Idea: Bikeshare/Metro discounted transfers

[mstone]

Metro really has bigger things it should be focused on. The cost of an annual cabi pass is so low that I can’t believe it’s a significant barrier to many regular metro riders. It also means there isn’t much room for a discount. If you want more cabi riders and you think cost is the problem, just subsidize more cabi passes. One thing I’m sure of, is that metro’s ridership problems have nothing to do with bikes.

[PotomacCyclist]

This is not something that would take up any time from safety, operations or maintenance personnel whatsoever. The software people would program this into the system, if it were to be added. Those people do not work on maintenance, safety, operations or management.

The point is not just to target current Metro riders. The idea is to add one more (of many) incentives to get people out of single-occupant cars and onto other forms of transportation. If something can provide a minor incentive at relatively little cost, why not do it?

Admittedly, I don’t know exactly how many people would be needed to program this discount or how much that would cost. Metro already has occasional changes to fare and transfer pricing. When that happens, they need to reprogram the electronic systems. So they already have the system in place (or they use particular contractors to handle the programming). Since you have not stated how much this would cost, I don’t understand your objection. This is not a major physical overhaul of the system or a large-scale project like the Silver Line. (One recent study blamed the Silver Line expansion for much of the maintenance issues, but I think the consistent underfunding of the system over a period of decades also plays a major part. A different article noted that Metro maintenance has been underfunded almost from the very start.)

[mstone]

The reason not to do it is that it’s pointless. At best they’ll get flak for a regressive giveaway to the rich people who ride the bikes and that distraction is one more they just don’t need. I get that you think cabi is the answer to everything, but it simply can’t provide a benefit to metro that’s worth any time or money investment at all.

[AFHokie]

Why not integrate bikeshare into the SmartTrip card network? You can already use the card with the Fairfax Connector, DASH, ART, & DC Circulator buses, & MTA, etc, so why not make it an option to pay for bikeshare use?

I don’t use bikeshare because for me it’s not worth the hassle of becoming a member for the handful of times per year I find myself in a situation where I’d consider it as an option over a cab, Uber, a bus or simply walking.

[mstone]

@AFHokie 137539 wrote:

Why not integrate bikeshare into the SmartTrip card network? You can already use the card with the Fairfax Connector, DASH, ART, & DC Circulator buses, & MTA, etc, so why not make it an option to pay for bikeshare use?

Are there enough people who would refuse to use the credit card option but would use a smartrip? Even metro has talked for a while about getting rid of cards in favor of mobile payment.

[PotomacCyclist]

@mstone 137538 wrote:

The reason not to do it is that it’s pointless. At best they’ll get flak for a regressive giveaway to the rich people who ride the bikes and that distraction is one more they just don’t need. I get that you think cabi is the answer to everything, but it simply can’t provide a benefit to metro that’s worth any time or money investment at all.

Here we go with the personal attacks again. This is the CAPITAL BIKESHARE sub-forum, which is why I post about Capital Bikeshare on this sub-forum. That’s the whole point. If you don’t like reading about CaBi, you can always skip this sub-forum.

Where exactly did I say that CaBi is the answer to everything? On this thread? Nope. On other threads? Nope. Do I like CaBi? Yes. Do I post about it often? Sometimes, yes. Do I think it is the answer to everything, or at least the answer to all transportation issues in the DC region? Nope. But you set that false characterization up and engage in yet another personal attack on someone on the forum. It’s not the first time.

The whole point of this suggestion is that it could be a low-key/low-cost way to bump up non-car commutes a bit. Nothing more, nothing less. Did I say that this idea would magically allow the region to tear up the Beltway, I-395, I-66 and all the other major roads, because more people might start using Metro and CaBi? Please.

I mentioned that I do not know the specifics of the potential cost. There would be no maintenance, operations or safety personnel who would work on this whatsoever. The programming cost could be more than I expect. That’s why I post on the forum, to see if others have valid, insightful comments and suggestions, pro or con. Not automatic dismissive statements and personal attacks based on your personal biases. I know there are some tech-minded people who post on the forum. Many work for gov’t agencies or private companies who might be involved in programming of this sort. While they would not be allowed to post about confidential info, they could probably post an educated guess about whether something like this would be a lot more expensive than I’m thinking it is. I would welcome such insight. Starting a thread on the BikeArlington forum doesn’t immediately add millions of dollars of costs to Metro or CaBi. It could be a good idea or it could be a bad idea. Nothing you have said makes me look at the idea critically in any way.

