Image via Seattle Transit Blog.
I talked a little while ago with Metro General Manager Kevin Desmond, who called to let me know what happened with Metro’s bus service today and what Metro’s plans are for the next week. Although he took issue with my flip statement this morning that the agency was “canceling basically all bus service to much of the city,” Desmond acknowledged that, to his recollection, Metro has never cut service as much as it did today—to about half the usual level. Metro’s “snow plan,” in fact, assumes maximum service reductions of only about 20 percent.
“Fundamentally, we’re left with a choice—do we attempt to operate with as much service as possible… knowing that in doing so we risk falling on our face? Or do we dramatically reduce the number of routes to protect the quality of our system, and only run buses where we know we can operate safely” in the worst-case scenario, Desmond says. If Metro cuts service in advance, Desmond said, they “run the risk that maybe the storm isn’t as bad as the forecast said”; if they don’t, they could end up with buses stranded all over the city.
On Thursday, Metro went with the former plan, cutting service to about 80 percent of normal levels. By afternoon, Desmond said, “We had buses slipping and sliding all over the place. At one point, we had in the neighborhood of 300 buses out of commission.” As the snow and ice continued to pile up overnight, he said, Metro managers decided to “pull in and focus our service in places where we have confidence the buses can run.” That meant virtually no service at all to places like West Seattle and Redmond, which Desmond says Metro deemed “inaccessible.” The decision of what routes to cut was made largely by Metro managers in the field, rather than any predetermined plan; currently, Metro has no backup plan when service needs to be cut by more than 20 percent.
Compounding the problem was the fact that more than half of Metro’s fleet is made up of trolley buses (buses that operate on electrical wires, and thus can’t be rerouted) or articulated buses (long buses with a flexible accordion hinge in the middle), which tend to jackknife on slippery roads. Virtually all of the articulated buses were taken off the road by this morning, and many trolley routes were canceled.
Although Desmond says Metro did the best it could under the circumstances, he acknowledged that Metro could have done a better job of communicating its thinking, and plans, to the public. “The public communications side of this is what bedevils us,” Desmond said. “That’s the thing that stings me the most. I’m continuously struggling for the agency to get information out sooner.” Desmond says Metro plans to operate on “largely normal” service hours tomorrow and Sunday, barring more snow; after that, he says, agency managers will come up with a more flexible contingency plan to deal with similar storms in the future.
@45 Are you on crack? Easy to get a bus up QA with an inch of ice on the street? Inexcusable? Fuck!
except for the whiny kids, “Who here is really going to the udistrict? .. are you? .. you?” who ended up getting off 4 stops up the hill, the 43 was a breeze into downtown and back.
@46:
Those storms only affected parts of the area, mainly the peninsula & North end above Everett, I believe, although I do recall we got a bit of compact ice on the roadways, but it was scraped off the main arterials pretty quickly, so the ice was only problematic in re: travel for a couple of days, at most.
We’re just going to be replaying these conversations upside-down and backwards for the next year.
A few days ago everyone was snickering about how Seattle closed schools when there was no snow.
A few months ago a transit column in a Seattle daily included a question about why Metro is not putting higher-capacity articulated buses on their route, because their buses are so crowded.
Six months from now the right wing will be complaining about city tax dollars spent on situations that rarely occur.
The only sane people today are those looking at the big picture, not this brief, transient event.
On Thursday there were no buses running to the top of Queen Anne from at least 6:30 am on (which is perfectly understandable) but Metro never updated their website to let riders know that buses weren’t going any further than 5th & Aloha. Not once did it say the 3 or 4 were turning around at the bottom of the hill.
Thursday and Friday a number of routes also seemed to be running on “unpublished re-routes” and said to call Metro. When you can’t get through on the phone that doesn’t really help riders to know where to catch the bus. It’s really not helpful. I’m thinking “unpublished re-routes” means we don’t know where the hell your bus is.
Today, the 3 is running to the top of the hill but the 4 isn’t? How does that make any sense? They operate on the same route for most of the way so why can the 3 make it but not the 4?
Also, if Metro could change the time stamp on their adverse weather page to PST instead of GMT that would be helpful too.
Why are managers doing last-minute re-routes to avoid hills that have been there unchanged longer than Metro has existed? They should have published “light snow” and “OMGBLIZZARDHELP” route maps after 1990, if not years before that. If the riders can’t find out where the busses are, you might as well keep them in the barn.
