It happens all too often. It seems to me that it happens more often just as I am getting ready to put the commute on hold for a few days while I travel on business. The correlation is uncanny and I have mentioned to several of the regular MARC conductors enough times that when something goes terribly wrong, one or another will ask if I am traveling again. It used to be a preponderance of incidents low platform arrivals at Union Station that occur when I am about to travel. Now the train that I ride in the morning so regularly arrives on 8 or 16 that the correlation has been made meaningless.
This doesn’t mean that other fubars don’t surface to fill the void. It was July 26, the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This day will live in my memory as the day of A Pair of Whammies and an Ace Kicker.
First let me explain that the following day I was scheduled to fly to Alabama on company business and would be off the remainder of the week. We arrived on the 16 Track as recent normal would dictate. The manual lift was littered with trash that the conductor kicked to the curb, so to speak, and onto the track bed. Beads of sweat on his forehead formed into rivulets and dripped off his chin. As always, I thanked him for the service he provided and let him know that I was going to be away for the remainder of the week. He replied with, “ah, oh.” We both knew that something probably was in store for us.
I departed the office a few minutes early in order to stop by the ATM at the corner near the office. I would need a few dollars for the meals on the trip. When I arrived at the station, Dave, one of the station supervisors gave be the heads up for the 16 Track so that I could get aboard before the onslaught of the remaining 899 passengers. I got me vertical ride to the car floor level and backed into my usual spot. Soon others of the Gang filtered in. Sandy and Mikey arrived followed by George. Even Princess Carly arrived soon enough to get a seat. George got up for Shelly, who has been a new addition to the usual suspects. Mikey held his seat in case Candice arrived.
Billy and Andrew made their appearances and Susan too. We had a quorum and a peanut gallery of itinerants, those people who just happen to stop for an open seat.
The day had been one of those above 90 days where Amtrak promised cold water in the station and just water on the trains in case there was a problem. The HVAC cut out a minute or two before the train started moving. The Princess, sitting in her corner spot, said, “A least we are moving.” It could not have been more than 30 seconds before the train slowed to a stop. I gave Carly one of those sideways glances and expression of mock disgust.
We all waited for the announcement. They were going to get the on-site mechanic out to the locomotive to see about getting it restarted. We had only moved about 2 car lengths before the end came. They fiddled about for a few minutes before announcing that the train was dead and the run canceled. Remember the double whammy? Here it comes. The 6 o’clock departure would take on as many of us that would fit. Here it is. The 6 o’clock train is on Track 8.
Now I have to wait to get off after they drag the half dilapidated lift down to my new location AND I would need to wait again to get back on the replacement train. The Gang ran ahead and regrouped in the fifth car on the new trainset. While there were a few strangers already seated, Carly and Shelly got their relative positions again. While I waited for the lift to be brought along the platform, Sandy and George taunted me by holding cold beer cans up to the window. Although I would have to wait, I did know that a cold one would be waiting. Billy took the opportunity to stop by the station package store.
A round of cheers when up as I made my entrance. Even though the aisle was crowded, my usual spot had been preserved. The new fifth car was a “café car” with the alcove behind where I sit. I offered to pull in there if two people cared to sit. Billy declared, “no way, we fought hard to keep that seat up.” I didn’t argue. Soon enough I was cracking open the cold one that was handed across the aisle and along to me.
We waited until the scheduled departure of this train. As we lurched into motion I said to Carly, “don’t say a word.” She pursed her lips and kept quiet. We held our anticipation until we were fully out of the station.
One of the occasional guys who drops in on occasion got talking about how the heat breaks down the locomotives and that they knew that DC was hot in the summer. Why then didn’t they buy equipment that wasn’t as sensitive to the heat? Billy mentioned the catenary lines and how they sag when it is hot. Mikey added the phrase “the cat and the canary” from our previous raucous conversations.
I said that it was just like the railroad folks to underestimate the needs of the people that serve. After all they would prefer to be hauling freight. Bill questioned, “Why so negative, Bob? You are usually the optimist.”
Mikey quipped, “He’s SEEN the canary.” That brought up all the imminent failures we have experienced over the years. Susan brought up her fifteen years of MARC commuting and how even when it was bad in those “old days” it was not nearly so often.
The ride moved along reasonably fast up until we had to stop to allow the Acela to clear the BWI platform before we proceeded. I promised an “ace kicker.”
