WMATA proposes $103 million in operating expense cuts for FY 2010

WMATA has posted a special report to be presented to the Board of Directors' "Special Budget Committee" at 9am tomorrow morning. 

The big picture:  WMATA faces a $176M budget gap, due mostly to increased personnel costs ($99M) and the elimination of a one-time budget trick* employed last year to reduce a fare increase ($36M).  WMATA will present a plan to eliminate $103M of that gap, leaving management and the Board with the tough decision of how much service to cut, or whether to consider increasing fares for the second year in a row.  WMATA's member jurisdictions could be asked to provide a "cost of living" increase of 2% in the budgeted subsidy, which would reduce the shortfall by another $10M.

Cost increases:  The largest increases in costs ($44 million) come from wage increases for unionized employees, which WMATA budgeting treats as sacrosanct.  But in these hard times, unions all over the country are being asked to do their part to help keep costs down. For example, in Montgomery County the firefighters' union agreed to cuts in order to help the county balance its budget, nationally the Teamsters agreed to wage cuts of 10% in order to help keep their employers afloat.  All Headline News reports that Boston has asked its city worker's union for a wage freeze in order to help balance the budget.  Bridgeport, Connecticut workers have agreed to a two-year wage freeze as well as a five day unpaid vacation (furlough).  Would it be fair to ask the unions to compromise and agree to a cut in wages or at least a cut in wage growth rates (perhaps a one-year wage freeze)?  The cuts might save some jobs compared to having to lay off workers or cut service (which would lay off more workers).

Big Cuts:  The biggest cuts are to the metro work force, which will decrease by 292 funded positions out of over 10,000.  These cuts will keep WMATA's personnel costs from increasing by almost $100M this year.  Out of the eliminated positions, most (70%) will be from rail and bus divisions (about twice as many lost in rail as in bus),  and most of the rest will come from administrative divisions (28%).

It's hard to tell from this presentation whether most of the eliminated jobs are from slots that just haven't been filled, or whether most of them are workers who will be laid off.  According to a recent article in the Washington Post, when Metro was considering cutting 900 jobs the split was approximately half and half.  Now that the number of eliminated positions appears to have shrunk, perhaps all of the proposed staffing cuts will be from unfilled positions.  It's unclear from the previous discussion whether the 900 eliminated jobs include those that result from service cuts.

Smaller Cuts:  Other smaller cuts are to increase the number of workers per supervisor, to reorganize the staff with fewer levels of supervision, to reduce overtime, and to take advantage of today's low fuel prices.  WMATA also proposes to "employ technology-driven approach[es] to traffic/ridership measurement", which, according to Metro, should result in more accurate data collection.  As someone who is interested in data and analysis, I hope that WMATA will be forthcoming in sharing this data with the public.

In addition, non-personnel expenses (such as materials purchases) will be deferred when possible.  This should concern riders because it just pushes the problem down the road rather than actually cuts back on costs.  In that case, the required fare increases or service cuts are not eliminated, but are merely deferred until next year.  Also, if the reduction in supervision means that poor customer service or unsafe practices are not improved or prevented, it could reduce the quality of WMATA's operations.

Changes from the prior report:  Comparing this proposal to the one previously presented to the Finance, Administration and Oversight Committee in early January, there's an "Other" expense of $22M from the previous presentation that's missing from this one, and with that unexplained disappearing item, WMATA appears to have met their goal of eliminating $103M from the baseline.  The rest of the shortfall will have to be made up in service cuts, which according to the previous proposal, will cut expenses by $87M and revenues by $14M.  The presentation to be discussed tomorrow does not provide any specific proposals for service cuts.  Alternatively, the Board could decide to raise fares or the subsidy provided by local governments.  WMATA is not allowed to run a surplus or a deficit.  To close the books, any surplus (deficit) at the end of the year is returned to (or charged from) WMATA's member jurisdictions via the funding formula.  Typically, WMATA runs a surplus compared to the budget and returns some of the subsidy.

The Bottom Line:  Metro's operating costs increased by $159M, and revenues, even with increased ridership, went down by $17M.  WMATA is proposing $103M in cuts to operating expenses, leaving a $73M gap that must be filled, most likely with cuts in rail or bus service.  Future board presentations are expected to discuss changes to the FY 2010 operating revenues and potential service cuts.

*WMATA's fare increase last year started in January 2008, but the money collected from January to July was actually applied to the next year's operating revenues (running from July 2008 to July 2009).  Since WMATA can only use that trick once, there's a shortfall of around $36 million).

