportation issues, and understand the link between good transit and land use. It’s unfortunate that you’re only allowed to pick one, I’d prefer a ranked choice voting system or some system that allowed me to vote for more than one.

If other candidates respond to my questions I’ll try to pass that information along.

I’m specifically not making an endorsement other than to say that either Grant or Howze are clearly bright individuals with the experience they need for the office. As Northern Virginia Democrats, they have similar views on transportation, taxes, public finance and social issues. Mr. Howze appears to bring more directly applicable experience to the office, having worked for Virginia public officials, while Mr. Grant appears to have a better feel for the many interlinked topics when it comes to planning, land use, transportation and the environment. At this point, I’m going to vote for one of the two, I’m just not sure which one.

Multispace Meters make performance parking easier

2009-05-21T12:12:00.001-04:00

According to a recent press release, DDOT has installed new multispace parking meters all over downtown, including Connecticut Avenue, Wisconsin Avenue, and the Chinatown area. These meters replace older single-head meters which have been unreliable.

The new meters have some capabilities that will help the District more easily implement performance parking. One of the difficulties with implementing a good performance parking plan is the trouble with collecting good data about parking occupancy, and with having meter prices that make sense at different times of day and days of the week.

With old meters, you might only get the number of quarters collected, if it’s logged. The transactions won’t be tied to times of day or days of the week. To get the kind of occupancy data you need for performance parking, you have to do manual counts and surveys. This isn’t a very efficient use of manpower, which may be one reason why performance parking hasn’t taken off yet in many cities.

Additionally, since old meters only allow for one hourly rate, it’s difficult or impossible to implement rates that vary by time of day or day of week. It’s an all-or-nothing prospect, which is why meters typically run all day and then offer free parking at all other hours, including Saturday and evenings. But there is sometimes too much demand to let the parking go free, but not enough demand to charge daytime rates.

The new meters are capable of collecting and transmitting transaction-level data, down to the amount of parking purchased, time of day, and date of sale. By analyzing this data, DDOT can get a very accurate picture of how crowded various parking meters are and when. For example, I obtained a day’s worth of data from a parking meter on 8th Street SE (near M Street SE). The data show a dual peak of demand at lunchtime and at 3pm. This data combined with targeted occupancy surveys would allow DDOT to adjust meter rates to more closely match the demand for parking with the price.

Number of cars purchasing time in 30-minute blocks from 7am to 7pm.

As the performance parking pilot around the ballpark demonstrates, the new meters allow for variable pricing by time of day, for the first hour, or even something as complex as special event pricing.

This combination of data collection and flexible rates allows DDOT to more easily implement performance parking downtown. DDOT should work with the Council and local groups to roll out performance parking slowly and steadily, starting with the most crowded blocks and based on the data reported by the District's investment in multispace meters. DDOT should implement a plan of regular data collection and analysis, with surveys to confirm the calculations. Then, rates and time limits should be adjusted to implement a target occupancy, in order to make parking more convenient and available.

Photo by Michael Perkins, parking meter data from DDOT.

Metro wants your input for online bus maps

2009-05-15T13:30:00.001-04:00

At each Metrorail station, WMATA has great local area bus maps near the station entrances. The maps show where the buses go from the station, a zoomed-in version of the bus map showing downtown lines, the location of each bus stop in the area, and a table with estimated headways and hours of operation for each bus line that travels near the station.

Here’s the central city map:

Here’s the map of the bus stops local to Eastern Market:

Here’s the table of hours of operation and frequencies:

And here’s an excerpt from the large system map:

I asked WMATA whether the station-specific bus maps could be linked from each Metrorail station's information page. They're willing to do that, but there is a concern that the information would not be very usable because the maps are very large PDFs (the one for Eastern Market is about 4MB) with a lot of street detail layers (the PDFS are the same as the ones used to print the maps, which are about 4 foot by 5 foot).

Take a look at the PDF and discuss what you think should be displayed on the wmata.com web page for the associated station:

The whole map?
Excerpts from the map?
The table of headways and hours of operation?

I think the target audience for having this map on the Metrorail station webpages would be people that live near a metrorail station or who frequently travel to a metrorail station but are unfamiliar with the bus service in that area. It's possible that by having this information available online, we can turn a current rail rider to an occasional bus rider, too.

The other potential audience for these maps online would be tourists that are planning to stay near a Metrorail station, but it’s less likely that tourists are adventurous enough to try the bus system. Usually they stick to rail.

Discuss in the comments whether you’d find this kind of map useful online (they’re already available at Metrorail stations).

All images courtesy WMATA

New Laptop

2009-05-14T09:52:00.000-04:00

I bought a Samsung NC20.

