The path to one million Metro rides a day starts with service enhancements

This is part 8 in a series about how DC can achieve its Vision Zero and climate goals, with parts 7 - 10 highlighting the role of our regional transit rail system, Metrorail, in achieving those goals.

Previously, I identified one million daily Metrorail trips as necessary for the District to achieve its climate and Vision Zero goals on the Metrorail system by 2045. That ambitious of a target is what we need to achieve the District’s climate and Vision Zero goals.

I landed on that number by assuming that the region can and should be averaging 50 Metrorail trips per year per person. That’s the low end of what rail systems in DC’s higher-performing, North American peer cities, like Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto, see, and it’s a key part of why there are fewer traffic fatalities and carbon emissions per capita in those cities than in the Washington region.

To achieve one million rides per day on Metrorail, regional leaders will first need to provide a dedicated funding source that invests in WMATA’s systems—Metrorail and Metrobus—for the long-term. Then, Metro leaders will need to attract riders to the system with expanded frequency and operating hours that better match our post-pandemic lives. Long-term, those who steward WMATA must expand the system, and build more on the land it owns to systemically disincentivize driving.

Where do we start?

Transit Center’s 2016 “Who’s on Board” report surveyed riders from seventeen diverse US metropolitan areas and conducted focus groups with them in Raleigh, Denver, and New York to determine their satisfaction with different elements of their transit trips. The report splits respondents into two groups based on whether they would recommend taking transit to others. The difference in satisfaction rates between each group reveals the relative importance of each element.

Big, structural elements of transit, like frequency and speed, are the highest-scoring. Comfort and convenience—and price—are ancillary. There is not a legitimate alternative to improving service so as to increase ridership; transit systems that want to induce higher ridership must increase their frequency.

Frequency: The first and final frontier

Of course frequency is the most important component of transit to riders. As transportation planner Jarrett Walker identifies, high frequency alone solves three distinct problems:

1. High frequency speeds trips up, and trips are the purpose of transit. And frequency reduces wait times in particular, which people experience as more stressful than other, nominally equivalent minutes.
2. High frequency makes a whole transit system—not just the line you’re on—more attractive and more accessible by enabling easier transfers and connections. You can go further in less time with higher frequencies.
3. High frequency creates reliability. A missing or broken-down train in a system running three-minute headways is a minor annoyance; with 30-minute headways, that can become a regional crisis.

High frequency gives riders the confidence that the system will work for them, on their schedule. It minimizes or eliminates the need to precisely plan and time travel, and allows for the unexpected small delays life so frequently throws into our trips—kids being difficult getting out the door, a wallet left back at the house, a wrong turn in an unfamiliar station. Per Walker, frequency “approximates the feeling of liberty you have with your private vehicle—that you can go anytime.” If switching trips to transit is not-so-secretly a battle against the convenience of driving a personal vehicle, increasing frequency fights fire with fire.

So, how fast is fast? What frequency levels do we need to shift the most trips? That’s tricky to measure. There is data analyzing the overall relationship between frequency and ridership (called elasticity). Transit writer Alon Levy analyzed a number of studies and found a range of results from .3 to 1.1, meaning for every one-percent increase in frequency, you may get a ridership increase of .3% to 1.1%, but those start from a wide range of baselines, and many planners don’t believe that scales linearly past a certain point. Walker’s “hunch” is the upper bound is 15-minute frequencies, which corresponds with the definition of “high-frequency transit” quite common among US systems and studies.

Internationally, the bar is higher. The Community of Metros (COMET), a multinational transit benchmarking group, characterizes “high-frequency” transit lines globally as ones with frequencies of 2.4 minutes (25 trains per hour) and “very high frequency” systems at two minutes (30 trains per hour). Obviously those are lightning fast relative to US averages and the “very high frequency” is even beyond the current maximum physical capacity of the Metrorail system. But they represent the game-changing service level WMATA needs to aspire to spur major ridership growth. If WMATA wants to be on par with global standard-bearers like Moscow, London, and Tokyo, its planners should aim for a target closer to these benchmarks. I suggest a starting goal of Metro trains running every five to ten minutes at all hours, with 5 or below the reach goal after that.

WMATA has demonstrated it is capable of meeting this standard, sometimes. General Manager Randy Clarke said improving frequency was one of his strategic priorities when he took the job last year, and so far he and the board have delivered on that promise. The return of the 7000-series cars to the system in the fall and spring brought back pre-pandemic levels of service, and the FY24 budget funded even lower headways on three of six lines. You can see in the chart below that under the new budget, a majority of hours on a majority of lines in the system are now funded to hit that ten-minutes-or-faster mark. As of last week, the system is delivering 89% of this funded service.

Of course, all residents deserve the five- and six-minute headways Red Line riders have right now, and the search for a dedicated funding source should aim for an even more aspirational service-level goal—say, every three minutes at peak at least. But compared to the SafeTrack era’s 20-minute headways, Metrorail’s current schedule is a renewed high point that can and should build more trust and ridership.

