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San Francisco board approves “parking toolbox” study

2009-10-21T14:20:00.001-04:00

The San Francisco County transportation authority board recently approved this extensive on street parking management and pricing report.

As part of the report, the study team put together some neighborhood case studies that are relevant in Washington, DC, Arlington, and other parts of the region.

Some interesting findings from the report: Resident permit parking fees are $76 per year, more than five times as high as Washington, DC. According to the report, this price is set based on the costs of administering the program, and requires the largest amount of parking officer enforcement effort. If San Francisco says it costs $76 per vehicle to administer the program, why is DC only charging $15?

San Francisco allows up to four permits at the base price, but households (if they qualify for an exemption) can pay a graduated rate for additional permits. Visitor permits are available in short durations (as low as two weeks) and are priced at around $40 per month. Permit zones appear to be limited to walking distance, minimizing cross-commuting. The rules for setting up zones are similar to Arlington’s, which require a certain amount of observed outsider parking, parking congestion, and neighborhood approval.

On-street parking occupancy in some areas was very high. All reported surveys showed the Cow Hollow area as 90% occupied or more. The study also found that compliance with traditional time limits was low. Average vehicle duration at 30-minute meters was over 40 minutes, and at 1-hour meters was over 85 minutes.

The study team interviewed pedestrians in the study areas. They found that more than half of people surveyed were non-drivers. Among drivers, many reported having to search for 5 minutes or more to find parking. In the most parking-constrained neighborhood, less than 40 percent of drivers expected to find free parking.

In a mail-reply survey, residents rated availability (ease of finding a space) as the most important parking attribute, with cost of metered parking rated below safety, appropriate time limit and convenience. When asked to rate their experience parking, availability was at the bottom, with cost rated a better experience than time limits, information, and the availability of various payment options.

The survey results imply that residents would be willing to pay more for spaces that are more convenient and available. Among availability, convenience, and neighborhood improvements, availability beat convenience and improvements in forced-choice questions.

Businesses also rated availability highest in importance, with cost also rated below time limits, convenience and safety. “Being able to find a parking space more quickly” was rated by businesses as the improvement customers would be willing to pay extra for, with “extended time limits” running a close second. More than 50% of businesses surveyed said they would be more likely to support an increase in parking meter rates if a portion were dedicated to neighborhood improvements.

The recommendations also read like the Shoup model of parking management: variable prices, extended time limits, devoting a part of the revenue to the neighborhood.

Something "Infosnacky" for a change

2009-10-16T13:28:00.001-04:00

I don't blog much about the data and stuff anymore, working on parking and transit issues takes up most of the blog time I have.

But I saw this and wanted to share. What a fantastic presentation of data.

Some really interesting things going on there, click on any profession and it will expand, you can type a search, breaks down by male/female, etc.

For example, type "fa" and look at what happened to farming. It used to take about 50% of the US workforce to grow crops, now it's down below 2%.

What's an "operative", by the way? There sure were a lot of them in the 1960s and 1970s.

Petition regional governments for more Metro funding

2009-10-09T15:09:00.000-04:00

If you don't have time to read, click here to sign Coalition for Smarter Growth's petition to local government officials asking for more financial support for Metro.

We've recently discussed Metro's funding shortfalls, in the current fiscal year (about $22M based on declining ridership and revenues), for next fiscal year (projected at about $100M due to high cost growth in Metroaccess and employee compensation, and a reduction in advertising revenues), and about $3B for the next 10-year capital funding cycle (where the needs include track maintenance, new storage and maintenance facilities, and new railcars/buses).

Coalition for Smarter Growth, a little organization (only five staff members) with a big impact, now has a petition to local elected officials to request that they fully fund Metro’s needs. Here’s the text of the petition:

“I urge you to commit to fully funding our region's Metro System, which is the lifeblood of the Washington region. Our roads and transit systems depend on your leadership to maintain Metro as a world-class transit system.