This laptop rocks. It’s so tiny (but with a decent 1280x800 screen and a full-size feeling keyboard), fairly inexpensive (around $550), about 2 lbs lighter than my old one (Dell Inspiron 600m), and can handle PDFs, Windows Live Writer (my offline blogging tool of choice), Google Chrome (my browser of choice), Skype (free video phone calls).

It’s much easier to write while on the Metro, etc. Now that most everything I do is Web-2.0 style stuff with the data stored on the network, it’s more seamless to transfer between laptops. I’ve got all my research on the other one so I may have to use a memory stick or external USB hard drive to transfer stuff over but until then it’s not like I’m missing much.

I ended up not getting Microsoft Office so I’m going to give Open Office a shot. That and Google Docs should be able to manage.

Anyone else know of some hidden gem piece of software you can’t live without? Let me know in the comments.

Metro approves contract for Smartrip upgrades, bus riders to get first passes

2009-05-06T10:15:00.000-04:00

I wrote last year about how Metro is working on upgrades to the Smartrip program so you'll be able to do things like go online to check your recent trips, recharge your Smartrip card online or automatically by credit card, or use your Smartrip card as an unlimited use pass.

The Metro board recently approved contracting to provide those online services, which it says will reduce the number of service calls that currently have to be staffed by the Regional Customer Service Center. The schedule is a slight slip due to contract negotiations, but it still involves significant upgrades during the coming year.

By September 2009, the Smartrip software will be upgraded to allow unlimited passes. That is, the cards and system will be capable of having passes, but the roll out of actual passes will be an ongoing process after that. Metro is going to start with the unlimited weekly bus pass since that one is the most popular. It's also the best deal, offering unlimited $1.25 bus rides for only $11 per week. I've put in a question to see if these can be automatically renewed from stored value on the card or by using the "autoload" feature.

By December 2009, you'll be able to call Smartrip customer service to set up automatic replenishment of your Smartrip card via a credit card (this is called "autoload"). The same feature will be available by Internet in early 2010. Metro is working to beat these target dates so if they can get it out sooner, they will.

Later this year, they will be increasing the number of stand-alone retail Smartrip terminals from 127 installed today to 220.

The combination of allowing the bus flash pass on Smartrip, autoload, and more retail Smartrip terminals reduce the disincentive for bus riders to go get a Smartrip card. Metro is working to make it easier to load fare, to use the popular bus pass, provides free transfers for three hours, and a ten cent discount for single rides.

What are the final low hanging fruit to convince bus riders to use Smartrip? Should Metro get more of the card-by-mail brochures on buses? Is it even possible to convince the people still paying with cash to get a Smartrip, or has Metro done everything it reasonably can?

Metro response to: Delays involving single tracking

2009-05-05T09:46:00.000-04:00

I got a response about two months ago to an earlier Infosnack article, "Delays involving single tracking", which discussed whether Metro should be turning trains around just short of a single-track section during a major service disruption. Here's what Metro's Rail Operations Control Center Director Hercules Ballard had to say:

We regret that you and other customers experienced lengthy delays on February 19, 2009. In routing trains during a derailment or other serious service disruption, the Operations Control Center (OCC) has to consider many factors, including the number of available trains, the time required to turn trains around, the time of day, the location of the derailment, and the number of customers who would be helped or hindered.

On February 19, 2009, some trains were turned around at the Ballston Metrorail station as you suggested; as circumstances quickly changed, other trains were turned around at East Falls Church Metrorail station, and still others were not turned back. Turning back trains at Ballston Metrorail station allowed us to reduce the inconvenience to customers travelling toward New Carrollton. It also meant we were sending fewer trains into the single-tracking area, thereby reducing platform wait times for Vienna-bound customers.

Obviously from inside a Metrorail train it's hard to tell to what extent this idea is possible or being used, but it's good to know what they take into account and that they use it during disruptions.

A PARP request for the incident report for these disruptions did not turn up documents that were terribly interesting. The full report had not been finalized and was not released to me because it was considered "pre-decisional".

Public art: would it make you ride Metro more?

2009-04-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

These presentations show new public art that the Metro Customer Service Committee and Board are expected to consider on Thursday. The public art will be installed at five Metrorail stations in Tyson's Corner and Reston, and at the entrance to the Farragut North station.

According to the presentation, art at the Tyson's stations will cost $1.7M and will be funded by Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.

Metro states that public art, "helps create attractive transit facilities that increase ridership and enrich the lives" of its passengers. It also states that the art selected will "reflect the artistic, cultural and historic interests" of the surrounding communities.

More importantly, the presentation about Tyson's Corner stations is the best view I've seen of the location and design of the four stations. The feature they all have in common is that access will be from pedestrian bridges. If the stations had been placed underground, access would have likely been through entrances and tunnels on either side of the street. Here's a Google map showing the locations of the stations:

View Tysons Corner Metro Expansion in a larger map

So what do you think of the art in the presentation? Does it reflect the local Tyson's Corner community? If not, what would the appropriate art look like? Are there other public art installations in Metro that you like or dislike? Would it be likely to increase ridership or enrich your life?

