Is there room for more riders on Metro?

DC Examiner
January 06,2005
Christy Goodman
Metro Plans for More Riders



"The stations were not designed for the number of people the system already handles and will face problems in the future, said Edward Thomas, Metro's assistant general manager of planning and technology."

MetroRail has seen over 100% growth in ridership over the last 10 years at some Metro Stations. The trains are already packed during rush hour. Yes, 8 car trains are going to help, if Metro doesn't reduce the number of trains.

But can we afford to grow another 100% or more in the next 10 years?

I'm looking forward to my education on the Riders' Advisory Council from Metro on how we're going to be able to squeeze more people onto an already over burdened system.

In an earlier BLOG I asked about "transportation modeling" for better management of Buses on our over burdened roads. I'd like to see "transportation modeling" used to manage the greater demands on MetroRail as well.

My gut tells me that even if we could optimize the schedules, max out the trains to 8 cars, and remove seats to make room for more sardines (err passengers) the system is just not going to scale.

Add on to this the problem of deteriorating infrastructure (escalators, elevators, and cracked concrete in stations) and the cost to improve the system is going to be much greater than the $1B budget WMATA has now.

Where was the planning for this system in the first place? Why do we only have one pair of tracks running through most stations?

We can't even move to a system that allows us to use express and skip-stop trains!

Good thing lots of the new jobs are out in the suburbs where they don't have to worry about MetroRail. (;-)>

Telework Anybody?

I. Michael Snyder
WMATA Riders' Advisory Council
Council Member for Maryland - MetroRail