“Salt is not healthy for children and other living things” . . . . like the metal parts in the body of your car and the tree roots and the fish in Lake Union, Lake Washington and Puget Sound. So, just say no to salt.
Seattle gets the snow plow service its willing to pay for, which is, not very much. Of course we don’t need it very much, only a couple days per year. So quit whining that your street and driveway aren’t plowed yet – you aren’t willing to pay the taxes for that. Are you ready to pass a 10-year “snow plow” levy or something? I think not.
As for what kind of job SDOT does do, you voters keep approving of the job they’re doing by voting Nickels into office over and over. Voters here have gotten pretty much exactly what they’ve voted for, so quit whining or pick someone else (viable) to run and back them till they get elected. (Note to Seattle: “Al Runte” does not equal “viable”).
As for Metro, if only they could figure out how that thar new fangled ‘internets’ thing workz maybe they couldz post changes on that thar thang. I mean, with all the people with cell phones you’d think they’d deploy some wireless device-friendly version of their schedule pages or something. No, “mybus” doesn’t seem to work well – usually I get a reply text only after 10 or 20 minutes and then its often incomprehensible.
Of course, given the extreme ‘challenges’ King County government has with upgrading computer systems – what has it been like 10 years they’ve been trying to upgrade their software systems and each time they manage to blow like $2 million on something that turns out not to work? I mean, with all the techies in Seattle you’d think for that much moola they could just hire someone to write completely new code from scratch and be done with it.
Have you ever tried to figure out the ‘secret #’ for your bus stop by using Metro’s rider info line? Insane – it can take 10 to 15 minutes to work the menu and that assumes you don’t accidentally hit a wrong entry and have to start over. Portland has come up with a brilliant idea – they stencil the bus stop # on the bus stop sign – OMG?! Who’d have thought such a crazy idea like that could work? Those Portlanders are so far ahead of the curve its scary!
The daily Metro mantra – repeat after me: “its not about the customers, we have no customers, the apparent reality of customers and their needs are a trick of Satan and must be denied at all costs.” Yes, there are lots of bus drivers who are wonderful people, but that doesn’t excuse the agency from being as disappointing as it is.
If ever there was a city/region that needed a Bus/Transit Riders Union to bludgeon Metro into some approximation of common sense, this is it.
So ECB, when are you holding the first meeting? I’ll be there.
I was on a 16. It got to Stone Way and 45th and announced it was going up Stone Way instead of down 45th. I started walking down 45th and saw a woman jumping up and down with excitement that the bus was falling coming. I had to tell her to go chase it down because it wasn’t going down the street — She didn’t know that because there were no announcements, no signs, no web site, no text messages. The Metro site lists an entirely different re-reouting and it isn’t mentioned at all on the Trip Planner.
It’s total f-cking bullsh-t. Even if we can’t do anything about the snow, we CAN do something about the communication. Come on METRO! Man the phones! Get an opt-in text system in place!
Amy @29 made the most sensible point on this thread. I’ve been on the Metro three times since yesterday morning and all of the drivers were pleasant and professional. This certainly isn’t their fault, yet they are the ones enduring all kinds of comments from some very rude assholes. (I’ve wondered what Ecce Homo has been up to lately…)
That said, NOW can we please get serious about building light rail?
Gots chainz?
No?
@59: Both my drivers today were awesome. I’m mad at the organization, not the rank and file. I just saw a 26 going down 45th. These really are the end times.
Management at work docked the pay of everyone who did not show up. If everyone who had the option of telecommuting, did, then I wouldn’t have been standing on Aurora watching nine 358s filled to capacity rolling on by our stop Thursday afternoon.
Saw someone with cross-country skiis swooshing up the sidewalk instead–that’s my new plan for Monday morning.
trolley buses are awesome because they do not use fossil fuel.
also, it’s not worth the money to outfit the buses for a once or twice a year 1 day long storm (this year is wacky as this storm is lasting a week).
when it snows, take the day off. get over it. weather happens.
thanks, metro.
go lightrail.
and if you bosses are assholes about it, that really sucks. i will wish evil on them if you like.
When I moved here I got a place near major bus lines, and within walking distance of the city, and lo, I have been able to either walk to work, library, grocery, and/or none of my regular buses have been cancelled anyway.
@58 – That’s exactly the problem. Until Metro learns how to use their big-boy words, and tell their *customers* exactly WTF is going on, they deserve all the shit they are going to get over the next few days.