Metro Set To Further Annoy It's Best Customers

Metro, following in the footsteps of progressive organizations such as the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), will be enacting new policies designed to cause invoncenience, aggravation, and possibly legal problems, to the kind of customers it likes most: those who own Smart Trip cards. Starting August 29, you will no longer be able to exit a metro station if your Smart Trip balance is below zero.

"We asked if there had been a problem with Metro never recovering negative fares from travelers; [Metro spokesperson Angela Gates] said she'd have to look into that."

-- Dave Jamieson, TBD reporter

A few years back, the RIAA invented the "eff you, frequent flyer" business model by suing the very people who spent the most money on them. While largely a symbolic gesture, since only a couple people actually went to court and most cases were dropped due to them being absolutely insane to sue children in the first place, it set the stage for future acts of desperation by other organizations. Organizations that found themselves with management and cash flow problems, faced with a changing world but unable to keep pace, or just plain stupid.

I think metro falls in the "just plain stupid" category, since they don't really have any competition. They have, apparently, decided that their own hard times have warranted the implementation of the "eff you customer" program, rather than taking the more practical step of getting their shit together. The result of such poorly-thought-out moves is, inevitably, bad press, futher hemmhoraging of revenues as some customers stop using your service, and other collateral damage.

Let's take a look at what this means.

You must use cash to pay ExitFare.

Most people use SmartTrip card because of its convenience, and the ability to pay by credit card. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do the math here. Since you have not ever needed cash to travel by metro for a decade, there's a decent chance you won't ensure you have some on you before you head to work.

SmartTrip cards do not feature an "automatic recharge" feature.

Unlike almost every other "subscription" sort of service on earth, you must manually recharge your smart trip card when it runs out. At a machine. This means, inevitably, this problem is going to happen to everyone.

People don't think about their Smart Trip balance. That's why it's useful.

When you have a SmartTrip card, it's very simple: you go in, and when it goes below zero, you get a warning on your way out. That is a reminder that it's time to recharge. And if you forget, it won't let you go back in again on your next trip. So you refill on your way in. You can't get screwed. You can never find yourself able to get in, but not out. You can never find yourself stuck in a Metro station with no cash, and no legal way to leave. Until August 29th, that is.

It's like the "refuel" light on your car. It reminds you to stop at the next gas station.

But now, you won't get a "refuel" warning any more. Oh, and also, you can only look at the gas guage on your car at the end of a trip, or after you've already gotten on the highway. Because a metro trip can range from $1.60 up to $5.00, there are many, many possible trips for which you'd have sufficient balance to enter, but not exit.

It's like if your car suddenly just died on the side of the road at some point below 1/4 of a tank.

And I don't buy the argument that "people using paper cards have always had to deal with this." You know what's different about a paper card? It has your balance printed on it.

Why?

If you could link your SmartTrip to a credit card to recharge automatically, I don't think most people would care about this. But despite this technology being available for things such as EZ Pass for more than a decade, you can't. This is a whole different problem, but it's amazing that they would implement a policy change such as this one, before enabling automatic recharge. That shows extremely poor judgment.

Metro recently lowered the price of SmartTrip cards from $5 to $2.50, and seems to be rationalizing this move because they fear fraud from people buying SmartTrip cards, and leaving the system with a negative balance. Which could, at most, be $3.40, since the minimum fare if $1.60 and the maximum rail fare is $5.00. And that's even using non-rush for the minimum and rush hour for the maximum.

In the worst case scenario, Metro would be facing someone with a $3.40 negative balance on a $2.50 card. And I'm not even sure that scenario is possible, unless you crossed non-rush-hour to rush-hour lines during your trip.

Would anyone really ever do this? Would this ever be a possible method of "fraud" at any scale other than extremely isolated?

Furthermore, Metro earns tons of money from unused fares, and interest on money spent on transit before it's taken. I would guess the average balance on a SmartTrip card is over 10 bucks, and there must be millions of unused farecards purchased every year (e.g. by tourists, or from people who just toss low-balance farecards). I don't know how much money this is -- but I guarantee you it's far, far more than they could ever stand to lose from a handful of folks who would rather go to CVS and buy a new card, than pay (at most) the 90 cents difference to recharge their own SmartTrip card.


