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The last week was a very busy week in transit! Here at NextStop, we had a lively discussion about bike commuting and possible solutions to crowding bikes onto crowded trains, learned about two important safety measures Metro takes to protect our passengers – lightning arrestors and light rail door technology – and discussed Metro’s briefing of the St. Louis County Council.

Meanwhile, here’s some news and thoughts from elsewhere that you might have missed:

• LA Metro has started a new transit blog, The Source. Check it out.
• The Post-Dispatch has published an article about the plans for revising St. Louis Centre in a way that will benefit the surrounding neighborhood.
• The Urbanophile reported on 2009 RailVolution conference.
• The proposed Cincinnati streetcar has cleared one hurdle.
• The Oregonian ponders retractable speed bumps that reward law-abiding drivers.

The Moving Transit Forward team has added another public workshop, hosted by Madison County Transit on Tuesday, November 17 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Edwardsville Station, Main and Hillsboro Streets in Edwardsville, Illinois. If you haven’t had a chance to make it to one of the public workshops, this is your last opportunity.

If attendance at public events isn’t your thing, we’ve put all of the workshop materials on the Moving Transit Forward long-range planning website for you to review and then send us your feedback. And remember, there will be another round of public input next month when Metro’s planners begin to put together the long-range plan based on this first round of feedback.

A Chicago mother was faced with a horrific scare yesterday evening: her child’s stroller get caught in the doors of one of the CTA trains and was dragged 75 feet before the child fell 10 feet to a gravel bed below.  Thankfully for all involved, the little girl survived with no serious injuries.  But it’s still a nightmarish thought – getting caught in a moving train door.  It would be a traumatic experience for all involved.  Therefore here in St. Louis we have several layers of safety measures in place to help prevent these kind of incidents with MetroLink doors:

1. First, MetroLink operators have rearview mirrors to check before and while they press the door closed button.  You might have seen this in action if the door has ever opened to let one more rushed customer inside.
2. MetroLink doors have an electromechanical lock on them that prevents the train from moving unless they are closed properly.
3. Once passengers are inside, the leaving station protocol for operators are:    1) Check mirrors for passengers on the platform; 2) Make the announcement, “Please stand clear, the doors are closing”; 3) Close the doors if they are clear of passengers
4. If a door is not functioning properly on MetroLink, there are usually red indicator lights above the defective door that illuminate.
5. The operator can “cut out” a door (take a door out of service) that is not working by flipping a circuit breaker.  The door is then inactive.

In addition, Metro is about to begin testing station barriers that protect strollers, the visually impaired, children, etc. from falling in between cars.  They are installed in the section of the platform between train dockings, and are traversable in case of emergency.  Do they seem like they would be useful in protecting the public?

Luckily, no one was injured in this Chicago incident, but it is important for us riders to remember our safety too.  It’s best not to run on the platform, best to take it easy boarding the train.  Safety precautions work most efficiently when both rider and Agency work together to prevent incidents.

We hope for a quick recovery for little Rachel and her family in Chicago.

The Post-Dispatch’s Along For the Ride blog has a nice piece this morning about the Metro executive briefing of the St. Louis County Council yesterday. Although the information won’t be new to our blog readers, the post highlights how long it takes to build a light rail extension – from planning to opening day – and the steps in between.

One thing you may not know, however, is that Metro has to compete for federal funding whenever the region wants to make a large capital investment (like a light rail expansion). There are many other transit agencies out there with expansion plans. The federal government has preferences about what gets built – longer extensions rather than short connectors, for instance, or – these days – bus rapid transit corridors rather than light rail. In order to secure federal funding, Metro has to prove to the federal government that the project is a good idea. The feds also require a “local match” of some percentage of the funding; and proof that the investment can be operated once the federal capital dollars are gone. This second set of requirements, as the Post-Dispatch points out, is where the St. Louis region has historically struggled:

Friem said Metro faced challenges raising the money for pay for expanded service. Among them are the inability to raise local money to match federal funds and little state support of transit in Missouri, he said.

This year’s March service cuts were a direct result of lacking operating funding. All of the capital investment in the world – buying buses, building tracks – won’t improve the transit system if there isn’t funding to pay people to drive the buses, fix the tracks, change the tires, run the pay system that pays the drivers, etc. Metro executives are working with regional, state, and federal officials and other stakeholder groups to try to find a solution to this issue. As Mr. Baer says:

Baer said Metro had needs “that would never go away” and that it needs “a secure revenue stream” to deal with them. Having invested $1.8 billion in Metro, the public should not walk away from the system, he said.

In response to a MetroLinks post last week regarding bike vending machines, commenter JimmyZ asked:

Instead of “Bike-share Vending Machines”, how ’bout just some simple bike lockers at suburban metrolink stations, available for daily or monthly rentals?

I thought that was a good question, so I spent some time thinking about it, and here’s my answer: Why not both? (more…)

A MetroLink train stays momentarily dry in the Eads Bridge. Pic taken today from the sixth floor of Metro Headquarters in Laclede's Landing.

Anybody notice that it’s awfully wet outside these days?  We’ve gotten a LOT of rain this fall, and when it rains, it pours on challenges for transportation.  Anybody who’s gotten stuck in traffic after a rainy-day collision or rode home soaking wet on a bike knows that when we have inclement weather in St. Louis, getting around can be a pain.  Some of the problems of bad weather don’t affect MetroLink, like increases in traffic.  But rainy days pose their own unique problems for light rail, and MetroLink maintenance employees have to double as “storm watchers” on the worst days to monitor opportunities for damage (and you thought only your dad liked the Weather Channel!)  I asked MetroLink trainer Suzanne Whitehead and Metro Power Engineer Bill Wood about what we look out for on our wettest days.