Please:
1) Commit to providing Metro with sufficient annual operating funds.
2) Meet Metro's needs for $11.4 Billion in capital improvements over the next ten years. This money should come from all levels of government -- local, state, and federal.

This effort is crucial to keeping Metro operating. With the recent Board guidance to General Manager Catoe, he is required to propose enough cost reductions, including service cuts, to balance the budget for next year. The Board wants to consider only small inflationary fare increases and does not expect an increase in operating subsidy next year. With the two sources of revenue constrained, that could mean fairly substantial cuts in service. We need to ask our local elected leaders to make a commitment to Metro. Please sign the petition today.

Streetcar on the “Honor System”

2009-09-28T23:53:00.003-04:00

Like most other rail street transit systems in the world, the DC streetcar should be on the honor system. This system requires passengers riding the streetcar to have proof that their current ride is paid for, but does not require riders to show their ticket unless asked by an inspector. This system is extensively used in Europe and in various American cities like San Diego, Portland, Phoenix, Dallas, and Los Angeles.

Honor system boarding allows people to board at any door of the vehicle and speeds up vehicle travel speed. If you have a valid day or week pass or prepaid cash ticket, nothing would be required. Just board and go. If you have a Smartrip card, readers at each door would be available to register your payment. Cash fares could be accepted at the driver’s door only, but this could be discouraged by increasing the fare (for example, by charging $2.00 at the farebox instead of $1.50 at the station machine). The goal would be to encourage most riders to prepay their fares so the boarding process can happen smoothly and with a minimum of delay.

Fare verification would require random inspection of tickets. First-time non-payers could be warned, repeat offenders could be fined or (in rare cases) asked to leave the train. A reasonable first fine (after a warning) could be $50, with a maximum $200 fine. Citations could be paid by mail or contested at the Metro or DDOT office, with judicial appeals available if required by law. I’m not sure what to do about passengers that are not carrying photo ID. Some systems have difficulty compelling fare evaders to show ID, at worst they could be asked to leave the vehicle.

Having enough inspections to give people more than a 10% chance of being asked to show payment is a reasonable balance `between too many inspectors and rampant fraud. With this level of inspection, the TCRP reports that most transit operators see between 1 and 6% non-payment rate. For example, Phoenix’s new light rail transit line reports about a 1% non-payment rate with about a million rides per month. For DC’s streetcar lines, three to five full-time inspectors for each line should be sufficient to provide this level of coverage, supplemented by additional temporary staff inspectors occasionally to provide more robust coverage and audits.

Inspections would be kept brief, paper fare media could be inspected visually, and Smartrip payment or passes could be validated by hand-held readers. To reduce confrontation and security risks, inspectors might be sent in pairs, boarding the vehicle at both doors and meeting in the middle.

There are some alternatives to the honor system. One would be to require all passengers to board at the front door and pay or show a pass, involving longer waiting times at stops. Another would be to have a conductors at each door (I saw this in Germany) which would increase operating costs. Finally, DDOT could somehow limit access to streetcar stations except through faregates, which is likely impractical or impossible without encasing the station and providing street-side doors for boarding like in Curitiba.

Since these alternatives are slower or more expensive, I recommend that DC follow other cities and use proof of payment/honor system for collecting streetcar fares.

London’s “Spider Maps”

2009-09-28T23:53:00.001-04:00

Transport for London has these great bus maps that show routes traveling in all directions from major transit nodes.

These maps are more abstract than the previously mentioned station-oriented bus maps. They combine several useful features:

1. A local area walking map, showing the location of the different bus stops keyed to a table of routes

2. A schematic route map for the bus, showing routing to other transit nodes in the area

3. A table of routes leaving from that node, either daytime or nighttime routes

These maps, Metro’s station area maps, Los Angeles Metro’s “12 Minute” maps (discussed here), and improved bus schedules are all created by CHK America, Inc.