How many Metro stations can you name that have public art?

Here's the proposed artwork.

Tyson's East

Tyson's Central 123

Tyson's Central 7

Tyson's West

Wiehle Ave

Farragut North

That's a big deficit.

2009-04-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

Mankiw has a post up depicting what happened to our deficit this year. Short story is we're paying out about 27% of GDP and only collecting about 16% of GDP in taxes. While that's not as high as it was in WWII, it's as high as it has ever been since then. Holy Crap.

Also, it is not projected to get much better. Long term, we're talking spending 22-25% of GDP and taxing only about 19%.

Does TurboTax make the tax code more complicated?

2009-04-20T08:15:00.000-04:00

So argued Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center last week. He states that because we have software and paid preparers, complicated tax provisions like the AMT are more likely to continue without complaint, rather than be removed from the tax code at the demand of angry taxpayers.

I know in my case, I just plugged my data into TurboTax and accepted its conclusion that I don't owe the AMT. He's probably right. I'm not that upset there's an AMT, but then again I spent about 20 seconds thinking about it out of about 10 hours total preparing taxes.

In other news, I'm not posting much on Infosnack lately as you can tell. Most of my blogging is going up over at Greater Greater Washington, including approximately weekly live chats with local politicians, officials, authors, and others involved in transit, smart growth and other local issues. If the volume of posts at GGW (about 3-4 daily) would overwhelm your reader, periodically check this link, which is for my posts only.

Infosnack is not dead. I will continue to post here when I get the chance. Most of my writing will be going up on Greater Greater, and often Infosnack will get the "rough draft" version of the same post. I appreciate if you prefer to read only Infosnack and I'll still be reading any comments you put here.

Fairfax Connector proposes bus line changes

2009-03-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

Fairfax County has proposed cutting bus service for FY 2010 to close a $650M budget gap.

Among the cuts are the complete elimination of fifteen routes, decreasing bus frequency on nine routes, cutting off weekend service on one route, and other cuts.

Proposed route eliminations:

Metrorail/VRE feeder routes:

303,304,305 - Metrorail feeder service for Island Creek, Saratoga, and Newington Forest, respectively
307 - Lorton VRE feeder bus
402,403 - Weekday Rush Hour service for the town of Vienna to the local Metro stations (Vienna and Dunn Loring)
556 - Weekday service between Reston Town Center and the West Falls Church Metro
952 - Reverse commute route for West Falls Church Metro and the Herndon Park and Ride.

These routes to be cut are Metrorail or VRE feeder services, and their elimination may adversely affect both congestion along the region's highways, and Metrorail's ability to attract customers during rush hour, when higher peak fares contribute more to the costs of running the system.

Highway Express Routes:

380 - Franconia/Springfield to Pentagon express bus
595,597 - Weekday rush hour service between Reston East Park and Ride and the Pentagon/Crystal City

One of the routes (the 380) duplicates Metrorail service between two points. Two other routes largely duplicate service that's provided by a combination of bus and rail. It's not clear whether eliminating this route will merely shift people between the bus and rail or whether they will start driving.

Local Routes:

306 - Midday service from GMU to Pentagon
922 - Herndon local route
929 - Herndon/Centerville local route

The rest of the routes (306, 922, 929) are local connector bus routes that more likely than not primarily serve the transit-dependent. I do not have data to support this assertion, it's based on my knowledge of the area (highly car-oriented) and the bus route description (doesn't serve rail, appears to travel local streets only).

Public Hearings: The service cuts will be discussed at public hearings on March 30 at 7pm, March 31 at 3 pm and on April 1 at 3 pm. All hearings will be at the Fairfax County Government Center in Fairfax. To speak at the hearing register here prior to 10 am on the day of the hearing or call 703-324-3151 prior to noon. You can also submit comments in writing here or by calling 703-324-9400.

The final budget will be approved on April 27, 2009.

Metro's options for balancing the budget

2009-03-13T11:00:00.002-04:00

There are essentially four options at this point for closing Metro's $29M budget gap. In order of my preference:

Jurisdictional subsidy increases. This would require local area governments to search hard in their budgets for any additional funding that can balance Metro's budget. The amounts needed by jurisdiction are:

District of Columbia $4.9M
Montgomery County $7.8M
Prince George's County $6.9M
City of Alexandria $0.9M
Arlington $2.6M
City of Fairfax $0.1M
Fairfax County $4.1M
City of Falls Church $66K

In the case of my home county, Arlington, since the County has already advertised the maximum tax rate, this will require service cuts as opposed to tax increases. If you know how your home jurisdiction's budget process works, please provide insight in the comments.
Fare or other fee increases. According to the presentation given yesterday at the FAO Committee meeting, a ten-cent raise across the board would raise over $30M. However, such a flat raise doesn't take into account differences in price between services. It's a pretty large increase on a $1.25 bus fare relative to a $4.50 rail fare. To me that proposal seems inadequately designed and researched, but that's probably because Metro staff were never really allowed to consider fare increases as part of the plan. If a fare increase proposal were better designed and supported by subsidy increases, I could support it. There's also the revenue WMATA could gain by applying performance parking at crowded Metro lots, which has unknown revenue potential.

