The MT Position

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

Have you ever heard the saying if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Lately I feel that way about transit. If a transit-related story happens and it’s not where you live do you pay attention to it?

This week another tragedy befell the public transportation industry with the rail accident in Washington, D.C. First, our thoughts are with those who lost loved ones in the wreck. You never want to see something like this happen anywhere.

Strangely enough, here in the Midwest it almost seems like it didn’t happen. I asked a few friends about the accident and they seemed to recall something about some train crash, but they couldn’t go into specifics. Now, I know I am tuned into the transit industry, but to not know about what happened?

Then I thought about the Metrolink accident from a few months ago. Have you heard about that lately? I am sure on the West Coast it was brought up again in the wake of the Metro accident in Washington, but for most other parts of the country life has moved on. It’s just another blip on the news radar.

Why is this? When the I-35 bridge in Minnesota collapsed it was national news for weeks. There was a national cry for immediate funding to fix bridges and the words “crumbling infrastructure” became an instant part of the public conscience. Is it because so many more people use cars than take transit? I don’t buy that. Is it media hype? That is more likely. It is easier to spin a story about a bridge collapse locally (our one bridge into town is in dire peril!) than a train crash when you don’t have rail lines in town.

Looking back at the I-35 bridge collapse, the federal government moved swiftly to ensure $195 million for Minnesota to replace the fallen bridge and $1 billion nationwide to repair others in just six weeks. There are already urgings to get Metro money to improve its system — improvements the NTSB says should have been done years ago — to prevent future accidents from happening.

Here’s the crux of this. When will transit ever get a fair shake when it comes to funding? After the I-35 bridge collapse a nationwide call goes out to improve bridge infrastructure, yet two rail accidents happen within months of each other and officials are arguing to be sure to put restrictions on any aid Metro gets so it doesn’t use it to pay off old debts. Huh?

Metro is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg here. There are plenty of other agencies out there that could benefit from a federal investment into positive train control systems rather than using systems that are decades old. But, you know, those have worked pretty good so far, so we could squeeze another 20-30 years out of them.

Think on that for a minute. We cry about our crumbling infrastructure and how we need to repair it. Now consider being told it hasn’t failed yet, so you won’t get any funding until it does. That’s what transit faces. No money until something goes wrong.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
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Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

How pervasive is transit? In your community? In the United States? In the world? This among other questions came to mind as I visited Chicago this week for the APTA Rail Conference. And after three days of seminars and meetings, I think there is a new formula that can be applied to transit.

Einstein’s theory of relativity is actually a couple of theories, which when combined explain pretty much how the universe works (in layman’s terms). Most of us think of his theory as the equation E=mc², although that is just a part of it. It’s actually the formula for mass-energy equivalence. Strangely enough, APTA president, Bill Millar, came up with a similar formula for transit during his speech at Monday’s opening seminar even though he probably doesn’t realize it.

In Bill’s speech he discussed how transit is a benefit to the environment, energy independence and the economy. He also talked about how transit can increase quality of life. So I propose a new formula I call the theory of mass transit-quality of life equivalence. Here it is:

Q=me³

Breaking it down, that’s: Quality of Life = mass transit x environment/energy/economy. It won’t stand up as a mathematical proof, but it just might be a simple enough theory to catch on and it would look real good on a button.

This year’s Rail Show was overflowing with like-minded individuals (sometimes literally) salivating over the increased interest in and demand for rail in the United States. It was an almost palpable upbeat feeling. It was something I haven’t felt in transit for a while now.

But now we need to take that feeling and disperse it to the all of transit’s customers. We need to simply and easily explain how transit benefits everyone on multiple levels in multiple ways. We need to take Bill’s message and distill it down to its essence and spread the word in a way everyone can understand: Q=me³

Applied transit improves your quality of life. Simple.

I’ve got a small request to end the blog this week.

A task force established by APTA’s executive committee is in the midst of developing recommendations on APTA’s governance and committee structure - from the top down - which it plans to forward later this summer for consideration by the executive committee. This restructuring will reorganize its executive committee, board of directors and many of its committees. As always, APTA isn’t doing this without member input. It needs comments on the plan from its members to make sure it can and is serving you the best way it can.