Some issues with this mapping method:

You have to name the “dots”. Could DC residents agree on what to call the many new places we’d have to represent as a dot on a map? Or would the dot names become conglomerations, like some Metro station names?

Our bus service seems more complicated. Some routes only travel certain times or have “turn-back” service. For example, there are some Metrobus routes that operate only two or three trips a day. Is it better or worse to put them on the map?

Our buses are not as frequent as London’s. This kind of map is most useful if the rider only has to worry about routing and not schedule. Once a rider has to worry about bus schedule and timetables, it’s likely this won’t be enough information.

Infosnack and Greater Greater Washington Mentioned in the Post

2009-09-27T00:12:00.001-04:00

I was mentioned in the Washington Post. Woot. Probably because Unsuck DC Metro mentioned me or perhaps Lena Sun of the Post has my business card after I talked to her at a WMATA board meeting, before I was writing more heavily for Greater Greater Washington. See this article, "Catoe should make gadfly bloggers his new best friends". We should convene a meeting of the WMATA bloggers and strategerize or something. I'm still looking to meet the bloggers from DCist, Metro Man, Why I Hate DC and We Love DC.

Board to Catoe: Cut service to balance the budget

2009-09-23T12:32:00.001-04:00

According to this draft resolution, the Board will consider providing the following guidance to GM Catoe for preparing the FY 2011 budget, which starts next July:

Assume that jurisdiction subsidies will not likely increase

Assume a fare increase in line with inflation, approximately a 3% increase

Determine whether the FY 2011 budget can be balanced by funding preventive maintenance with capital funds, and assess how that affects the capital program

Propose how to keep MetroAccess costs from growing unsustainably

Recommend how to adjust rail and bus service levels to provide a balanced budget

The last item is key. Once you’ve put fare increases above inflation and government assistance off the table, you have to find the money either through cutting service or some other Metro expense. Since last year’s budget was mainly balanced by cutting non-service Metro expenses, it seems unlikely that much more will be possible, leaving Metro’s staff in the uncomfortable position of recommending severe service cuts.

As we discussed earlier, we prefer a balanced approach, with the burden shared evenly between subsidies, fares and service cuts. We also strongly endorse measures to keep the growth of MetroAccess costs down, as well as working with local departments of transportation to speed up bus service, allowing fewer buses to provide the same level of service.

Arlington installs better meters

2009-09-15T13:16:00.000-04:00

In some Arlington locations, drivers are now able to pay by credit card, right at the curb. Unlike the multi-space pay and display meters showing up around the region, these parking meters are conveniently located right at each parking space, and do not require the driver to place a receipt on their dashboard.

The county is trying the new meters out for a 3 or 4-month pilot program.

The new meters are a drop-in replacement for the county’s existing parking meters. A video I can’t find again shows how they can be replaced in less than 30 seconds. The old meter is unlocked and the top and guts are removed, the new guts and a new top are installed. The meters use existing coin boxes and poles. According to Arlington County, the new meters are about $500 each. They are solar powered, accept credit cards, and do not need to have supplies like receipt paper periodically replaced.

The brochure states that the meters can be administered remotely, report errors or malfunctions by text message, and can even accept cell phone or contactless credit card payment.

Arlington is currently undergoing a series of public review and board approval cycles for their draft Master Transportation Plan. In the Parking and Curbspace Management element (PDF) of the draft plan, Arlington is contemplating a change to Performance Parking as one of its curbspace management tools. The draft element needs to be approved by the County Board (scheduled for November 14, 2009) before it will be official guidance for staff to draft revisions to county ordinances.

Assuming the Parking element is approved with something resembling Performance Parking, Arlington’s new meters would permit adjustment of meter rates at different times of day, and report data that allows staff to measure the relative popularity of different meters which would allow them to adjust rates based on demand.