Apart from the insanity of even a tiny fraction of society going to all this trouble to perpetrate a fraud with a theoretical maximum value of ninety cents, what the hell?

If this is your only reason for this move, then why didn't you just price it at $3.50 which will effectively eliminate the, er, "incentive?" Even better, why didn't you just not change the price from $5 in the first place? Do you really think there's a single person on earth who prefers saving $2.50 on the cost of a SmartTrip card, which most people buy exactly once, to the convenience of not facing possible incarceration in a metro station every time they go to work?

Prediction

Monday, August 30. Mayhem. Tens of thousands of people, probably 10-20% of all riders, cannot exit because they entered Metro at rush hour with under $4 on their card (as they probably do approximately 20% of the time).

Three-quarters of these people, the ones with cash, will be pissed as they have to wait in huge lines for the exitfare machine.

The other one-quarter, the ones without cash, will be jumping turnstiles.

Or, Metro station operators will just open the emergency gate and let everyone go through, costing Metro far more in a single day because of the chaos, than they could ever stand to lose.

Google Maps as accurate as year-long NTSB investigation

If I was that worker, I'd get the hell out of there
before someone starts moving the train without warning.

NTSB has released some very exciting documents related to the ongoing investigation into the June 22, 2009 Metro crash that killed 9 people. One of those is a line-of-sight analysis which concludes that the operator would not have had a full view of the rear of the stopped train until they were approximately 470 feet away. The investigation is not expected to be completed for several more months. The picture here is from the report and shows the line of sight from the train.

My analysis included
this awesome photoshopped
aerial view. Where's
yours, NTSB? Huh?

Apparently, it takes the NTSB about a year and god knows how much money to do what I was able to accomplish in about 30 minutes using Google Maps. On June 24, two days after the crash, I posted this analysis of the accident site using only google maps and concluded that "...the operator couldn't even have seen the train until she was within about 500 feet of it!

Yes, I am indeed quoting myself. Thank you, thank you. So with Photoshop and the Internet, I came up with the exact same conclusion as NTSB, almost down to the foot.


I also managed to duplicate those scientific-looking pictures, such as the one you see above, using my cell phone on my way home from work one day, here. Now admittedly, their picture is slightly better because the train it's taken from is not moving, which is evident by the Metro safety worker on the tracks in the picture. I give them points for having Metro workers present, it definitely adds a little "je ne sais quois" to the photo.


However, I would like to submit the following picture from the Silver Spring metro station, which does involve Metro workers walking in the tracks. I realize this has nothing to do with the crash, but I think you will agree the composition is much better than NTSB's pictures.

Metro: Love / H8

Seriously Metro, why the Mount Pleasant hate?

"None of the federal, Maryland, Virginia or D.C. laws apply to us," said [WMATA] Vice Chairman Peter Benjamin. "That's the way it is."

WMATA decided, unceremoniously, to shut down Metro at three Northern Virginia stations over Labor Day Weekend. This interesting move was predicated on the need to perform major surgery on the tracks between Crystal City and National Airport. Inconveniently, I was flying to Maine in and out of National Airport during the window in which Metro would not be open.

This was irritating, mostly because the public announcement was made Tuesday of last week. There was, understandably, a significant reaction from the public upon learning with very short notice that it would be inconvenient or impossible to ride Metro to the airport. WMATA held a conference call on Thursday with its top staff to discuss the communication shortcomings in the wake of this blunder. In the ultimate irony, Metro, which is a publically-funded system, decided that the conference call would be secret.

Getting There

Being able to take Metro to National is one of the main benefits of flying from National, and much of the reason why I'm willing to pay extra to use that airport. So suddenly learning that that benefit had evaporated a few days before my travel did not make me happy in the way that a bank error in your favor does.

Metro offered shuttle service to and from the airport from the Pentagon station. Since my flight left at 8:40 AM on Saturday morning, and Metro opens at 7, this seemed like a dicey proposition at best. We would not be taking Metro. Nor was I excited about the idea of finding a cab at 7:30 AM on a Saturday. The last option, driving, seemed equally risky, since who knows how many people would have to drive for the same reason, making parking questionable. Besides which, I didn't really want to drop another 50 bucks or so on airport parking. After many phone calls and emails, I found a friend who was miraculously both in town over the holiday weekend, and could be convinced to get up at 6:30 to bring us to the airport.