It’s a simple thread, about a possible idea. I would like to see what the pros and cons are, based on data or educated guesses based on data and other insights that people may have. Gripes about how I think “CaBi is the answer to everything,” well, I can’t say I find that useful at all. The only thing I’ve gotten out of your responses is that you want me to shut up about CaBi. Since you are not the forum dictator, I will not shut up about CaBi. I will continue to post about it when I think it’s appropriate. Like it or not, Capital Bikeshare is now a major part of cycling in the DC region. You may despise it and you may try to shut down discussion about it on the forum, but the forum covers bike commuting, bike infrastructure and bike planning, among other bike-related topics. Capital Bikeshare is a significant part of all of those topics and categories.

[hozn]

I think most of us have learned that arguing with with mstone is rather pointless. He has lots of good points but they come with a heavy dose of hyperbole, over-simplification, and general cynicism. It makes for good theater, though.

So I would just save the “walls of text” responses for occasions that matter.

[mstone]

Wall of text ignored, as desired. You’re not posting about cabi, you’re posting about metro. You’re ignoring the optics involved on the metro side, because of your focus on cabi. I don’t think you actually responded to what I wrote, but I honestly didn’t parse every word in the wall. Metro can’t do something like this without studies and administrative overhead which isn’t free. Their smartrip system has been overtaxed and having problems for years, and there’s no such thing as a “simple change”. And, again, the optics of metro spending time and attention on that instead of the major problems in the system would lead to headaches that metro really doesn’t need and almost certainly won’t affect ridership in a measurable way. If you want to promote cabi+metro, find a way to promote it from the cabi side without burdening metro with it. AFHokie posted about changing cabi to use smartrip cards. I’m skeptical that would be revenue-positive, but at least that’s something that comes out of cabi’s funding rather than metro’s.

Think of it as a sinking ship. You want to put on a better deck chair. It doesn’t matter if it’s the shiniest deck chair ever, it doesn’t matter if you say that the captain doesn’t need to polish it, just the steward. The people on the ship are going to be really annoyed if anyone is focused on the deck chairs while the ship is sinking. Once the ship is fixed, sure, talk about how the chairs could be better.

[Raymo853]

Based on your first seven sentances/phrases, I think this is a great idea. I have no idea what else you state as your post is insanely too long. When advocating, always keep to three related points and no more than six sentances/phrases.

One problem, metro and bike share see each other as the enemy.

[Steve O]

@Raymo853 137550 wrote:

One problem, metro and bike share see each other as the enemy.

Actually, I think it’s asymmetrical. I don’t think CaBi sees Metro as the enemy, particularly since they are a useful tool for the “last mile” problem. OTOH, Metro has publicly stated that part of their ridership decline can be attributed to more bicycling, including Capital Bikeshare.

The general concept of integrating forms of transit is, in and of itself, a good idea. It’s already done a lot–particularly between buses and rail. So I think PotomacCyclist raising this idea can make for a worthwhile discussion. Since CaBi can be a good “last mile” solution for other forms of transit, linking them somehow makes good sense.

One simpler, starter idea in this regard might be cross marketing of some kind. For instance, Metro riders could get coupons for a free ride on CaBi. To reduce the free-riders problem, they could be limited to same day and certain CaBi stations. That sort of thing. If the goal is to help people better understand the connectedness the systems can create, with the intent of increasing use of both systems, then unleash some marketing geniuses to come up with promos and other tools to work on that. Shared fare systems is just one idea of many that could be considered.

[mstone]

@Steve O 137553 wrote:

OTOH, Metro has publicly stated that part of their ridership decline can be attributed to more bicycling, including Capital Bikeshare.[/quote]

Well, for a long time metro has been looking for anything to blame other than their reliability and other internal problems. (For years they wouldn’t acknowledge that the weekend track work was a factor for people not wanting to metro on the weekend!) If you look at the difference between peak and current ridership, and the number of people riding bikes, it’s clear that the majority of people abandoning metro didn’t hop on a bike. I think telework is a bigger existential threat to metro than bikes, since they’re geared so heavily toward supporting traditional 9-5 commuters.

Quote:

One simpler, starter idea in this regard might be cross marketing of some kind. For instance, Metro riders could get coupons for a free ride on CaBi.

