Come learn about the new Silver Line this week and next

Join us for a series of community events to learn about service improvements to bus and rail coming along with the new Silver Line service to Tysons Corner and Reston.  We will be on-hand to discuss what the new service means to you, including changes to the Orange and Blue Lines, and local buses.

The “main event” will be three Open Houses which will feature informational exhibits on rail and bus service, a table where we will be collecting public feedback, a section for children’s activities as well as a “WMATA tools section” where folks can learn about Next Bus, sign-up for e-Alerts and get other useful information. Here’s the schedule and locations:

–      Tuesday, March 12, 5-8p at Faith Temple #2 Baptist Church, 211 Maryland Park Drive, Capitol Hgts., MD 20743 (walk from Capitol Heights Metrorail station, Metrobus 96 or 97)

–      Thursday, March 14, 5-8p at the Reston Community Center Hunters Woods, 2310 Colts Neck Road, Reston, VA 20191 (Fairfax Connector: RIBS 1/3, RIBS 2 & Route 551)

–      Saturday, March 16, 11a-4p at the Sheraton Crystal City, 1800 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, VA  22202 (walk from Crystal City Metrorail station, Metrobus 9A, 9E, 9S, 10A, 10E)

Prior to the Open Houses, we will host a series of smaller events or “Pop-Ups” this week in the community.   At each of these, we’ll be stationed at a table to answer your questions, provide information and give you a chance to provide us your feedback.  Here’s the schedule and locations for these events:

–      March 5, 4-6p at Largo Town Center Metro

–      March 7, 4-6p at West Falls Church Metro

–      March 8, 10a-2p at Tysons Corner Center Mall I (on the first floor near Barnes & Noble)

–      March  8, 4-6p at Pentagon City Metro

–      March 9, 10a-2p at the Eden Center (6751 Wilson Blvd, Falls Church, VA 22044)

The public comment period will run from February 28 through March 18, 2013.  You may submit your comments at the events or online on the project’s website, wmata.com/silverline.

Thank you for all for your valued contributions on MindMixer over the past several months. All of your comments and ideas have been reviewed to see what improvements we can begin to undertake and plan for and many have been incorporated into Momentum: The Next Generation of Metro, our strategic plan. We also appreciate your continued patience while we developed new topics.

We’re happy to announce that new topics are open! We want to hear from you on the staff draft of Momentum and initiatives for Metro 2025 so that we can maximize our existing system. Additionally, for the cartographers out there, there is a question about proposed changes to the Metrorail map in advance of the Silver Line opening later this year. So please log back on and let us know what you think. If you haven’t joined the conversation, please do! We want to hear from you and we’re listening.

Transit lets many of us bypass the nation’s worst traffic, and plays an important role in managing our region’s congestion. (Photo by wfyurasko, click for original)

You may have seen in the news recently that the Washington region’s traffic is the worst in the country – again. However, missing from the headlines is the crucial role public transit plays in keeping congestion at bay today – and how transit should be a big part of the solution to the region’s traffic problem going forward.

The D.C. region definitely has bad traffic, but transit helps give us good options to avoid it.  In fact, traffic on the roads doesn’t matter to many of you who take Metrorail, walk, or a ride a bike. Census figures tell us that around 20% of our region’s commuters ride transit to get to work, and that number is rising. People in the Washington region are increasingly choosing to live in mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods near transit, giving them the option to avoid congestion altogether. Congestion may be bad, but many of us choose alternatives – and Metro is a big part of that.

Without transit, congestion would be even worse.  The Texas Transportation Institute’s report itself actually points to public transportation as a key way the Washington region has been able to grow despite our congestion.  According to the report, transit in our region is helping drivers avoid over $700 million per year in wasted time and fuel – nearly five minutes per day for each and every commuter, whether they ride transit or not.  In fact, the report is broadly consistent with Metro’s own estimates of transit’s role in congestion in the Washington region. Metro estimates that transit in our region saves drivers $1 billion per year in wasted time, and that transit riders are able to save nearly $500 million in auto maintenance, fuel, parking, and other costs.

Congestion matters to Metro, too – because our buses are stuck in the same traffic as regular cars. Bus-only lanes in key locations, such as H and I Streets NW downtown where buses are 2% of the vehicles but carry 40% of the people, would help make Metrobus a great way to bypass traffic. Metro has designated 24 bus corridors in the region where improvements to help get buses out of traffic could attract 100,000 new bus riders per day.

More transit in the future is a good way to help congestion.  We may never get rid of congestion entirely, but we can build our infrastructure in ways that give us good alternatives to being stuck in traffic.  High-quality public transit may not come cheap, but this report is a good reminder of some of the costs of not investing in public transportation.  The transit project needs identified by Momentum – eight-car trains, bus-only lanes, pedestrian walkways, and resolving rail bottlenecks – will help keep our region moving for years to come, despite the traffic clogging our roads.