To that end, a presentation was put together and shown at this year’s Rail Show. For those of who missed it or weren’t in attendance, please take the time to check it out (you can find a PDF of it here) and send your comments to Fran Hooper or Art Guzzetti. They would be most appreciative.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

As rail transit grows in popularity across the United States, transit agencies will need to be more aware of the idiots they have to deal with. No, not the people who try run the lights at rail crossings, those are expected. I’m talking about the ones who try and make a buck off the seemingly “fat cat” transit authority in the process.

Here’s a case in point. Austin is putting in a new passenger rail line. I’ve seen the Capital Metro DMUs and they are real nice. The agency has had some problems with its crossings, mainly faulty signals, but it’s doing the right thing and making sure the system is 100% before opening it.

A few weeks back there was a “near miss” at one of the crossings as covered by a local TV station. This was largely a sensationalistic piece where the driver was claiming he had a life-threatening run-in with a Cap Metro train and he was upset the authority had “blown him off.” The video is largely dismissive of Cap Metro, opting to paint the guy who barreled across the train crossing in front of the train as a poor innocent than the idiot he really is.

Oh, did I forget to mention that Cap Metro has video of the incident? Here. Here. And here. Having 18 cameras on your vehicle has its advantages after all.

I like video number two the most myself. I like how the SUV’s “life-threatening” run-in amounted to stopping at the crossing as the train approached and when it stopped deciding it was a good time to throw caution to the wind and tear across the tracks in front of it before it starts moving again – 15 seconds later! And it’s not like this is a Porsche or anything.

I will give the TV station credit. When Cap Metro presented them with the videos, they did run another story on it. They even brought back the same people they interviewed from the previous story. The guy who claimed to be having nightmares about the train showed an estimate for body work as proof that he got into an accident by slamming on his brakes to stop from getting hit by the train.

OK, the video does show the SUV coming up short at the crossing. But you can see daylight between it and the car behind it. And if there was an accident, didn’t the footage show him leaving it?!

As I said, the real idiots transit authorities need to be on the lookout for are the ones trying to profit off them. This isn’t anything new. Transit agencies have been targets for con men for decades. But with more agencies looking to add rail to their systems, they need to be careful they’re not just adding another mode to be fleeced.

We’ve recently updated our online Suppliers Directory, so stop by and check it out. If you’re company isn’t listed be sure to sign up.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

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Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

I’ve been thinking on this whole convincing people to get out of their cars situation we as a nation are faced with and I think instead of taxing and/or regulating, we need to put in some good old marketing know-how. Otherwise I just don’t think it will ever work.

I read a Worldchanging interview this week with Nancy Kete, program director with the World Resources Institute. It was a very good interview discussing the United States’ current transportation conundrum and the current administration’s plan to implement high-speed rail among other things.

Kete is very informative and for the first time I’ve seen in a while, pretty pragmatic and fact of the matter when it comes to what the United States needs to do to overcome its addiction to automobiles. Notice how I said addiction to automobiles and not addiction to foreign oil?

The United States has been addicted to the illusion of freedom automobiles give us since it was first dreamt up to sell cars and everything that comes along with them.

Take a look at the two Firestone ads I’ve included here. Sure, they’re selling the tires, but take a good look at the transportation utopia pictured here. See the mass transit vehicles on the road? There are lots of them. How many lanes do you see on these roads?

So that idea of transportation utopia was born on the back of mass transit, not 18-lane highways. Somewhere along the way we’ve lost focus on that.

Kete states that we are, “going to have to make driving alone or driving more expensive, make it reflect the environmental and infrastructure costs of supporting the driving economy.”

Aw, man, nobody likes to hear that. I can already hear the pundits now claiming you can pull the steering wheels from their cold dead hands.

The thing is that while Kete’s statement makes sense, it isn’t going to play well in places around the United States with limited to no transit. The guy who lives on a farm and has no option but to drive into town for groceries hears this and thinks the government is taxing him for no reason – he’s getting nothing for something.

If the government is going facilitate a change to the collective mindset about automobiles and public transit, they need to start marketing public transit better. Do like they did in the ‘50s with futuristic ads showing off two-lane highways with few cars and buses zooming along to far-flung destinations. We don’t need to prove that mass transit works or is necessary, that’s been done. We need to sell it.