At the airport, we were approached by a reporter from WJLA who quizzed us about the metro closures and how it had affected our travel plans. Yes, actually, it did. It wasn't the end of the world, and it worked out. But it would have been a lot less stressful if we had known well in advance about the closure so we didn't have to scramble to figure out a way to get to the airport. Obviously they did not decide to perform this work only four days before the weekend. This sort of maintenance work is probably scheduled months in advance. Yet nobody, not even some top Metro officals, knew until Tuesday. I can think of no excuse for this, whether it was an oversight or a deliberate act. It is unacceptable.

WMATA later updated their web site to include a more detailed explanation of the closures, and an explanation that Labor Day was in fact historically the weekend when the fewest people ride Metro. You know what? I was a lot less confounded and irritated when I actaully was treated like a rational human being and given an explanation for why this had to be done. Why couldn't you just be straight with everyone at up front? And a few months ago?

Returning from National on Monday morning, we decided to save cab fare since we weren't in a hurry and see how things went with Metro. We followed the yellow signs in National to the metro shuttle pickup. At least until we encountered a sign that was pointing in the direction we had just come. Nice. Luckily, the centripital signage all seemed to converge upon the infromation desk at the airport, so when we found ourselves slightly baffled as to where we should be going, we just asked the lady. The instructions were pretty obvious. Go outside and the bus will pick you up at the beginning of the platform.

If I had been a little more coherent at that moment, after getting up at 4 AM to make my 6 AM flight from Portland, I probably wouldn't have even tried to follow the signs in the first place, but I did because they were there. The busses were exactly where you would expect them to be: on the curb outside baggage claim, with all the other busses. So why on earth did they install a baffling, conflicting maze of signs in the airport, when they could have just had far fewer signs that said "Exit Baggage Claim For Metro Shuttle" or something like that? Or just "Go Outside Where The Busses Are?"

Metro: Communicate. Really.

Metro seems to have a problem with basic communication. Here's my report card for how they did in communicating this service interruption.

Timeliness: fail. 4 days ahead of time for a major holiday weekend? No es bueno.

Quality: fail. No explanation given for the closure at fist.

Usefulness: fail. The signs at National were confusing, conflicting, and franky, unnecessary. Rather than install a maze of arrows pointing us (or failing to do so) to the same place we always go, why not just tell us to go outside?

Plays well with others: N/A. Metro doesn't have any friends left.

Once we got to the metro shuttle, the service was remarkably efficient. Metro advised on their web site that the shuttle would add about 15 minutes to the trip. You know what? It did. There were plenty of shuttles waiting, they left often, and we were at Pentagon exactly 15 minutes after boarding the shuttle.

Here's some really simple advice, which I can hardly believe is necessary. Communicate. I love Metro. It's a great system, better than most in this country. I also understand that maintenance is necessary and you will need to interrupt service sometimes.

But if you can't grasp the most basic concepts of telling us what is going on, you come out smelling like garbage. To turn garbage into roses, all you need to do is stop acting like a communist dictator and let us know what's going on.

Oh yeah, Maine

It was awesome! And altogether too short. There was, unfortunately, no stay of execution for those lobsters above.

Fenty To Metro Riders: "Screw You"

May 5, 2005: "As equipment threatens to become less reliable, it is vitally important to finance additional capital maintenance for both the subway and the bus system." -- Rudolph G. Penner, The Urban Institute, before the Committee on Public Works and The Environment Councel of the District of Columbia.

March 23, 2006: "As a result of its investigation, the Safety Board made the following recommendations: ... Either accelerate retirement of Rohr-built railcars, or, if those railcars are not retired but instead rehabilitated, then Rohr-built passenger railcars should be retrofitted with crashworthiness collision protection that is comparable to 6000-series railcars." NTSB

---

June 22, 2009: Metro trains collide killing 9.

