My Morning Commute

[rcannon100]

@Tania 125525 wrote:

Metro ridership is way down.

‘[The report] attempts to attribute some of the ridership decline to increased reliance on non-rail modes of transportation, especially cycling, which has the potential to cut in significantly to the number of Metro rides shorter than seven miles. “

I knew it was the cyclists fault! Damn cyclists! Why cant they keep their bikes out of the subway tunnels!

Metro may have no choice but to goose its revenue by raising fares again. The system has undertaken five fare hikes since June 2004, resulting in a 59 percent increase in the base fare from $1.35 to $2.15 effective last July.

Five fare hikes in 10 years, 59% increase in fares – and this is the result

And the solution is another fare hike????

Are these guys for real???

[S. Arlington Observer]

@Steve O 125531 wrote:

The more relevant metric is what is your marginal time. If your metro ride is 45 minutes and your bike is 1:05, then your marginal additional time is 20 minutes. Investing 20 minutes to get 1:05 of exercise is a very efficient use of time.

Another person was complaining about Metro in today’s Washington Post Letters to the Editor.

That is an excellent point. Biking costs me about 30 minutes more a day than simply taking the bus. But I get two rides (good for mental sharpness) and “70 minutes of exercise for the price of 30”.

[dasgeh]

While Metro schadenfreude is fun and all, and Metro suckage has probably led lots of people to biking, overall, I believe functioning public transit is helpful to getting the region to really embrace cycling. The more people can rely on public transit, the more willing they will be to give up on cars and the infrastructure we currently have to support cars (like parking). even if they never use public transit, having bus or rail be the back up for a cyclist means that cyclist will be ok with there being less parking at their destinations and less road surface to get there.

[Raymo853]

@S. Arlington Observer 125535 wrote:

“70 minutes of exercise for the price of 30”.

I need to keep that or something similar in mind to lessen the attraction of driving. Trading 45 mins of driving to gain 75 mins of exercising.

[Raymo853]

@rcannon100 125534 wrote:

I knew it was the cyclists fault! Damn cyclists! Why cant they keep their bikes out of the subway tunnels!

Five fare hikes in 10 years, 59% increase in fares – and this is the result

And the solution is another fare hike????

Are these guys for real???

I remember a Metro spokeperson stating that each rider cost the Metro system money since the fares were too low to cover the cost of moving the person. So shouldn’t they be doing better as ridership drops?

[Steve O]

@Raymo853 125542 wrote:

I remember a Metro spokeperson stating that each rider cost the Metro system money since the fares were too low to cover the cost of moving the person. So shouldn’t they be doing better as ridership drops?

And think how rich they will be when it drops to zero!!!

[wheelswings]

@Steve O 125531 wrote:

The more relevant metric is what is your marginal time. If your metro ride is 45 minutes and your bike is 1:05, then your marginal additional time is 20 minutes. Investing 20 minutes to get 1:05 of exercise is a very efficient use of time.

For me the key variable is reliability. You can rely on your bicycle. You know within two minutes when you are getting home or to your meeting or to the school bus to pick up the kids. You cannot rely on Metro, nor on driving through the traffic jams.

The marginal time variable is often less important…and honestly I wouldn’t want my commute to be any quicker ‘cause I like it too much. Often it’s valuable thinking time as well, and when I get to my destination I rush to write down what I’ve come up with. That rarely happens while driving or when I’m a high-priced sardine on Metro.

[AFHokie]

@Raymo853 125541 wrote:

I need to keep that or something similar in mind to lessen the attraction of driving. Trading 45 mins of driving to gain 75 mins of exercising.

When people ask why I commute by bike, I tell them it’s because I’m lazy…by riding to/from I’ve combined my commute & workout so I don’t have to find time to exercise before/after work.

@wheels&wings 125545 wrote:

For me the key variable is reliability. You can rely on your bicycle. You know within two minutes when you are getting home or to your meeting or to the school bus to pick up the kids. You cannot rely on Metro, nor on driving through the traffic jams.

I’ve had metro & driving commutes take an hour over the average time, but when cycling my variable is at most +/- 5 minutes. The hard part’s maintaining a consistent departure time.

[KWL]

@Tania 125501 wrote:

First ride in on my new bike and it was glorious. Stuff it, metro.

My Strava flyby claims I passed someone name “Tania” just downriver from the IOD this morning. There was a claim it was the first commute on “Warbird”. Was that you? And yes, stuff it Metro, and stuff it driving. Every time I do something other than ride to work, I regret it.