Pay-as-you-drive fees may be a good incentive, but I need to get something from not driving other than, well, not driving.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

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Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

Last week I railed against George Will’s column taking a slanted view of secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood’s plan for increasing public transportation in the United States. Sadly, the secretary didn’t hold up his end of the bargain and stop himself from proving Will right.

It wasn’t 24 hours after I wrote last week’s blog that I read an article touting, “Transportation Secretary Endorses Anti-Car Agenda.” The deck claiming the secretary said coercion and government intrusion would be used to force people out of their cars made me think this was just another slanted article. Of course, the secretary did say those things.

Secretary LaHood was speaking at a National Press Club event last week about the DOT’s stimulus initiatives and to be honest he got off on the right foot by noting that transit agencies need operating funds to go with the new buses and trains they are getting with stimulus dollars. But then it kind of went wrong when he admitted that making driving less attractive was the intent behind new fees and regulations.

Hold up there a sec. We just listened to Will rant last week about how LaHood was the “Secretary of Behavior Modification” and just like that the secretary practically admitted to it. Of course, taking the choice quotes out of context is an old trick. LaHood was discussing how creating opportunities for people to get out of their cars through livable communities, which is a good thing. And he should have stopped there.

“It is a way to coerce people out of their cars, yeah,” LaHood admits at one point. Taken out of context or not, using the word coerce in this statement just gives George Will every right to sit back, fold his arms, nod his head and smile. You’ve proven his point. The government is using coercion to get people out of their cars. They are taking away freedoms through underhanded means. Game. Set. Match.

If this were Vice President Biden, people would be proclaiming this as a gaff. Is it? To be honest, no it’s not. I think the secretary was being brutally honest as he seems to have a penchant for. You want a better environment? You want less congestion? You want lower gas prices? Then there just simply has to be fewer cars on the road. It’s a part of the solution – not the whole solution, mind you – but a significant part. And if it takes government legislation to get it done, then the government needs to step in and do that.

Here’s the thing that neither Will nor LaHood nor anybody else is talking about – this has happened before, there was just a lot less complaining about it. We didn’t have the 24/7 Un-media (to coin my own Orwellian phrase) endlessly examining and discussing every nuance of the government during the last depression. Think about what Eisenhower would have to go through to create the interstate highway system today had he had to deal with all the “pundits” discussing his plan and how it was going to affect your life.

LaHood didn’t say anything wrong and he said the worst thing he possibly could have. In today’s day and age it’s politically incorrect to be honest because somehow even the truth can (and Will) be used against you.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

The new trend in media it seems isn’t reporting the news, but sticking up for your guy and yelling at other media members for saying bad things about him. That folks is how you get ratings. Whole careers have been built around it. And frankly, I’m sick of it.

George F. Will is arguably one of the most learned and skilled authors writing in America today. While his views don’t always align with mine, he has the right to his views just as much as I do to mine. But sometimes, sometimes you just have to stand up and say enough is enough.

In a recent column Will discussed Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood’s views on public transportation and how they are just one example of a “far-seeing and fastidious government” who seemingly wants to control everything from sea to shining sea.

Please. It’s this type of political fear mongering that is so rampant in the media these days. Does Will actually believe that the current administration is out to control all aspects of everyone’s lives? Or does he think it’s just the liberals (i.e. Democrats) that are to blame?

As Will puts it, “Long before climate change became another excuse for disparaging America’s ‘automobile culture,’ many liberal intellectuals were bothered by the automobile. It subverted their agenda of expanding government — meaning their — supervision of other people’s lives.”

Are you kidding me? Ask anyone in a major metropolitan area in the United States whether they feel the government is supervising their lives through the use of public transportation. The idea that a transit system timetable is a means of ordering society in neatly controlled masses is Orwellian claptrap at best and conservative propaganda at worst.

So, what is the alternative? Just give up on the idea of public transportation? Drop the whole plan for a series of intercity high-speed rail lines? Just keep adding more lanes to an already choked and crumbling highway system instead? Public transportation continues to grow despite lack of government support in many places. That is the public making a choice, not being forced into a bus or train, their cars abandoned at the side of the road.

George Will is doing nothing different than Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olberman or even former Vice President Dick Cheney — he’s sticking up for his side and tearing down the other guys to do it. Have we devolved as a nation to the point where that’s all we get from our writers, commentators and leaders?

