The MT Position

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit magazine

The Washington Metropolitan Transportation Authority (WMATA) stated they would be starting random bag checks at Metro stations. Since the announcement, people have been up in arms. I’ve read complaints ranging from why didn’t WMATA ask for opinions before they installed the program and am I going to get locked up for bringing a sandwich on the train to they are denying me my Fourth Amendment rights.

My response to this — so what!

I know I am going to bring down the ire of a certain segment of the populace with that comment, but really, this seems much ado about nothing.

How many of us have at one point in our lives been asked a question by a police officer? One Saturday morning I was heading out way too early and went to get a soda from the fridge in my garage. When I walked out, I was blinded by a police officer shining a light at me. He wanted to know what I was doing coming out the side door of a garage in the dark at 4 a.m. I just told him this was my garage and my soda — and I was probably brusque with him because, well it was my property. My anger quickly dissipated to gratitude when I found out he was in the area because one of my neighbors had their garage broken into that night.

If a police officer called you over as you were entering a transit station and asked where you were going, what would you do? Hey, I would tell him the truth. Contrary to popular mythology, most police officers are decent folks just trying to earn a living like the rest of us. The stereotypical jerk is few and far between, with more stories of them than actual sightings — everyone has got one.

The folks over at Flex Your Rights, “disputes the notion that citizens must prove their innocence in order to use public transit. Moreover, we have serious concerns that this territorial expansion of police search powers is doing grave damage to people’s understanding of their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Really? Who is asking anyone to prove their innocence? As for territorial expansion, this program is already in place at Amtrak and several other transit authorities.

Flex Your Rights is also distributing a flyer asking, “Do you fear that we will have fewer and fewer public spaces where we can be free from random searches?” and “Do you think that this program is another step towards the creation of a ‘police state’?”

Huh? A police state? One of transit’s biggest problems is simply the ability to secure it properly, especially for large systems. How do you keep hundreds of miles of rail monitored at all times? How do you keep hundreds of stations safe?

Transit’s openness is its greatest weakness. Let’s take the recent Metrolink tragedy for example. If the accident had been caused by a bomb that caused the train to run the red light and crash into the other train, what would have happened? Everyone would have asked how something like this could have happened. Where was the transit security? Why weren’t bags being checked?

One of the other arguments is that this system (random checking) will be ineffectual and it is a waste of time and money. Held up as an example of what should be done is the Broken Windows Theory, which basically says if minor crimes are left unchecked then they will grow in number, spawning major crimes and so on. To prevent this, a greater police force should be installed to crackdown on all the rules infractions, thereby preventing anything major (such as a bomb) from happening. Isn’t that a police state?

Whenever something like this comes up, people pull out their handy abridged copies of the Bill of Rights and cry foul not stopping to think of the context those amendments were written in and how they are much larger in scope than this.

The Fourth Amendment was conceived during the years leading up to the American Revolution to prevent the abuse of general warrants being used to raid houses looking for people and/or material viewed as seditious England (and really the King).

You know what, if a cop kicks in my front door with a bogus warrant searching for “seditious” materials, then I am going to cry foul. But asking people politely if they could look in their bags — and mind you they can refuse, they just can’t enter the system if they do — isn’t the same thing. That’s not an abuse of rights, that’s trying to make the system safe in the best way they have available to them.

Transit always gets stiffed on this sort of thing. While we have to virtually strip down to get on a plane these days (even if it means missing your flight), no one argues about it. Sure there is a reticent amount of grumbling, but I don’t hear people screaming about their rights being abused when airlines started making everyone take their shoes off to get on a plane. Or remove all liquids from their carry-ons. Or take out their laptops from their bags. Or remove any sort of coat. Or belt.

Before we cry foul, why not give it a chance. If the number of people missing their trains exponentially increases over the next few months, then this isn’t working. If there are numerous complaints about abuse, then this isn’t working.

But to start a campaign about this before the program even begins is ridiculous.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit magazine

Sometimes I have to question the “conventional wisdom” of others, especially when it comes to transit-related matters. We’ve all heard the term conventional wisdom, but do you really know what it means? Conventional wisdom refers to ideas accepted as generally true by the public or “experts.” The problem I have is when conventional wisdom is used to make “wise” decisions.