Shifting capital repair to operating funds. Under budget rules, Metro could shift money between budgets and spend some of the money designated for capital, such as new buses, faregates, fare machines, track equipment, and maintenance facilities. This would hurt the system's long-term reliability and usability prospects, and would cause old equipment to be used even longer before it's retired. A lot of this equipment, like Metro's Flxible buses, are at the end of their design life. This would make the problem worse. Metro's capital budget is already underfunded. We'll need to fix this problem sooner or later. Because of economic conditions we may decide to fix it later, but the problem will still be there, and it will grow.
Service cuts. Right now, the Metro jurisdictions' staffs are probably working furiously through lists of bus lines, trying to come up with their allotted amount of cuts in service. But with ridership at all-time highs and service that already doesn't come more than once and hour in some locations, does that even make sense? It doesn't have to be all or nothing, though. The way the FAO Committee left it at the meeting, service cuts would have to be made on bus service only, which doesn't make sense. There are some rail system cuts that could be done without too much pain, like closing some station entrances during non-peak hours where there are more than one entrance (worth $700K per year), and reducing the frequency of trains during the 6-7am timeframe (when I commute!). I would want a plan for how this service gets restored quickly, but I don't think rail should be immune to service cuts because of a quirk in how Metro calculates its subsidy.

In reality, we'll probably solve the budget crisis with a combination of all four of these. There's probably some addiitonal money each jurisdiction could come up with, but not the whole thing. We may consider fare increases that are better designed and more targeted, but smaller than the whole $30M. There might be some capital expenses we defer to flusher years, and we may make some service cuts. From listening to the committee's discussion yesterday, I was glad to hear somebody on the panel articulate the same arguments I would have made, most of the time more eloquently than I could have.

Crossposted at Greater Greater Washington

Metro "punts": Schedule data to be released by March 23

2009-03-11T10:23:00.000-04:00

Metro listened to the riders. Yesterday at the DC Council oversight hearing for WMATA, General Manager John Catoe announced that Metro will release schedule and routing information in the open Google Transit Feed Specification format. They will post the information online for all to access March 23, according to Catoe:

Graham: Now you've got this "Google Transit" issue. And you know I'm going to mention this, because we had testimony [from Michael Perkins] earlier about this. And people have strong feelings about this question. Where are we on giving access to our bus, rail and other information to Google?
Catoe: You know, there's an old statement from football, there's a time to pass the ball, or a time to run the ball, or a time to punt the ball. From this perspective, we've listened, and as a result, Metro is planning on making its bus schedule data available on our website in the [Google Transit Feed Specification] format no later than the 23rd of this month. So we're working as we speak to make that information available.

Catoe said "bus schedule data" but he probably meant "bus and rail." I'm going to call to confirm.

This is even better than just doing a deal with Google, because anyone will be able to use the data. Actually, Catoe didn't give any updates on a specific deal with Google. Other agencies have signed specific deals. Metro might still do that, but it looks likely they might not at all.

How great is that? Metro figured out a compromise position based on feedback from you, the riders. Perhaps they didn't feel that partnering with Google on Google's terms would work for them, so they decided instead to just give the data away and let anyone use it.

For other transit systems, it's been typical for the agency and Google to sign an agreement together. Some provisions of Google's agreement had been a sticking point for Metro in the past. Metro might still be working on a special Google deal. Or, maybe they aren't.

If not, this shouldn't pose a problem if the goal is for Google to index and search the data. Google doesn't get an agreement from every website out there it indexes into its search engine, so why should they require an agreement to index Metro's schedule information? The data will be out there, just waiting to be used by application developers. That's Google, but also anyone else who comes along. Now let's hope (and advocate) for other transit services like Ride On, The Bus, Arlington Transit "ART", Fairfax Connector, DASH and more to follow Metro's lead and release their schedules, too.

Crossposted on Greater Greater Washington

Long-term Trends in Metro fares and Budget

2009-03-09T13:23:00.000-04:00

Metrorail fares increased recently in 2003, 2004 and in 2008. What used to cost $1.10 now costs $1.65. What's going on? Are Metrorail fares growing too fast? Or is Unsuckdcmetro.com right, and the fares haven't gone up enough compared to inflation? What about bus fares, those have been pretty stable, have they kept up with inflation? How has government support of rail, bus and paratransit changed over time? I took a look at some historical data to figure it all out.