The train stopped with our car reasonably close to the stairwell. I jumped out and headed for the stairs like everyone else. Susan and I waited by the elevator for it to return to the lower level. A crowd of other anticipatory commuters hoped for a spot in the elevator. One of these days BWI station will have two elevators on both sides of the platform. For now though the single rickety units would have to suffice. We packed in and bore up under the extreme heat of 8 human bodies packed into an already hot 280 cubic foot box. When we arrived at the pedestrian bridge level, the kicker became manifest. The door failed to open. The buttons failed to prompt the door. The car would not move and the door did not open.
At least the emergency bell, for what it’s worth, rang out clearly. The emergency phone also dutifully dialed its prescribed number. No one answered. Maybe he or she was out for a smoke or a toilet break or maybe no one was there. We didn’t wait.
A woman asked the logical question, “can we open the door ourselves.” She also posed the associated one about how we would do it. Undoubtedly there was at least one person on the verge of freakout.
I said for those by the door to place the palms of their hands flat on the door and push left. With several intermittent pushes, the door mechanism clicked into place and it slowly slid open. In one big wave everyone was out the door. I quipped to myself that I would probably be the only one in the elevator on the other side. It was astute deductive reasoning. No one waited there to ride down.
Just as I was about to cross the bridge, Jill emerged from the stairwell and we walked over together. I related that we had just averted a major meltdown in the stuck elevator. “Really,” she pondered? “Yes, really. No one is waiting to ride down in this one.” It arrived at my call, Jill and I rode down together. There was no Ace to match the kicker.
Now my only travails will be the three As of flying that constantly are a problem to the traveler: Airlines, Airplanes and Airports. They are all equally good and equally bad each in their own ways. But THAT is another story.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Yet Another Way to Have a Delayed Commute
Every day there is something else or a familiar cause of delay. As of late, the morning train that I use has been arriving on Track 8. Even when I caught a later train after a planned late ride home the night before, there we were being assigned to Track 8. For anyone who doesn't count the track locations, Track 8 along with #15 and #16 are low level boarding locations. The architects and railroad managers decided that when they remodeled the Great Hall at Union Station and added a multi-level parking structure behind the old station that the trains and their passengers would take secondary status. Actually there is a match to the Track 8 location that is likewise low level boarding but it is rarely used for daily commuter trains. These two pairs of tracks allow Amtrak and maintenance crews to drive their baggage and service tugs in and out of the station.
When there are several arriving or departing passenger trains is not the time to be moving supplies and equipment along the boarding platforms. This has never stopped them from trying. Of course the movement of equipment along the platforms is not without its other negatives. Garbage and trash are hauled in and out along those same walkways dripping their fermented brew on the crumbling concrete and asphalt. That brings up the state of deterioration of the walkway themselves.
Back in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act promulgated accessibility regulations that included measures that were supposed to assure that persons who are blind or visually impaired could detect the edge of the raised platforms and know where the pedestrian paths and vehicle paths cross. Amtrak and the Union Station management opted to install the "yellow bumpy dots" that were the required minimum. These bright yellow plastic plates were riveted to the subsurface after the pavement was milled down a quarter of an inch to assure a smooth transition. With years wear from driving the station equipment over the plastic, they are both heavily soiled with grease and extensively broken. The smell of garbage and the poor condition of the walking surfaces testifies to the status of the commuter and passengers of the three railroads that utilize the station.
The character of the 7/8 and 15/16 track pairs is significant because anywhere from 600 to 900 passengers per train must climb and descend the steps of the train when the train is scheduled on those tracks. Most people are only marginally inconvenienced by those arrival locations. There are many people whose knees, ankles and hips do not fair well especially when descending and making that last step down to the pavement. Couple that with the poor conditions of the platform edges and damaged yellow detectable warnings, and you get a significant financial liability and risk of passenger injury.
The most inconvenienced of commuters are the persons who use wheelchairs who must wait until one of the train or station crew members drags a corroded dirty trash strewn aluminum lift along that cluttered broken pavement to the train car door when one waits until the accessibility equipment is properly positioned and ready to board or disembark the passenger. I describe this point of view from my perch on a wheelchair waiting by the doorway to enter or exit these trains.
Now to be fair, the conductors do not make track assignments. They do not maintain the station or the lift equipment. Although sometimes they get busy with other passenger assistance or forget that I am waiting, they do an excellent job of handling the accessibility of their trains. For those times they all have my forgiveness.
July 22, 2010 yet another cause of delay can be written into the log book. When we arrived at about 4:45 in the evening we discovered that due to "a police action" tracks 7 through 11 were closed ant out of service. No trains were being allowed to enter the station on those tracks. Furthermore, the trains already parked on those track in the station were not being allowed to leave.