Bombardier premiers contactless, no-wires light rail power system

Bombardier, the manufacturer of Flexity light rail vehicles, just announced and demonstrated a new power system for light rail vehicles that doesn’t have an overhead wire, called PRIMOVE.  Additionally, the power system transfers energy by induction, so no electrical connection is required.  The new power system might be an option for downtown DC, where overhead wires are currently prohibited by federal law. 

I’d like to see how much more the system costs than conventional overhead wire.  The presentation/fact sheet (PDF) states that vehicle performance is not affected.  The system might require more complicated electrical systems that cost more to maintain.  The contactless system eliminates the hazard to cyclists or pedestrians of inadvertently energized electrical systems at ground level.  That hazard and the additional system lifecycle costs were what prevented me from supporting the previous state-of-the art wireless system INNORAIL (PDF) used in Bordeaux, France.  That system also is susceptible to contact with snow or rain.  

From the Bombardier promotional video, it appears the same vehicle is capable of receiving power through either an overhead wire, or retracting a pantograph and running on the PRIMOVE system. 

These are all issues for DDOT to take into consideration when designing and installing DC’s streetcar system (currently two lines in planning, one in Anacostia SE/SW and one on Benning Road/H Street NE/NW).

Hat tip to Yonah Freemark at the transport politic and also MSNBC.

According to the Illinois legislature, carbon reduction is worth $400-700 per ton

Mother Jones publishes this article, which analyzes the cost/benefit of a new “Clean Coal” project in Illinois.  The project is based on a state requirement for “clean” energy, and costs $0.20 per kWh compared to $0.11 per kWh on average.  The article does the math and figures out that the carbon reduction (about 300-500 lb/MWh) costs the purchasers of electricity about $400-700 per ton of CO2.  This is compared to, as stated in the article, about $16 per ton of CO2 for carbon permits traded in Europe, a reasonable estimate of the cost of reducing CO2 emissions.  It’s even more expensive than the original “safety valve” provision (40 Euros, or about $52) for companies that were not able to obtain permits (in 2006).

It’s this kind of regulation that make me wish we were trying to regulate carbon emissions through some sort of market-based system, such as a carbon tax (my preferred option) or cap and trade (another acceptable option).  By requiring a specific technology, the legislation reduces carbon emissions far less than otherwise for the money, or alternatively, costs consumers more for the same amount of carbon emission (it’s the same thing).  If the European carbon markets are efficient, we could have reduced carbon by 25 times more had we just done cap and trade or carbon taxes, and we would have had government revenue to reimburse ratepayers to boot.  The way Illinois did it, the state gets no revenue, carbon gets reduced less, and ratepayers end up paying more than they would have for wind, solar, probably even nuclear.

It’s not even clear the operators of the “clean coal” power station get a windfall profit, because they have to spend more money building the plants, resulting in waste.

At $400 per ton of CO2, it’s worth it to sell permits, then use the money to purchase oil that’s been pulled out of the ground and re-bury it.  Think about it.  A barrel of oil releases 0.5 tons of CO2 when burned, and costs you under $50 to purchase.  So you sell a permit (a “carbon offset”) for $400, then you go buy two barrels of oil from a supplier and put them back in the ground.  Your profit is $300, and you’ve got two barrels of oil stored for use when carbon permits are cheaper.

Does this simple math mean that the price of one ton of CO2 offsets is not likely to go above half that of a barrel of oil?

Hat tip to Carbon Tax Center’s feed.

Congratulations, WMATA

The numbers are still increasing, but it looks like WMATA will almost certainly finish up above 1,000,000 Metrorail riders today (it’s at 973,000 as of 7pm, with 7 hours of service to go), breaking yesterday’s record of almost 867,000, which was the previous record day of all time. 

With the exception of the Reagan State Funeral, the “Si, se puede!” immigrant rights rally in 2006, and one record-setting day in 2007, all of the top 20 ridership days have been set in the last 10 months.

It’s going to be very hard to get as many people interested in riding transit as today, but it’s great to be able to move everyone without clogging the roads.  Can you imagine trying to get a million people around town without a mass transit system like Metrorail?

So Congratulations, WMATA, on your new record.

SEPTA's plea to quiet car riders: "Use your 'inside voice'"

As the proud daddy of a 2-year old, I can completely understand one of SEPTA's (Philadelphia Transit) request for riders in their "quiet cars" on commuter rail:

Keep conversations with other passengers short using their best "inside voice"

Well put.  I'm up in Philadelphia for inaugural weekend (it's a rare four day weekend for the wife and me), and I'm taking the opportunity to try out a different transit service.  I'm also taking in the Franklin Institute, the National Liberty Museum, the Free Library (I'm a big library fan), Independence Hall, the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul (surprise, mass will be in Latin today!), and the downtown Reading Terminal Market.

