For the record

Over the last few years, I’ve written many times on this blog that Capital Metro was eliminating half of the local service on the route 1 corridor when the route 801 (MetroRapid, or so-called “Rapid Bus”) started service. Many, many times. Here’s one example from last June. Here’s another from October, 2011.

Recently, hundreds of people have expressed surprise and dismay when the events I’ve been telling you about for years actually came to pass. Richard Whitaker came out of the woodwork and talked to me while I was practically dying of the flu on a business trip in Atlanta, shocked that the locals were being eliminated. Nobody on reddit saw it coming. Nobody in the local TV media saw it coming.

Now it’s here, and again, everybody is surprised and dismayed.

The dismay is obvious. But why the surprise?

Honestly? It’s due, in major part, to the fact that one particular employee of Capital Metro has spent years convincing decision-makers and media-members that the author of this blog is a troll who has no idea what he’s talking about. Yes, I know this for a fact.

The last major exchange that Capital Metro employee and I had is still burned into my mind. It was on the same topic as the blog link featured further down this page, but I have yet to be able to get a twitter search tool to bring up the thread. Basically, I spent a couple of hours while on a layover in the DFW airport a couple of years ago making the fact-based case in that blog post below (about the #9 being cancelled without its planned replacement) in tweet form, calmly and rationally, only to be repeatedly told by that Capital Metro employee that I was wrong; and at the end, to be cut off again and labelled a troll. After that, I lost a considerable amount of access I previously had to some members of the media, city council and staff, and other decision-makers and thought leaders. I observed some activity myself where said Capital Metro employee was undermining yours truly with media members, and heard much more from others.

Today, that same Capital Metro employee was given an attaboy by somebody who I respect for supposedly dealing with constructive criticism well. This doesn’t make me feel happy about that person I respect, and it doesn’t make me happy about trusting the organization he leads. I hope this is just a momentary mistake.

Here’s the post which begins by showing how the Capital Metro employee in question really deals with constructive criticism, and my fact-based rebuttal to his dismissive aside to a third-party.

Whole Shakers Of Salt, from 2010

Here’s my recommendation for solving the Rapid Bus problem and it matches up with combinations of things suggested by Steven Knapp and Jace Deloney.

1. Make the 801s compatible. Repaint the buses. They’re just 101s. Charge the same fare as for locals. The New York subway doesn’t charge more for local 7s versus express 7s. That’s a fundamentally stupid idea. Continue to charge more for the 98x buses if you want; those have long stretches of nonstop running in the middle which make them more ‘premium’. The 801 is not a premium service. It’s just a brand-new bus.

2. Restore the #1 at its original frequency. If the 801 is so great, troche it will gradually make the 1s more empty, at which point you reduce frequency on that route through the normal service planning process after customers have demonstrated their preference instead of being force-marched to either incredibly crowded remaining local buses or expensive, incompatible, newer buses.

That being said? It’s too late to do this in a way that would actually help in the long-term. Even if Capital Metro really wanted to, they’re not, logistically speaking, going to be able to make these changes for months. It would have taken people taking my points about Rapid Bus seriously many months ago – and for that, please see the post before this one. Making these changes 5 months from now at the next service change window is too late for riders – they’ll either give up or move on by then, just like how the #9 riders weren’t going to sit around for a year to wait for the replacement service to show up.

m1ek

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