I was about to suggest to Sandy that we go to the Center Café and wait out the delay when one of the station crew called me over to the MARC desk. They had just opened access to Track 13 and we were going to be able to leave. Sandy got separated from me when I stopped to talk with one of our regular conductors.
"You put her up to this didn't you?" he said. I didn't know what he was referring to but I played into the gig.
"Well, somebody had to," I said.
"You just didn't want to be on track 8 again."
"I never do, but I have to deal with it, don't I?"
I got to the usual Car 5 location where Larry already was situated and Sandy had just arrived ahead of me. "So you decided to not jump, huh, Sandy," I said cryptically. She did not know what I was talking about. I got the change to recycle the comment when Trish arrived. She too was not getting my sarcasm.
Sam knew. His office window overlooks the Union Station parking structure. He related the news that a woman was on the edge at the top threatening to jump while the police held back and negotiated.
I said that it is good that MARC riders are mostly a mellow lot because if anyone had a reason to want to jump off the garage, it was us. We put up with a lot of crap nearly everyday. The difference is that we are just angry enough to "have nothing better to do then write letters of complaint."
We put up with nearly continuous construction of both boarding platforms at BWI, the alternately partial then complete closure of one garage and partial reopening, the elevators out of service, the cross station arrival each evening with the steep narrow stairwell to the pedestrian bridge. This work has stretched on for over three years now. If anyone was going to snap, they would have done it by now. If everyone who had good cause to snap did, we would have felt an earthquake much bigger than our July 16th 3.6 one in Gaithersburg.
When there are several arriving or departing passenger trains is not the time to be moving supplies and equipment along the boarding platforms. This has never stopped them from trying. Of course the movement of equipment along the platforms is not without its other negatives. Garbage and trash are hauled in and out along those same walkways dripping their fermented brew on the crumbling concrete and asphalt. That brings up the state of deterioration of the walkway themselves.
Back in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act promulgated accessibility regulations that included measures that were supposed to assure that persons who are blind or visually impaired could detect the edge of the raised platforms and know where the pedestrian paths and vehicle paths cross. Amtrak and the Union Station management opted to install the "yellow bumpy dots" that were the required minimum. These bright yellow plastic plates were riveted to the subsurface after the pavement was milled down a quarter of an inch to assure a smooth transition. With years wear from driving the station equipment over the plastic, they are both heavily soiled with grease and extensively broken. The smell of garbage and the poor condition of the walking surfaces testifies to the status of the commuter and passengers of the three railroads that utilize the station.
The character of the 7/8 and 15/16 track pairs is significant because anywhere from 600 to 900 passengers per train must climb and descend the steps of the train when the train is scheduled on those tracks. Most people are only marginally inconvenienced by those arrival locations. There are many people whose knees, ankles and hips do not fair well especially when descending and making that last step down to the pavement. Couple that with the poor conditions of the platform edges and damaged yellow detectable warnings, and you get a significant financial liability and risk of passenger injury.
The most inconvenienced of commuters are the persons who use wheelchairs who must wait until one of the train or station crew members drags a corroded dirty trash strewn aluminum lift along that cluttered broken pavement to the train car door when one waits until the accessibility equipment is properly positioned and ready to board or disembark the passenger. I describe this point of view from my perch on a wheelchair waiting by the doorway to enter or exit these trains.
Now to be fair, the conductors do not make track assignments. They do not maintain the station or the lift equipment. Although sometimes they get busy with other passenger assistance or forget that I am waiting, they do an excellent job of handling the accessibility of their trains. For those times they all have my forgiveness.
July 22, 2010 yet another cause of delay can be written into the log book. When we arrived at about 4:45 in the evening we discovered that due to "a police action" tracks 7 through 11 were closed ant out of service. No trains were being allowed to enter the station on those tracks. Furthermore, the trains already parked on those track in the station were not being allowed to leave.
I was about to suggest to Sandy that we go to the Center Café and wait out the delay when one of the station crew called me over to the MARC desk. They had just opened access to Track 13 and we were going to be able to leave. Sandy got separated from me when I stopped to talk with one of our regular conductors.
"You put her up to this didn't you?" he said. I didn't know what he was referring to but I played into the gig.
"Well, somebody had to," I said.
"You just didn't want to be on track 8 again."
"I never do, but I have to deal with it, don't I?"
I got to the usual Car 5 location where Larry already was situated and Sandy had just arrived ahead of me. "So you decided to not jump, huh, Sandy," I said cryptically. She did not know what I was talking about. I got the change to recycle the comment when Trish arrived. She too was not getting my sarcasm.
