The MT Position

Posted by the SF Muni Ladies

With the cost of fuel at an all-time high, transit systems are experiencing record-breaking ridership. Good news for you transit execs, bad news for gas-guzzling drivers. As these new riders get out of their vehicles and into yours, it’s easy to spot behavior that would make our Mommas blush! Inspired by experiences on our local transit systems BART and Muni, we feel compelled to offer a few etiquette rules…with a modern spin. These sassy “rules of the road” apply to any major city ripe with transit infractions: from the subways of NYC, to the Tube of London, or to future riders of the Bangalore Namma Metro — readers are logging on and spreading the word — 50 states and 129 countries, to be exact.

You’d be surprised (or not) by the number of people that could use a gentle lesson on public decorum. With the advent of technology and the bold, anywhere, anytime world in which we live, we’d like to share a sampling of our simple yet actionable rules:

Top 10 Muni Manners

Muni Manner 1: Always let exiting passengers leave the train before you board.
Muni Manner 2: Anticipate your stop to calmly exit the train or make way for others to do so.
Muni Manner 3: If you are young or able-bodied, give up your seat to someone who isn’t.
Muni Manner 4: Keep cell phone use to a minimum when riding public transport.
Muni Manner 5: Don’t rely on others to pick up after you; always dispose of your waste.
Muni Manner 6: To prevent the spread of germs, cover your mouth when expelling air.
Muni Manner 7: Help save space and avoid jostling others by properly stowing your bags.
Muni Manner 8: Be mindful of the volume of your music, even when wearing headphones.
Muni Manner 9: To prevent fellow passengers from feeling uncomfortable, keep your stare in check.
Muni Manner 10: Stay awake on transit to limit unwanted body contact and avoid blocking fellow passengers.

Transit agencies should be in the know, too. Check out our growing list of rules at http://www.munimanners.com. Our challenge to you? You’re in the driver’s seat so share the word! It’s the safe and courteous thing to do.

SF Muni Ladies
Public Transit Riders Bloggers
sfmunilady01@gmail.com
sfmunilady02@gmail.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

The Secretary of Transportation, Mary Peters, came out swinging this week, calling the federal gas tax “antiquated” and saying that the federal approach to funding transportation is “broken.” She goes on to say that it’s, “time for a new, a different and a better approach” to funding.

Take note of the wording there. She said the approach to funding transportation was broken, not transit.

So what’s this new, different and better approach to funding transportation? It’s the approach we in the transit industry have heard about and been dreading for some time now — taking of funds from the transit account to the highway account in the Highway Trust Fund.

See here’s where I get confused. Evidently the federal gas tax and its funding of the Highway Trust Fund wasn’t an “antiquated” or “broken” system when gas prices were $2 cheaper and there were 10 billion more miles being driven. When people are driving less and using less gasoline, then suddenly the system is broken? You didn’t see this coming when gas prices surged to $3 a gallon?

And what’s worse is this notion that a gradual shift towards more funding for transit is needed? Is this a political shift … i.e. a gradual one in which the time it takes equates to the natural progression of a political campaign? If the 10 billion fewer miles and the continued drop in gasoline usage while transit business is booming is any indication, then this is the time for a dramatic shift in the funding for transit.

I’m a sports fan. And one of the things you will hear a lot around sports talk shows is the idea of fans voting with their dollars. If fans really don’t like something, you will know by how they spend their money. Right now people are spending their money on transit instead of on their cars. They are making that choice.

So where is the government support? For years transit has gotten short shrift due to our nation having a “car culture,” which is evident by how the Highway Trust Fund is apportioned with a much larger percentage of monies going to the highway account than to the transit account. It’s high time that changed. Actually, how about fixing the system by simply swapping the percentages?

Rather than simply acting like a spoiled kid who wants to change the rules now that they don’t favor them, the federal government should open its eyes to the dramatically changing transportation landscape in front of them and make some equally dramatic decisions when it comes to funding.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

As I was traveling this week I heard that Midwest Airlines (our local carrier) was cutting flights and laying off personnel citing gas prices as the main culprit. As I checked in at the airport and looked at the new prices being levied on customers — $25 for an extra checked bag, for example — I wondered how bad gas prices had gotten for airlines.