1.  Flood on the tracks. It’s not very common, but it can happen.  And when it does, it poses a serious risk to the light rail vehicles’ electrical systems.  When flooding occurs, the train must stop or risk damaging thousands of dollars worth of the vehicle’s electronics.  Rail beds are elevated to help mitigate flooding, and problems must be investgated very quickly.

2.  Look out for fallen trees! When the weather turns bad and the wind picks up, tree branches sometimes fall onto tracks.  When they do, they must be removed immediately for fear of damaging vehicles or becoming a safety hazard.  According to Suzanne, Metro’s rail maintenance team has put a lot of effort in the last two years to trim back trees to prevent branches falling onto MetroLink’s path.  But when the wind picks up, crews stand on guard to quickly remove matter from the tracks.

3.  Lightning crashes. During lighting and thunderstorms, electrical surges from lightning strikes threaten the catenary wires suspended above MetroLink tracks.  These wires deliver the electricity that runs MetroLink.  So all along the alignment are lightning arrestors.  Without these arrestors, large sections of MetroLink track could be vulnerable to shutting down during lightning storms.

Here’s how the arrestors work.  Normally, electric charges enter the top of the arrestor through a wire, and exit through the bottom.  When the charge gets too high (such as that of a lightning strike) the arrestor’s sensors cause it to  self-destruct, separating that part of the circuit with the rest of the system.  The surge of energy is then diverted to the ground.

These arrestors could self-desruct in five...four...three...two...

Aren’t you glad your home computer surge protector doesn’t work like that?  But these kamikazee protectors keep sections of MetroLink operational, even in lightning storms, and protect our passengers and vehicles.

Unfortunately, none of these provisions will remove clogged leaves from your gutters or provide a much-needed dose of Vitamin D, but hopefully will help keep your rainy commute running as smoothly as possible.

Here are some interesting tidbits from around the internet to help you kick off your Halloween weekend.

• Metro President & CEO Bob Baer sat down with the Post-Dispatch’s “Along for the Ride” crew and discussed his recent decision to stay on permanently at Metro, as well as the agency’s fiscal future.
• Is it out with the hybrid, and in with the…nothing?
• The East-West Gateway Council of Governments has started a blog, Renewing the Region.
• Bike-share Vending Machines – a good idea/ Would it work here? Would you use them from time to time?
• MoDOT tv: Watch “The Life Cycle of a Highway“
• Enjoy some photos from last week’s Metrolink prom, here and here.

MetroLink Prom Queen, courtesy of Miss MetroLink

St. Clair County Board Chairman Mark Kern and Metro President Bob Baer chat before the ribbon cutting.

Yesterday, Metro’s Engineering Department celebrated the successful completion of the new paint booth facility that I mentioned previously. A small ribbon-cutting ceremony was held yesterday morning out at the Illinois MetroLink Yard facility in East St. Louis, where the paint booth was built.

Dust Collection Apparatus (aka vacuum hose)

The new paint booth facility was constructed by Plocher Construction and, thanks to the project team’s hard work, the project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget. The new facility has two parts: a “prep” area where the vehicles are cleaned and prepared for painting, and the paint booth itself, which has a massive filtered ventilation system and a whole lot of lighting. There’s also a smaller shop area where small parts can be prepped and painted as well. The setup includes a “dust collection system” (i.e. vacuum setup) and an exhaust system that keep bad particles from escaping into the air. (more…)

Recently the city of Portland, Oregon created a new kind of bicycle lane on one of its streets. The concept was to create a barrier-protected bicycle lane on one of the city streets without building a whole lot of new infrastructure. According to the local paper’s Hard Drive blog, city engineers used some paint on the road and changed a few signs – no construction necessary – to create a brand-new, cycles-only lane. How does it work?

By moving parked cars away from the curb and out into one of the traffic lanes, the city engineers created a bike-friendly, protected-from-traffic corridor between the parked cars and the curb. The bikers would still have to watch out for car passengers opening their doors (as opposed to watching drivers’-side doors, previously), and for people crossing from the parking lane over to the sidewalk. But the parked cars insulate the bikers from moving traffic. It’s a simple, elegant, low-cost solution to a common safety concern.

Yesterday the Hard Drive blog followed up on how the experiment is going. After some initial motorist confusion, and a few additions to the paint job – notably, adding the words “Bike Lane” to the lane to make it more clear to parking motorists – it seems that the experiment is seeing some success.

But Burchfield said the cycle track, aside from the early parking confusion, is now operating smoothly…

…Burchfield said there have been complaints. Some have told the city that there’s a “lack of predictability” when pedestrians are stepping into the cycle track to cross Broadway. Others say they are feeling the [e]ffects of one less car lane in the area.

“It’s hard to know if these are people who are actually using the cycle track and Broadway, or just complaining,” Burchfield said.

For one thing, even as PSU classes have started up, there is no evidence yet that congestion has increased as a result of the cycle track, he said.

Also, despite earlier concerns from motorists who said they couldn’t park without a curb, “people are better at it than they think.”

(The same Hard Drive post mentions that things aren’t going quite so well with a different kind of bike lane experiment a few blocks away.)

Can you think of any streets around here where that might be a good experiment to try?

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Claire Nowak-Boyd, one of the organizers of the MetroLink Prom, to discuss the event with her. But first, the details:

Who: You, and all of your dancing, fun friends.

When: This Friday, October 23, beginning at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Meeting at the Forest Park MetroLink Station; traveling westbound to the Clayton Station on the 7:57 p.m. train, where the Prom King and Queen will be elected and dancing will occur; then traveling eastbound at 8:30 p.m. to Laclede’s Landing for an evening of dancing at the Morgan Street Brewery.

What you need: Cash for train fare (and Morgan Street), dancing shoes, formal wear from any decade, a sense of fun.

(more…)