By Lena H. Sun and Jonathan Mummolo
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 15, 2007
It was rush hour. Metro trains were stuck. Smoke, fire and a power failure had shut down 11 of 86 stations, mostly in Virginia, and shuttle buses dispatched to pick up stranded passengers didn't know where to go.
Frustrated riders couldn't get answers. At the Pentagon Station, more than 100 passengers followed one supervisor around, straining to hear shouted directions about which buses to board. The confusion drove Martina Schwartz to tears. "I asked him three hours ago how to get to Franconia," she said. "I never got a response."
For many who have ridden Metro, the scenario from the late August service meltdown was all too familiar. For years, customers have complained that train operators, bus drivers, station managers and just about anyone else wearing a Metro vest fail to give basic information during delays and breakdowns. Or when they do, it's impossible to understand.
Metro General Manager John B. Catoe Jr. has promised to fix communications, adding his name to a list of agency chiefs who have vowed, unsuccessfully, to cure one of the agency's largest and deepest ailments. At a board meeting last week, managers outlined a new take on the long-standing problem. Success, they said, will not be achieved by simply making station announcements comprehensible; it will require a complete culture change, from top managers to all 8,200 bus and rail operations employees.
The agency has failed to provide basic information to its customers on too many occasions, Catoe said. People understand that mechanical things break down, he said, but after that happens, Metro fails "to tell [customers] how long it's going to be, what the problem is or even where to go."
Alexandria Mayor William D. Euille, a Virginia representative on the Metro board, put it more bluntly: Metro workers have to stop viewing riders like "robots" and more like "human beings."
Some board members questioned whether the new efforts would matter.
"We've had this same conversation, in this exact same room, quite a few times," said Christopher Zimmerman, who represents Virginia. Still, they should be given a chance, he said, adding, "I want to see results really soon."
The communication problems trace to nearly every aspect of how Metro operates. Some are technical and require more money and new procedures; others could be fixed with little more than handing out dry-erase boards. The most basic could be fixed with dedication to old-fashioned customer service.
The root of most miscommunication happens internally. Metro officials say they need to do a better and quicker job of getting information to train operators, station managers and other front-line workers, who should pass it on to riders. Officials are considering buying hand-held radios that would allow station managers to receive updates directly from the agency's operations control center and wireless microphones that would allow them to broadcast over a station's public-address system.
They also want to give dry-erase boards to station managers so they can jot down information and put the boards at station entrances to alert riders before they get to the fare gates.
On Aug. 27, almost an hour after officials shut down the Pentagon Station, passengers continued to head down the escalator, unaware that trains weren't running. An electronic sign at the top of one entrance still showed a Blue Line train to Franconia-Springfield arriving in 12 minutes. Alan Dorhoffer almost got to the fare gate when a Metro police officer screamed at him to turn around. "Every time something happens with Metro, there is always misinformation," Dorhoffer said, fuming.
Metro officials also believe they have created unrealistic expectations. They can't always diagnose problems right away. And simple logistics means that they can't rush another train or a convoy of buses to a scene. So instead of immediately directing riders at stations to "go upstairs and catch a shuttle bus" during incidents, riders should be told that the first buses won't arrive for 30 to 40 minutes and that each can carry only about 60 passengers, a fraction of the 600 to 800 on a full train, said Ray Feldmann, the senior manager in charge of improving communications.
There also needs to be better coordination between bus and rail operations, officials said. After passengers were stranded at the Pentagon, Metro dispatched shuttle buses to get passengers to working stations. But the bus drivers didn't know where they were going and asked riders for directions.
At one point, a frustrated passenger on one of the buses called his friend, who happened to be Metro board member Euille, who then called Catoe. Only then did passengers learn that the drivers didn't know Virginia roads because they normally drove routes in the District.
Under the new approach, Metro is considering creating station-specific brochures with information about rail stations within walking distance and bus routes that serve the station, Feldmann said.
The bottom line, he said, is that Metro needs to be honest about what it can do. The agency shouldn't be afraid to tell riders: "Avoid the Red Line because there is a major disruption," Feldmann said.
That might be difficult for an agency that has long led people to believe it was omnipotent, said Maryland board member and former agency executive Peter Benjamin. "We can't move all the people all the time," he said.
Riders should understand that being stuck on a train is similar to being stuck on the Capital Beltway, Benjamin said.
"Customers don't want to hear that we don't know what the answer is yet, but realistically, for a certain amount of time, nobody knows the extent of the problem until you get some people there," he said.
Metro also plans to give information even when not all details are known, officials said. In the past, employees' priority was fixing the problem. They were reluctant to share details too early because they didn't want to be blamed if the explanation turned out to be wrong.
Some train operators and station managers do an excellent job, officials said, but they should be the rule, not the exception.
District board member Anthony Giancola praised a thoughtful Red Line operator who alerted downtown-bound passengers to a delay. The operator said that he didn't know how long the delay would be but that customers could transfer to the Green Line at Fort Totten and "by the way, that we could also use the restrooms," he said.
The agency's technology also limits how much information can be sent out quickly. From its control center, which oversees all trains, there is no easy way for someone to talk to train passengers, said acting rail chief Dan Epps.
Rail controllers can make announcements in stations via the public address system and speak to train operators and repair crews via radio. But there is no easy way for them to speak directly to train passengers because the radio has only one channel. So if they are talking directly to passengers, those trying to fix the problem can't talk to each other.
During rush hour, trains run two to three minutes apart downtown, so "controllers have only about 30 seconds" to figure out what to do and talk to operators and crews, said Deputy General Manager Gerald Francis. Nevertheless, live announcements can be made quickly, he said, so Metro is considering adding employees whose jobs would be to pass information from controllers to passengers in easy-to-understand language.
Station managers receive limited information because they don't have radios. Only some of the 107 kiosks have one-way scanners that allow station managers to get updates, but they don't always work. Alternately, they have telephones with direct lines to the control center. But there is no way to alert all station managers without calling each separately.
Station managers often have to call the control center or rely on announcements over the much-maligned public-address system.
"Half the time, I can't hear what they're saying," said a station manager at Farragut North last week, stepping out of his booth to answer a passenger's question about an unintelligible announcement.
Some of the speakers are more than 30 years old and were installed in the concrete arches of the stations, creating echoes that make announcements hard to comprehend. Metro has replaced the systems in a third of its 39 underground stations with speakers closer to ear level. Officials said they hope to finish the rest by June 2009.
Sound problems are exacerbated when announcements aren't clear or loud enough.
At L'Enfant Plaza, which has an old system, Michelle Vaca was reading on a bench last week when a jarring, garbled sound forced her eyes from her book.
"May I have your attention, ladies and gentleman," a muffled voice began. With her ear cocked, Vaca turned to try to hear the message and managed to make out a single, crucial word: "Vienna."
"I kind of understood there were delays, but I had no idea what line they were talking about," she said, awaiting a Blue Line train to Federal Center. "But I heard, 'Vienna,' so once I heard 'Vienna,' I said, 'Okay, that's not me.' "
Staff writer Elissa Silverman contributed to this report.
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