On January 17th and 18th, two staffers from Metro’s Office of Planning attended a two day transit network design course, offered by long time transit planning consultant, transit blogger and now author, Jarrett Walker.  In transit planning circles, Walker’s recent efforts, culminating with “Human Transit,” have been very well regarded.  For many planners, his book has been a breath of fresh air in helping to demystify how complex transit offerings can be made more simple, customer focused, effective, and useful for everyday city life.  Many planners have an appreciation of the attention he has given to linguistics, and how word choice (i.e., the use of “transfer” vs. “connection” or “transit route” vs. “transit line”) can subtly reinforce or undermine certain collective beliefs about the usefulness of transit, or anything else for that matter.

The participants in the DC course were fairly diverse, although all of those in attendance had a vested interest in transit in some way.  Among these were urban planners, consultants, advocates, and transit planners, among others.  Care was taken to ensure that each working group had a included at least one transit professional mixed with other disciplines and backgrounds in order to facilitate a balanced discussion. Read more…

On Monday, hundreds of thousands thronged the National Mall to watch the Presidential Inauguration and parade, and many came by Metrorail.  To accommodate the crowds, Metro ran rush-level service for 17 consecutive hours.  Just how busy was Metrorail?  Here are some highlights, using our preliminary faregate counts:

Metrorail ridership (entries) by fifteen-minute intervals, Inauguration Day 2013

• Total rail ridership came in at about 800,000 passengers for the day– higher than a typical weekday, 2-3 times the level of a weekend day or holiday, but lower than the 2009 Inauguration.
  • It should be noted that this year Inauguration Day fell on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday.  Therefore, part of the lower ridership this year is likely due to many people having the day off this year when in 2009 they did not.
• Early start! Over 90,000 customers entered the Metrorail system before 7:00 am.
• By the time the President began speaking at noon, Metrorail had already provided 343,000 trips.
• From miles around!  End-of-line stations saw the biggest increases in ridership.
• Carpooling helped many more people access rail at stations where parking is limited.  Franconia-Springfield, for example, recorded over 16,000 rail system entries before noon – 10,000 more than normal, and well over the 5,069 parking spaces available.
• Hundreds of tour buses at RFK Stadium helped generate 10,200 entries at Stadium-Armory before noon, about 5 times that station’s normal ridership.
• The afternoon peak lasted nearly 5 hours from 12:30 to 5:30pm. During this time, another 300,000 passengers entered the system – nearly half through only six stations downtown.

Rail ridership was especially concentrated at a few stations around the Mall:

• By noon, the top 10 busiest stations near the Mall had collectively seen twice as many passengers exiting as a normal weekday.
• L’Enfant Plaza station recorded an impressive 70,000 exits before noon on Monday (normal is around 15,000 for the same timeframe on a weekday). At one point, between 8:00 and 8:15am, 3,600 people exited at L’Enfant Plaza – about 240 passengers per minute.
• Gallery Place handled 53,000 entries after noon on Monday (more than twice its normal ridership for the same timeframe) and experienced three “peaks” – 1-2pm after the Inaugural address, 4-5pm after the parade, and then again at 10pm-1am for late-night revelers.

1. Franconia-Springfield: 16,319
2. Vienna: 14,289
3. Greenbelt: 12,500
4. New Carrollton: 11,917
5. Shady Grove: 10,431
6. Pentagon City: 10,303
7. Stadium-Armory: 10,245
8. Silver Spring: 9,630
9. Branch Avenue: 9,520
10. Crystal City: 8,567

Top 10 Stations for Entries, After Noon:

1. Gallery Place: 53,077
2. L’Enfant Plaza: 36,628
3. Metro Center: 34,125
4. Union Station: 31,574
5. Farragut West: 22,618
6. Farragut North: 20,030
7. Federal Triangle: 19,331
8. Foggy Bottom: 18,152
9. Judiciary Square: 14,458
10. McPherson Square: 13,161

Did you ride Metro on Monday?   These numbers provide one perspective, and we’d like to hear about your experiences in the comments below.

The first round of MindMixer questions for Momentum: The Next Generation of Metro closed on October 26^th. 370 people joined the conversation and posted over 90 ideas, 300 comments, and 1,600 votes. There were 4,300 visits to the site, of which 63% were unique visits. There were almost 24,000 page views and visitors stayed on the site for an average of five and a half minutes. The response was terrific and we’re excited to continue the conversation and new questions are currently on the site.

Who Commented

Mind Mixer responses by zipcode. Click for larger version.

Your fellow Metro riders who joined the conversation came from across the region.Below is a map of the number of participants by zip code.Participants ranged from 18 to over 65, with an average age of 36.5. 70% of participants were men.As our ridership is much more evenly split, we’d love to hear from more women, so please don’t be shy!Guys – please tell your female colleagues, friends, and family about the site and encourage them to comment.This month we are advertising on buses and in multiple English and non-English newspapers to further engage our riders, so keep an eye out.