Metro Budget Possibilities

2009-09-14T13:16:00.000-04:00

Metro's 2011 budget starts out about $100M in the red from a preliminary analysis, but the General Manager has to submit a balanced budget to the Board by December. Here's some things he could consider:

Revenues: A fare increase is unavoidable this year. Metro should increase all fares by some base amount, about 5%. For Smartrip bus fares, this is about a nickel, maybe a dime. For cash bus fares, $1.50 is a reasonable increase that makes the cash payment easy to manage in exact change. According to data obtained from Metro, less than 15% of Metrobus riders pay cash. For Metrorail, off-peak fares should increase a dime at the low end to $1.45, and a fifteen cents at the high end to $2.50. Peak Metrorail fares should increase fifteen cents at the low end to $1.80, and the maximum fare should increase fifty cents to $5.00. Parking fees should increase a minimum of 5% (about 25 cents), and the Board should study whether parking garages that are completely full should have higher parking fees to manage demand. Even the bike locker fee should be increased by $5 (to $75 per year), with higher increases targeted to stations that have a waiting list.

The fare increases should have a broad base component, ensuring that all riders contribute to keeping Metro's budget balanced, and a targeted component to (1) overcrowded Metro services (like parking, peak rail and bike lockers), and (2) segments that are relatively price insensitive (like peak-hour commuters). This kind of fare increase should raise around $65M, about half of the amount raised by a much more targeted fare increase in 2008. Since Metro already assumed a $34M fare increase, that's $31M more than previously stated.

Subsidy: Last year, in one of the worst economies since WWII, Metro's funding partners were able to contribute an additional 3%, or $16M. This year, with the economy starting a recovery, we should expect the same or more. It is not fair or equitable to expect Metro's customers, who do not select the members of the Board or participate meaningfully in Metro's governance, to bear the primary burden of keeping the transit system solvent through fare increases or service cuts.

If the Board is unable or unwilling to hold down cost growth in areas like employee compensation (up $53M a year) or paratransit (up $20M), then the Board should be able or willing to go to its local governments and ask for the money those increases require. In discussions, Board members often treat this cost growth as unavoidable, but the experience with BART shows that it is possible to constrain the growth of labor costs, and the staff has repeatedly discussed ways to reduce Metroaccess costs. With the riders expected (as suggested above) to contribute about 10% more than last year, it is only fair that the subsidy should be increasing at about the same rate. Metro's funding partners should be expected to contribute no less than the increase in paratransit service, or $20M, but really it should be closer to $30M, or about 6% of the subsidy last year (subsidy levels typically increase every year, while fares increase only some years, that's why it's not 10%).

Cost reduction: According to this presentation, reducing Metroaccess to the mandated 3/4 mile ADA corridor would save $2.8M per year or more. Another idea would be to ask jurisdcitions to stop dropping their own federally subsidized paratransit programs, and directing their constituents to use Metroaccess, as the District did last year. Metro could also implement a mandated 2-3% cost reduction effort in all departments except public safety, which would save about $3M per year. The board could decide to implement the "escalator to stairs" concept, with a delay between when the escalators are no longer maintained and the capital expense to convert them to stairs, saving them up to $1M per year. They could implement the cost reduction strategy of closing underutilized station entrances on Metrorail, as proposed last year for a savings of about $1M per year. They could continue to propose cutting Metrobus lines that underperform, or jurisdictions could offer to take them over, as Fairfax and Arlington Counties did last year. Finally, they could propose cutting Metrorail service frequency outside of rush hour, going to 15 minute headways on weekdays and Saturdays during the daytime, which could save another $7.5M per year. Some of these service cuts are painful, but the budget gap is huge.

The total of everything above is about $75M per year, so the GM and the Board are going to have to find even more cost reductions, more subsidy increases or more fare increases than what I've mentioned above. It's going to be a tough budget year.

