DC Commuting

I should have known. Or at least suspected it. I hit the off-button of the alarm clock instead of the Snooze and woke up 20 minutes later than planned. I had to hurry up and get ready for the commute.

I dashed to the car and to the train station only to find that the train was going to be about 30 minutes late. It was. At least I got the extra sleep. The platform was already hot with the morning humidity and there were dozens of extra people there because the next train is usually only 20 minutes later than the one I take. So we had two trains worth of commuters to stand in the aisles and block up the path.

By the time we arrived at Union Station, I was half-way between two local bus arrivals and waited along with a dozen people who would be wanting to board the bus also. It arrived and we all piled in.

By the time we reached 9th Street, the Police had the block over to 10th cordoned off for some unspecified reason. The bus deviated with a left turn in what was supposed to be a "uni-block detour" that turned out to be much more. By the time we moved one block south we were met by another police vehicle making us turn left again. While two wrongs don't make a right, three lefts do.

We were headed back toward Union Station until we made the third left and were headed North. By then there were a series of No Left Turns including the useless left on at E Street from where we originally diverted. K Street provided the first opportunity for a left turn, the fourth one that put us back on a Westward path.

It was about then that I thought about the possibility of the driver's name being Moses. He did an admirable job of navigating the city streets during morning DC rush hour, but we did seem lost in the desert there for a time.

Employing 20-20 hindsight this day would have been a good one to telework. Then the realization hit me. When you get to work, your commute is only half over. The day was only cranking up to its maximum temperature at that early hour. AMTRAK and MARC still had to contend with warped rails, switch and signal malfunctions, and overheated locomotives. Sometime over the past 21 years of commuting into DC the commute has become an adventure. THAT was never supposed to be.

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So Where IS Plan B?

I have commuted between BWI Rail station and Union Station for 16 year. I've seen the best service and the worst service events in that time. Mechanical failures are inevitable. They are related to equipment age and funding issues. The bigger failures are always the ones that are compounded when company management fails to appreciate the gravity of the situations they allow to take place by their short-sighted responses and lack of timely information. There is no excuse for a poor or non-existent plan.

Several years ago, I was fortunate to not be commuting on the MARC Penn Line on the occasion of a mid-summer breakdown that lasted several hours. The train was stalled on the tracks between stations and a rescue locomotive was dispatched but the entire ordeal lasted the several hours in the afternoon heat that caused several passengers to experience medical emergencies. It was only my work travel schedule that had me elsewhere on that fateful day.

Stalled without power, the HVAC systems were not functioning and the interior temperatures of the bi-level cars climbed over 100 degrees. A lack of useful information and emergency planning by the MTA management and staff left passengers to fend for themselves. People in each can took it upon themselves to remove the emergency exit window panel in order to create some level of ventilation. Even with the windows out the stifling heat prompted some passengers to climb out on to the track bed to get away. Many walked over the berm and found their own way home at the end of a very bad ride.

After that incident, the MTA furnished promises that they would handle any future such events with more competent response. One of the plan elements was a supply of emergency bottled water. Fast forward to May 28, 2010. Again I was fortunate to be on company travel and not on the stalled train. The evening express train, 435, leaving Union Station experienced mechanical troubles just south of the New Carrollton station and was pushed back to DC for a different locomotive. That incident did get handles in an expedient manner and the passenger, though delayed and irritated, were not left stranded in dangerous heat conditions.

June 21, 2010, the 5:38 departure from Union Station with a full consignment of 900 passengers left the station only to become stranded by a stalled locomotive between stations. This time the braking systems became locked and the rescue locomotive could not move the train. These 900 passengers were stranded inside the aluminum cars once again. If one thinks that emergency water was available in June, that person would have been wrong. There were many opportunities for the management to load the water supplies aboard the train, but did not do it. There are several allocated cars on MARC Trains that are called Café Cars. In those cars there is a compartment large enough for many dozens water bottles. An interesting observation I made on June 23, is that there was a new nylon tie sealing the door of the Café compartment with the date 6-23-10 inscribed on it. I suspect that just maybe there is a supply of bottled water in there for the next time the train breaks down in the afternoon DC heat.