Yup, that’s something that wouldn’t require anything at all from metro, cabi could just get a couple of people handing out passes at metro stations and buy some ads inside. I thought they’d already done some of that, but I may be thinking of some other campaign. A bigger challenge on the cabi side is how non-scalable their interface for daily users is–they’re not going to impress a lot of people with a line at the kiosk. I wonder if they could do some kind of facilitated transaction with mobile terminals, where someone gets handed a one day key right there? (I assume they’d still want a credit card associated with the key to discourage bike trashing?)

[peterw_diy]

CaBi’s 2014 member survey: “Ninety-one percent of respondents said they would be somewhat interested (31%) or very inter-
ested (60%) in a Capital Bikeshare fob or SmarTrip card that they could use to access both Capital Bikeshare and public transit service.”

But Metrorail serves 25x as many people as CaBi. If 90% want a single card, it seems likely that the existing CaBi members are WMATA users. How much can CaBi grow without more equipment? How much of an increase would it be for WMATA if CaBi maxed out? How many of those riders would bring additional revenue to WMATA?

I imagine CaBi has already reached out to WMATA and been rejected.

[PotomacCyclist]

The idea I had is that no new equipment would be needed at all. If this proposal were ever instituted, it would be software-based only. The CaBi account and the SmarTrip account could be linked by the user. It would be optional. If someone is concerned about “the Government” tracking their every move, well, then don’t use CaBi or Metro, or at least don’t sync the two. Problem avoided.

For those who want the benefit of interconnection, they could opt in, through either the CaBi acct or on the Metro SmarTrip site. (People can already register their SmarTrip cards online. The benefit is that if you ever lose the card, you can retrieve the entire balance and transfer it to a new card, paying only the small fee for a new card. Some people store hundreds of dollars of value on their SmarTrip card, so losing it could be a big deal if it isn’t registered.) If everything were set up, then the user could simply check a box on either account page and possibly verify the selection by receiving an email link and confirming that the user wants to link the two accounts.

Once that’s done, the individual would use their CaBi key as before, and they would use their SmarTrip card as they do currently. The difference is that if the systems detect that the person has checked in a bike within a set distance from a Metro station, and then enters that Metro station within a set time period, then the discounted transfer would apply. They could use similar limits as the rail/bus or bus/rail transfers, with slight modification for bikeshare. Perhaps something like checking into a bike station 1/4 mile from a Metro station, then entering the Metro station within 30 minutes of docking the bike. (The exact numbers could be hashed out by others.) This isn’t new and it’s not revolutionary. These transfers have been part of the Metro system for years, maybe even decades. That’s why I don’t think it would be that novel to program the CaBi/Metro transfers, because this sort of thing has already been done before. It’s not new, except for the proposed addition of Capital Bikeshare.

I don’t know if Metro would have money to spend on studying the effect of this transfer system. But as I mentioned before, many private individuals have already been studying cycling and bikeshare data for years in the DC/Arlington area. This is not a new task either. It is already being done by many intelligent and motivated individuals. It’s really not that hard.

Will those studies be comprehensive and authoritative? Probably not, but most studies are not authoritative and 100% conclusive. They just try to narrow down the range of possibilities and probabilities. As people are pointing out, the user base of CaBi is relatively small, compared to that of Metro, so I don’t see this as having a massive negative effect on Metro. If it is true that CaBi has already had a negative effect on Metro revenues, well, that had absolutely nothing to do with any discounted transfer program.

[PotomacCyclist]

I have also been thinking of the new proposals from the new Metro General Manager, to offer more practical and beneficial monthly passes for MetroRail riders. They only offer a slight discount over paying for rail trips individually. The benefit to Metro is that if someone buys a monthly pass, that provides a much more stable revenue stream for WMATA. If there is an outage, such as the one a couple weeks ago, that would not result in a large negative spike in revenue. The monthly passes would also encourage purchasers to take more weekend trips, even with the reduced train frequencies, because once you buy the monthly pass, there is no extra cost to taking multiple additional trips on the weekend (as long as you stay under the per-ride limit of the pass). I don’t recall the specifics, but the pass works something like this: You would pay for the cost of about 18 round trips at one of two levels, something like $2.15 or $3.25. (I don’t remember the exact numbers, but you get the idea.) Then that pass allows the purchaser to take unlimited trips of $2.15 or less (or $3.25 or less, or whatever the number is).

