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Metro meets passengers where they are - on buses and trains
(by Rebecca S. Rivas - April 29, 2008)
Carleton Spiller hopped onto the 11 Chippewa bus, a Metro route that travels from downtown to Meramec College in Kirkwood. In a voice that perked up all the 8:30 a.m. passengers, he made his announcement.
“Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I’m with DOTec, and we’re contracted by Metro to do a survey. Gas prices are going up. Pretty soon you won’t be able to grab a seat on the bus. We need everyone to participate.”
The women on the bus reached for their purses to pull out pens. Passengers put surveys against the windows and seats and started writing.
“It’s not about getting into your business,” Spiller said to a winded man who seemed glad to make it to the bus on time. Spiller told him that the survey asks for the destination and purpose of each person’s bus trip in order to schedule bus routes more accurately.
Every year, Metro conducts an annual survey to not only gather demographic and travel-specific data, but people’s attitudes toward Metro’s efficiency as well.
Todd Plesko, Metro’s chief of planning and system development, said that as a result of information gathered in past surveys, the agency has increased security and altered routes to reduce the number of transfers that riders have to make.
But changes like these happen only after people fill out the surveys. This year, Metro divided the survey into two parts in order to lessen the length of time it takes to complete each form. This month, surveyors are passing out the travel section of the survey, and in May they will distribute the customer-satisfaction survey.
Spiller and the six other surveyors have the job of distributing 6,000 surveys on 90 percent of the bus routes and 4,000 surveys on MetroLink trains.
Each surveyor has a different style of approach when talking to people, but one key ingredient, Spiller said, is: “You have to have a gift of conversation.
“You also gotta have a mint or something. It’s the worse thing to be in someone’s face breathing fire first thing in the morning.”
Spiller thinks rising gas prices will add to the normal load of people on the bus. The 70 Grand is Metro’s busiest route; there are three high schools along the route that get out at the same time, and the buses are often packed.
If you add to that load the extra people who are starting to take Metro, it’s going to throw the routes off balance, he said.
In general, people appreciate the clean train stations and increased security, Spiller said. But he also encounters dissatisfied customers. “It’s rough sometimes,” he said. “But at the end of the day, there’s change.”
“People appreciate being able to give their opinions,” said Dianne Williams, director of communications for Metro.
Williams lives in Florissant and occasionally rides the MetroLink to work in downtown St Louis. But like many people, she said, she’s on the tipping point.
She said if she rode MetroLink daily, “it would be 15 minutes added to my commute, but I cut my gas in half. That’s lunch money right there.”
Plesko pointed to frequency and security as two main issues for riders. Other Midwestern cities, including Kansas City and Cleveland, have bus rapid-transit systems that run fuel-efficient buses as frequently as the MetroLink trains. Those buses also have exclusive lanes and fewer stops.
Plesko said such a system is “the next step up,” and the costs of a BRT system can be less than the city’s current bus system. He is watching to see how BRT systems fare in other cities, just as “other cities are watching to see how our MetroLink system does,” he said.
Increasing frequency with Metro’s bus system is difficult, he said, because it costs about $180,000 per year to run a bus route for eight hours a day. Plesko said that whether the agency operates 40-foot buses or 30-foot buses makes marginal difference. The significant cost is pay for the drivers.
To better control its fuel costs, Metro contracts for its fuel in advance of usage. Last year, the agency had a net gain of more than $1 million by contracting for fuel, Williams said.
The major objective for this year’s survey, Plesko said, is to get a more accurate assessment of who transfers and how often, as well as who uses the transit system. Analyzing the data and implementing changes could be up to a year away, he said.
“It’s a public service,” he said. “It’s paid for by all of us. Those who pay for it and don’t use it want to know who benefits from it.”
Plesko encourages people who have suggestions or comments about their bus or train routes to email customerservice@metrostlouis.org or call 982-1406. They should receive a response within a day or two.
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