The following is by Sally Hand who is new to MPW. A law librarian for the past 25 years working in private, governmental and educational settings, Sally is also the Community Outreach Coordinator for Delegate Saqib Ali (D-39). Of course, the views presented here are her own. She and her dog Ginger Jar are residents of Germantown. Welcome!
With the announcement of the new Metro fare hikes on Dec 13th my cost to get to work just went up $1.95 a day, or $39 a month, or $468 a year. I am a middle-class working women who can rearrange my budget to cover this increase and will but it is now cheaper for me to drive into DC, park in DC and drive home than it is to use Metro. I believe that others might give up using the Metro since it is so expensive and the service is erratic.
Since Metro wants so much of my paycheck this is what I would like from Metro:
* Ample parking – either at Metro Stations or at a Park & Rides with frequent bus service
* Buses that travel to the Park & Rides as long as Metro is open (currently the last 124 bus leaves Shady Grove at 8pm – I often have to work late and have to cab it to the Park & Ride)
* Clear announcements that give information
* Train drivers that look before they close the car doors
* Emails that explain the disruption not just say it is cleared
I encourage ridership of the Metro and the ride on buses as the Green way to get to work. There are costs to the environment that Metro can assist healing. My carbon footprint is much smaller using public transportation than if I drove to work everyday. If Metro really wants to be a service to the entire community than they need to look at ways to encourage riders so that there are less cars on the roads these fare increases without service upgrades are just a way to lose ridership ergo losing more money.
P.S. Metro was shocked at the low turnout for the public forum in Reston about the fare increases. Hello, the hearing was not Metro accessible.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Metro Wants More from Me: What I Want from Metro
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2 comments:
Hi, Sally. I like your question, and your answers, too.
The lack of clear announcements is unforgivable, especially for the nation's capital. We have large numbers of tourists from around the world whose English may be okay, but not great. The low audio quality of the announcements make it hard for me, a native English speaker, to understand. I can't imagine how much harder it must be for foreign tourists to understand.
And the substance of the announcements can be equally maddening. They often seem designed not to inform, but to give the illusion of informing. "How can we not tell passengers anything while making them think that we are telling them something?"
I have had one Red Line driver who constantly keeps us updated on why we're stopping, why we're going slow, why she isn't sure if we'll have to hold at the next station, and exactly why it is that people shouldn't lean against the doors (this was news to me). I have called Metro to commend this driver, because she is the only Metro employee I have ever felt treats passengers with respect.
When I moved to the DC area in 1987, our Metro system was clean, passengers were well behaved, Metrobus drivers were among the best drivers in the region, and breakdowns were unusual. It was a system to be proud of.
Two decades later, the system is falling apart.
And rail passengers are treated more like cattle. The new seating system removes seats and even bars for standing passengers to hold onto. On some trains, there is a space near the door where there is neither a place to sit nor a place to hold on to. The only way to avoid getting knocked down by the inevitable jostling of the car is to sit on the floor.
I would like to see a commitment from regional governments (and the federal government, too) to provide Metro with the funding it needs to once again be a first-class system.
And I would like to see a commitment from Metro to running the system efficiently and with integrity, treating passengers with respect.
Let's not get the operating budget confused with the capital budget. The operating budget effectively HAS to balanced every year and comes from both fares and operatinb subsidies from state and local governments. The capital budget is NOT funded by your fares and comes from federal, state, and local governments. The fact that they haven't been providing sufficient capital funding for Metro has nothing to do with the fare increase.
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