Metrorail

The most interesting thing about Metrorail fares is that they are pretty stable over time. We've had a huge increase in ridership since the 1990s, added a lot of new service (more frequent trains, early morning and late night service, longer trains), had the WMATA workforce age and start drawing pensions (the first Metrorail operators working when the system opened in 1975 must have at least 34 years of service by now), and had a few energy crises. Even absent all these changes, the real price of Metrorail service for the same distance has stayed pretty constant (you have to take into account the fact that before 2003, you got a 10% bonus when purchasing $20 or more*). Interesting to note, between 1980 and 2003, bus and rail had the same base fares, and from 1977 to 1980 it it was actually more expensive to ride the bus than to go three miles on the rail.

The other interesting trend is the timing of fare increases. Before 2001, Metrorail fares appeared to increase just after recessions and recede somewhat during boom times. I attribute this to situations similar to the current Metro funding shortfall, where during a recession the local governments are unwilling or unable to increase operating assistance to transit, and rather than cut service to balance the budget, the agency increases fares. Recently, the trend has been a more steady increase.

Over the past five years (since FY2004, earliest data available), Metrorail subsidies have stayed flat or declined slowly (about $3.3M less per year) over time after correcting for inflation (2.2% per year real decline, not statistically significant). This is likely because fare increases have kept up with added system costs.

Metrobus

Metrobus fares have declined fairly steadily over time at a rate of about half a cent per year after accounting for inflation (about a 0.5% decrease, and statistically significant). This doesn't sound like a lot but over 33 years of operation it adds up to just about 20 cents per ride, meaning that Metrobus fares should be about $1.45-1.55 today to keep up with inflation. Additionally, since Metroaccess fares are based on bus fares, this would improve the Metroaccess funding gap. The timing of Metrobus fare increases does not appear as tied to economic trouble as Metrorail.

The long-term Metrobus subsidy trend is upward, at a rate of $14.4M per year (5.5% per year - statistically significant). Service is gradually becoming more expensive for the localities to provide. This is probably driven by real increases in personnel costs as well as the fact that increased ridership cannot be handled as easily with increased vehicle size like with Metrorail. Additionally, as mentioned before, fares have not kept up with inflation, especially over the past five years.

Metroaccess

Metroaccess fares are based on Metrobus fares, so they also have not kept up with inflation. Metroaccess subsidies are increasing rapidly (13.6% per year - statistically significant). These costs have been growing at a rate of about $5.8M per year since FY2004.

Overall Trend

The overall trend for WMATA subsidies is up in inflation-adjusted dollars at a rate of $16.9M per year (about 3.7% per year - statistically significant). The two charts to the right show the real percentage growth rate and the contributions to the overall subsidy from FY 2004 to FY 2010. For FY 2010, I knew the Metroaccess subsidy from Board reports, but for Metrobus and Metrorail I had to assume that the decline in real subsidy was shared equally as a percentage of the previous years' subsidy. This may or may not be correct, the cuts in bus service or rail service may be more severe, which would change the subsidy balance.

Conclusion

Contrary to what unsuckdcmetro.com found, Metrorail fares have stayed flat relative to inflation for trips of equal length**. Also, the fare increases we have had recently, combined with other operating revenues, have been enough to keep Metrorail's government subsidies from increasing. Therefore, it would not make sense to increase Metrorail fares based on an argument that fares have not kept up with prices, or that rail customers are not paying enough for their service.

For Metrobus and Metroaccess, it's a different story. Based on real subsidy increases over the past five years and a steady downward trend in fares, Metrobus and Metroaccess fares and operating revenues have not kept up with system operating costs. However,such a difference brings up important social equity concerns, as Metrobus riders are more likely to be poorer, more transit dependent and less likely to have full time employment (demographic information here). Additionally, Metrobus acts as a feeder service for Metrorail, and at least some of Metrorail's success in terms of attracting riders is the inexpensive bus service that extends the reach of stations beyond those who can find a parking space or walk to the station.

I think a reasonable compromise would be that bus fares should increase with the rate of inflation (meaning about a $1.50 bus fare today, probably too big an increase all at once, but maybe a 10 cent increase each time the fares are increased), but that it's not necessary and would likely be counterproductive to increase the fares enough to keep the subsidy cost growth rate as low as it has been for Metrorail.

In summary, it looks like the fare increases we've had recently for Metrorail have kept up with inflation, which has been enough to keep subsidy growth in check, but for Metrobus and Metroaccess, fares have not kept up with inflation, and subsidies have increased even after accounting for inflation. These subsidy increases have occasionally been resisted by member jurisdictions, and in this case are leading to service cuts, which decrease the benefit of having a transit system in the first place. Would it be better if fares kept up with inflation, and there was less pressure for service cuts? Maybe with fare increases, there would be money for increased service after the recession is over.

