PGCB and OMFUG

Posted on Wednesday 8th May, 2013 by

I’m testifying today before the PA Gaming Control Board on the subject of where to put Pennsylvania’s 12th casino.  For a recap of my full opinion, (spoilers: I like Market8 best,) read:  https://sictransitphiladelphia.org/2013/03/29/may-the-odds-be-ever-in-your-favor-philadelphias-second-casino/

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Philaredditor: Silverliner Vs cause RF interference in audio equipment

Posted on Saturday 4th May, 2013 by

This story comes to us from a post by Reddit user /u/alexdingley on the /r/Philadelphia subreddit, which can be found at http://www.reddit.com/r/philadelphia/comments/1dlhfx/this_sound_is_interference_caused_by_the_new/. The short version: the Silverliner Vs are producing a lot of radio frequency interference in the catenary that is rendering the recording studio in his home unusable. It’s unclear if this can get brought to the FCC, but if it can, then either SEPTA, Hyundai Rotem, or both are in serious trouble. And even if the FCC doesn’t care, it’s still bad and should be fixed.

I reproduce the full text of the original explanation here, with obvious speech recognition and style errors (but NOT technical errors) corrected, after the jump:
Continue reading →

Posted in SEPTA | 4 Comments

Character limit workaround: a reply to @IngaSaffron

Posted on Wednesday 1st May, 2013 by

The heart of this tweet is the fear of getting a good idea, bike share, embroiled in an extended NIMBY fight energized by idiots who hold “a cost-free street parking spot” on their own list of rights, right after (or before) speech, religion, assembly, and non-self-incrimination.  Fighting idiots is necessary, but creates delays and just feels like a demoralizing waste of resources.

I would suggest simply going around the parking-worshippers and siting bike share pods by simply asking for volunteers.  There are plenty of enlightened property owners and/or tenants out there who understand that a bike pod in the parking lane in front of their building adds far more value than a car.  Just ask those people or businesses to come forward.  The city can then distribute many (most?) of the pods where they will be guaranteed not to be offensive to the immediate neighbors.  Indeed, it would make for an effective publicity campaign to base the process around the loudly stated assumption that there will be more demand for a pod than pods to be distributed.  Make it a desirable status good, not a sacrifice; if you want to be really cheeky, auction the pods in the most oversubscribed locations.  And let the smart businesses reap the benefits of their early adopterhood.

(Normally I would reply to a tweet wih a tweet, but 140 characters is just not enough to explain an idea, sometimes.  Apologies for any issues from the WP phone client.)

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Capital Punishment FY2014

Posted on Saturday 27th April, 2013 by

Unlike the operating budget hearings, which I attended all ten of, I did not attend the capital budget hearings. I didn’t really have to. I could tell you last month, and I could tell you right now, what they consisted of. Here is an abbreviated “transcript”, translated into everyday English.

SEPTA: “We have a capital budget this year of $308 million. This isn’t anything. This might cover basic repairs of our bus and rail fleet for about nine months out of twelve, if we’re fortunate. Plus some replacement buses we have to buy and were going to anyway. The Feds are forcing us to spend a sixth of the 300 mill on Positive Train Control. The rest definitely won’t pay for anything we might desperately want. Here is our list of things we can pay for. Please take note how none of them cost any money.”

Public: “Can we have things X, Y, and Z that we really want and some of which you promised us before?”

SEPTA: “No. Things X, Y, and Z cost money. To reiterate, we can’t spend any money because we don’t have any.”

Public: “This sucks. Why don’t you guys have more money?”

SEPTA: “Governor Corbett has promised to fix the problem where he isn’t giving us any money”

Public: *puts two and two together* “Governor Corbett is an asshole.”