Sam knew. His office window overlooks the Union Station parking structure. He related the news that a woman was on the edge at the top threatening to jump while the police held back and negotiated.
I said that it is good that MARC riders are mostly a mellow lot because if anyone had a reason to want to jump off the garage, it was us. We put up with a lot of crap nearly everyday. The difference is that we are just angry enough to "have nothing better to do then write letters of complaint."
We put up with nearly continuous construction of both boarding platforms at BWI, the alternately partial then complete closure of one garage and partial reopening, the elevators out of service, the cross station arrival each evening with the steep narrow stairwell to the pedestrian bridge. This work has stretched on for over three years now. If anyone was going to snap, they would have done it by now. If everyone who had good cause to snap did, we would have felt an earthquake much bigger than our July 16th 3.6 one in Gaithersburg.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
The Adventure of Commuting
Recently, my oft posed question has been: When did commuting to work become an adventure? Wasn’t the stereotype of the commute a long boring drudgery that had to be endured in order to match ones household expenses to ones income. Or it was a necessity for having access to suburban schools while still holding down that urban managerial job where you had worked your way up from peon to harried middle-manager. Whatever the reason for the long trip, one had to drive alone on what is euphemistically called an “Expressway” or sit in a bus in the same traffic are the motorists or read the morning newspaper while cruising along the tracks on a commuter train.
When I relocated my career to DC in 1994 while still living in my house on the cul-de-sac in Baltimore, the daily repetition was quite ordinary and indeed boring. I had to meet the train on a crumbling platform in a swampy valley near the BWI airport. The station there already showed signed of its age even though it was not quite 15 years old. The bloom was off its flower even then, but the station as a whole was still quite functional. The two elevators that made crossing over the three tracks worked every day and there was little need to consider what I would do should there be an outage. My wheelchair doesn’t do steps very well but it goes down a flight far better than up one.
On February 22, 2000 the MTA inaugurated the bi-level train car service and announced the intent of doubling MARC ridership by 2020. That was a noble endeavor but one that was more marketing and pronouncement than substance. Ridership did however increase with the advent of the larger capacity cars. At an average of 132 seats per can there was comfortable room for more passengers. Fortunately there was also more standing room for the additional commuters who would be seeking transport into DC each day. The total number of trains each day remained constant on the Penn Line and space was at a premium almost from the start, even on a normal day.
Soon the parking lots at three of the busiest stations were filled and reached capacity earlier in the morning. Halethorpe, BWI and Odenton each reached capacity in a rotation mostly determined by the construction schedules of additional space and the fees that were charged at BWI where they constructed first one garage then a second one. Walking distances at Halethorpe and Odenton reach as long as 0.6 miles from the farpoint to the boarding zones. This long walk is an inconvenience but doesn’t not deter the commuters as a whole. There is a significant amount of ‘churn’ in the overall ridership. When a new rider sees the crowded conditions and challenges of parking and the regular delays of service, they drop out and someone else fills their place. One doesn’t need to be a masochist to commute on MARC, but it certainly helps. I say that with all due respect to MARC personnel who are the front line interface between riders and the operations and themselves must have masochistic tendencies in order to put up with the daily guff that several thousand people can present.
The MTA intent coupled with the economics of $4 gasoline conspired to raise the level of ridership to unprecedented levels. They added a ninth car to some trains because there is a fixed number of parking slots for trains at the terminus in DC. More and heavier cars loaded with 132 seated people and sometimes another 20 to 40 standees, taxed the capacities of the locomotives that were sized and purchased at a time when there were fewer and smaller cars in the set. One an occasional basis the additional weight could be handled by the exiting tracktive effort of the equipment. That ability to manage the additional load may have been possible when the equipment was new, but after a decade and longer, the motors just cannot work reliably every run every day. MARC is the victim of its own success and lack of ability to respond to age and capacity demands. This all is cold comfort to the 900 plus riders who were stranded in sweltering heat on May 21, 2010 when the locomotive that pulled them homeward failed between stations for the ‘um-teenth’ time.
But all of that is not what I am writing about today. There are ancillary equipment and services that are just as essential to commuting as getting a seat on a crowded train and having a locomotive successfully pull it to all the stations in a reasonable on-time manner.