*I was not able to determine when the 10% bonus started, therefore I applied it to all fares before 2003 by multiplying them by 0.91.

**regressions of Metrorail fares for 5, 10 and 15-mile trips with respect to time were not statistically significant at a 95% confidence level.

Sources: WMATA budgets for FY 2007, 2008 and 2009, WMATA Board Reports from January 2009-present, CPI data from Bureau of Labor, and author's calculations.

Happy Birthday, Infosnack.

2009-03-09T07:23:00.001-04:00

Infosnack is now one year old. Thanks for reading, everyone.

CA Legislator Proposes State-wide Parking Reform - what about rural areas?

2009-03-02T08:25:00.000-05:00

California State Senator Lowenthal (D - 27th - Long Beach and vicinity) last week introduced a bill (pdf) that would require all California cities, counties and city/counties to reform parking laws. The bill includes a menu of reforms, and localities would be required to enact reforms totaling 20 "points" by 2012. For example, eliminating minimum parking requirements is worth 20 points, while requiring on-street parking meter rates to fluctuate to achieve a maximum 85% occupancy is worth 10 points.

The whole menu of points includes reducing required parking minimums, implementing maximum allowable parking, requiring parking to be underground or be "wrapped" in retail or active uses, increasing density limits or floor area ratios to promote infill on existing parking lots, requiring residential and commercial unbundled parking (with a minimum price set equal to a monthly transit pass), performance parking, parking benefit districts, residential parking benefit districts (where commuters can pay to park in a resident zone but the money funds improvements to that zone), parking sales taxes, and parking impact fees with the proceeds going to alternative transportation. Localities can pick any 20 points off the menu, but must have the changes in place by January 1, 2012. Localities are also allowed to propose reforms that are not on the menu, and points would be awarded proportional to the reduction in vehicle trips compared to items on the menu.

The bill includes a carrot for localities to go beyond the minimum requirement, after 50 points localities get a bonus for competitive loan and grant programs.

For many localities in California such as San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and San Jose, I would agree with this bill and advocate its passage. But I wonder what rural Siskiyou County, CA (largest city Yreka, population 7,300), as an example, is going to do with this mandate. Where are they going to find 20 points from this menu that make sense for such an area? In this case I don't think the "one size fits all" approach is going to do it.

For these low-density localities, a potential selection could be to cut minimums in half, to 2 spaces per 1000 square feet of building (developers can always build more than the minimum - 5 points), require employers to offer transit passes to employees on a pre-tax basis (costs employers nothing - 2 points), establish a parking benefit district (5 points) to devote parking revenue back to improvements, install meters where parking was crowded (probably not many places except downtowns - 2 points), remove restrictions on mechanical parking and tandem parking (2 points each) because those practices are not likely to be followed, and establish a "shared parking ordinance" for the last two points.

This minimum amount of reform might reduce vehicle trips in rural areas, but it's not likely to make a huge difference like implementing 50 points off of the menu in San Franciso or Oakland would.

I think this bill probably will not pass in California but it would be an interesting change if it did.

Delays involving single tracking

2009-02-27T09:20:00.000-05:00

Like thousands of other Metrorail riders, I was affected by both track equipment derailment incidents last Thursday, which caused single tracking of the Orange line in the morning rush hour periods as well as the evening rush hour. This caused my normal 40 minute train ride home from Eastern Market to West Falls Church to be about an hour and a half. I've requested the incident reports and other records and hope to be able to take a look at them, write up a good article and distribute them soon.

When I was stuck on the way home, I noticed something odd about the way Metro was dispatching trains. Metro was single tracking trains from East Falls Church to West Falls Church, but the backups were all the way back to Rosslyn and beyond. It appeared that every train that was entering the Orange line at Rosslyn was being sent all the way through the single track area to Vienna and back again. For a long segment like East Falls Church to West Falls Church, travel time including clearing switches at both ends could be 10 minutes or longer. This limits the line capacity to one train every 20 minutes in each direction.

The problem is, with a single tracking segment so far from the center of the city, if Metro sends every train through the single track section, it effectively off the capacity of the entire line. If Metro can only send one train through the single track area every 20 minutes, then it can only send one (Orange Line) train every 20 minutes through Metro Center, and only one every 20 minutes can leave New Carrollton.

What if instead Metro had decided to turn every other train around at Ballston? The line before Ballston would travel twice as fast, with a train now able to go every 10 minutes. Some people would have to get off somewhere before Ballston to change to a through train, but everyone getting off at Ballston or earlier would have a shorter ride. There are probably few passengers riding from Vienna to Dunn Loring, so it would make less sense for Metro to turn trains around there to go back to Vienna.