Preliminary Metro Budget Forecast

2009-09-11T12:51:00.001-04:00

As reported in the Washington Post, Metro’s staff released a report for the Board’s Finance Administration and Oversight committee meeting this Thursday. Next year will certainly be a challenging year for Metro. According to the report, even after an inflationary fare increase of 4-6%, and continued deferral of preventive maintenance, Metro’s supporting jurisdictions would still be required to chip in almost 20% more than last year’s budget ($107M). Since such a large jurisdictional subsidy increase is almost certainly not going to happen in this budget climate, we will likely be looking at a much larger fare increase as well as debates over service cuts.

Fortunately, the Board has a lot more time to contemplate budget-balancing measures this time around. Last year, the Board ended up with a very compressed schedule, forcing the jurisdictions to come up with budget-balancing service cuts for non-regional Metrobus routes only. Under pressure from riders, the board implemented limited cuts while funding the remaining gap through borrowing, increases in subsidies, and administrative cost reductions.

What’s driving this deficit? In short, higher costs and lower revenues.

Due to contractual obligations, Metro needs to pay its workers about 3% more than last year, from promotions as well as cost of living increases. That’s about $20M of the gap.

The cost of Metro’s pension plan, health care (retirees and current workers) and other benefits contribute about $33M to the gap. Without more information about Metro’s union agreements, it’s hard to say much more about these issues.

Metroaccess, WMATA’s paratransit service for the disabled, has been increasing in cost rapidly this past decade, up to almost $100M per year in costs, and contributing $19.7M to the budget gap. Because paratransit fares are limited by law to double the equivalent fare by transit, very little of this cost is paid by riders, typically 5-6%. This budget item is expected to grow as the population ages and riders from other jurisdictions choose to use Metroaccess as opposed to services in their home jurisdiction. For example, passenger trips in 1998 were about 250,000, while budgeted trips in 2009 were 1.8 million and are projected to grow to 2.5 million in 2011. In the meantime, Metroaccess expenses in 1998 were about $10M, in 2009 were $78.5M, and in 2011 are expected to be $98.6M.

The costs mentioned above are structural. Without changes in Metro’s employee compensation agreements and in the way Metroaccess is delivered, those budget items will increase every year for the foreseeable future. Increases in ridership, fares, and jurisdictional subsidies should be structured to provide for a reasonable amount of growth in employee compensation and contracted paratransit service.

Energy costs continue to increase, contributing about $10M to the budget gap. This budget item is subject to fluctuations in the energy market.

Revenues: Metro calculates that ridership will grow about 1% from last year after accounting for the effect of a fare increase. Combined with a 4-6% fare increase, Metro calculates that about $44M in new revenue will be available next year. However, all of this increase in revenues is wiped out due to a drop in advertising and other revenue.

Coming up, where Metro could save money and what a fare increase proposal could look like.

Metro Customer Service Complaints

2009-09-11T12:49:00.001-04:00

At a meeting of a Metro board planning committee (audio), on Thursday Metro staff presented the results of the track maintenance this past Labor Day weekend. According to the staff member giving the report, the track repair was completed successfully, and the shuttle service provided was a success.

However, Metro Board Member Jeff McKay(?)'s experience with the shuttle service was anything but smooth. According to Mr. McKay, he and dozens of other customers waited 35 minutes for a shuttle from Rosslyn, and when it arrived, there were four of them at the same time.

When the customers finally arrived at the Pentagon station platform, they found out that the train had left just a couple of minutes before, taking only three people, and the wait for the next train would be 40 minutes. Mr. McKay asked the station manager why there was no communication between the station level and the street level, where a bus supervisor could have alerted the station and train operator to hold for incoming passengers. According to McKay, the station manager told him that due to a new safety policy, he was not allowed to use his cell phone (this is not accurate - the new policy only applies to vehicle operators, not station managers).

Another Board member (Catherine Hudgins of Fairfax?) asked Metro staff about other customer complaints recieved that weekend. Staff said that they received only 90 customer service complaint phone calls that weekend, which was pretty good considering their ridership. The only problem is that the customer service phone line is only open from 8am to 5pm, M-F. My calls to that line outside of business hours were directed to call back later, with no option to leave a message.