Union Station has 4 tracks on the lower level which do not board from high-level platforms. On the upper level where most MARC commuters are familiar, there are three such tracks without high-level platforms for boarding the trains. To most riders climbing the steps is a perfunctory exercise that is accomplished without must thought. But then there are those passengers who are marginal at best with their abilities to walk and climb steps. Such people actually have a more difficult time going down the steps than up because of the last big step and the affects of momentum as their body mass continues to move pursuant to Newton’s Law’s of gravitational forces. Ten there are the riders such as myself who use wheelchairs and are completely dependent on the train crews and the lift equipment to board and alight a train when the high-level platforms are not scheduled for the train.
The need for such lift equipment is a necessary part of the realities of a station that has a higher need for moving luggage and supplies around than for ease of passenger boarding. Elevators are necessary where passengers must cross over tracks. This is a fact. The issue is the collateral deterioration of these ancillary systems. The wheelchair lifts and elevators are getting older too and are in a state of decline just like the locomotives and rail cars. All are necessary for the successful operation of a passenger railroad.
During the last two weeks period of June when the locomotives failed and an engineer blew passed the Odenton Station there were multiple incidents of passengers being diverted and delayed due to the ancillary equipment and scheduling failures.
One evening the conductor stopped back at my location as we prepared for arrival at BWI. He reported that the elevator was broken and I could not cross the tracks to the garage. The Plan B solution was to continue on to Penn Station and take the next train back to BWI. This entails an extra hour of travel in order to get 30 feet across the tracks to the other side. A week later that scenario was repeated on July 2 except that no one on the train knew that the elevator was positioned between levels while a technician was troubleshooting why it did not work. Faced with another unscheduled trip to Penn Station, I negotiated a solution with the Tech. He could make it run in manual mode by riding along and communicating with his partner in the well beneath the car.
All of these snafus took place during one of the worst weeks for MARC commuters that included three out of 5 days on low-level tracks, a major breakdown, a station blow-by, a meet the managers meeting where the managers were 35 minute late, two minor locomotive failures, two elevator outages.
This is one week in the life of a MARC commuter. Other events in the past year involve the extended commute that involves driving to the parking lot, and talking WMATA to ones final destination. Metro has its share of the exact same infrastructure deficiencies. I have lost count of the elevator and escalator failures that have impacted arriving at work and catching the evening MARC back home. The trains are the primary mode of transport, but getting into and out of the stations counts as part of the experience. Those experiences constitute the adventure I alluded to at the beginning of this story.
There was the fatal crash that claimed 9 lives a year ago. There is the dropped collector shoe that set off electrical explosions in the tunnel by Judiciary Square in October 2009. There are the innumerable service disruptions that took place in that year since that fatal crash. All events add to the notion that commuting has become a life and limb adventure. Not one of these situations is related to terrorist or even alleged terrorist activities. Commuting is quite enough excitement without the addition of the intrigue of bad actors trying to make it worse.
When I relocated my career to DC in 1994 while still living in my house on the cul-de-sac in Baltimore, the daily repetition was quite ordinary and indeed boring. I had to meet the train on a crumbling platform in a swampy valley near the BWI airport. The station there already showed signed of its age even though it was not quite 15 years old. The bloom was off its flower even then, but the station as a whole was still quite functional. The two elevators that made crossing over the three tracks worked every day and there was little need to consider what I would do should there be an outage. My wheelchair doesn’t do steps very well but it goes down a flight far better than up one.
On February 22, 2000 the MTA inaugurated the bi-level train car service and announced the intent of doubling MARC ridership by 2020. That was a noble endeavor but one that was more marketing and pronouncement than substance. Ridership did however increase with the advent of the larger capacity cars. At an average of 132 seats per can there was comfortable room for more passengers. Fortunately there was also more standing room for the additional commuters who would be seeking transport into DC each day. The total number of trains each day remained constant on the Penn Line and space was at a premium almost from the start, even on a normal day.
Soon the parking lots at three of the busiest stations were filled and reached capacity earlier in the morning. Halethorpe, BWI and Odenton each reached capacity in a rotation mostly determined by the construction schedules of additional space and the fees that were charged at BWI where they constructed first one garage then a second one. Walking distances at Halethorpe and Odenton reach as long as 0.6 miles from the farpoint to the boarding zones. This long walk is an inconvenience but doesn’t not deter the commuters as a whole. There is a significant amount of ‘churn’ in the overall ridership. When a new rider sees the crowded conditions and challenges of parking and the regular delays of service, they drop out and someone else fills their place. One doesn’t need to be a masochist to commute on MARC, but it certainly helps. I say that with all due respect to MARC personnel who are the front line interface between riders and the operations and themselves must have masochistic tendencies in order to put up with the daily guff that several thousand people can present.