The situation improves a bit more if more trains are turned around, but it's possible that platform capacity at Ballston would be overwhelmed by completely offloading two out of every three trains there.

Based on my discussions with system planners, I know Metro tries to maintain a "one seat ride" for passengers so transfers are minimized. However, I think in this case the passengers would be happy that their seat is traveling twice as fast, even if they might have to wait 10 minutes to transfer if they're going further than Ballston.

I've asked WMATA about this issue and hope they will get back to me soon with something I missed when I thought about it.

Federal Budget Deficits

2009-02-27T07:58:00.001-05:00

I don't have much time to post today, but I would just like to note that based on the graphic on the front cover of The Washington Post, the Federal taxes we pay in 2010 will only pay for $200B worth of discretionary spending out of over $1.4 trillion. In other words, 90% of the taxes we pay ($2.4 trillion worth) are for mandatory entitlement spending and interest on our debt. We're almost reaching the point where all of our discretionary spending (military, education, housing assistance, transportation, etc.) will be deficit financed.

This is similar to a household that earns money to pay the mortgage, car payment, insurance, and other fixed bills, then uses the credit card to pay for food, gas, groceries, and everything else. I think we're nearing a point where I would consider our government bankrupt. Something has got to give. Probably a lot of things together.

On another note, the taxes collected from payroll that are supposed to pay for Social Security and Medicare are about $200 billion dollars short of covering those programs, out of about $1.1 trillion in costs. So we're borrowing from our grandchildren to pay our grandparents.

That's all the time I have.

Transit Prices - Time to go "all you can eat"?

2009-02-26T09:10:00.000-05:00

When you pay for transportation, whether it's for driving a private car or taking mass transit, there's a continuum of payment methods, with "pay-per-use" on one end of the scale, and "unlimited use" on the other.

Does the choice of method matter? It should. People make choices about how they get around based on how much the next trip costs them. With unlimited use, the next trip is free. With pay per use, the next trip can cost a lot, because not only are you paying the cost of an additional trip, but you're paying a fraction of the fixed costs. If we want to encourage transit use and discourage driving (because of externality costs like pollution or congestion, safety and noise), then we should be pricing transit on an unlimited use model, and encouraging pay per use for cars.

Traditionally, cars are almost pure unlimited use pricing. You buy the car up front (or pay a monthly loan or lease), pay registration, property taxes, etc. regardless of how much you use the car, and parking is usually provided free, whether you are a tenant, employee or customer. Your only costs per trip are gas and maintenance, and those you don't even pay at the time you take the trip, but later, when your gas tank is empty or your tires are worn. When you hop in the car, it's easy to not even think about these costs. Psychologically, once you own a car, keep the gas tank filled and maintain it properly, additional trips are "free".

We could change this to price by use: Charge tolls to drive on roads. Charge per use for parking. Daily or hourly parking charges are better for this purpose than monthly contracts. With a monthly contract, parking is already paid for on day one, so all additional days are "free". Other methods are less common: insurance can be priced per mile. Shared-car services like Zipcar charge by the hour, taxicabs charge per trip and mile.

It's possible to make some of these changes without changing the overall costs, so it's not even necessary to get into a cars vs. transit debate. If someone pays $1000 per year in insurance and drives about 12,000 miles per year, it's not really charging them more if you charge $200 plus 6.6 cents per mile. It would encourage people to drive fewer miles, however (for comparison, gasoline including taxes is currently about 8 cents per mile). Also, if apartments typically rent for $1500 a month and include two parking spaces free, it's not an increase if the rent drops to $1300 per month and you pay $100 more per month for a parking space. Parking at work, which used to be unlimited at $120 per month, could be $6 per day against a pre-paid account instead of an unlimited per month charge.

Most people pay per trip for transit in the Washington region. About 35,000 unlimited weekly bus passes are sold per week, and about an eighth as many rail passes. We should implement more convenient, reasonably priced monthly or weekly passes. WMATA's effort to integrate the existing passes with SmarTrip cards is a good start. However, the rail pass is still separate from the bus pass, and the rail pass only makes financial sense for those that ride the longest distances.

The difficulty with rail passes in Washington compared to other systems is distance-based fares. For other systems, the provider chooses a weekly price, which is typically 9-12 single rides. For distance-based fares, how should you choose the price to base it on? If you choose about 10 times the maximum fare, it's a terrible deal for most and you don't end up selling many passes (this is almost what we do currently -- it's $39.00 for a pass and the maximum fare is $4.50). If you choose 10 times the minimum fare, it's expensive for the transit agency, and there's a lot of revenue loss compared to regular fares.

