wmata Archives - Joe Flood

Does Anyone Make Real Shit Anymore?

metro trash — Once the envy of the nation, Metro is now a mess.

I ask, cause I’m not sure:
Do anybody make real shit anymore?

– Kanye West, Stronger

I put off getting a new iPhone as long as possible, waiting until the battery life was mere minutes and I carried a charger every time I left the house.

I knew replacing it would be an ordeal. Months earlier, I had gone to the Apple Store and asked about my options. It took an Apple genius 30 minutes and a complicated diagram to explain the new pricing plans.

Eventually, I upgraded, ordering an iPhone 7 through my carrier, AT&T. FedEx lost it. I called AT&T, who blocked the phone from the network. Then, of course the phone showed up. AT&T unblocked it and then, perversely, decided to block it again the next day, making my phone a shiny, non-operational brick. I tweeted in frustration:

new iPhone doesn’t show up, @ATT blocks, new phone shows up, @att unblocks, and then blocks it again the next day

— Joe Flood (@joeflood) May 12, 2017

@ATTCares responded. Their Twitter account says that they provide support. But they don’t, they just refer you to the website, to an endless customer service chat. On Friday, I went through a lengthy chat where I had to type in various technical data about my phone. They said they would unblock. And I went through the whole process again on Sunday. My phone still doesn’t work.

This isn’t an unusual story. American life these days largely consists of doing battle with broken things.

On Sunday, while I was trying to work all this out, I had to go downtown. Ten years ago, I would’ve taken Metro. I avoid the transit system now. During the week, Metro features breakdowns and beatings, while on the weekends, it barely runs it all.

Instead, I took Capital Bikeshare. I write about CaBi so much because it’s a system that actually works. Swipe your key, hop on a bike, and go.

Capital Bikeshare 2.0 — Capital Bikeshare – the one thing that works in Washington.

Washington seems to be going backwards in terms of transportation, from heavy rail to bicycles and rickshaws. I fully expect a horse-sharing scheme to emerge within the next couple years.

At least I wasn’t on Amtrak #161, a Twitter saga that also unfolded on Sunday, passengers trapped on a train outside Washington for so long that they had time to order pizza. Their rescue was delayed for want of a stool so that they could climb from one train to another. Richest country in the world.

Romans didn’t just wake up one morning in the ruins of empire. Instead, it was a slow decline. Officials weren’t paid. Water from the aqueducts stopped flowing. Barbarians walked in, unopposed.

We could have a national train system that’s not dependent on a stool. DC could have a safe and efficient Metro (it once did). AT&T could fix problems for customers instead of sending them to chat-based hell.

It’s a choice. As Kanye, bard of our age, asks: Does anybody make real shit anymore?

We can’t cut our way out of crisis. If America is going to move to the next chapter, then it needs to invest in quality once again. We need to make real shit.

Adventures in Multimodal Transportation (and Drinking)

July 2 — Moves, an iPhone app, allows me to track my rambles. Gray is Metro, blue is biking and green is walking.

In most of the United States, there exists but a single transportation mode: driving. You use a car to get to where you want to go. Government has created a massive transportation infrastructure to accommodate that choice – roads of all sizes, gas stations on every corner, parking lots everywhere. Other transportation modes (biking, buses) are distinctly secondary, if they exist at all.

Only in the centers of the most urban of cities is life any different. In select urban areas, other kinds of modes exist. Haphazard government planning has resulted in the occasional protected bike lane. Lack of regulation allows companies like Uber to start. Streets designed in previous centuries accommodate pedestrians who walk to work.

In a multimodal environment, you pick the right tool for the job. You can’t just drive and park somewhere – parking might be expensive or not available or you might not have a car (like me). Instead, you select the transportation mode that works best for you, balancing a mix of a factors including time, hassle, expense and convenience.

While these choices may seem complex, after a while you learn what works best for you. And it won’t be just one mode. My day on July 2 is a good example of what it’s like to live in a multimodal world.

Destination: U Street Metro
Mode: Bike
Time: 8 AM
Distance: 1 mile
Cost: Free

Every weekday, I trek from Logan Circle to Silver Spring for work. The first leg involves biking one mile to the U Street Metro. I bike because it’s easy, fun and quick. Most of the journey is along the 15th Street Cycletrack, a protected bike lane that makes it safe. I have two bikes – a Specialized Sirrus and a Breezer folding bike. I take the Breezer because it’s the cheaper of my two bikes so less likely to be stolen. Even so, I keep it locked up with a Kryptonite lock at the Metro. Safety is an important consideration in urban environments.

Destination: Silver Spring
Mode: Metro
Time: 8:10 AM
Distance: 6 miles
Cost: $3

I’ve biked up to Silver Spring before but it’s nothing but hills and traffic so I take Metro instead. I take the Green Line to Fort Totten and switch to the Red Line. Most of the time, it’s a pleasant, uncrowded reverse commute that takes 20 minutes or so. My commute costs around $120 but actually it’s even less because I can take that money out of my paycheck pre-tax as a transportation benefit.

Destination: Whole Foods Silver Spring
Mode: Walk
Time: Noon
Distance: 1.2 miles (round-trip)
Cost: Free

There’s nothing good around the office so I typically walk up to Whole Foods in Silver Spring for lunch.

Destination: U Street Metro
Mode: Metro
Time: 4 PM
Distance: 6 miles
Cost: $3

Weirdly, on the reverse-reverse commute, the Metro ride home typically takes 5-10 minutes longer than the morning.