See, the crux of conventional wisdom is (as Wikipedia explains) that the definition implies the wisdom here is just something that has been accepted as fact by the general populace, and therefore subject to reexamination in the future. The problem with this is that the general populace is a fickle beast that can change its feelings on a topic on a proverbial dime.

Take for example our current all-consuming media black hole, the presidential election. How many times in the last two months have you heard about “gaffs” or “game-changers”? You know, those seemingly innocuous statements that get overanalyzed and scrutinized, possibly changing someone’s view on a topic, or in this case candidate. Heck, for each debate we were told to specifically watch for them and you felt as if you won something if you were the first to spot that one turn of phrase that the media blasted across the stratosphere the next week.

This week a story came out about how the candidates felt about transit-related issues, specifically those around the Washington, D.C., area. When asked about the importance of investing in infrastructure, the Obama spokesman said the investment should begin now. The McCain spokesman said the infrastructure investments were an imperative, but needed to be done wisely, which was the campaigns top priority.

Here is where I question the wisdom of, well, doing things wisely. “Conventional wisdom” will tell us that we need to make a serious investment in our infrastructure. After the I-35 bridge collapse this was almost accepted as unimpeachable truth. Now, it can (and will) be debated in the context of investing “wisely.” The same could be said for the conventional wisdom of spending money on security post-9/11. After the terrorist attacks money was desperately needed to shore up our nation’s security and it was spent — but was it spent wisely? That didn’t come up for debate until much later.

If you ask me, I think we should stop trying to use conventional wisdom and go with something a little more, dare I say it, blue collar — you know, what a plumber might use. Let’s go with common sense.

Common sense, which basically equates to knowledge and experience people already have, tells me that we need to invest in infrastructure. Why? Well, when a 16-lane highway is getting gridlocked, we need to rethink how we are moving people. When I need to show up to an airport hours before a flight to be there “on time,” we need to rethink how we move people. When buses and trains across the nation are stuffed with riders and systems have to cut routes because they are over budget due to rising fuel costs or flagging sales tax revenues, we need to rethink how we move people.

Conventional wisdom tells us the transit system in the United States works fine as it is. It has worked for decades and we are still getting where we need to go. Conventional wisdom, says if things change we can reexamine it later.

Common sense tells us the transit system in the United States is on the brink of disaster with issues of aging infrastructure, congestion, rising fuel costs and overcrowded transit systems just the tip of the proverbial iceberg of problems we are staring at. Common sense says we need to change things now before they get worse.

Let’s not spend too much time trying to make “wise” decisions instead of the right decisions.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit magazine

I have two boys (9 and 7) who — as young boys will — don’t go to bed at precisely the time you would really like them to. The other night I put them to bed, came downstairs to get a little work done and was soon back upstairs as the giggling turned into laughter. Expecting another round of late night stuffed animal wars, I found they had smuggled their Game Boys into bed with them and were texting to each other with them.

My anger quickly turned to curiosity as I didn’t know their Game Boys had a texting function. They gleefully explained to me they discovered it poking around one night and had taught themselves how to use it. I feel I fall into that generation that remembers a time before the computer explosion, yet is still able to pick up new technology with relative ease. Yet, I marvel at the fact that my kids can so easily learn via an electronic device while we struggle at night with the old basics, reading, writing and arithmetic.

This got me to thinking. Have you seen the “Shift Happens” video? You can find it here. Sure we come away from that video thinking about our children and how we can better educate them, but it also made me wonder how are we training our current workforce? We’ve had the discussion about continuing education at Mass Transit before. Do you offer that for your workers? And how do you do it?

While I was in San Diego at this year’s Expo, Bombardier hosted a seminar on e-learning, discussing a lot of the same things in the “Shift Happens” video and how it applies to the transit industry. This kind of started me down the path towards wondering about new training techniques for the younger members of our industry. And sitting in some of the committee meetings really hit it home.

