Oh, boy – Metro (the subway here in Washington) has some logistical morons on staff.
They’re constantly in the red, and it doesn’t help that their parking attendants were robbing them blind — to the tune of millions. Who says that parking attendants are stupid?
Their response to this was to eliminate parking attendants, and force riders to use an electronic SmarTrip card to pay for parking. This means that even if you are just riding for the day and need to park, you must first purchase a $5 SmarTrip card then load it with enough value to pay for parking.
Next, to save money, they began running trains with only two cars on nights and weekends. The crowding became so bad that people literally couldn’t fit in the trains, and had to wait on the platform… and wait, and wait, and wait.
Well, now they admit that the two-car trains were a big mistake:
Board members said the mini-trains were a mistake, and that they had based their original decision on winter ridership numbers — before the surge in tourism.
DUH. Have these people ever heard of “planning?”
To make matters worse, here’s what’s happened with their SmarTrip plan:
Metro officials said Thursday they only have about 20,000 of the plastic SmarTrip cards left. Although supplies will be trickling in, they have decided to halt sales next Monday, and resume again in September when a stockpile is built up.
Board members criticized managers who didn’t foresee the shortage–especially after requiring SmarTrip cards to pay for parking at Metro lots beginning last month. Drivers without a SmarTrip card will have to buy paper farecards for the exact amount of the parking fee. They’ll hand them to one of 48 temporary workers Metro is hiring to collect them.
Officials said they didn’t expect the big increase in tourism or the overwhelming demand from local residents. The cards are now accepted on most Metrobuses, adding to the demand.
Okay. So, you force huge numbers of your riders — even casual ones — to use electronic cards to park and ride, then you don’t have enough of the cards in stock? And to top it off, even though one of Metro’s major problems is overcrowding, you estimate using low off-season ridership numbers in a city that is overrun by tourists from spring through fall?
Geniuses.
(Can I just complain about the marketing geniuses who think that dropping a common letter in a product is clever? SmarTrip? Ugh.)
You know, normally I end up defending WMATA — they’re terribly squeezed for funding and no one seems to want to pay a fair share.
But first there was the parking theft fiasco, and then two-car trains and SmarTrip card shortages. It’s getting harder and harder to defend them. I think what WMATA needs at this point is funding increases *and* significantly new leadership.
And then, one day later, Metro has announced that they WILL keep selling the SmarTrip cards. I guess they figured it was cheaper to pay for rush shipments of them from the manufacturer than to either lose large numbers of pissed-off passenger or pay for new parking attendants. If the Metro board was running for office, they’d all be called flip-floppers.
Interestingly, an article in the Washington Post today indicates that they contacted the subways in Chicago and Los Angeles which use electronic cards to see if they would sell them some. Turns out that these cards might not be compatible. No surprise there. Metro has to be it’s own creature, you know?