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
Check out our LinkedIn page!

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.

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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 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!