WMATA is excited to be part of “Friends with Transit”, Lyft‘s initiative to provide first and last mile connections to transit systems across the nation, and a coupon code.
Metro covers a lot of ground – 1,500 square miles or so! But not everyone is within convenient walking or biking distance to transit, and that makes us less convenient than we would like to be for our customers! We’ve profiled here how we would like to close that first-mile/last-mile gap for our customers through enhanced pedestrian and bicycle connections, and now we have yet another option to get you where you need to go. Read more…
Now that gas is at historic lows, isn’t it cheaper to drive and park than take transit? Probably not!
The Office of Planning staff often helps get new Board Members acquainted, and we recently had the pleasure to participate in a portion of Board Member Malcolm Augustine‘s orientation. During our lengthy conversation, the familiar refrain of gas prices and parking costs vs. Metrorail fares and parking fees came up. Are low gas prices and cheap parking taking trips off the rails?
We’ve looked at this issue in the past and reported out that declining gas prices have not historically nor do they do now seem to have a meaningful negative impact on Metorail ridership. We’re continuing to track these datapoints as we keep our finger on the pulse of Metrorail ridership. But we also hear that trips are very personal, and even though the big picture data doesn’t show it – and even the American Automobile Association has denied it – might driving be getting cheaper than taking transit?
Construction of the K Street Transitway and Union Station to Georgetown Streetcar might result in some growing pains, but Metro & DDOT already have a remedy.
The H/I/K Streets NW Corridor is a heavily congested corridor with traffic frequently backed up and traffic jammed at rush hour. Fortunately, DDOT has approved the K Street Transitway, an exclusive two-way, two-lane median east-west transitway between 20th and 9th Streets NW, to improve the transit and traffic conditions in this corridor. The transitway would also be utilized by a future Union Station to Georgetown streetcar.
Construction of the transitway will likely take a lane or two away from an already congested corridor and Metro would need to reroute our buses to ensure safety and performance.
Current K Street bus service would likely need to detour via H and I Streets NW, but H and I Streets are at capacity!
At rush hour, cars, bikes and pedestrians all fight for limited street space along H and I streets NW. It is common to see bottlenecks, strings of red brake lights, packed crosswalks and cars moving at a sluggish 10.8 MPH through the corridor during the PM Peak. These delays impact our bus service along the corridor. How much service do we have there? A lot. Read more…
Would you like to gain insight into Metro’s direction and help shape new initiatives? Are you looking for an opportunity to share your rider experiences and make a difference in how Metro responds to issues that face you and your fellow riders?
Join Amplify, Metro’s first-ever Customer Community and newest tool for engaging customers like you in day-to-day decision making. The Amplify community will include everyday customers who ride Metro’s Bus, Rail and MetroAccess services, as well as the Riders’ Advisory Council members and transit professionals.
Amplify community members will be provided a forum for on-going engagement with fellow riders and Metro staff through online surveys, discussions and polls. Community members will also receive regular updates on news and events.
Visit amplifybymetro.com to apply to be an Amplify community member and help shape our region’s public transit service now and into the future.
Despite its current operational challenges, it’s important to keep an eye on the future. Our increasingly connected world means that tomorrow’s transit system could not only be more reliable, cleaner, and faster – but smarter.
Metro Smart Cities round table participants.
Recently WMATA announced that there is a path forward to cellular service throughout the rail network. That’s a huge step forward for all of Metro’s customers, who we know value staying connected and productive while on the go. But checking email, catching up on social media, or even banging out that legal brief while en route from work to happy hour is only the beginning of what a technology-enabled interconnected transit network can do. Metro’s Office of Planning is keenly interested in understanding what the future of the “Internet of Things” might mean for WMATA, and we reached out to industry experts to find out.
On September 14, 2015, the Office of Planning hosted transportation experts who were in town for Smart Cities Week to weigh in on how technology and data could transform the way we think about transit. Our panelists – all of whom agreed to participate on their own dime and on the condition that we were not entertaining any sales pitches! – included representatives from Cisco, Microsoft, Mastercard, TransitScreen, and Urban Insights. The event hosted over 60 leaders from WMATA to hear what evolved into an open dialogue about the promise of a data-enhanced transit system and rider experience.
Here are some of the major take-aways from the event: Read more…
Brookland-CUA station enabled over 24,000 trips for visitors attending the papal events at the Basilica on Wednesday, September 23, 2015.
