Major shakeup coming for Metrolink

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Paulus

Conductor
Joined
Jul 13, 2012
Messages
1,469
Amid Frustrations, Metrolink Is Said to Face an 'Imminent' Change

Southern Californias main passenger railroad is in for a significant imminent change, Orange Countys transportation board chairman said Monday, noting frustrations by the countys representatives on the railroads board.

While he was vague about the potential change, Orange County Transportation Authority Chairman Shawn Nelson suggested the possibility of a different agency being contracted to manage rail service.

Its imminent. They cannot run this system and we are wasting our time asking them to, Nelson, who also sits on the railroads board, said at Mondays OCTA board meeting.

...

The potential changes come amid frustration by OCTA board members over what they describe as a poor customer experience at Metrolink and unreliable ridership figures.

Metrolink is poorly run and wouldnt have any idea what their ridership is, said Nelson. Its sort of an endless source of frustration.

Management there were just continuing to go back to a very poor model, with a lot of [human resources] issues, he added. Were just tired of fighting about HR and personalities and not focusing on ridership and fares and things like that.

Michael Hennessey, who is the vice chairman of Metrolinks board, also chimed in with frustrations over ridership figures and financial issues.

Across the region, Metrolink has experienced a drop of nearly 600,000 annual passengers since 2008, according to the railroad. Ridership in Orange County was reported to have increased over the last year.

But Hennessey said the data isn't to be trusted.

Ridership could be up, ridership could be down. We really dont know, said Hennessey.

Referring to what he described as a budgetary problem, Hennessey said Metrolink is late in closing out its books.

You can ask for these things all you wantbut they just dont act, said Hennessey.

When they dont seem capable of reacting or understanding, what do you do? he asked.

Nelson replied that the short answer is to find an agency with the pieces in place and contract them to run the partnership.

It was unclear which partnership Nelson was referring to Metrolinks board is comprised of representatives from across Southern California, and OCTA itself pays Metrolink to provide rail service.

OCTA board member Lori Donchak asked how OCTA should get Nelsons message across.

Im being polite on purpose, Nelson replied. Its imminent. The thing is not workable right now.
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For the curious, Metrolink currently relies on conductors doing a manual count of boardings and exits in order to gather ridership data. The introduction of automatic people counters on the San Diego Trolley (which Metrolink is looking at doing a trial run of) led to greatly increased passenger numbers just from better counting for example. So Metrolink could very well be wildly off in either direction.
 
I guess most Metrolink ridership is from weekly or monthly passes, then? Because it's easy to count how many people bought single-ride tickets.
 
neroden said:
I guess most Metrolink ridership is from weekly or monthly passes, then? Because it's easy to count how many people bought single-ride tickets.
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Assuming that the machines worked, which is a questionable assumption with Metrolink: On any given day, there's an issue with 20% of the TVM fleet. There's also been a lot of reports of ticket scalping (including physical threats forcing handover of tickets).
 
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Paulus said:
neroden said:
I guess most Metrolink ridership is from weekly or monthly passes, then? Because it's easy to count how many people bought single-ride tickets.
Click to expand...
Assuming that the machines worked, which is a questionable assumption with Metrolink: On any given day, there's an issue with 20% of the TVM fleet. There's also been a lot of reports of ticket scalping (including physical threats forcing handover of tickets).
Click to expand...
Cite please? about threatening scalpers, not about ticket machine failures.
 
OCTA is hardly credible when it comes to transit. They only believe in freeways and lining the pockets of their chosen contractors.
 
gwschenk said:
OCTA is hardly credible when it comes to transit. They only believe in freeways and lining the pockets of their chosen contractors.
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Oh please. OCTA was funding commuter San Diegans before Metrolink came about, has been putting a lot of money into Metrolink and rail expansion, was chosen to lead the LOSSAN agency overseeing the rail corridor and Surfliners, is apparently the only agency which makes a major effort to have timed connections between bus and rail, and it wasn't their fault CenterLine didn't come about.
 