The MTA intent coupled with the economics of $4 gasoline conspired to raise the level of ridership to unprecedented levels. They added a ninth car to some trains because there is a fixed number of parking slots for trains at the terminus in DC. More and heavier cars loaded with 132 seated people and sometimes another 20 to 40 standees, taxed the capacities of the locomotives that were sized and purchased at a time when there were fewer and smaller cars in the set. One an occasional basis the additional weight could be handled by the exiting tracktive effort of the equipment. That ability to manage the additional load may have been possible when the equipment was new, but after a decade and longer, the motors just cannot work reliably every run every day. MARC is the victim of its own success and lack of ability to respond to age and capacity demands. This all is cold comfort to the 900 plus riders who were stranded in sweltering heat on May 21, 2010 when the locomotive that pulled them homeward failed between stations for the ‘um-teenth’ time.
But all of that is not what I am writing about today. There are ancillary equipment and services that are just as essential to commuting as getting a seat on a crowded train and having a locomotive successfully pull it to all the stations in a reasonable on-time manner.
Union Station has 4 tracks on the lower level which do not board from high-level platforms. On the upper level where most MARC commuters are familiar, there are three such tracks without high-level platforms for boarding the trains. To most riders climbing the steps is a perfunctory exercise that is accomplished without must thought. But then there are those passengers who are marginal at best with their abilities to walk and climb steps. Such people actually have a more difficult time going down the steps than up because of the last big step and the affects of momentum as their body mass continues to move pursuant to Newton’s Law’s of gravitational forces. Ten there are the riders such as myself who use wheelchairs and are completely dependent on the train crews and the lift equipment to board and alight a train when the high-level platforms are not scheduled for the train.
The need for such lift equipment is a necessary part of the realities of a station that has a higher need for moving luggage and supplies around than for ease of passenger boarding. Elevators are necessary where passengers must cross over tracks. This is a fact. The issue is the collateral deterioration of these ancillary systems. The wheelchair lifts and elevators are getting older too and are in a state of decline just like the locomotives and rail cars. All are necessary for the successful operation of a passenger railroad.
During the last two weeks period of June when the locomotives failed and an engineer blew passed the Odenton Station there were multiple incidents of passengers being diverted and delayed due to the ancillary equipment and scheduling failures.
One evening the conductor stopped back at my location as we prepared for arrival at BWI. He reported that the elevator was broken and I could not cross the tracks to the garage. The Plan B solution was to continue on to Penn Station and take the next train back to BWI. This entails an extra hour of travel in order to get 30 feet across the tracks to the other side. A week later that scenario was repeated on July 2 except that no one on the train knew that the elevator was positioned between levels while a technician was troubleshooting why it did not work. Faced with another unscheduled trip to Penn Station, I negotiated a solution with the Tech. He could make it run in manual mode by riding along and communicating with his partner in the well beneath the car.
All of these snafus took place during one of the worst weeks for MARC commuters that included three out of 5 days on low-level tracks, a major breakdown, a station blow-by, a meet the managers meeting where the managers were 35 minute late, two minor locomotive failures, two elevator outages.
This is one week in the life of a MARC commuter. Other events in the past year involve the extended commute that involves driving to the parking lot, and talking WMATA to ones final destination. Metro has its share of the exact same infrastructure deficiencies. I have lost count of the elevator and escalator failures that have impacted arriving at work and catching the evening MARC back home. The trains are the primary mode of transport, but getting into and out of the stations counts as part of the experience. Those experiences constitute the adventure I alluded to at the beginning of this story.
There was the fatal crash that claimed 9 lives a year ago. There is the dropped collector shoe that set off electrical explosions in the tunnel by Judiciary Square in October 2009. There are the innumerable service disruptions that took place in that year since that fatal crash. All events add to the notion that commuting has become a life and limb adventure. Not one of these situations is related to terrorist or even alleged terrorist activities. Commuting is quite enough excitement without the addition of the intrigue of bad actors trying to make it worse.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
It’s Been a Bad Month for MARC and its Riders
It’s been a bad month for MARC and its riders. First, age and decay has taken their toll on the conditions of the locomotives, the cars and the track infrastructure. Second, the high temperatures of June pushed the system over the edge. Third, the chronic lack of managerial planning for known deficiencies has lead to a repeat of the long ago breakdown that stranded many hundreds of passengers in sweltering heat inside unpowered cars on the Northeast Corridor between Washington, DC and Baltimore.