Brookland-CUA Metro station in Washington The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on the Catholic University of America campus is in the background. Photo Credit: AgnosticPreachersKid at English Wikipedia
Metrorail can handle crowds for most events downtown where the demand can be shared across a variety of stations and lines. The papal mass at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, however, required a little extra planning. The Secret Service was in charge of the regional planning of the event, and as the event approached Metro staff became aware the event would have a ticketed attendance of 25,000 people and that an additional 15,000 people might amass outside the venue to watch the ceremony on the jumbo-trons and try to catch a glimpse of the Pope on his way in and out of the area. Preparing to enable safe and efficient trips for up to 40,000 customers at a station with one of the smallest capacities in the system required some extra effort. Read more…
On a recent trip to Toronto, Metro planner discovers a new rail link.
I flew up to Toronto in July of this year for a fun weekend trip, flying into Pearson Airport. I’ve traveled up there a few times in the past year and try to take transit between the airport and downtown when schedules allow. Each time, I check transit schedules via Google Maps to determine whether or not transit from the airport makes sense to me. This most recent time, I discovered something odd: a new transit connection from the airport I hadn’t seen before, simply labeled “UP“. Curious, I googled it and discovered that a new rail transit link had just opened between Pearson Airport and downtown Toronto’s Union Station, with two stops in between. Being a transit nerd, I had to check it out.
The new UP train operates between Toronto’s Union Station and Pearson Airport.
Metro is coordinating with other regional agencies to release a single data file that will contain schedule data for all transit operators in the Washington DC Metropolitan Area.
Over 10 years ago, Metro began coordinating with local bus operators and commuter rail agencies to incorporate all of their transit schedules into wmata.com Trip Planner. It took some time and effort, but eventually Metro reached agreements with all the operators in the region and began to consolidate transit schedules in one online, searchable data source. In fact, Metro’s Trip Planner is the most comprehensive online data source for regional transit trip planning. So much so, that when the Transportation Planning Board (TPB) needs to update their four-step travel demand model they request all of the region’s transit schedules from Metro and we deliver them as a General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) file.
Sites and app developers can load one data file for all the region’s transit instead of downloading separate files for each agency.
Only some agencies in the region publish their own GTFS files, and releasing this file will make several agencies’ schedule data available online for the first time.
Over the past two years, Metro staff have worked to negotiate the release of this GTFS file. We were pleased reach out to the other regional operators in July requesting sign-off on a regional data-sharing agreement that would permit Metro to release the other agencies’ data online in this GTFS format. We are excitedly awaiting executed agreements from the operators, and we’ve received one back already, thanks RideOn! Once we have received a few more replies, we will begin to publish a regional file including the data of all agencies that have executed the agreement.
In the meantime, feel free to contact your local bus, commuter bus or commuter rail operator and ask that they expedite the signing of this regional transit schedule data sharing agreement.
We’ve seen from previous posts that total Metorail ridership had been experiencing its cyclical swoon following the housing bust and economic collapse of 2008. Despite the volatile market, system ridership stabilized over the last few years – this past year may mark the beginning of the next phase of Metrorail ridership growth. In Fiscal Year 2015, average weekday Metrorail ridership grew by just over 1.5%.
The biggest swing of course is the difference in October: in October of 2013, we experienced the ridership loss due to the prolonged Federal Government shutdown; that didn’t happen in October of 2014. Another interesting difference is that in FY 2014 there were five snow days during the winter, compared to only two snow days during the winter of FY 2015. So, even when discounting the October effect, ridership was still up slightly year over year – a good sign for Metro and the region that helps support its services! And of course, the new Silver Line stations are helping to drive growth as well.
Meanwhile, we are continuing to experience strong growth in Metrobus routes where we have executed operational innovations. Metro stands ready to work with jurisdictions and replicate these successes elsewhere.
This isn’t the end of the story. The region’s pipeline of transit oriented development is going to accelerate this ridership growth, and in the next post we’ll provide just one example by detailing the expected ridership impacts of the exciting new project proposed for Rhode Island Avenue.
Ridership from neither of the two back-to-back sold-out Taylor Swift concerts at Nationals Park this week generated as many riders as an average Nationals baseball game.
Entries at Navy Yard by fifteen-minute period, Orange and Gray were nights of the Taylor Swift concerts.
Pop star Taylor Swift brought her 1989 tour to Washington this week, playing two sold-out concerts at Nationals Park, adjacent to the Navy Yard-Ballpark Metrorail station. According to Swift, approximately 45,000 people attended each concert. That’s a lot higher than a normal Nationals game, as the concert had seating on the floor as well as in the stands. One would hope that such big crowds would bump up Metrorail ridership higher than the Nats. You might be disappointed. Read more…
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