[Tania]

@KWL 125549 wrote:

My Strava flyby claims I passed someone name “Tania” just downriver from the IOD this morning. There was a claim it was the first commute on “Warbird”. Was that you? And yes, stuff it Metro, and stuff it driving. Every time I do something other than ride to work, I regret it.

That was me!

Oh. I guess I should should say “yah mahn.” (Warbird color is Black Rasta)

[vern]

@rcannon100 125534 wrote:

I knew it was the cyclists fault! Damn cyclists! Why cant they keep their bikes out of the subway tunnels!

Five fare hikes in 10 years, 59% increase in fares – and this is the result

And the solution is another fare hike????

Are these guys for real???

I think it’s telework that is killing Metro. Most days my office is about half empty as most co-workers are allowed to telework 3 days per week. I know that most of those people take Metro, so now there’s 3 days a week that they aren’t. I don’t think fares are the main culprit. In any event, fares have to increase if the various governing entities won’t put more money in the pot to offset the revenue shortfall.

[KLizotte]

Since the federal government covers metro fares for most workers via the transit subsidy the fare increases don’t have an impact on that cohort which is probably the largest share of riders. In my agency teleworking has grown a lot over the past few years as has people working compressed schedules. The place is a ghost town on Fridays. I teleworked for six weeks this summer due to an injury and hope to telework one day a week if I get a new job. Since starting biking I now take metro a lot less for commuting and just getting around for personal reasons.

Lastly, the delays imposed on metro by all of the construction work on weekends really seems to be having an impact. I’ve had some events I couldn’t bike to so I ended up taking Lyft to get to them since the metro ride would have taken so long and was unpredictable. I’ve ended up taking metro home and have noticed a lot fewer people than normal (when trains operate on a 24 minute schedule one would expect that).

[mstone]

@vern 125554 wrote:

I think it’s telework that is killing Metro. Most days my office is about half empty as most co-workers are allowed to telework 3 days per week. I know that most of those people take Metro, so now there’s 3 days a week that they aren’t. I don’t think fares are the main culprit. In any event, fares have to increase if the various governing entities won’t put more money in the pot to offset the revenue shortfall.

No, it’s metro being metro that’s killing metro; the roads don’t seem any emptier, even though a lot of drivers also have a telework option.

[mstone]

@KLizotte 125562 wrote:

Lastly, the delays imposed on metro by all of the construction work on weekends really seems to be having an impact. I’ve had some events I couldn’t bike to so I ended up taking Lyft to get to them since the metro ride would have taken so long and was unpredictable. I’ve ended up taking metro home and have noticed a lot fewer people than normal (when trains operate on a 24 minute schedule one would expect that).

I used to routinely take metro on the weekends to avoid driving downtown on a Saturday night. I stopped about 5 years ago, when it was clear that it was far quicker and more reliable to drive because of all the single track stupidity and long headways. I’m told it’s gotten worse. Maybe my kids will give weekend metro a chance some day, they’ve pretty much lost me.

[DrP]

@mstone 125572 wrote:

I used to routinely take metro on the weekends to avoid driving downtown on a Saturday night. I stopped about 5 years ago, when it was clear that it was far quicker and more reliable to drive because of all the single track stupidity and long headways. I’m told it’s gotten worse. Maybe my kids will give weekend metro a chance some day, they’ve pretty much lost me.

I agree with the “getting worse” statement. I took metro from 1997-1999 red line to the outer green line (when there was a stretch from Fort Totten to Greenbelt, but not connecting to the rest). And that was a pain, but doable. Then again from 2007-2009 from MD to VA and that wasn’t bad. Sure, there were bad days from time to time, but generally for commuting times, it was mostly reliable. Weekends were generally pretty good, but Sundays were bad just because of so few trains. From 2009-now, I only rarely commute via metro because it takes so long with the transfers and I keep hearing about all the delays in the morning (and it takes about the same time as it does for me to bike. I admit I had been driving it mostly until this March. That was MUCH quicker, but less satisfying than biking). I still would like it for weekends, but they are doing so much track work that it is becoming impractical. I tend to just not go where I feel I should only go via metro (meaning, I do not hit the museums on the mall because I should metro there and metro is unreliable. So, I go elsewhere that a car, walking or bike make more sense). The single tracking is ridiculous. It would appear that they only have cross-over tracks once every several stops. They should be before and after every station. Then they can work small areas with minor delays – especially on off-peak hours when they run fewer trains.

I was hearing about the problems the NY subways had in the 70s and 80s, which were similar to metro’s and those got turned around. Perhaps there is hope.

[Author]

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