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

Transit has a stigma — well more than one — attached to it. More likely, it has a stigma attached to its riders. That its riders are rude, poor and that nefarious “bad element” no one seems to be able to define clearly. I’m skipping the latter two today because the first one is undeniably true and I think we bring it on ourselves.

Now, when its riders are rude, I don’t mean all riders. But there are a significant portion of riders whose bad behavior has become the fodder for a lifetime of stand-up comedy routines. Let’s take the guy who puts his feet up on the seat across from him. Or how about the loud cell phone talker who gets mad when they are asked to tone it down. Or the person who uses transit as their personal office spreading themselves out over several seats who is imposed on when the vehicle fills up. Or my personal favorite, the person with the earphones and music so loud you can hear them two seats away anyway.

All of these people are truly rude and again I think it’s our fault. I recently got an agency newsletter in the mail that included letters from riders complaining about other riders. Unfortunately, almost universally the agency response was what do you want us to do about it.

You know what? That’s a stupid stance to take. If someone takes the time and effort to contact an agency about a problem (and they’re not a crank — those you usually can spot right away), then they’re the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to a problem. For every person who has contacted an agency about someone playing their music too loud, numerous others have just sat there and suffered in silence.

And what do we do about it? Largely nothing. On a bus, we can complain to the driver who will politely tell the person to stop whatever rude behavior they seem oblivious (or feel entitled) to. On the train the conductor fills that role. And what comes of it? Hopefully the person will stop whatever they are doing, but a brief admonishment is no guarantee.

When that conductor on the train walks away you’re left with two people who might as well be kids in a teacherless classroom, the tattler and tattled on. That never goes well. I’ve heard more than once of a passenger berating another about asking a conductor or driver to have them stop being rude.

Why don’t we boot these people off the bus or train? Have them move to a different car or just pull the bus over and tell them to get out? So many agencies have told me their vehicles are “self-policing.” Why is that? Why must we put up with rude people?

I understand that for a long time transit was happy for every rider it could get. But now with booming riderships do we need to maintain this policy? Wouldn’t transit be better served making the car/bus full of riders happy by kicking the one rude guy off rather than just putting up with him until his stop?

As transit’s popularity grows, I think we need to adapt our thought processes from being thankful for every rider to making patrons thankful for every ride.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

I’ve said it before (probably here); it’s nice to go to shows. This year’s APTA Bus & Paratransit Conference was no exception. We’re an industry that is very connected and yet, can be very isolated. So it’s nice to get out to the same location with a couple hundred of your industry peers and just compare notes on how good (or bad) things are in their neck of the woods.

I know from my perspective that I tend to get tunnel vision this time of year. Our schedule is front-loaded so combining that with all the shows in the first six months and I tend to go from one issue to the next and when I get a breather I look up and don’t realize how the year went by so fast.

As I look down at the fast-approaching halfway point for 2009 bearing down on us, it was nice to take that breather this week at the Bus & Paratransit Conference. Seattle is a great city and I had a great time sampling some of its local cuisine and checking out some great places to shop. As expected, the King County Metro did a fine job as the host agency.

I also had the chance to catch up with a lot of people I knew in the industry and see how things are going for them. Frankly, times are tough everywhere. I didn’t hear a single transit exec tell me things were rosy for their agency. Nearly unanimously what I heard was the stimulus (sorry, ARRA) money was (much) welcomed, but it didn’t help assuage the operating deficits they were facing. Those worst off seemed to be agencies who relied on sales tax revenues for funding. The poor economy is cutting into their bottom line in a major way.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though. As I said, the stimulus money was a glimmer of hope for those agencies receiving the funds and most hoped this pointed to a continued commitment from the current administration towards transit. Things are bad, but they could be a lot worse.

That glimmer of hope may just be the dawn breaking through as transit slugs through the darkest part of this economic downturn. Everyone I spoke with was keeping their chins up and vowing to work to keep the buses and trains moving. It’s transit, that’s what we do.

And one last shout out for our Top 40 Under 40. We’ve got more than 100 nominations from across the transit landscape, but I’d love to see that double before the deadline next Friday, May 15. I know everyone reading this has someone under 40 in their organization they could nominate. This industry has a ton of great young talent in it, and it’s time they got the recognition they deserve. Please take the time to go nominate someone you think is deserving.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

For every step forward transit takes, it seems mainstream media is there to blow the whistle and tell it to take two steps back. Last night I was watching the ABC World News while cooking dinner and a story come up about how people are driving less due to the economy. OK, that’s fair, but there was no mention of transit. Instead Charlie Gibson’s point was, “If you have a job you can get there quicker.” How hard does transit need to work to get a little respect?