What We Heard

We have compiled a summary of the vote tally from each first round question, as well as a summary of the themes of the comments within each question. The major takeaways for Metro were that our riders have a lot of interesting, creative ideas for small, short-term improvements to their daily ride, many of which could be inexpensive. Additionally, there is a desire for large infrastructure projects to expand the system, connect communities, and increase the capacity in the system core. We also noticed a need for a Metro 101 to better explain the basics of how Metro operates, as well as the pros and cons of ideas and concepts. Stay tuned to PlanItMetro for posts tagged as Metro 101.

Overall, the major themes we heard were:

• Safety—repair and relieve crowding
• Address core crowding first
  • More train frequency
  • Bus priority
  • Station entrances; faregates
• More information
• Integrate and connect other services, communities
• Funding—long-term source

Data recently released by the Census Bureau show that more commuters are using public transportation than ten years ago, and that transit use has been growing faster than the workforce. Transit’s share of commuters rose from 14.6% in 2000 to 19.4% in 2011. The growth can be chalked up to all transit operators in the region, and it is an encouraging sign that transit’s role supporting the economy has been increasing. Nearly all jurisdictions in WMATA’s Compact area experienced a growth in public transportation usage.

Public transit's share of commuting has grown in the last decade across nearly all jurisdictions in the WMATA Compact area, the latest Census data show.

Transit’s growth in the region highlights the need for us, our partners, and the public to start talking strategically about Metro’s future. Not only are more people taking transit, but more people are choosing to make the Washington region their workplace and home. How can Metro best accommodate growing ridership?  Join the online conversation at Momentum to express your thoughts on these and other questions. Over the next few months we will post questions, conduct polls, and ask you to prioritize various elements of the plan. Your input matters, and we’re listening.

In the coming months, we’ll be releasing what we learned about our rail ridership through the 2012 Metrorail Ridership Survey.These findings from the Census will help put the survey results in context.

The table below shows the change in number of workers for whom means of transportation work is determined, and their transit mode share, between the 2000 Census and 2011 1-Year American Community Survey.

These numbers describe commuters’ “primary” mode of transportation to work. The American Community Survey figures are estimates based on sampling, and are accompanied by statistical margins of error (not shown here).

* Note: For sampling size reasons, the American Community Survey does not publish 1-year statistics for Falls Church City and Fairfax City. This post shows 5-year 2005-2009 ACS statistics for those two jurisdictions.

Countywide Master Plan Transit Corridors.(Click for larger size.)

While Metro works to bring the transit system back up to a state of good repair as well as looking to the future of Metro, we continue to work with our jurisdictional partners on various transit studies and projects to expand the region’s transit system.  In Montgomery County, since 2008 much of the transit expansion planning has focused on developing a countywide Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, most recently through the recommendations of the county’s Transit Task Force earlier this year.

Seeking to take another step towards defining the county’s transit future, the Montgomery County Planning Department is holding a series of public meetings in the coming days to hear from the public on an update of the county’s master plan to consider how BRT might be incorporated within the transportation corridors under study.  Above is a map of the proposed corridors under review.

You can find Montgomery County planning staff’s recommendations online (22MB pdf).

A real-time transit information screen at Java Shack in Arlington, developed by Eric Fidler:Image courtesy of GreaterGreaterWashington.org

This is just a quick note to acknowledge what would hopefully be a trend in future transit-oriented development in the region.  According to the Washington City Paper article, Douglas Development wants an exception from a zoning code-required parking minimum for a new apartment building being planned for Tenleytown.  The generous community benefits package includes, among other things, ” installing a digital display with real-time bus and train schedules and information about nearby bike- and car-share stations.”

This is a great innovation that hopefully will be repeated in restaurants, cafes, bars, as well as new office and residential developments around the region.  The Washington area is rich with transportation options, and it’s exciting to see that third parties are engaged in helping promote alternatives to single-occupant vehicle travel.

The real-time transit information screen in the image above was developed by Eric Fidler, who blogs about transportation issues at Left for LeDroit.

Metro is excited to welcome Shyam Kannan to the position of Managing Director of the Office of Planning.  He offers the following statement to the online planning community.

Shyam Kannan speaking at the Capitol Riverfront BID's Annual Meeting. Photo credit: Tony DeFilippo Photography

After a decade consulting for real estate developers and public agencies alike, I learned the following:transportation drives development – always has, always will. The economic competitiveness of the Washington, D.C. region – especially in a rapidly-evolving global marketplace for talent and investment – is inextricably linked to the quality and appeal of its transit system. Furthermore, there is a window of opportunity right now as Metro continues to restore its aging system to a state of good repair to ensure that the right plans and visions are in place to guide the system – and the region – towards continued prosperity, vibrancy, inclusivity, and health for decades to come.

I look forward to working with Metro, the rider community, and our public leaders to bring forward-thinking and strategic solutions to the many challenges that the system faces and will face over the coming years. Admittedly, I’m a data hound, planning geek, transit aficionado – but I’m also a real estate economist, steward of public process, collaborator, and problem solver. Working to connect the dots and ensure that we have sound ideas that are not only beneficial to the region and sit on firm financial foundations, but also have measurable returns on investment is critically important to this office’s agenda, and we are wiring it into the DNA of everything we do.