Staff also did not mention the customer service complaints they recieved from other methods. Metro accepts customer service complaints via the web. Since last year, they have returned emails to the customer service email address without response.

Unlike other government agencies in the area like Arlington County (@ArlingtonVA), DDOT (@DDOTDC) and other transit agencies like BART (@SFBART), Metro's twitter account doesn't follow anyone, and to my knowledge has only responded once via Twitter to a customer complaint, when I directly brought the customer's complaint to the attention of Metro by another means. Other companies like Comcast track traffic on Twitter to get a sense of their customer's complaints and needs.

So is Metro doing enough to listen to customers? Should the complaint line have a voicemail option? Should WMATA listen to what its customers are saying on Twitter or is that a waste of time?

Fairfax conducts economics experiment

2009-08-31T14:09:00.000-04:00

As part of the current fiscal years’ budget balancing measures, Fairfax County raised the price of express bus routes 380, 595 and 597 from $3.00 each way to $7.00 each way. Their exact reasoning was not publicly stated, though I believe it had something to do with the recent increase in federal transportation subsidy from $120 per month to $230 per month. With the transportation subsidy, round-trip travel less than about $12 per day is essentially free, providing a means for local governments to get additional revenue without losing much ridership. This depends on there not being close substitutes and on your ridership being primarily government workers. On two of these express bus routes, Fairfax found this combination and was able to nearly double revenue. The third one saw ridership plummet.

Because this provided an interesting economics experiment, I obtained ridership data from Fairfax County for the increased fare lines, as well as three other lines unaffected by the change. I obtained data for the months of June and July. Other than the change in fares, there was no change in service frequency or schedule.

The baseline data showed a slight increase in ridership from June to July. Average ridership grew between 1.75% and 7.8% for lines 171, 401 and 950. There was not a change in fare for these lines.

For lines 595 and 597, which travel between park and rides in Reston and Pentagon/Crystal City, respectively, the lines experienced modest drops in ridership, about 20%. Combined with nearly doubling of fares, the change resulted in a net revenue gain for the county, nearly doubling. This is probably due to the high government employees ridership and lack of close substitutes for these lines. The nearest substitute other than driving would be to take a bus to West Falls Church, take the Orange line and then transfer to the Blue line, a “three seat” ride taking approximately the same amount of time (but with three vehicles, it’s more likely that one of them would have a problem).

In contrast, ridership on line 380, from Franconia/Springfield to the Pentagon, was cut by almost 80%, and average revenue was cut in half. Although the ridership is likely a lot of government workers, the Blue line provides the same trip with a much better frequency, about the same travel time, a more comfortable ride, and after the fare change, about half the cost.

These results show that it’s sometimes possible to get more revenue by raising fares, but the results depend heavily on the circumstances. Fairfax should reconsider its decision to raise fares so heavily, at least on the 380. Where there are close substitutes, large fare increases can actually decrease revenues and are counterproductive. Now there are fewer people riding the 380 and paying more each, so the county has to subsidize the bus line even more.

UPDATE: The county has informed me that they are studying a new variation of the 380 line to visit more park and rides and charge a lower fare. This is in the preliminary stages so it would still need to be vetted by Supervisors for impact on their constituents. It is still a very, very rough draft plan.

Metro trip planner problems

2009-08-26T06:50:00.001-04:00

Other than wanting to find out if they could be paid, the other reason Metro said they were not working on partnering with Google for their transit mapping service was the quality and availability of Metro’s own trip planner.

Most of the time, when I use the trip planner for rail trips, the results are fairly accurate. The interface is clunky but improving, and it seems to assume an unreasonably long time to make a transfer. This is probably a design decision to ensure that even the slowest-moving customers can catch their train.

