However I’ve already gotten over my personal frustration with one car service because everyone can get on the trains still. If it actually starts delaying things or impairing safety (it already seems to be impeding the speed of the trips) it’ll then become unacceptable.

But as for the convince of having a roomy car, I don’t think that’s a valid reason for any one to get upset at a transit network… so has anyone been truly affected by the one car switch? I think we’d all be happier with a more transparent transportation agency, where things like this just don’t come up unexpectedly.

I don’t really see METRO’s motivation on running the single-car sets during the day periods. I can see it at night. I normally ride after 8:30PM and I have been on some single car trains and the load is pretty comfortable. I have been on mid-day trains with single cars and I Have yet to experience crush load, but I can imagine very well that it is happening.

As the RPTA and most city governments enter into their new fiscal year (which starts July 1), I think we are going to see a lot of paranoia and more belt tightening where it comes to money.

Look at the upcoming fare increase. They are charging a higher price for purchasing a day pass on the bus vs. purchasing it from a retailer or a vending machine. RPTA claims it is to “speed up the boarding process” on the buses. In fact, when you insert a “virgin” pass (without a date stamped on it yet) into a farebox, it actually takes about the same time because of the delay of processing the card and printing the date on the card (oh, and yes, the same risk that the farebox will “eat” the card).

Back to the single car train sets, I think what we are seeing is the aftermath of the first six months of operation. As many of us may know, that the Phoenix “Transit 2000″ initiative included funding to cover the capital costs to build the light rail and fund the first six months of operation. Now that the six month period is over with, LRT will be starving for funding along with the buses.

Even with the upcoming fare increase, the light rail continues to operate “fat” as the system is not going to really see any cuts.

Plus, has anyone thought of the possibility that this alleged “savings” by running single-car trains during the day is going to cover the extended service span on Friday and Saturday nights?

With that, I can justify the use of single car train sets at certain times of the day (such as the evenings when there’s no major special events taking pace) and the nice thing about the system is that it is flexible to handle the shift in passenger load. But I would think there would still be costs involved with coupling and decoupling cars from a particular train run since it would technically take two people (one person to drive the additional rail car from the yard to meet up with the train and another to drive the operator back to the yard) which probably explains why they just pull out a block for the entire day using the single car set.

Until the individual cities realize it would be better that public transit be totally regonalized and the local cities’ transit departments would eventually fold into RPTA (something that Phoenix is fighting tooth-and-nail), we will have many backwards transit decisions being made.

Transit in the valley should be funded at a regional level, not a local level. This way, Peoria may finally get their bus on 75th Avenue.

=m