As we laid over to refuel I found out. The pilot informed us that we had just loaded about $11,000 of fuel. This translated to about $168 a passenger. In relation, the cost for the crew taking us to our destination came out to be about $12 a passenger.

That’s a ratio of 14 to 1 for what they spent on fuel versus crew. How much are you spending on fuel? How much in comparison to your operations staff? Of course with the dramatic rise in fuel prices in the last few years, it’s hard to not end up with a ratio like that.

This got me to thinking. What kind of price can we put on good customer service? Many agency directors I speak with tell me that they are (if they haven’t already) switching from hiring people who can drive a bus to people who are good with customers. The logic is that they can teach them to drive a bus — they can’t teach them to be good with customers.

This is true in almost any position. We’ve all had that person at the checkout who really doesn’t want to be there and let’s you know it. You can teach a person to run a register, you can’t teach them how to be good-natured around customers.

Service is key in the transit industry. If riders aren’t happy about their service they will walk — sometimes literally.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

“I am coming, I am coming! Hark you hear my motors humming?
For the trolley’s come to conquer and you cannot keep it back;
And Zip! The sparks are flashing as the car goes onward dashing;
Yes the trolley’s come and conquered so look out and clear the track!”

Thus did a late 19th century author describe the advent of the electric streetcar, an event that literally changed the way Americans went to work and play and moved about the cities. Today we are faced with another major change in individual mobility, $4-a-gallon gasoline is causing many Americans to rethink the way they get around and to look more to public transit to fill the void.

As an industry that is historically underfunded and equipment-hungry, many of us are struggling to meet the demand. How does a small transit operator with a fleet of vintage electric streetcar equipment rise to meet this challenge? In the case of McKinney Avenue Transit Authority (MATA) in Dallas, Texas, we decided to examine just what it was we did and who we were. The answers enabled us to reaffirm our identity as a vintage operator, while plotting a course to meet the demands and expectations of our customers and take advantage of 21st century technologies.

Throughout the past year as we have seen gasoline prices spiral upward we have also noticed steady ridership increases during our regular commute times. Ridership for 2008 is up 20 percent over the same period last year. In particular, we have seen a large increase in the number of passengers transferring to our streetcars from light rail stations of the regional transit authority (DART). These numbers, taken in conjunction with on-car surveys, told us we were experiencing a basic change in our ridership demographics. We took a hard look at what our commuter passengers expected their streetcar system to do for them.

Early in the year it was decided to air condition our fleet of vintage streetcars. A grant from the Sue Pope Foundation enabled MATA to begin addressing this issue, and in May the first air-conditioned 1920 Birney safety car in the world rolled out of the shops to the delight of our riding public. Four other cars will follow during the course of the summer, and the further addition of AC traction motors, solid-state controllers and resilient wheels over the next two years will enable us to increase safe operating speeds, decrease headways and provide a higher level of comfort and service to the riding public while maintaining the ambiance and look of the antique cars.

Greenhouse gases, NOC emissions, global warming and, on a more visceral level, the cost of gas at the pump has caused Americans to re-ask the question of the World War II generation, “Is this trip really necessary?” It should cause each of us, as transit executives, to ask some important questions about what kind of organization we are and how our agencies can re-equip ourselves to do the job ahead of us.

Roll up your sleeves folks, it’s a big job and there’s work to do!

John Landrum
Chief Operating Officer
McKinney Avenue Transit Authority

Post by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

As we do every year, we poll our readers to get a snapshot of what they are looking for in a magazine and how they see the current state of the transportation industry. What’s interesting is that security has been one of the lowest-rated issues for our readers for several years now. Granted, if you are running a small rural agency, you probably don’t have to worry about terrorists.

Of course, now with the amount of technological integration in public transit, you have to keep an eye on the people working for you more than ever. Quis custo diet ipsos custodes indeed.

For those not familiar with that Latin quote, it roughly translates to, “Who watches the watchmen.” Who is watching the people that are watching your system?

Sunday a network administrator for San Francisco’s municipal computer network was arrested for giving himself unfettered access to the city’s network, purportedly creating an über-password for his use only, and locking out other administrators in the process.

From reports this situation stemmed from a conflict between the administrator and his supervisor, and other than the time and trouble needed to rectify the password situation, no harm was done. Of course, that’s not the point. This isn’t a matter of what was done, but what could have been done.