SEPTA: *Our fear for our jobs, and the hope we have that we might succeed in getting more money, prevents us from agreeing with you.*

SEPTA: *Also, thank you for not inquiring too deeply into the list of things we’re going to quietly let fall apart because we don’t have the money to fix them. We’re already losing one bridge, and we can’t afford to look any more pathetic than we already do.*

SEPTA: *Help. Send money. Please. Help.*

Posted in SEPTA | 1 Comment

Operating budget blues

Posted on Friday 26th April, 2013 by

I have been working on a summary of the long and contentious public hearings in Center City Philadelphia on the proposed fare hikes and NPT changes, but it’s ballooned into a 10,000+ word monster of a post on disability and paratransit and is still nowhere near done, and in the meantime I owe you all a more general treatment of the hearings, both city and suburban.

I attended all ten hearings on the operating budget, and have as good a picture of the zeitgeist of the hearing series as anyone other than SEPTA Hearing Examiner Joseph O’Malley.  The issues that generated the most concern were:

  • Pass limits: EVERYBODY HATES PASS LIMITS. HATES THEM HATES THEM HATES THEM.  I am serious as cancer about this. SEPTA needs to fix this broken proposal before even considering moving on this budget.  This is the sort of unhappiness that can make the entire careers of politicians running on platforms of repeal and retribution.  There are too many people who can bump up against a dumb cap of 50 unlinked rides per week, or 200 unlinked rides per month, purely through legitimate use.  SEPTA’s analysis may show that it only affects about 1% of current weekly pass users, but this is hardly reassuring: SEPTA should have chosen a limit that only affected 0.1%, or even 0.01%.  In the words of several speakers, anyone with a four vehicle ride to work has a hard enough life already; there is no justice in any system that risks revoking their unlimited pass on the 27th of the month through no fault of their own.  The angriest voices at Philadelphia saw the pass limit proposal as a deliberate money grab by SEPTA, victimizing the poorest and weakest riders; no such assumption of bad faith is necessary.  Rather, only an assumption of myopia is required.  The failure of SEPTA’s planners to imagine the lives of people very different from themselves is hardly inexplicable, but it is a shortcoming, as is the inability to see the heaviest users of the system as assets and loyal customers, rather than as costly burdens and potential cheats.
  • Seniors: Currently, senior citizens ride free on the transit division by showing a Medicare card or a state-issued (non-photo) ID. PennDOT, SEPTA, and other Pennsylvania transit agencies have been working to transition to a system where seniors swipe their drivers licenses or state-issued non-driver ID card in a card reader on the farebox or turnstile, which will be able to read the age of the rider from the magstripe on the back. This concerned many speakers, who expressed reluctance to have their official state IDs out in an everyday transaction, where they can be dropped accidentally or stolen. Nor was the issue of people without state-issued ID addressed, despite the statistics cited during the push to require photo IDs to vote that caused much controversy last year. SEPTA’s representatives at the hearings did not do a good job assuaging those fears, nor did they communicate clearly that SEPTA will be offering a photo-ID version of its own Smart Media card as an alternative. Ultimately, this is part of SEPTA’s ongoing problems with outreach and media relations.
  • Center City RRD faregates: Nobody expressed any enthusiasm for the Regional Rail proposed NPT fare collection system; reactions ranged from reserved trepidation to outright skepticism to anger to mockery. SEPTA is on notice that if the system creates circulation problems in any of the five Center City stations, or if the rate of fare evasion goes up or remains flat, then there is going to be a chorus of voices demanding answers.
  • The basics of NPT: OK, some people you just can’t teach. But the overlap between the set of people who could find out when these hearings were and could show up to ask questions, and the set of people who had no idea what NPT was, what it will mean for riders, and when it’s scheduled to go into effect, is way too high for comfort. Again, SEPTA needs to do a better job communicating with its own customers.
  • Disabled riders: As I said, this deserved a magnum opus all its own, but be assured that it’s a mess, inside of a problem, wrapped in a quandary.
  • Transfers: A 90-minute time limit between boardings is unreasonable in the suburbs, where a lot of bus rides are long, connecting routes run infrequently, and 69th St routes are pay-as-you-leave westbound. SEPTA did not have a satisfactory answer to this concern. And the $1 transfer fare is still $1 too high.
  • Via Center City RRD fares: OK, the main person banging this drum was me, but I did get backup at the Philadelphia hearing, so I’m rolling with it. The flattening of Via CCP ticket fares may only adversely affect 0.1% of Regional Rail ridership, but that still translates as 125-130 riders per day. And that’s after decades of SEPTA trying to discourage short-haul Regional Rail trips; if they reversed course and actually made themselves attractive, that number might rise significantly. Instead, SEPTA has decreed that a handful of lines of software code are not worth creating for those 125 Regional Rail riders, while actual stations with only 51 riders a day, which are far more costly as they require actual work and maintenance, are clearly worth maintaining. This is madness.
  • Intermediate RRD riders: I suppose the good news is that SEPTA finally has a semblance of a plan for how to collect Intermediate fares. The bad news is that it’s a series of kludges involving conductors making inspection sweeps and platform lifts, which has a high potential for causing delays while not actually plugging the leak in the fare-collection system. We should be keeping a close on on this as well; I’ll be following up with my own network of informant to see how this works out.
  • Delaware: There were several questioners, most notably a long interrogation at the West Chester evening session, who had many questions about Intermediate rides, honoring of passes on DART, post-NPT sales locations, and just generally why neither SEPTA nor DART notifies riders or holds hearings on such issues of major importance. SEPTA didn’t even seem to have a desire to blame DART for lack of hearings, which it could easily have made the case for without even seeming to be unfairly attacking its partner agency. But let the record show that, in three years, I’ll gladly trade the second hearing in Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties for just one in New Castle County and maybe one in Mercer County. Sometimes, responsibility really is just showing up in person to point fingers at the other guy.