SEPTA reminds me a lot of New York's service.  The subway stations have tons of entrances and exits (as opposed to WMATA's one or two), there are few elevators or escalators, and the subway stations are not much to look at.  But the service is efficient (headways at most every 10 minutes during the day on Sunday, better than WMATA), cheap ($1.45 for a token), pretty fast, not too dirty (though not as clean as WMATA), and has fairly good ridership (plenty of people riding even on a Sunday).  And they don't cut the headways during the middle of the day like WMATA does (trains come every 6 minutes as opposed to 12 minutes mid-day for WMATA).

If I had more time, I might even be able to figure out the bus system.

By the way, what systems are out there that still use tokens?  Seems like it's getting pretty rare these days.  I know NYC, Boston, Chicago, BART, MARTA, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Portland, Los Angeles have all switched to some other system besides tokens.

WMATA's Smartrip supplier underpromises and overdelivers

After being able to promise only 30,000 commemorative Obama Inauguration Smartrip cards as of November, it appears that WMATA's transit card supplier, Giesecke and Devrient, managed to provide that many and more. According to this article, G&D has delivered over 200,000 of the cards in time for the big Inaugural weekend, ensuring that customers won't have to resort to ebay to get their piece of Smartrip (and US) history.

What information do people request from WMATA?

I was curious about what information people are requesting from WMATA through the public access to records policy (PARP) process (PDF).  PARP is WMATA's version of FOIA, an important way of obtaining information from government agencies.  I requested and received information about all the requests made in a year, including the date opened and closed, subject matter, and whether any exemptions were applied in the WMATA response.  I categorized the requests to see what the most common request types are.

Going through the list of requests, it's clear that people are interested in Smartrip card transaction records.  Out of 454 requests, over 52% (240) were for Smartrip transaction records.  Given that WMATA will only provide personally identifiable Smartrip records by request of the person identified, under a court order or a law enforcement request (see PARP 6.1.8), it's clear that these requests are either some sort of investigation, people curious about their records, or people trying to prove something about their travels.  These requests are typically filled quickly, within three weeks, and among the requests analyzed, exemptions were rare (only a handful among hundreds of requests).  Once WMATA starts up online Smartrip account access as expected late next year, perhaps many of these requests will become unnecessary.

The second most common request category is for incident reports, accident investigations, identification of injured passengers, vehicle operator statements, police records, and other records related to WMATA transit vehicle incidents.  Out of the 454 requests, 28% (126) of them were for incident reports or other information about incidents.  It's common among these requests for WMATA to cite the exemptions for internal memoranda that would not be released even under litigation (6.1.5) or for personal privacy (6.1.6), but it wasn't clear what amount of information was withheld under these exemptions.  I'd be interested in seeing what level of event is considered an "incident", and given the high level of public interest in obtaining the reports, WMATA should preemptively redact the documents (to remove privacy information) and place them in the "documents of presumed public interest" section of the webpage as other agencies subject to FOIA or other access to records policies do.

The third most comment request category is for information on WMATA's contracts.  These are 23 requests (5%) from people interested in receiving the contract, bidding information, etc.  To me, it's strange that only some WMATA contracts are placed on the public interest webpage, and the vast majority of them have to be obtained through PARP.  For example, WMATA signs dozens of contracts per year for services, parts, agreements and yet only three contracts are listed on the public interest webpage.

Another category is financial information, 12 requests (3%).  You can apparently request title, code, union status, pay rate, date of hire and other information about WMATA employees, and it's not exempted (sometimes some information is withheld under the privacy exemption, but some broad requests were not exempted at all.  Atlanta's transit agency, MARTA, posts the entire employee database of compensation online (with names removed). 

The last two categories were two broad to be included in the ranking above, for this reason I did not rank them above.  There were 34 (7%) requests that I would classify as "Management", asking about ridership, policies, who made decisions, etc, and there were 19 (4%) that I classified as "Other", where I couldn't really tell enough from the request to adequately classify it, or it didn't seem to fit one of the categories but there weren't enough similar requests to make a new category.

PDF of the PARP requests available upon request to michaelp (at) ggwash (dot) org.

WMATA Inauguration Update

WMATA opens its Customer Service Operations and Safety Committee (PDF) presentation on Inauguration Day preparations in the words of the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference."  Well, not in exactly those words, but close enough that I saw the parallel right away.  WMATA clearly feels that this is going to be an unprecedented event for the transit agency, but they're doing the best they can to get ready for it.

