Metro Chief Promises Better Communication

Photos
Torrential Rainfall Pounds D.C. Region
Treacherous thunderstorms swept the region, causing damage and delays in the Washington area.

Metro, criticized by riders this week for its inability to alert them to problems caused by flooding, is modifying its alert system and giving more information to passengers, officials said yesterday.

Some riders have complained that some of the confusion and frustration they experienced Monday and Tuesday could have been minimized if they had received complete and accurate information early enough to change their plans.

Metro's interim general manager, Dan Tangherlini, said the system did "pretty well" in responding to "what the National Weather Service told us was the single largest one-day rainfall since the 1870s." The flooding shut down two heavily used stations, Archives-Navy Memorial and Federal Triangle, causing enormous delays as passengers scrambled to board shuttle buses that were then hobbled by the same traffic problems facing drivers.

Metro officials noted, however, that the system continued to run even as Virginia Railway Express service was canceled and MARC service was canceled on two lines and reduced on another.

Nevertheless, Tangherlini said one of the main lessons from this week's flooding was that Metro "needed to do even better" communicating with customers.

One rider, Donald Sheppard, 58, a program analyst at the Pentagon, said he received conflicting information during Monday's morning rush hour from train operators and Metro personnel at L'Enfant Plaza.

"Are we waiting for a major disaster to occur where clear and precise directions from Metro could prevent panic and perhaps save lives?" Sheppard asked.

Metro officials said they plan to improve an e-mail alert notification system, post additional information on the transit system's Web site about delays and their causes, issue more announcements about systemwide disruptions and make new -- and more prominent -- signs to tell people where to line up for shuttle bus service in the event that a station is closed.

As the storm moved in Sunday night, the automatic e-mail alert system notified only the 3,000 to 5,000 customers who had signed up to receive information about weekend service. Most of the 45,000 subscribers who are weekday users, and would have been riding the system Monday morning, did not receive the alert.

Subscribers receive terse bulletins via e-mail about service disruptions. Weekday riders can choose to receive information about service during different parts of the day, such as morning rush hour, midday or evening rush.

"The alert system was designed for short-term disruptions, not disruptions that may extend over a 24-hour period," said Sydney Garriss, Metro's electronic communications media manager.

Metro plans to change that system so customers will know about unresolved service problems regardless of what type of e-mail alerts they subscribed to, Garriss said. He hopes to have the changes in place by the end of July.

The system that automatically generates the e-mail notifications also creates the alerts posted to Metro's Web site. But after complaints about delays that were not posted on the site, including one on the Orange Line during Tuesday's morning rush, Metro staff will be manually updating the site with additional information, if necessary, Garriss said.

In the past, Metro has chosen to broadcast train messages affecting riders on a particular line. But Tangherlini said that "where it makes sense" to do more system-wide announcements, Metro will do so to give riders more information.

Riders also complained about poor acoustics on the public address system, and Metro has a $9 million project underway to replace speakers, officials said.