http://kelsocartography.com/blog/?p=348 Blogging at KelsoCartography.com Sat, 11 Aug 2012 01:39:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://kelsocartography.com/blog/?p=348&cpage=1#comment-11479 nathaniel Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:47:17 +0000 http://kelsocartography.com/blog/?p=348#comment-11479 Response to Bob follows up in length email conversation that is still ongoing. Remind me and I’ll excerpt some of that (and the conclusions) here.

]]> http://kelsocartography.com/blog/?p=348&cpage=1#comment-10688 bob previdi Mon, 16 Feb 2009 19:24:57 +0000 http://kelsocartography.com/blog/?p=348#comment-10688 I am curious about this “crowding” I am hearing about.
I am a former transit planner at NYC Transit and WMATA keeps the passengers per car around 90
which is just slightly over a seated load.
My concern with this is that there is an awful lot of empty seats running around during the shoulder of the peak hour.
Those empty seats are wear and tear on the system. If the problem is just 8-9 am then you really should tollerate more standees – because the cost of those empty seats in the long run will come back to bite you when you have to replace those cars. Car miles add up very quiclkly.
To me these 75 foot cars could easily handle 120 per car and that would get you almost 1,000 per train and that still – to me – is not crowded. Full yes, crowded no.
At 26 trains per hour that would leave capasity currenlty 16,000 and under the blue split, 20,000 (I believe they are looking at 6 via Rosslyn 4 via bridge). Currently the Orange is 10,500 in the peak hour – 1/2 of what it could comfortable handle – in my humble NY opinion.
I do like the idea of trains not being as packed as NY.
But I also think the other extreme of trying to get everyone a seat can be too costly to the operation and future capital procuements.
Now this idea of splitting the blue is a good one and I like your idea of swapping terminals at the south end – but how hard will that be for current FS and Huntington users?
I think just a dotted yellow line marked rush hours only would do the trick without much heartache.
Your northern terminal at Ft Totten will not work however. The reason WMATA does this only during non rush hours is because they are turning on the main line. There is no middle track like north of Mt Vernon or east of Staduim. You really can’t turn that many trains on the main line particularly with so many trains comming south.
thx

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