The presentation summarized the inauguration planning, which up to now has been a pretty fluid process.  I've been satisfied so far with WMATA's candor and the effort they're putting into this process.  They've taken some shots for some of their decisions early on, from me as well as others, but it looks like they're willing to reevaluate those decisions, like free parking and reduced fares.  More recently, they've cut back on reserved Metrorail parking lots for charter buses, after the demand wasn't sufficient for the amount of reserved parking planned.

The big change announced yesterday is that WMATA is planning on running new major bus corridors with 10 minute headways, as reported in the Washington Post.  In addition to accepting cash and Smartrip cards, WMATA will sell a $5 all day bus pass to speed boarding (more than three times a bus fare?  what a deal!).  There's a great summary in the presentation on what to expect each day during Inauguration Day weekend, including hours, fares, restrictions, and service enhancements.

Some of the highlights and surprises:  Bikes will be prohibited on Metrorail throughout the weekend.  WMATA will be running extra bus service to the airports (Dulles and BWI) on Saturday.  Cars have to be out of WMATA lots by 10pm on Monday or be towed. 

On another note, I'm going to admit when I was wrong.  The Obama Smartrip cards were not as hot an item as I had originally thought.  With crowds expected in the millions and apartments offered for thousands (though maybe not actually renting for that amount), I would have expected the market price for 35,000 commemorative Obama Smartrip cards to be much higher than $10 (in the comment on GGW I think I went crazy and guessed $100 or $200!).  In fact, during the Board meeting when the cards were first announced, Board Chair Chris Zimmerman seemed to agree with me, reacting to the limited number of available cards by joking, "I think the price just went up!"  But here we are, just a couple weeks ahead of the big day, and WMATA is still offering them for $10 (unloaded) on their website.  There are dozens offered on Ebay for more than face value, and as far as I can tell there haven't been many takers.  I picked up a couple of them when they were first offered, thinking that in case the prices on Ebay went crazy I could sell at least one of them.  The backup plan is that they make great gifts for Obama-supporting friends.  It looks like it's not so much that they're not selling that well, it's that the supply is much greater than expected.

WMATA's Economic Stimulus "Wish List"

There's been a lot of discussion recently about "shovel-ready" projects for economic stimulus.  A lot of the discussion has centered around the idea that highway and road projects are inherently "shovel-ready", while transit projects like new light rail systems would happen too slow for the stimulus to do any good (doesn't mean light rail isn't a good investment, you just might not get the win-win of economic stimulus as well as public investment).

Well, WMATA has got the "shovel-ready" projects covered, from their end.  At the WMATA Board meeting yesterday, WMATA's General Manager, John Catoe, presented a list of $529 million in economic stimulus projects that meet the American Public Transit Association's recommended guidelines.  According to APTA, projects should be implementable within 90 days, should be eligible for Federal funding, and should be projects that would not happen during the current fiscal year without funding help.

The requests are categorized as follows:

Vehicles and parts: WMATA wants $120M for buses, railcar truck parts, and miscellaneous parts. WMATA states that the purchases will support the American auto industry, especially through the purchase of bus parts (seats, windows, doors, transmissions).

Maintenance Facilities: $177M for repairing, replacing or expanding bus garages and railcar maintenance facilities. WMATA says that the improvements will help employ workers in the construction industry that has been hit hard by the economic downturn.

Passenger Facilities: $167M for replacing platforms, installing station canopies, improving credit card readers, etc. Just like with the maintenance facilities, local construction companies would get some business.

Safety and security: $4.2M for emergency tunnel evacuation cars, and expanding the "chemical sensors detection system".

Maintenance and repair equipment: $43M for cranes, cars for carrying rails and equipment, de-icing equipment.

Operations Systems: $11M for fare collection equipment, signage and "grout pads", which are an installation method used to improve the strength and stability of vertical columns installed on concrete surfaces. By eliminating warping of the base plate, a grout pad stiffens a column installed by bolting a flange plate to studs embedded in concrete. See this UF research paper (big PDF) conducted for the Florida DOT for more on grout pads.

Information Technology:  $12M for hardware and software to improve maintenance efficiency, monitor network traffic and provide disaster recovery.

Looks like a lot of good stuff on that list.  My only criticism is that as usual, WMATA failed to prioritize the list.  What about the likely case where not all of the requested funds are available?  What would be the highest priority, and what can wait?  As it stands now, none of these projects will be completed this year without external funding, so they can't just take the position that "it's all important".

What do you think?  What appeals to you from this list?