In that years ago incident, passengers waited in darkened cars without functioning HVAC and, water or any way to mitigate the situation. There was no way that is until they took it upon themselves to remove emergency exit window panels to get what little ventilation could be had in the dead air of mid-summer. The restroom cars were a relief for a short time until they filled to their capacity and stopped functioning.
The temperature continued to climb while the railroad personnel tried everything they could to restart the locomotive or hook up a replacement motor and pull the train back to Union Station. When the breakdown stretched into second hour, some people saw the open window frames as a means of egress. They climbed out onto the track bed where the conditions were not much better. The sun blazes down on the steel rails, gravel ballast making an efficient furnace on the ground. Some of the more energetic commuters just walked away, preferring to implement their own personal Plan B.
After that event, the MARC management said that they would have a better emergency response plan before the next time. The next time? In the months since that fateful day there have been dozens of times that faulty locomotives, ruptured brake line, wonky circuit-breakers have delayed departures or initiated mid-station breakdowns. All of these events have been the warning signs of the imminent collapse of this commuter rail system.
June 21, 2010. The much anticipated unexpected breakdown came. Train 538 departing Union Station at 5:34 came to a stop between stations and sat there with locked brakes. The automatic braking system did its job when the locomotive lost power. The problem was that the system would not disengage and the rescue locomotive dispatched to assist and bring the train back to DC was unable to do so. This is where a well conceived Plan B would have been quite helpful. Conductors would have made periodic accurate announcements and they would have opened the storage compartments and distributed the water to everyone who needed it. The trouble was there was no accurate information to announce and no water to distribute.
So much for Plan B.
The next day there was another breakdown on a train departing at 4:15 from DC. They were lucky. The delay was short and the events unremarkable.
Tuesday the following week the engineer of Train 538 forgot that he was supposed to stop at Odenton Station. In what is euphemistically referred to as a “blowby” the train kept going on to BWI where the passengers who wanted to get off at Odenton had to wait on an Acela to take them back. In a related event, the train I was on in the morning of July 1, over shot the Bowie State platform by two extra car lengths. Our conductor jokingly said “we’re off the platform but at least we still have a few cars on,” as he hurried by to get to the doors that he could open.
MARC and Amtrak managers had a “Meet the Managers” session set up for June 30, at 4:30 in the Gate C area of Union Station. In an ironic move, they were all 35 minutes late. One long time rider comments, “There were on MARC time.” After that meeting, the train crews must have had a meeting where they got a bug in their trowsers or something.
On the 5:20 train Lash Larue called an unscheduled stop north of Odenton and just out of BWI because several passengers had moved pre-maturely into the vestibule on at least one car. He was only able to see one vestibule before he authorized the stop. Lash came through our car to inspect another vestibule on the other end of our Car 5. His PA announcement clearly informed everyone that we were stopping because a few passengers were in the vestibule and the train was stopping because THAT was a safety hazard. Good move, Lash. We are all better off when people don’t crowd the vestibule even though they backlog the aisle and stairwells up and down. If we hadn’t already been running late, there would not be as much anxiety about getting off the train and out of the garages. That raises items Four and Five, but that will have to wait.
Lash Larue made an off the cuff remark as he breezed by to the other end of the car. “Bob, it’s your friends that did this.” The Gang who was there looked at me and I wagged my finger back at them. Larry said, “I didn’t know you had friends in other cars too.” I told him there more friends than there were seated in our end of the car.
It was a power move, and we were under way in a minute or two. It is ironic that an unscheduled stoppage of the train is far more hazardous than a few people standing in the vestibules. Instead of a half dozen people at risk of being crushed if the train suddenly struck an immovable barrier, 900 plus people were at risk of being stranded a couple of hundred yards from the safety of the BWI platform if the locomotive should fail or the brakes decided to not release. We wondered if the corridor dispatcher knew about the unscheduled stop before it was implemented.
Now Four and Five. Four, the northbound platform has been under reconstruction of over a year so there is a large gap between the two ends. Trains can only access the shorter north end portion. Amtrak is overhauling the northbound track and sleepers so our evening train are using the southbound side because the entire train can offload at once there. This means about 400 BWI commuters must trek the stairs up and across then down the other side. It’s a big irritating inconvenience for everyone and an impossibility when the elevators are out-of-service when one uses a wheelchair.
Five, half of Garage 1 is closed while they finish the repair to the structure and clean up. Everyone temporarily must exit through Garage 2 and half as many exit lanes. Somewhere back there in time, commuting became an adventure, or a mis-adventure if you prefer.