In the report, which you can view here, Gibson claims a “clear sign” of growing unemployment can be found on roads where there has been a significant reduction in congestion. The story basically covers the recent Department of Transportation (DOT) report that total vehicle miles travelled dropped by 3.6 percent in 2008. Of course, it also stops there, telling you the economy is bad so people aren’t driving making it better for everyone else on the road.

It fails to pick up the APTA information that in the same time transit trips increased by 4 percent — and this despite the plummeting gas prices. So, once again, the public only gets half the story.

Hey, you’re commuting? You’ve been using the bus? Ah, a bunch of people are out of work, go on get back into your car!

I’m banging my head against the wall again on this. I know I shouldn’t. It’s the same situation transit has been facing for, well, ever.

Last summer when gas prices soared the media covered the boom in transit ridership and left you with the implication that it all had to do with high gas prices. When gas prices dropped and ridership stayed the same or increased in some locations where was the media? Off covering the latest juicy story.

Now the economy is in the tank and the number of cars is down. Is it really because all of these people are out of work, or is it because people are taking transit? The story discusses metro Atlanta and how traffic has dropped there by 36 percent. And MARTA ridership? Its subway system alone had an 8.6 percent ridership increase in 2008.

I can’t help but feel that transit continues to get the short shrift when it comes to news coverage. When I hear people complaining about how ineffectual a high-speed rail system will be, I wonder have they heard the whole story when it comes to transit or just what the media wants them to hear.

Check out Mass Transit’s new Top 40 Under 40 promotion on our Web site. We’re looking to recognize transit’s best and brightest under the age of 40 in an upcoming issue. Click on the link and you can read more about it and nominate yourself or any of your colleagues.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!

Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor

It’s interesting how for some people certain concepts just go in one ear and out the other. Take the President’s recent high-speed rail plan. I am amazed by the number of people who seem to think this is a national rail network. You couldn’t get the concept of regional networks through their heads if you had a map to show them. Oh, there is a map?

Since the blog last week I’ve read numerous comments to articles about this “national” network and how the United States is way too big to sustain a high-speed rail system like this. And didn’t they learn anything from Amtrak? How is that doing? (Pretty good, actually.)

As part of my blog I posted the map of the proposed high-speed rail corridors and the one thing that sticks out to me is the fact that the West Coast really isn’t connected to the rest of the country. In fact, the two proposed corridors on the West Coast aren’t even connected to each other as part of a single high-speed network.

High-speed rail is a regional concept. It is planned on a regional scale and would be implemented as such. And, you know what, on a regional scale it would thrive. Check that, it will thrive. High-speed rail is coming because frankly it’s not just a vision from the President anymore, each day it becomes clearer and clearer it is becoming a necessity.

This past Wednesday was Earth Day. As I wandered through my house after my kids grumbling and turning off lights, I thought again about the high-speed rail network. About how much of a benefit it will be to not just the economy, but the environment. People will say that it won’t take cars off the road, but what they really mean is that it won’t take enough cars off the road for them in their specific area so they can have an empty lane to go as fast as they want in whenever they need it. That’s congestion relief to most of the grumblers out there — relief for the congestion affecting them, not anyone else.

And think about the benefits to the environment. APTA announced this week that Americans using public transportation reduce the United States’ carbon footprint by more than 35 million metric tons each year. And right now the majority of public transit’s systems are collected in our major metropolitan areas. Think about what it would mean to our nation’s carbon footprint if everyone traveling to and from those areas, as well as the people living there, could ride public transit!

The President’s high-speed rail network plan brings public transit outside of the urban metros and out to everyone living around them. It allows transit to fight sprawl on its own terms by giving the people living in those areas a real taste of public transit, and the public transit systems connected to the network a real chance to promote what their local users already know — transit works.

Check out Mass Transit’s new Top 40 Under 40 promotion on our Web site. We’re looking to recognize transit’s best and brightest under the age of 40 in an upcoming issue. Click on the link and you can read more about it and nominate yourself or any of your colleagues.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
Check out our LinkedIn page!