As you can see, the recurring theme is the failure of SEPTA to communicate beyond the walls of its own headquarters at 1234 Market St. This is a continuing problem, and while there are some signs of getting better, there is still a lot of work to be done. Talk may be cheap, but talking is valuable. And cheap-but-valuable needs to be SEPTA’s stock-in-trade if it is to continue to be a first-class transit agency.

Posted in Fare policy, SEPTA | 12 Comments

The Norristown Hearings via Twitter

Posted on Wednesday 17th April, 2013 by

It’s true. (Note to SEPTA management: don’t get any stupid ideas. Pass limits are still dumb.)

Everybody has a bad day, but this was cringeworthy.

RIP Schuylkill Valley Metro, the gold plated hybrid to Far Far Away.

Ed note: This was correct in terms of time saved, but…

I stutter when speaking in public. Always have. My delivery was bad even by my own standards. Should have waited for West Chester.

Via Center City ticketed passengers are only 0.4% of RRD ridership. 75% of those are hitting the max fare, i.e. will be getting a fare cut. I wasn’t fast enough on my feet to point out that the remaining 0.1% of RRD ridership is 125 rides a day, and that if SEPTA considered closing a station with that ridership they’d be rightl pilloried. Stations cost money; this isn’t even a station we’re asking for. It’s a line of ink on a page, and five lines of code in the fare system to match.

Even though I was disagreeing mightily with Daniel Casey, he gets massive points in my book for having actual statistics at hand, and weaving them into his argument. I would still like a pass limit cap that covers at least three nines of present usage.

It turned out to be a laugh line, but it’s true. A fraudster isn’t going to care if the cap is 50, 60, or 75 rides a week, but SEPTA’s most loyal (legitimate) users are going to care a great deal.

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The Media Hearings via Twitter

Posted on Monday 15th April, 2013 by

This was from the initial SEPTA presentation.

We would find out the identity of one at 6:00.

I think my later take on this point is better, but.

I should not say he lied, especially as Mr. McGee was under oath at the time. I apologize and retract the accusation. But he was really reckless and irresponsible in his initial answers here.

There was no indication that there was any plan in place to deal with this situation, except a vague reference to easing the time limit on weekends. That may be part of a solution, but the problem persists.

Mr. Diehl is a member of Tri-State Transit Center, a local advocacy group.

Yup, BLET needs a contract.

They and I both mean, of course, that transfers should be cheaper, and preferably free. As they stand (at $1), they are inefficient and inequitable.

This last one failed to post, thinks to the terrible wifi. But it’s right; see you tomorrow!

Posted in Fare policy, SEPTA | 3 Comments