In that years ago incident, passengers waited in darkened cars without functioning HVAC and, water or any way to mitigate the situation. There was no way that is until they took it upon themselves to remove emergency exit window panels to get what little ventilation could be had in the dead air of mid-summer. The restroom cars were a relief for a short time until they filled to their capacity and stopped functioning.
The temperature continued to climb while the railroad personnel tried everything they could to restart the locomotive or hook up a replacement motor and pull the train back to Union Station. When the breakdown stretched into second hour, some people saw the open window frames as a means of egress. They climbed out onto the track bed where the conditions were not much better. The sun blazes down on the steel rails, gravel ballast making an efficient furnace on the ground. Some of the more energetic commuters just walked away, preferring to implement their own personal Plan B.
After that event, the MARC management said that they would have a better emergency response plan before the next time. The next time? In the months since that fateful day there have been dozens of times that faulty locomotives, ruptured brake line, wonky circuit-breakers have delayed departures or initiated mid-station breakdowns. All of these events have been the warning signs of the imminent collapse of this commuter rail system.
June 21, 2010. The much anticipated unexpected breakdown came. Train 538 departing Union Station at 5:34 came to a stop between stations and sat there with locked brakes. The automatic braking system did its job when the locomotive lost power. The problem was that the system would not disengage and the rescue locomotive dispatched to assist and bring the train back to DC was unable to do so. This is where a well conceived Plan B would have been quite helpful. Conductors would have made periodic accurate announcements and they would have opened the storage compartments and distributed the water to everyone who needed it. The trouble was there was no accurate information to announce and no water to distribute.
So much for Plan B.
The next day there was another breakdown on a train departing at 4:15 from DC. They were lucky. The delay was short and the events unremarkable.
Tuesday the following week the engineer of Train 538 forgot that he was supposed to stop at Odenton Station. In what is euphemistically referred to as a “blowby” the train kept going on to BWI where the passengers who wanted to get off at Odenton had to wait on an Acela to take them back. In a related event, the train I was on in the morning of July 1, over shot the Bowie State platform by two extra car lengths. Our conductor jokingly said “we’re off the platform but at least we still have a few cars on,” as he hurried by to get to the doors that he could open.
MARC and Amtrak managers had a “Meet the Managers” session set up for June 30, at 4:30 in the Gate C area of Union Station. In an ironic move, they were all 35 minutes late. One long time rider comments, “There were on MARC time.” After that meeting, the train crews must have had a meeting where they got a bug in their trowsers or something.
On the 5:20 train Lash Larue called an unscheduled stop north of Odenton and just out of BWI because several passengers had moved pre-maturely into the vestibule on at least one car. He was only able to see one vestibule before he authorized the stop. Lash came through our car to inspect another vestibule on the other end of our Car 5. His PA announcement clearly informed everyone that we were stopping because a few passengers were in the vestibule and the train was stopping because THAT was a safety hazard. Good move, Lash. We are all better off when people don’t crowd the vestibule even though they backlog the aisle and stairwells up and down. If we hadn’t already been running late, there would not be as much anxiety about getting off the train and out of the garages. That raises items Four and Five, but that will have to wait.
Lash Larue made an off the cuff remark as he breezed by to the other end of the car. “Bob, it’s your friends that did this.” The Gang who was there looked at me and I wagged my finger back at them. Larry said, “I didn’t know you had friends in other cars too.” I told him there more friends than there were seated in our end of the car.
It was a power move, and we were under way in a minute or two. It is ironic that an unscheduled stoppage of the train is far more hazardous than a few people standing in the vestibules. Instead of a half dozen people at risk of being crushed if the train suddenly struck an immovable barrier, 900 plus people were at risk of being stranded a couple of hundred yards from the safety of the BWI platform if the locomotive should fail or the brakes decided to not release. We wondered if the corridor dispatcher knew about the unscheduled stop before it was implemented.
Now Four and Five. Four, the northbound platform has been under reconstruction of over a year so there is a large gap between the two ends. Trains can only access the shorter north end portion. Amtrak is overhauling the northbound track and sleepers so our evening train are using the southbound side because the entire train can offload at once there. This means about 400 BWI commuters must trek the stairs up and across then down the other side. It’s a big irritating inconvenience for everyone and an impossibility when the elevators are out-of-service when one uses a wheelchair.
Five, half of Garage 1 is closed while they finish the repair to the structure and clean up. Everyone temporarily must exit through Garage 2 and half as many exit lanes. Somewhere back there in time, commuting became an adventure, or a mis-adventure if you prefer.
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