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gwschenk said:
They killed light rail in OC.
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CenterLine was shelved because of a lack of local support and Federal funding. In the meanwhile, they tried to bump up frequencies on Metrolink within the county, but those have been getting eliminated for lack of any ridership whatsoever. It's worth noting that they're working with Santa Ana and Anaheim on their streetcar projects.
 
Metrolink is a royal mess. It's about time they brought in some qualified people.
According to the people at RailPAC Metrolink is run like a min-Amtrak, with each train being a separate entity with little or no attempt to coordinate connections and conductors sometimes standing at a single door looking at each ticket before boarding when they have a fare crack-down.
San Diego's rolling spot-checks seem to work well enough and don't slow down the boarding process. The Green and Orange lines are coordinated at Grossmont so people can transfer between trains when traveling between Mission Vally and Lemon Grove. Making the train work for the customer makes it work better for the railroad.
Now I'm seeing financial and accounting problems that make it impossible to know what the service is actually doing. They need a good housecleaning.
And a fumigation.
 
Tokkyu40 said:
... and conductors sometimes standing at a single door looking at each ticket before boarding when they have a fare crack-down.
Click to expand...
Never experienced that on the Ventura Line...when they do a fare check, the conductor walks the train after it leaves a station. As far as security checks at stations, the TSA and LASD (not Metrolink) does that while stopped at stations.
 
They are moving to 100% fare enforcement on the Antelope Valley Line, which some have nicknamed the "Felony Flyer" for the population that rides up to the jails in Castaic and prisons in the Antelope Valley. Also brought up is the problem of "short pays" which often happens as conductors traditionally check the peak load point of the train, coming or leaving Union Station. http://www.metrolinktrains.com/news/news_item/news_id/959.html
 
While I'm fine with "100% Fare Enforcement", I'm curious as to how much fare recovery/generation will be produced as compared to the $1.7 million to do this...the R.O.I. in other words.
 
FrensicPic said:
Tokkyu40 said:
... and conductors sometimes standing at a single door looking at each ticket before boarding when they have a fare crack-down.
Click to expand...
Never experienced that on the Ventura Line...when they do a fare check, the conductor walks the train after it leaves a station. As far as security checks at stations, the TSA and LASD (not Metrolink) does that while stopped at stations.
Click to expand...
Did a for-fun circle trip Orange-Riverside-LAUS-Orange this week. No check of my purchased tickets on the first leg. Conductor came through the train checking tickets once on the second leg. Someone checked tickets at the top of the stairs and the ramp to the platform at LAUS for the third leg.
 
calwatch said:
They are moving to 100% fare enforcement on the Antelope Valley Line, which some have nicknamed the "Felony Flyer" for the population that rides up to the jails in Castaic and prisons in the Antelope Valley. Also brought up is the problem of "short pays" which often happens as conductors traditionally check the peak load point of the train, coming or leaving Union Station. http://www.metrolinktrains.com/news/news_item/news_id/959.html
Click to expand...
When I took the Antelope Valley line the day before TG, it was PACKED. On top of that, the LAC Sheriff's came through the train dong fare check not the conductor. Then again, the people on board were not exactly the type a single conductor would want to get into a tussle with because of non payment. Even when the conductor came through the train demanding people to get their feet and bag off of the seat, he had a deputy right behind him following him.
 
FrensicPic said:
While I'm fine with "100% Fare Enforcement", I'm curious as to how much fare recovery/generation will be produced as compared to the $1.7 million to do this...the R.O.I. in other words.
Click to expand...
So, apparently I"ve got too much time on my hands.

$1.7 million for 100% fare enforcement on the Antelope Valley LIne. The cost of a round trip Lancaster to LA ticket is $30. Metrolink needs to "recover" 56,666 fares to break even! On ONE line!

Metrolink's website shows for FY14 Q4 an average of 382 "boardings" for Lancaster. The FY 13-14 Q1 report shows, for the AV Line an average weekday ridership of 5950, average Saturday ridership of 3265 and average Sunday ridership of 2285.

Spend a dollar to save a penny?
 

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