Saturday, December 17, 2011

More Trains, More Often

More Lines , More Often !
The Phantom is a huge advocate of improved evening and weekend service. Metro operates frequent bus and rail service in a larger geographical area than any other transit system in the world, yet service frequency falls off a cliff after dark. Downtown and many other neighborhoods do not shut down after 5 p.m., so why should a bus or train that operates every 6-12 minutes during the day suddenly become every hour after 7 or 8 p.m. ? It makes absolutely no sense.

Now it looks as though Metro is finally seeing the light, or in the dark as it were, with improved evening service on the Red, Purple and Blue Lines. The top three Metro Rail lines now have 10 min service from early evening until close. That's more frequent than during the day on weekends. Metro has been making a big deal about the cost of night service for years, but adding less than a dozen trains (and operators) for 3 hours is really just chump change.

The obvious question is why not the Gold and Green lines or buses on the 15 Minute Map ?! It would be a bit more costly, so start with a dozen more trains to cover the other rail lines (including Expo!) and then add buses to the 25 lines that already have 24 hr. "Owl" service. It doesn't even have to be every 10 minutes. Every 12-15 minutes until Owl service begins would be a huge improvement ! It would put Metro in the league with New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver.

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