Post Tagged with: "Verizon"

Though Washington, DC is nation’s 4th lastest metropolitan, its transit system “sucks”- Metro rail’s cell phone service plan faces gaps

May 15, 2009 at 2:48 pm

(Source: Washington Examiner)

• Region encompasses Washington, DC; Northern Virginia; and Suburban Maryland — an area 6,000 square miles (15,500 square kilometres)

• The 4th largest population in the United States (6 million people); population expected to grow by 1/2 million by 2010

• Gross regional product (GRP) of $342 billion — 4th largest in the nation

• Led the United States in job growth over past 5 years — 270,000 jobs added from 2000 to 2005

• But still has a Metro system that does not allow for ubiquitous communications.

Metro riders will still hear silence on their phones even when Metro extends cell phone service in its underground rail system later this year.   

The transit agency plans to expand cell phone service to include more carriers in the 20 busiest rail stations by the fall — but it won’t extend into the adjacent subway tunnels yet. And it could remain a patchwork of service for up to three more years.

“We’re going to have a lot of very frustrated customers if they are going to be getting and losing signals going in and out of stations,” warned Peter Benjamin, a Metro board member who represents Maryland.

The problem stems partly from the requirement that forces the agency to add the service. In exchange for $1.5 billion in dedicated federal funding that Congress authorized last year, Metro is required to have cell phone service in the 20 busiest stations by October, then have it in all 47 underground stations by October 2010. Service throughout the entire system wouldn’t need to be finished until October 2012.

Metro’s board of directors agreed earlier in the spring to negotiate a $40 million contract with national carriers Sprint Nextel, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless to fulfill the requirement.

But Metro board members said Thursday they were worried that meeting the minimums of the federal timetable without going further would just anger and confuse riders.

“We don’t want to build in frustration,” said member Gordon Linton.

Note: TransportGooru wonders what would it take for the Metro management to fix this messy communication system.  This nation holds many brilliant minsd and the city iteself plays home to several technology giants (Lockheed,BAE,  etc).  We, as a nation, have launched manned missions to moon and now working on getting to mars for the past few years.  But we still can’t fix the communications system in an underground network of tunnels? 

We know very well that we have the technology, we have the interest and above all we have the “need”.   But still metro can’t find one person/company who can fix this system?  What we lack is the political will and the sincereity to serve the customers for what they pay. If it is not a technical problem and one that solely involves money, pay some Harvard MBA to workout a business model that benefits everyone, not just the customers who own a Verizon or an AT&T phone.  Bring people who can think outside the box and offer solutions that work.  

TransportGooru would like to challenge the Metro Management to get this done in 100 days.   If Guantanamo Prison(not fully done though) can be closed & $9.3 billions dollars can be spent creating thousands of jobs in 100 days of a President who had to contend with much larger problems, why can’t a damned communications systems in a metro rail system be fixed.  Why do we need to wait for 3 more years?  Doesn’t that tell you how inefficient you are, Mr. John Catoe & company.  Fast track the process and get it done, dammit.  Hire more workers to run the cables inside your tunnels & deploy required equipment.   For the $8 customers pay through their nose everyday to ride your system, they deserve better than “We don’t want to build in frustration.”   For one just do that very thing you don’t want to do.  Who knows you may very well do it right!  If your Board members don’t have the courage to act decisively and quickly, fire them all and appoint folks who know a thing or two about running a system and about relating to “customers’ needs”.   Why do you always come up with an excuse for not doing anything on time – be it running a train or building a communication system?  What more do you need, Metro? Customer service has never been an integral part of the DC Metro system.   It seems to remain only as a lip service even in the years to come.

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WashPost’s Dr. Gridlock: Train Fight Highlights Flaw In Call-Button Setup

May 4, 2009 at 2:12 pm

(Source: Washington Post)

Dear Dr. Gridlock:

I was on a packed Red Line train shortly after 6 p.m. [Monday] when a fight broke out between two passengers as the train was moving between Farragut North and Metro Center. As the two passengers fought near the forward end of the car, several passengers tried to find the emergency call button to call the train conductor.