Destination: Home
Mode: Bike
Time: 4:30 PM
Distance: 1 mile
Cost: Free

On the way home, I rocket down 13th Street and go around Logan Circle, which is always fun. However, it’s impossible to make a left on Rhode Island to my apartment building. Instead, I go to the next corner, stop, wait for the light to change, then turn around and come back. It’s one of those minor inconveniences that you get used to as a bike rider.

Destination: Aveda Salon
Mode: Walk
Time: 5 PM
Distance: .5 mile
Cost: Free

I got a $40 haircut! It was quite pleasant actually. Part of the reason I chose the salon was that it was within walking distance.

Destination: Glen’s Garden Market/McClellan’s Retreat
Mode: Capital Bikeshare
Time: 5:30 PM
Distance: 1.5 miles
Cost: Free (normally $8 for 24 hours but I had a coupon)

If you’ve visited DC, then you’ve seen the red Capital Bikeshare bikes. They’re impossible to miss. I took one from Logan Circle to Dupont Circle to meet friends for drinks at McClellan’s Retreat. I knew it was the fastest way to get where I was going and I had a coupon. And I didn’t want to have to worry about my bike, or about drunk-biking home. And they’re just fun to ride every once in while.

Destination: GBD
Mode: Walk
Time: 7:00 PM
Distance: .5 miles
Cost: Free

After a couple of bourbon-heavy drinks at McClellan’s Retreat, I had a hankering for fried chicken and biscuits. Thankfully, I could walk to GBD. I think I would’ve been a little wobbly on Bikeshare.

Destination: Home!
Mode: Walk
Time: 8 PM
Distance: 1 mile

Nice to be able to walk home without having to worry about a driving a car after a couple drinks.

Analysis

Distance Covered: 18.7 miles
Total Transportation Costs: $6

Bikes, trains, walking – multimodal transportation can seem complicated. But if you look how I transited around a busy urban area, it’s a model of low-cost simplicity. If I had to drive to all the places listed above, I could’ve easily spent $50 on parking, as well as the aggravation of dealing with DC traffic. Plus, biking is quicker for virtually any trip in the city.

So, give multimodal living a try. Ride a bike. Walk to the corner store. Take a bus downtown. There’s probably more than one way to get to where you’re going.

Metro and the Culture of Organizational Indifference

Silver Spring Transit Center, doomed to never open? — The empty Silver Spring Transit Center. Total cost: $125 million. And rising.

Every morning, I walk by the empty shell of the Silver Spring Transit Center. It was supposed to be a glorified bus shelter, where people could transfer from one bus to another. Construction began in 2008. Six years and $125 million later and it’s still not open.

Why? Because it’s unsafe. The concrete in the structure has started to crack and crumble. Who is responsible? Montgomery County blames the contractors; the contractors blame the subcontractors; the subcontractors say they just followed the Montgomery County specs; and so on. It’s a perfect circle of blamelessness, where no one is at fault.

On Monday, there was a fire in Metro, the subway system for Washington, DC. Smoke is not uncommon in the aging system.

I ride the Metro every day and can’t imagine a more nightmarish scenario than being trapped in a train car as it filled with smoke. People waited as the train operator assured them that help was on the way. They waited patiently for 45-60 minutes, in a tunnel, as smoke overwhelmed them. One person died; 83 others were sent to the hospital.

At the time, I tweeted:

I’d say this changes everything but sadly I don’t think it will #wmata

— Joe Flood (@joeflood) January 12, 2015

Why won’t anything change? The people who manage, operate and oversee Metro have no incentive to change. General Manager Richard Sarles is retiring with a generous pension. Senior Metro executives will receive bonuses. The rich provisions of union contracts will continue to be honored. The Board of Directors will meet and chat. No one will be fired and everyone will find someone else to blame for this tragedy.

The attitude of this elite class of public sector professionals reminds me of Tom and Daisy from The Great Gatsby, after they ran someone over in another transit-related tragedy:

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

Except no one will clean up this mess. Fires, derailments and other safety hazards in Metro will continue and get worse.

Nothing will change at Metro until we make individuals accountable. That means firing everyone associated with Monday’s fire, including:

The Train Operator.
The Station Manager.
The Manager in Charge of Track Maintenance.
The Manager of Operations Control Center.

This should be done – at a minimum. It would be a small step to demonstrate that Metro takes this seriously.

Metro does not need to wait for the NTSB investigation to do this. Someone died in the system that they manage. There needs to be an immediate consequence for this tragedy.

Metro will say, “But we can’t fire anyone – they’re in a union.” Then the union should be abolished. Passenger safety is more important than organized labor. You cannot institute individual accountability with a labor union controlling hiring, firing and work rules.

Train arrives in Silver Spring #igdc #wmata — A train arrives in Silver Spring

Over the next few months, the familiar cycle of blame will set in. Metro will say that the accident is because the Board didn’t give them enough money; the Board will say that they did all they could; union will blame management; management will blame union; Metro will blame passengers; and on and on as everyone remains in their jobs. It will be business as usual – unless we demand better.

Washington is supposedly the land of the “best and the brightest.” And we have no want for resources – we literally print money in this city. If Metro is The Great Society Subway, then the failure to make it safe for riders is an indictment of the entire idea of big government. Walter Olson at the Cato Institute nails it:

If the cream of the nation’s political class, living within a 50 mile radius in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C., cannot arrange to obtain competence from their elected local officials in delivering a public service that’s vital to their daily work lives, what does that tell us about their pretensions to improve through federal action the delivery of local government services – fire and police, water supply and schooling, road maintenance and, yes, transit itself – in the rest of the country?

Big government and other large organizations need to be made accountable. That means punishing people. To break the cycle of organizational indifference, then we have to ensure that there are real penalties for screwing up.

Metro must be reformed. Our lives depend on it.