Now think about this in a transit sense. How many transit authorities are installing remote viewing capabilities for their video systems? AVL is commonplace and almost required in many systems. What about Wi-Fi access to video recorders? Or Wi-Fi downloads of technical information from a vehicle. Farebox totals?

I know, I know, every one of these systems is protected from tampering. But most of them are protected from tampering from someone outside of the system. If a clever IT guy decides to start messing around with your system, will anyone notice?

Of course, this is a slippery slope towards paranoia, but it pays to be safe. And if transit systems are safer than ever before due to better security systems, it’s worth a second look to make sure the security system is just as safe as the transit system itself.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

When you are participating in anything, it’s difficult to take a step back and look at it as a whole in comparison to the world around it. Are you a sports fan? Take a step back and look at sports fandom some time in relation to the rest of the world.

Now, we really need to step back and take a look at transit on a broader scope while tuning out the rhetoric (good or bad) for just a bit.

Every year Mass Transit piles everyone involved in the magazine into a room and we discuss the past year, what we liked, what we didn’t like, and discusses what we want to change in the next year (not without our fair share of arguing). We purposely step back from the daily grind of publishing to look at the magazine as a whole in the perspective of the industry and world around it.

This led me to think whether or not transit needs to do that as an industry. There was a good story posted on the Mass Transit Web site earlier this week. You can read it here. The story discusses whether or not transit is at a tipping point and looks at it from an outside perspective.

One interesting point stuck with me. In the story, transportation consultant Alan Pisarski is quoted as saying that mass transit only accounts for 1 percent of travel in the United States. So with a 20 percent increase in travel, that would jump to 1.2 percent. Transit isn’t at a tipping point when you look at it in that scale. Really, it’s not even close.

Of course public transportation in the United States is on an entirely different slope than the rest of the world. Let’s take a look at Europe, which gets compared to the United States in terms of public transit so often.

The distance between London and Paris is 212 miles. The distance between Paris and Berlin is 545 miles. The distance between London and Moscow is 1,552 miles.

The distance between New York City and Chicago is 711 miles. The distance between Chicago and Los Angeles is 1,740 miles. The distance between New York City and Los Angeles is 2,444 miles.

It’s further to cross half of the United States than most of Europe. That’s a big difference in scale.

While we’re comparing the public transit offering in Madrid to that in Los Angeles, we need to remember that Madrid is the center of an entire country, while Los Angeles isn’t even the capital of the state of California. The public has a way of talking about transit as something for the “big cities,” but we need to remember that on a comparison scale to the rest of the world, the United States (3,794,066 square miles) needs to be compared with continents (Europe – 3,930,000 square miles), not countries.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit

This Friday is the Fourth of July, celebrating Independence Day here in the United States. Of course, for a lot of people, this is the first big weekend of summer. Sure, summer usually starts when the school year ends, but all of those summer days are just leading up to the big show on July 4th.

Many cities across the nation are celebrating Independence Day with fairs, fireworks and usually a whole lot of fun. Of course, that usually flies out the window if you’re trying to drive to the local festival and a parking spot. I know I learned several new words from my father as we tried to find that ever-elusive parking spot as close to the local ballpark as possible.

Many of those same cities are planning options to get people where they want to go this Friday. Extra service is being planned, special routes and lengthened schedules are being put into play. With gas prices at $4, a holiday like this is a perfect time to get more people on board your system. But just make sure you don’t push them away in the process.

The influx of passengers can leave a bad transit taste in some people’s mouths if their first impression is of wall-to-wall sweaty (and possibly inebriated) people. That’s hardly the image you want prospective riders to have in their heads when they consider taking transit Monday morning.

And if making sure you have enough room for all the passengers this Friday, be sure you have the security you need as well. Last year our van got broken into on Fourth of July weekend. Nothing was stolen, but for the next month my wife had me investigating every noise she heard (or thought she heard). Rowdy riders returning from Fourth of July festivals have the potential to cause all sorts of problems. Be sure you’re prepared for all of them.

The Fourth of July can give most agencies a nice boost if they prepare themselves for it accordingly. Make sure your prospective customers are safe and comfortable on the fourth, and you may just have many of them return on the seventh!

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com