Steve Eldridge, The Examiner
2007-11-28 08:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

I guess it’s better to hear estimates of how bad things are going to be and then find out they aren’t. It sure beats the alternative. All of the doom and gloom about holiday traveling this Thanksgiving seems to have been based on bad information or on a self-serving scramble to get headlines. With so many electronic toll collections systems set up around the country, it would seem that estimating the number of people actually on the roads would be easier than ever.

The interesting thing is that the advanced estimates about the number of people who will be on the roads during a given time frame do little to impact our behavior. Maybe travelers have already figured out that these estimates are not worth the storage space they take up on our computers or the paper they are printed on.

Switch to buses due to hike?

Ben, who pays more attention to these things than most of us, writes in with a good observation and suggestion for those worried about the inevitable rate increases at Metro parking lots: “I was at the Rockville hearing on Metro fare increases where several speakers who commute from Shady Grove said that the proposed increases in parking and fares would force them to carpool.

“These commuters might think about taking the express buses from Milestone (Ride-On 70) or Lakeforest (Metrobus J9) to Medical Center and transferring to Metrorail there. The parking is free and the round-trip bus fare of $1.60 with transfer is more or less equal to the difference in rail fare to downtown or to the Pentagon-Rosslyn area. With the proposed fare increases on rail, the total fare will actually be less. Travel time is competitive, especially if you’re coming from north of Milestone, and taking the bus puts you in the HOV lane instead of the regular lane on the stretch north of Shady Grove.”

Those sound like pretty good options for those who live upcounty, but I wonder how long those spaces will last. Montgomery and Fairfax counties have also invested heavily in Park and Ride commuter lots that might connect well with Metro stations.

Metro retirees receive a lot

Donna writes with a very astute observation. I know there is an underlying question here, but doubt that I would be able to get a straight answer to it from anyone in the union or at Metro: “I’ve read about the pensions Metro employees get, and that retirees can make as much as they did when they were working ... but in all the discussions about raising Metro fares I haven’t read anything about the possibility of getting any concessions from the union. It seems that the number of retirees will keep growing, so our fares will have to cover the expense of all those pensions as well as current salaries. Is that a consideration in Metro’s budget planning?”

The sad truth is that much of the money that we pay in fares or in the taxes our local jurisdictions and states pay into Metro goes to the bloated payroll. Although I haven’t been able to sit through any of this year’s discussions about fare increases, I have to say that I never heard the phrase “union concessions” raised by the board in years past as a way to cut expenses. Metro and, as a direct consequence, its riders are totally at the mercy of the unions. Not that one can blame them. When a group is offered the kind of sweetheart deals these unions were over the years, it would be crazy not to go along.

Questions, comments, random musings? Write to Steve@ SprawlandCrawl.com