I recently was invited out to dinner at a restaurant at Fairfax Corner, out in the Fair Oaks area (see map). Using the Metro trip planner gave some interesting results, to say the least. If you’d like to try this, the search was from “Eastern Market” to “4250 Fairfax Corner Ave [Fairfax, VA]” leaving at 4:20pm on a workday. Here are the trip planner’s suggestions:

View Larger Map

1. Take the Orange line to Vienna, wait 28 minutes to take the 623 past the restaurant (there’s a stop about 0.3 miles from the restaurant), then get off at a park and ride and wait 24 minutes for the 605 going back the way you came, stopping at the restaurant you passed. Total time: 1:59.

2. Take the Orange line to West Falls Church, wait a few minutes and take the 505 to Reston, then wait 49 minutes to transfer to the 605 to the restaurant. Total time: 2:50.

3. (This is the really funny one) Take the Orange line to Vienna, wait 9 minutes to take the CUE-GOLD bus in a closed loop, arriving back at Vienna, then wait 57 minutes to take the 621 to the restaurant. Total time: 3:03, of which almost two hours is pure waste. It might as well have said, “Go to the Ugly Mug and drink for an hour and a half, then take the Orange line . . .”

I looked into how stable this trip was, by varying the start time. Earlier departures resulted in earlier closed-loop rides on the CUE bus system, until the trip planner stopped providing that helpful suggestion (it only gave two options at that point). Later trips shifted to suggesting that instead of continuing on the Orange line to Vienna, I should get off at East Falls Church and take a bus (the 2) to Vienna (which takes 50 minutes instead of 10).

The real solution, after studying Fairfax Connector’s bus map (large PDF), three bus schedules and calling the customer service phone number, is to take itinerary #1, get off a little beyond the restaurant and walk back along the route. It’s less than a half mile and I’m in fair shape. Takes about an hour and a half.

Of course, without Google Maps providing transit directions, it’s not a given that Google would do any better. But Google has the incentive and resources to get their trip planner right. They’re serving trip planner results for most of the country now, and problems with their search algorithm would affect many more riders than just Metro.

Others were able to point out very strange results from the planner, such as the suggestion to take a bus, Green line and Yellow line trains from “Greenbelt Center SC” to Huntington Metro station. The routing was correct, but it took over 7 hours for the train to get from Greenbelt to Fort Totten, and over an hour to get from Fort Totten to Huntington (This was searched on 8/17/2009).

What’s the strangest thing you’ve seen? Is the trip planner helpful? Please share your funny (strange or ha ha) trip planner results in the comments.

Metro posts bus information online

2009-08-17T13:21:00.000-04:00

Metrorail stations contain very informative bus maps showing the routes around a particular station. We recently looked at those at asked what additional bus map information you would find useful online. Metro decided to take our suggestion and post the station bus information maps online on each station's webpage. They haven't posted all of the information that you can get in stations, but there's a lot there.

For example, here's the map from Dupont Circle (PDF):

One of the most useful part of the map is the table of bus frequencies. It shows which buses just aren't operating late at night on the weekends. It also helps sort out the buses that travel once per hour (you should probably consult a schedule or trip planner and show up early) compared to the ones that travel every 10 minutes (just show up). This is great for people that are unfamiliar with the bus system but live or work near a Metro station. The station may have great service by bus as well as rail, but it's not always clear from the large system map what lines are available at what times, or which lines travel frequently enough to be convenient.

The Dupont map also shows, in yellow, the routes of buses that carry travelers from the station. So far, many other stations' maps don't contain the yellow lines, and instead just display a general downtown bus map. In the future, it would be great if Metro were able to post the same maps for other stations, which they already have in stations. But the other stations' maps do contain the tables, diagrams showing the locations of bus stops near the station, and more.

Metro's starting to develop the kinds of information technology that help people learn to use the bus system to its full potential. We have the full system maps to give the overall picture, the station maps to help people that frequent a station take a bus instead of driving to the station, the online trip planner to help plan trips, and NextBus to make waiting for the bus more productive and less unpredictable. Pretty soon, we'll have flash passes available on Smartrip, automatic reloading of fare media, and online Smartrip management, which will let riders put fare payment on autopilot if they so choose.