Smartrip cards are smart enough to have customizable weekly passes. You could choose a fare level and pay ten times that amount per week automatically by subscription. All your rides that are less than that would be free, any fare above that amount is deducted from your account balance. This would have the effect of "pay for your commute and the rest is free". This is just like wireless phone service, where you pay for a certain amount of daytime (peak) minutes and get your nights and weekends for free. Right now WMATA has this policy, but there are only two potential fare levels, at around $26.40 for the cheaper "Short Rail" pass (equivalent to commuting downtown from approximately Bethesda), and $39.00 for the more expensive unlimited rail pass (which would be a good deal for anyone commuting downtown from White Flint or further). Someone who commutes a short distance isn't likely to buy one. Additionally, the passes are inconvenient, requiring purchase of a paper farecard, and for the short rail pass, carrying exitfare to make up the difference for each trip.

In addition to having reasonably priced unlimited passes, some transit agencies have taken the idea of unlimited pricing one step further. For example, the Denver area transit agency, RTD, sells an unlimited pass to an entire employer based on the number of employees and the distance from the city's downtown and transit centers. This is a form of insurance that spreads the cost out socially in order to provide a benefit. In this case, the employer typically gets to reduce the number of required parking spaces, and the employees get free transit. The transit agency prices the passes to assure revenue neutrality. For a much lower price per employee thank single pass purchases, everyone gets an unlimited yearly pass. The price per employee is lower (somewhere between 2 and 30% of the price of an annual pass) because the transit agency assumes some people will not use it. Transit agencies still get the same amount of revenue, but instead of paying for each trip, the employees don't pay anything extra. This program reduced the number of parking spaces needed for Colorado University, and increased the number of employees taking public transit downtown. Boulder City staff were happy to talk to me about the program, so I'll be working on a post for the program soon. From the materials she provided to me, the program is like steroids for transit. People are many times more likely to use transit, even buses, when they have the pass. Neighborhoods are allowed to organize and buy passes for everyone on the block. Even though the price of a ECO pass has risen dramatically (RTD has hiked the prices more than 50% since 2003), so has transit ridership and pass usage.

Unlimited passes are also an interesting idea for sporting or entertainment events. In that case, the stadium or ballpark would add a fee for every ticket, transferring the revenue to the transit agency. In exchange, the sporting event tickets would act as a day pass (perhaps after a certain time in the afternoon).

If you change the way people pay for transit and cars, you can still fund both, but switch the incentives so that more people want to take transit and fewer want to drive. Because driving involves pollution, congestion, safety risks, and inefficient land use patterns; reducing driving would be good for society as a whole. Because increased transit use reduces the bad effects of driving, and increases the political will to run more frequent vehicles and expand the network, it's good for society to increase transit use. Unlimited pricing is an effective tool for increasing transit use for the same level of funding.

Metro Finances: Proposed Cuts Take Too Much from District

2009-02-25T08:15:00.000-05:00

According to this presentation which will be discussed before Metro's Special Budget Committee, the previously discussed service cuts leave the District of Columbia with a $2.9M surplus at the end.

This means that the previously proposed service cuts to Metrobus and Metrorail affected the District of Columbia disproportionately through the funding formula.

During the meeting Mr. Graham, Mr. Albert, Mr. Brown and Mr. Giancola, the District's representatives on the committee, should be asking questions about why the District should have service cut more than needed to keep their subsidy the same as last year, while other jurisdictions still need to give up more to balance the budget.

For reference, here are the other jurisdictions and the amount of additional service cuts to non-regional bus service needed to balance the budget:

Jurisdiction	Additional non-regional bus cuts (increases) needed to balance
DC	($2.9M)
Mongomery County	4.7
Prince George's	3.2
City of Alexandria	0.2
Arlington County	1.2
City of Fairfax	0.1
Fairfax County	1.0
Falls Church	0.0
Total	$7.4M

These numbers are the amounts of non-regional bus service that would need to be cut (or added) in order to balance each jurisdiction's Metro budget, after already taking into account the administrative changes proposed in January and the service cuts proposed earlier this month. Non-regional bus lines are ones that don't cross jurisdictional boundaries. For example the U8 (Capitol Heights to Benning Heights) in DC, the 18s (Orange Hunt) and 17s (Kings Park Express) in Virginia, and the R4 (Queen's Chapel Road) in Maryland bus routes. Costs after subtracting fares for non-regional bus lines are paid for directly by the jurisdiction, rather than through the funding formula for rail or bus. Rail's funding formula takes into account population and density, ridership, and number of rail stations. Regional Bus's formula is based on population and density, service hours, the number of miles buses traveled, and ridership. Paratransit is paid for by the rider's home jurisdiction.

From the table, any further cuts are likely to hit Montgomery and Prince George's Counties, while the District may be looking at improving service compared to the previous proposal. WMATA's staff is proposing that service cuts be approved for public comment on March 5th, and that after reviewing public comments either in writing or at public hearings, that the Board approve any selected service reductions on April 23. As always, more to follow.