We are a graying industry folks. Most of us already know this, but there is a vast change coming and we need to be on top of it in any way we can. We need to not only get young people into the transit industry we need to keep them here, not just through competitive pay (which becomes less and less the carrot it once was), but through improved education and other benefits. With our ridership growing exponentially with no end in sight, it’s time we made a play to not just turn those choice riders into permanent transit riders, but members of the transit industry itself.

Bombardier has a PDF of the whitepaper they handed out at Expo available here, and Mass Transit will be hosting a Web version of the same seminar next week. I’ve seen it, I like it and I encourage you all to take some time out of your schedules to see it for yourselves. You can register for the Webinar here.

We’re on the eve of change and we need to make some hard decisions to keep our workforce up to speed as the world radically changes around them. I know my staff can’t afford to lag behind — can yours?

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit magazine

Ok, I know that sounds like an overly cliched title, but San Diego was much hotter this week than first predicted with temperatures in the 90s during the midday. Good thing most of it was spent within the confines of the San Diego Convention Center walking the aisles of this year’s International Public Transportation Expo.

It’s always difficult for me to judge just how good a show is overall — which is probably the case with most people. We each have our own demarcations as to what we’d call a successful show. If we don’t hit that point, then the show is a failure. If we zoom by it without a scance look backward, then the show is a booming success. In the words of Einstein, it’s all relative.

In that vein, I spoke with several exhibitors who were disappointed with the show traffic. Some extremely disappointed. Others were happy with attendee turnout and one even remarked to me she barely had time to finish up with one person and turn around because there was someone else behind them. See, relative.

Relatively speaking, it looks like the key factor at Expo (as it is in any business endeavor) was location, location, location. Those along a main arterial aisle had the most traffic (as did those with visibly accommodating booths). It didn’t matter which hall you were in as several exhibitors in the Sails Pavilion told me they had great traffic. Again, others did not.

Wednesday was a bit slower, but as someone pointed out to me, Monday is always the busiest day and it tapers off from there. It looked to me like the attendees all decided to take the afternoon off on Wednesday and enjoy the beautiful weather and sights of San Diego — and who could blame them! Still that is something for APTA to consider looking forward to 2011 as I am sure New Orleans is going to prove just as distracting as San Diego was.

As I said above, all in all it was a good show with a somewhat upbeat feeling tempered with a solemnity I would attribute to the current economy and the trepidation of potential funding issues in the future. The presidential election is staring us right in the face and 2009 is just around the corner. Expo showed us what the future of transit can look like, we just need to make sure we get to the station on time.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit magazine

A report came out this week stating that the Metrolink engineer involved in September’s tragedy was texting throughout his shift the day of the accident. Not only had he sent and received dozens of text messages, he had sent and received messages just 22 seconds before the crash happened. The Metrolink engineer also didn’t pull his emergency brake before the crash, while the Union Pacific engineer did — 2 seconds after he could have seen the Metrolink train coming. So what was the Metrolink engineer looking at?

California has banned the use of cell phones while driving (I believe without a headset), and now has banned texting while driving. Of course, Metrolink had rules against its engineers using cell phones while on the job before the crash on September 12. That didn’t stop its engineer from using it to send dozens of text messages during his split shift.

Rules and laws are the backbone of society, but they are only worth the paper they are printed on if they are enforced. It’s great that California passed laws prohibiting the use of cell phones, but who is going to police this? And who is going to police it especially for train engineers? Random spot checks? Come on.

If anything, people who abuse the system now will just curtail the use of their cell phones until the media attention dies down and then do what they have been. I am sure they are telling themselves that the accident that happened in Chatsworth, Calif., wouldn’t happen to them because they are always attentive and only use their cell phones for emergencies or “just a little bit.”

The fact of the matter is that the only way you can really be sure that the engineer driving the train isn’t using a cell phone is to take it away from him. Metrolink — and really every transit system — should make it mandatory that engineers hand in their phones when they come on duty. If they want the engineer to have a cell phone for emergencies, give him one that is approved by the authority with limited use and no text capability. If the driver needs to be called for a family emergency, set up a special line the family can call.

The only way to prevent an accident of this sort from happening again isn’t to tell people that they will get in trouble if they do the same thing the Metrolink engineer did. It’s to make sure they can’t do what he did to begin with.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com