Virginia 2009 Legislative Season - Transportation Roundup

Virginia's Legislative Process is pretty easy for citizens to understand and follow, due to some constitutionally mandated practices. Each bill can be about only one topic, legislators are limited to a certain number of bills per year, and the legislative session is of limited duration. Virginia's legislative session is about to start, and the Delegates and Senators have "pre-filed" many bills for the 2009 session.

The excellent website Richmond Sunlight takes the publicly available data and makes it more accessible to readers. You can subscribe to an RSS feed for a bill, vote for or against it, and leave comments. Here are some bills for the 2009 session that I found interesting:

HB 1604: This bill authorizes borrowing $12M for a parking garage near the state capitol. See the proposed location here:

 
View Larger Map

I don't know much about the price of parking in that area.  If parking is scarce enough that the VA government is considering borrowing money to build a garage, couldn't a private company build it and make a profit?

HB 1615:  This bill prohibits using wireless devices to send, receive or read text messages while operating a vehicle.  This includes motor vehicles as well as other kinds of vehicles like bicycles.  While I don't have an objection to the bill's intent, it does seem troublesome that the bill prohibits "receiv[ing]" text messages, because most wireless devices will do that without any operator action.  Do I get a ticket if my blackberry gets an email while I'm driving?

HB 1659:  Similar to HB 1615, this one would prohibit all non-emergency use of wireless devices while driving (even a bike), even while using hands-free devices.  I don't support this bill.

SB 874:  Similar to HB 1615, this bill more accurately defines what an emergency call is, allows hands-free devices, and excludes turning phones on or off and initiating or terminating a call.  It also only applies to operators of motor vehicles as opposed to people riding bikes or other kinds of vehicles.

HB 1627:  This bill reduces the minimum insurance trolley operators need to carry.  Commenter RacerX points out an interesting link between the bill's introducer, Del. Mark Cole (R-Fredricksburg) and a certain "Trolley Tours of Fredricksburg", who donated $750 to his election campaign.  Normally an operator of such a vehicle that carries more than 16 passengers would be $5 million, so this is a pretty good break.  "Trolleys" are apparently vehicles that are powered by gasoline, electricity or diesel, operate on tracks or on the road, and are "designed in the style of a traditional street car or a cable car", so it's all cosmetic.

HB 1648:  This bill requires Virginia government agencies to consider what impact plans or projects might have on Virginia Byways, which are historically, culturally or scenically significant roads.

HB 1661:  This bill converts Virginia's "cents per gallon" tax on gasoline and diesel fuel into a percentage tax.  That way, as the price of fuel rises, the tax collected will rise with it rather than staying the same.  I like this bill, but it probably has no chance because it (a) is introduced by a Democrat, (b) has something to do with taxes, and (c) has something to do with gasoline.  The Republican-dominated house will likely send this one to a subcommittee so it can die.

HB 1698:  This bill requires people who are selling scrap copper and other nonferrous metals like catalytic converters (which contain platinum) to provide documentation that they actually own the scrap metal being sold.  This is probably in reaction to recent high metal prices which made it profitable to steal catalytic converters from cars and copper piping from homes in order to sell for scrap.  It's also in my opinion this years "silly bill".  It doesn't really beat last year's silly bill, which was Del. Spruill's "Truck Nuts" bill.

HB 1694:  This bill allows certain counties to control commercial vehicle parking.  It also eliminates phrases intended to limit a law to a certain county without naming the county, such as "counties with population greater than 500,000", which could only be Fairfax and Prince William.

On to the Senate:

SB 803:  This bill prohibits dirt bikes on the highways.  Don't know what Sen. Miller (D-Norfolk) has against dirt bikes.

SB 863:  This bill establishes a commission (the "TransDominion Express Commission") to study building, improving and operating a rail corridor from Bristol through Roanoke and Lynchburg, and then splitting to go to DC through Charlottesville or to Richmond.

SB 864:  This bill establishes a "Rail Transportation Development Authority", similar to SB 863 and introduced by the same Sen. Edwards (D-Roanoke).

I encourage Virginia residents to visit "Richmond Sunlight" and to contact their legislators about any of these bills you feel strongly about.

Just so y'all know

I've been posting at Greater Greater Washington for awhile now, and there are some interesting posts I've done recently over there that haven't been posted here.  Sorry about that.  Go check them out at ggwash.org/michaelp

Video: The History of Parking

Dr. Shoup, author of "The High Cost of Free Parking", one of my favorite books,  linked "Parking Public" (video embedded below) on Facebook.  I think it's worth a look.  Lots of great 1940's and 1950's footage of the downtown urban environment, as well as discussion on the origin of modern parking regulations.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Video courtesy "The Temporary Travel Office", with a hat tip to Don Shoup.