Metro is already running the relatively empty trains on the weekends. The track work has led to fewer weekend Metro trips overall. Perhaps more people would use Metro on the weekends if there was no additional per-trip cost. People (at least in DC, Arlington and other areas near Metro stations) would be more likely to go car-lite or car-free. Maybe this would increase total revenue for WMATA. I don’t know if it will or not. Neither does WMATA, so that is why they are only running a pilot program for the new monthly passes.

Why is this relevant here? Because this is partly why I thought of a CaBi/Metro transfer program. If someone can tie in CaBi with Metro, and connect it to a monthly Metro pass, the overall combination could attract more people to Metro than just the monthly passes would. I don’t have any solid evidence to back up this assertion, but that’s why I posted this here. To see what interested parties would have to say. Even such discussion would not prove anything, so a pilot program would also be a good idea, if this idea were accepted.

I tend to think that this idea would have a slight benefit for WMATA, especially in combination with the monthly passes. (The increased transit tax benefit will also help to boost Metro revenues, I think.) I do NOT think this idea would be a gamechanger for Metro. Never said it would be. However, I think the cost to institute this would be relatively small, which would make this a worthwhile program. It’s not as though I’m talking about constructing a new underground Metro line through downtown DC here. I may not know the exact cost of this idea, but certainly it is not a multi-billion dollar idea, the way that a separated Blue Line through downtown DC would be.

Compared to most other Metro-related plans and programs, this transfer idea would cost very little. So even if the benefits are only modest, that could easily make it worth pursuing. If someone can explain why it would not, I would be interested to hear the argument… AS LONG AS it has to do with facts, good-faith guesses, and opinions based on experience, studies, observations and thought experiments. Just saying “Metro sucks” or telling me to shut up about CaBi does not add anything to the discussion (and DISCUSSION is exactly the entire POINT of having this forum in the first place!).

[PotomacCyclist]

As for Metro rejecting the plan, well, both Metro and CaBi are funded/owned by the same groups, namely the local governments. There were problems with CaBi placing bike stations on Metro property, but that could have been due to exaggerated fears about bike stations interfering with bus or pedestrian traffic flows and safety around Metro stations. (I’m not saying those fears were reasonable, just that those attitudes might have led to all the delays and obstacles.) Or some of it was due to protecting Metro turf from the intrusion of the new Capital Bikeshare program.

There would be no physical transfer or use of Metro property with the discounted transfer program. It’s all software. (None of those paper transfer tickets like they used to use. Actually, some of the local bus systems still use paper transfers or tickets. I used one in Prince George’s County this past winter.)

Perhaps there has been reluctance to cooperate with CaBi because of concerns about CaBi eroding Metro revenue. I’ll admit that CaBi does appear to have had at least a small negative effect on Metro revenue. But a CaBi/Metro transfer program would not increase the decline of Metro revenue. It could encourage more people to use Metro, and perhaps it could encourage more people to sign up for the new monthly passes. Again, I do not think the CaBi/Metro transfer idea on its own would bring tens of millions of dollars into Metro coffers. But it doesn’t have to. Until someone tells me differently, I have to assume that this idea would cost much less than most Metro programs and additions. Nothing would need to be built. No new equipment would need to be designed or purchased whatsoever. No revolutionary leaps in software programming would need to be made, because these electronic transfers have already been built into the existing system. It’s already set up to detect the time gaps between leaving a Metro station or bus and entering a bus or Metro station, and then deducting the transfer discount automatically.

Likewise, the CaBi account system is already set up to detect and record fairly precise information. If you login to the CaBi site, you can see the precise times that you check out or check in a bike. You can see the bike stations used. (The distances for the trips are not accurately, because the system only measures the straight-line distance between stations, not the distance of the actual route taken.)

It would take some programming to link the CaBi system and the SmarTrip system. I’m not a programmer so I don’t know how complicated this would be. But I do know that all the precise info required for this idea is already being recorded and tracked for SmarTrip and CaBi today. The systems wouldn’t need to be overhauled.

I understand that whenever you try to fiddle around with a complicated network or software system, bugs arise. Maybe this idea would introduce too many bugs. But it seems that the software people should be able to work it out, since Metro is already running an electronic automated transfer discount system.

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