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June 24, 2009: "The only appropriate response is to begin to eliminate the crash-unworthy cars with this year's appropriations." -- Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. The Washington Post

June 26, 2009: "D.C. Metro crash highlights underfunding of public transit systems." The Christian Science Monitor

July 9, 2009: "Fuck you, Washington." -- Adrian Fenty (paraphrased), The Washington Examiner. DC pulls its $50 million share of Metro funding from its budget, jeopardizing $150 milling in matching Federal funds.

---

Because if there's one thing that we can really afford to cheap out on today, two weeks after the worst accident in Metro's history, it's funding Metro.

I am no longer of the opinion that Adrian Fenty and the DC Goverment is a bastion of corruption and lies. Now, I am pretty sure that they're just common-or-garden variety stupid.

MJ's Ghost Boards Monorail At Epcot Center, Exacts Revenge For Captain EO

It was that or my alternative headline, Y2K+9 Bug Cripples Single And Dual Railed Transit Systems Nationwide. But I thought the supernatural angle was more attention-grabbing. Anyhoo, it seems far more than simple coincidence that less than two weeks after the worst crash in the history of the DC Metro system, the less prestigious but equally important Disneyworld Monorail System (DMS) has suffered the worst crash in it's 38-year history, resulting in the death of the train's operator.


Coincidence? Or Paranormal Interference?

There are many similarities between the monorail accident and the WMATA accident. First, the operator or Metro's crashed train was a rookie -- she had only been operating metro trains for a few months. The monorail train's operator, who died in the crash, was a junior at Stetson University. He had only been a "Monorail Pilot" since October. Anyone who's been reading this blog for the last couple weeks knows I don't think that the accident in DC had to do with the operator's experience. I'm just noting the coincidence.

Second, both Metro and DMS include sophistocated computer technology designed to prevent such incidents from ever happening. From the article:

"A former monorail pilot told Local 6 that all Disney monorails are equipped with a sophisticated 'anti-collision' system that automatically stops the trains if they get too close to each other."

Metro's sytem includes thousands of relays that report the position of the trains to a central computer system. DMS's system, on the other hand, uses a sophistocated technology known as "pixellated intelligence." While too complicated to explain here, the basic premise is simple. The trains can actually see each other and are smart enough to stop before they crash.

While it's unclear what may have caused Sunday's failure of the PixTel system, much like the Metro accident, scrimping on safety could have contributed to the seriousness of the problem. There has been much grumbling in recent years that outsourcing of animation at Disney has resulted in lower quality products.

Moving On Then...

Speaking of which, I risked certain death last Wednesday and rode the Red Line metro home from Silver Spring to Fort Totten in the front car. As we hurtled through the crash site at a hair-raising 8 miles per hour, I was able to obtain exclusive pictures showing the view the operator would have had as she approached the stopped traing.

This shot, based on the position of the building to my left, is about 250 feet from the bridge. You can see an aerial view from my original post on the subject. The accident occurred just around the bend on the other side of the bridge. In this picture you can actually see a train coming the other way. It's barely visible now from it's position just south of the bridge. A train on the same track would be even less visible as it would be further to the right.

And so, with this final piece of photographic evidence, the book is closed. The operator had very little time to react when she saw the stopped train. While there is no reason for the catastrophic computer failure to have occurred in the first place, in the future, how about NOT stopping the trains just around the bend on a blind corner? Maybe this is a silly point. I mean, they wait in the tunnels all the time, where there is probably about zero visibility in general. But if you're going to wait right there, why not wait about 100 feet back so someone can see you stopped there... didn't they teach us this in Driver's Education?

No reports yet on whether the Disney accident occurred on a blind corner. But this reporter is expecting yet another coincidence. And yes, I promise I will seek help with my train crash obsession.



RIP Austin Weunnenberg, Monorail Pilot.

You Cannot See Through Trees And Walls

Just in case there is any doubt that the operator had very little time to see the stopped train, we go back to the wonder of Google Street View (since I am too lazy to go there myself and take a picture).

The picture below is standing on the bridge on New Hampshire Avenue looking north. The stopped train was actually a couple hundred feet south of here. We are looking north, while the train operator would have been looking from the north towards us. But obviously, if we can't see around the corner to the north, then she could not see around the corner to the south. You can click the photo to see a larger version.

