Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Post-Derailment Reactions

This post will serve as a collection of politicians' responses to today's revelation that last Thursday's train derailment (zero injuries) should have been prevented a month earlier, and shows a significant lack of safety management. WAMU has more. Use this as a reminder to keep those who run/manage/oversee the organization responsible for their actions and those that affect the safety of all WMATA customers, riders, and employees.

WMATA Board of Directors
Mark Warner

Tim Kaine

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Decrease in (Reported) WMATA Track Delays Since 2009

In a conversation on Twitter, this simple question was tweeted at me:

With data from the Daily Service Reports, this shouldn't be too hard to find. Just count up and graph the number of delays categorized under track problems, right? Well, that's exactly what I plan to do with this write-up. If you don't feel like reading everything including the details, I guess you can skip to the bottom and read the conclusion.

Background

The current push for overhauling the older parts of the WMATA Metrorail system is a plan known as Metro Forward:
The Metro Forward improvement program is an ambitious 6-year action plan that is designed to make your life better by making your commuting experience more reliable, more comfortable and more enjoyable.
We are working to provide you with new rail cars, new buses, new tracks, new technology and the rebuilding of essential infrastructure. Just over the coming year we will be rehabilitating and replacing nearly 50 escalators; renovating 12 Metrorail stations; retrofitting track and replacing track circuitry; rehabilitating third rail, running rail and track pads; installing track turnouts; purchasing new police radios; rehabilitating three bus garages; replacing 100 Metrobuses and rehabilitating 100 more. (http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/metro_forward/)
At a cost of $5.5 billion, the program started in 2011 is advertised to be replacing significant amounts of track, circuitry, escalators, and more. Focusing primarily on track for this article, Metro Forward is responsible for replacing on average 31,000 track fasteners and 18,000 ties per year, reducing the number of welds in the track, and completely replacing over 60 miles of track over the program's duration in addition to what is replaced during regular maintenance. (http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/board_of_directors/board_docs/100914_4DCombinedCOLOR.pdf)

Through October of 2014, WMATA shows that they have made some fairly significant progress in the program. Noted in the graphs below, Metrorail is working out of a backlog due to previous underinvestment in the rail system. One of the main items that is still unresolved and won't be for a few years is decreasing the number of track joints. Two joints are created each time a new piece of rail is inserted into the system - one at each end of the new piece - which end up causing a bumper ride for customers, and decreasing the lifespan of train wheels and the track itself. During maintenance windows, teams go around joining or welding these to the rail on either side in order to create one continuous piece of rail for trains to run on.

Number of Canceled (Did Not Operate) Trains on the Rise

This article has been cross-post to the FixWMATA website as well. Check it out!

Does it sometimes feel like more and more WMATA trains don’t run as they’re scheduled to? I’m here to say, unfortunately, it is not your imagination or made up. Ever since the start of revenue service on the Silver Line, the number of train cancellations – those that do not operate as scheduled – have gone up and up. Formerly averaging 37 trains per month that did not operate in the 5 years before the Silver Line’s opening, the number of canceled trains has now spiked to 141 canceled trains on average per month since July 2014 through July 2015. This impacts the system most when the maximum number of trains are needed for service, that is, morning and evening rush hours.
The 6am hour is usually the one most impacted, closely followed by the 7am, 3pm, and 4pm hours (24, 29, 24, and 17 trains canceled on average per month for each hour, respectively). These four hours are some that WMATA says are the most important to them as a transit agency.
When broken down by line, it is plainly obvious to see that the Orange line is most impacted by the opening of the Silver line, and in general, all cancelled trains since 2012. Surprisingly though, the Green and (to a lesser-extent) Yellow lines have also been impacted in recent months, neither of which share track with the Silver line and are unlikely to share rail yards. Again, the spike in scheduled-but-cancelled trains is clear to see starting once the Silver line went into revenue service in July of 2014.

All told, this issue is not just of importance to riders, but also one of importance to WMATA. If the number of trains canceled correlates at all to the number of customers who choose alternate methods of transportation, this looks to parallel decreases in ridership and lower revenue for the system. Each 6-car train cancelled loaded with 100 passengers per train is potentially an extra 600 riders in the system, meaning the average rise in cancellations post-Silver Line could be resulting in around 750,000* fewer fare-generating trips per year riding the system.

Thus in addition to bringing customers more frustration by increasing crowding, waits, or resorts to alternate transportation methods, WMATA may end up overestimating the revenue brought in by rail operations of a tune of $1.5 million or more.

* Each month has seen an average increase of 104 extra cancelled trains as compared to before the Silver line. If we assume each of these is a 6-car train with each car carrying on average 100 passengers, this adds up to 748,800 cancelled “seats” moving through the system.
$ Data for March 2011 through April 2012 is missing. February 2011 data only constitutes the first half of the month.

# Raw data can be provided upon request.