 Apparently, the button was at the rear of the train car, but the train was so crowded it took some time for word to get to the passengers within reach of the call button. In the meantime, passengers in the center of the car, desperate to do something to get the attention of the train operator, opened the emergency box, which only has an emergency brake lever that stops the train, but no call button. A passenger pulled the lever, which stopped the train.A few moments later, the train operator, as if unaware of why the train stopped, asked passengers to stop leaning on the doors. About five tense minutes later — during which time a couple of good Samaritans kept the two combatants separated — two Metro police officers boarded the train and got it moving (after some struggle with the now-extended brake lever) to Metro Center.

No passengers were harmed, but the fact that there were no call buttons at the center of the train — where there was an emergency box — led to some unnecessary anxiety, delays as the train was stopped between stations, and may have further endangered passengers if the fight had continued while the train and passengers were trapped inside the tunnel.

— Isaiah J. Poole, Washington

Passengers can easily get confused about the purpose of the red boxes on either side of the central doors. They don’t control the brakes. Pulling the lever releases the central door so passengers can evacuate the car. Open that box only in an emergency, and on the instructions of the train operator after the train has stopped. Leaping from a moving train into a darkened tunnel is not an option.

The emergency door boxes are not a substitute for the intercoms. But on a crowded train, the intercoms are hard to get to at the ends of the cars, and sometimes — as we saw when train operators were inadvertently stopping with some rear cars still in tunnels — passengers don’t think about using them in time.

There’s a better setup on the newest cars: Call buttons and intercoms are in the middle of the cars as well as at the ends. And the boxes with the emergency door levers are colored beige, rather than red. The lettering says “Emergency Door Release.”

When the Red Line train’s lever was pulled by a rider in the fifth car on Monday, the train operator up front got an indication that there was a door problem. At the same time, Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said, the train’s fail-safe system was bringing it to a stop. Transit police responded to the incident, located the fighters and removed them from the train at Metro Center, Taubenkibel said. They declined to press charges against each other.

A Word of Advise from TransportGooru:

1).  Dear Fight Club Members, it is already a painful experience commuting by DC’s Metro rail during the peak hours.  And you people make it worse by getting into such silly fights without knowing that we are all terribly inconvenienced by your immature behavior.  If you really feel like duking it out, wait till you get to your stop and start jumping at each other.  

2). Dear Dr. Gridlock,  for your kind attention the suggestion to dial 9-1-1 or to use a cellphone to call out from a DC metro tunnel is “INVALID”.  The metro system didn’t realize the concept of “security” when it leased out the licenses only to Verizon, which means cellphone users with other carrers like AT&T, Sprint, etc are sitting ducks until they resurface from the tunnel to an above ground station or section of the track.  Talking about Social Equity and DC Metro makes me mad!  All damn tax payers paid for the system and how come Metro decided to lease out the lines only to the previleged Verzion customers?  This is a DUMB policy and only validates eagerness to remain out of touch and incredibly partial & discreminatory!

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At long last, metro opening D.C. subway to wireless choice

March 4, 2009 at 12:46 am

(Source: Washington Post)

Metro knocked down one of the bigger barriers to competition in the D.C. area’s wireless-phone market Friday afternoon by announcing thatall four nationwide wireless carriers would offer service in its subway stations and tunnels.

The Metro Reloadedmind the gap

The  Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s press release led off with words that many Metro riders have been waiting for years to read: “Metro riders will be able to call home from any cell phone.”

Today, the only signal to reach Metro’s underground stretches comes from Verizon Wireless; Sprint users can roam on that signal, but AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile subscribers are out of luck. It’s an awkward little detail that I’ve had make part of my standard guidance to people shopping for wireless-phone service.

That Friday-afternoon release went on to explain that Metro’s board approved an agreement with AT&T Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon to “build a new wireless infrastructure in the underground rail system during the next four years.” The first results will appear pretty soon:

Click here to read the entire article.

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