Finally, here is another version of the same overhead view showing lines of sight from further back, to the spot where the other train was stopped. The lines pass through buildings and trees. There is no way the operator could have had more than about 500 feet to see the stopped train. The building on the left from the street view is the closest building to the bridge here, barely 200 feet. The building on the right from the first image is the large building near where the train is photographed in the satellite image. It is about 400 feet from the bridge. This is basically the limit of visibility.

But the operator would have not even have been able to see the train from there - the train was stopped 200 feet further south of the bridge, further around the corner and also obstructed by the bridge itself.

I Scooped NTSB

This is just too good. Today, in the Washington Post:

Hersman said investigators are also examining the actions of Jeanice McMillan, the novice operator of the striking train, who was among those killed in the wreck. The steel rails show evidence that McMillan activated the emergency brakes 300 to 400 feet before the pileup, which occurred on a curved section of track between the Takoma and Fort Totten stations, Hersman said.

From my post yesterday, I said...

So if the second train was stopped a couple hundred feet on the other side of the bridge, just outside the visible line, the operator couldn't even have seen the train until she was within about 500 feet of it!

Who needs dozens of forensics experts when you've got google maps?

Some reports from passengers in the moving train said that they felt a bump of some kind before the impact but don't remember the train slowing down. The bump they felt was almost certainly the emergency brakes being activated, which would be jarring at that moment when first applied, much like slamming on the brakes on your car (your OLD car, the one that doesn't have anti-lock brakes) before it skids. This also indicates to me that the operator reacted about as quickly as is humanly possible given the set of circumstances.

Metro is safe: You have better odds of winning Powerball

I am sure everyone is stunned by the accident that so far has taken the lives of 7 riders on Metro's red line yesterday. This was the worst accident in Metro's 32 year history. One of my coworkers was on the train that struck the stationary train. Luckily, she was not seriously injured, but it struck close to home. Though I usually drive to work, I take Metro sometimes, and I could easily have been on the same train.

Without question, Metro needs to figure out what caused this accident and ensure that the malfunction can never happen again. Metro has automated safety controls that are supposed to ensure that human error cannot cause such an accident. While we still don't know exactly what happend, clearly, both the automated and human controls failed to prevent this accident.

But I would like to point out that Metro is safe. This was the first accident involving loss of life to a passenger since 1983, and only the second such accident in the system's history. There have been four other accidents in which WMATA employees lost their lives, and one other in which passengers were injured.

Metro served 540 million passenger trips between it's opening in 1977 and the first accident killing 3 in 1983. For that period of time, your chance of being killed on a metro ride was 1 in 180 million.

Between 1984 and now, Metro has served 5.2 billion passenger trips. Seven people lost their lives in yesterday's accident. In that time, your chance of being killed on a Metro ride was 1 in 750 million.

In the history of the entire system, 5.8 billion rides, 10 passengers have lost their lives due to an accident, a chance of 1 in 580 million for any given ride.

Your chance of winning the Powerball jackpot each time you play is 1 in 195 million. You are three times more likely to win Powerball with one ticket, than you are to be killed on a given metro ride.

If you ride Metro twice a day, five days a week, your chance of being killed on Metro in a year is about 1 in 1.5 million.

Your chance of being killed by lightning strike in a year is about 1 in 3.8 million.

Your chance of dying of the flu in a year is about 1 in 14,000.

Your chance of being killed in a car accident in the DC metro area in a year is about 1 in 6,700.*


*Estimate: 280,000,000 US Residents. Approximately 42,000 deaths due to automobile accidents annually. Approximately 8,200,000 people in the Baltimore/Washington metropolitan area. This equates to about 1,230 automobile deaths annually in the area for 8,200,000 residents.

Metro Accident History

January 13, 1983 - 3 dead, 25 injured
Janary 6, 1998 - 1 dead (WMATA employee)
November 3, 2004 - 20 injured
October 2005 - 1 dead (WMATA employee)
May 2006 - 1 dead (WMATA employee)
November 2006 - 2 dead (WMATA employee)
January 2007 - 16 injured
June 2009 - 7 dead, 70+ injured (as of this writing)