All the Metro, all the time

The best thing about the new Metrorail schedule may not actually be the increased headways but, rather, the fact that those increased headways are no longer solely a feature of “peak” travel times. By shrinking the gap between peak and non-peak frequency, WMATA is directly addressing the new reality of the post-Covid world, in which off-peak ridership is surging while commute-hour trips struggle to keep up (though the agency recently announced a bit more peak service, so it’s worth watching if this is a tweak or the start of a larger trend back).

This less-peaky service can and should make it easier for WMATA to bring Metrorail ridership to one million trips per day. That many trips occurring primarily during the traditional weekday peak times of 5 am-9:30 am and 3 pm-7 pm only could stress the system and run up against rate limits in train, staff, and station capacity that might hinder the goal. And, anyway, 9-to-5-ish commutes make up only 20% of the total trips taken by DC residents; that’s likely similar for the whole region. So, the greatest potential for growth lies in the 80 percent of trips that happen in non-peak hours—exactly when the Metro system is currently most under-utilized.

Late-night Metro shots

Adding frequency to off-peak times is one means by which to reach one million trips per day. Another is expanding Metro service into hours when trains don’t currently run at all. The status quo of extremely limited nighttime bus service as the only option is neither equitable for the people who need transit most at those hours nor conducive to inducing new trips at those times down the line. In the immediate, opening the system earlier and closing it later could unleash pent-up demand from those who prefer Metrorail to driving already, but can’t take it when no trains are running. Many of those new trips will unlock bonus additional ones as well. The early-shift worker who currently drives in the morning has to take the car home at the end of the day too. Give them a transit option for the first leg, and you’ll get a second one free.

Non-nine-to-five workers are not an insignificant constituency. Census data suggests the Washington region has over 250,000 people who arrive at work either before 5:30 am, meaning they can’t take Metro to get there, or after 4 pm, meaning Metro could be closed at the end of an eight-hour shift. That’s 11% of our total regional workforce, and includes those who work as health aides, emergency responders, public utilities workers, and service industry employees among others. Providing them with reliable service during later hours will, in addition to expanding ridership, make life easier and more affordable for the working-class residents on whom our region depends.

Extending Metro’s hours, particularly the time at which it closes, is also likely to increase economic activity. Ensuring that both patrons and employees have a reliable way to get home at the end of the night can give businesses the confidence to extend their hours, inducing more commercial activity from visitors and residents alike (not to mention saving lives by reducing the drunk driving that is surely already happening in jurisdictions where last call is currently later than the last train).

Efficient and enjoyable

Better service is the surefire way to attract more riders to Metrorail, and it really needs to be Plan A, B, and C to increase ridership within the existing capital footprint of the system. When riders consistently find that any particular trip is faster on Metro than in a car, their modeshare will follow suit. But for some, that alone won’t be enough, and Metro also needs to compete with the comfort and convenience of driving to win their trips. Confusing, frustrating, or uncomfortable experiences (or, in the case of non-riders, preemptive expectations of those experiences) can cost ridership on the margins even in a high-frequency system. So finding small to medium ways to make the experience of riding trains easier and more pleasant is a nice supplementary cherry to a big service sundae.

The good news is Metro already does some of these things well relative to its peers. Other systems have had to catch up to replicate our real-time arrival signs, which all stations have. And compared to older systems in peer cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, Metrorail stations often get high marks for being cleaner and better lit. WMATA seems to buy into user experience as a value-add: It hired a Chief Experience and Engagement Officer this year to work on customer service, information, and design.

Perhaps more promising is the recent “Metro ambassador” program, adding knowledgeable, friendly guides who provide wayfinding and support to riders at stations and in the train cars. The program is based on similar efforts around the country, including a 300-ambassador strong pilot in Los Angeles that has been received positively. Complementary to armed police, the ambassadors also provide a cost-effective way to address the safety concerns that top the list of rider feedback by providing additional visible eyes and ears throughout the system.

Free fare forays

Another idea that’s gotten attention for increasing ridership is lowering or even eliminating fares completely. The discourse on this is comprehensive and deserves its own post, but the summary is that in the near-term, when it comes to ridership, it’s a hammer solution for a scalpel problem. Data both nationally and locally suggest strong majorities of riders aren’t being hindered by price. Solving for the communities that are is an important equity task, but in the current funding environment, eliminating fares for all riders would likely necessitate service cuts that would undermine the core value of the system to those same communities along with all others and quickly reverse the ridership gained.

But in the long run, I, and GGWash, would like transit to be treated as a public good, funded by general progressive taxes (see all the federal money currently going to highways that actively make the climate crisis worse) —or, better still, Pigouvian taxes that disincentivize people from owning cars and driving them. With abundant funding, transit absolutely should eliminate fares (and all the money and time invested in collecting them and policing that collection) to remove a final barrier to access to riders of all income levels.

Our region’s Metrorail system is great—and it can be greater. Metro already facilitates millions of trips per year that are safer, healthier, and cleaner than driving by connecting many of the region’s densest neighborhoods, job centers, and commercial districts. Visionary leadership, good governance, and dedicated funding can start pushing ridership to the levels we need. Let’s keep this train running in the right direction so Metro can lead us into a new era.