What other information should be online? I'm angling for a "12-minute" style map. If I had more time and better data-manipulation capability to deal with the 20 megabytes of text files in the Google Transit Specification data, I would be looking to make custom "stem and leaf" bus schedules.

Crossposted from Greater Greater Washington

Metro plans Bike/Pedestrian Study

2009-08-12T14:00:00.000-04:00

Metro's planning department recently held a community meeting to seek input on bicycle and pedestrian access to Metrorail stations. If you're interested in providing your input, please take the online survey.

Over the next 20 years, Metro ridership is expected to grow significantly (up 40% from 2005). Kristen Haldeman, the project manager, said that the expected growth would make the Inauguration Day crowds a daily experience. It's going to be impossible to handle that kind of ridership if people try to get to the Metro stations with the same driving mode share we have today. There aren't enough parking spaces (parking is about 90% full on a typical weekday, with some VA stations at over 100% full*), there isn't much land to build more parking garages, and Metro doesn't have the money to build more garages.

That's why Metro is starting this project. They're concentrating on stations where a large portion of people driving come from very short distances, typically 3 miles or less, and figuring out what Metro or local jurisdictions can do to encourage them to walk or bike. Sometimes the solution will be fixing some sort of connectivity issue, like a nearby trail that doesn't have an obvious or safe route to the station. Sometimes it will be just a matter of providing signs from the station to the trail or vice versa.

They're also looking at improving bike storage at stations, with better lockers, bike cages or improved or expanded racks. They're also looking at coordinating with Smartbike at downtown destinations so you can ride from your final station to your destination. A lot of these improvements are going to go into Metro's 10-year capital needs inventory, and be part of the recommendations staff makes to the Board for capital funding.

The better portion of the evening was spent discussing the consultants' station typology. They took all stations in the system and tried to find similar characteristics and an example station. Then, they will develop recommendations for those example stations and see if those recommendations are applicable to the others in the category. The categories are given in the presentation. If this method is successful it will save Metro and the consultants a fair amount of time, so it's important that the categories and example stations be selected accurately.

A look at the categories (PDF) illustrates the wide variety in stations, from freeway-dominated Franconia-Springfield, to towering Ballston, from "campus" oriented Medical Center to suburban West Hyattsville. The consultants were especially interested in getting feedback about the categorization as well as the selection of example stations, so please take a look at that and provide it in the comments.

Metro is interested in your opinions on access to Metrorail stations by bike or foot, the survey is collecting data. I'm going to point out this article to the Metro project manager so if you leave comments here she might read them.

The project team will collect data until August, then investigate the model stations and best practices from other cities. They'll draft recommendations and develop cost estimates until November, then an implementation strategy in January. By March, Metro expects to have a final plan to present to the community and the Board.

*Meaning that some people leave during the day but others come and take their spaces.

What’s left for WMATA and Google Transit?

2009-07-20T14:00:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post reported back in March that Metro had finally decided to release its transit schedule and routing information using the open Google Transit Feed Specification format.

But a little while ago, I tweeted that WMATA and MBTA were the last major agencies not to have joined the popular Google Transit service. In fact, of the transit agencies listed under “Heavy Rail”, “Light Rail”, and “Major Bus”, about 85% of the average weekday ridership is on transit systems that have a partnership with Google.

Back in March, Metro released its information under fairly restrictive terms of service, and then basically stopped working on the issue.

Metro should continue working with Google to determine what needs to be changed about Google’s transit data sharing agreement, and then sign the agreement as soon as practical. Now that the new iPhone OS and Android phones support transit directions using Google Maps, that’s another way people can figure out how to get there using transit, and that’s what Metro is all about.

Coming up: What’s in the Metro data license and the Google data license?

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