USGA feels sorry for drivers, not Metro riders

Free shuttle service will be offered from free parking lots in Gaithersburg to the US Open tournament at Bethesda’s Congressional Country Club June 13-19. Yet those choosing to take Metro will be forced to pay $8 per day for shuttle service.

The shuttles, requiring reservations, will serve a Red Line station that’s much closer to Congressional than the parking lots are, though it isn’t even the closest Metro station! This makes the US Golf Association’s (USGA) disappointing, yet unsurprising windshield perspective starkly evident.

On Tuesday, I questioned these decisions. Reg Jones, the Managing Director of the tournament, sent the following response:

Let me assure you that our organization is committed to using public transportation and have utilized it very successfully at past championships in other metropolitan areas such as New York and Chicago. In 2009, nearly 20,000 spectators per day took advantage of our service via the Long Island Railroad to attend the championship. Due to the proximity of the train station (less than 1 mile from the golf course) it was very easy to feature this service as a primary option.

Unfortunately, as efficient as the Metro system is in the Washington D.C. area, the nearest station to Congressional is over twenty minutes from the golf course which truly limits the ability to run a similar mass transit operation. Initially, we did not see Metro as a viable option and were not going to offer any additional service involving Metro. There was no way to tell what the usage would be and almost impossible to plan for it logistically (i.e…number and timing of buses, space requirements at the Metro station, etc…) without some sort of reservation system in place. However, we felt very strongly that we wanted to utilize the Metro system as much as possible, so we enlisted a local third party transportation company, Transportation Management Services (TMS) to provide this service very much like a sports charter for a football game.

The USGA is subsidizing the cost of this service and did so in order to make it a reasonable option for all spectators versus the cost of taking other forms of hired transportation such as taxis or limos which are often heavily utilized options by our spectators. We also compared this system to charges for regular public bus options and felt that the $8 daily charge for unlimited roundtrip use was comparable to the price of normal bus ridership.

While you are correct that the USGA is not charging for parking in our spectator lots, I think everyone is certainly aware of the expense of driving their personal automobile based on the current cost per gallon for gasoline. Therefore, we believe that the Metro option for the majority of people in the DC area will still likely be the cheapest and most efficient way to attend the championship.

Mr. Jones is right to underscore that the USGA has effectively used mass transit to get spectators to and from the US Open in the past. Unfortunately, this point makes this year’s decision all the more baffling. He is quick to point out that even with an $8/person “fare” for the Metro shuttle, USGA is partially subsidizing the shuttle service.

Yet Jones fails to acknowledge directly that USGA is subsidizing the entire cost of parking and the shuttle for drivers. What’s more, the shuttle trip from the Gaitherburg parking lots is more than twice the distance as the trip from Metro to the Country Club, making it a significantly more expensive service to subsidize in its entirety.

As I commented in the previous post, the USGA has clearly employed flawed logic in these decisions. They assume that relatively few people will use the Metro service, and that this fact necessitates a reservation system in order to provide no more service than is necessary. This decision, in turn, makes it not only less enticing, but also more difficult to use the Metro option, thereby making USGA’s prediction of low usage a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The thinking at USGA boils down to this: The reality is that people will drive, so we have to make it as easy and as cheap as possible for them, especially because gas prices are so high. It would be nice if some people took Metro, so we’ll throw them a bone. But not a free bone like we give all the poor drivers paying so much for gas.

This is an amusing justification. Essentially, he says that because gas prices are so high, parking and shuttles should be free to make it easier and cheaper for people to drive.

He also completely fails to account for the Metro fare riders have to pay to even make it to the $8 shuttle at Grosvenor. The off-peak one-way fare from Metro Center is $2.60, the regular and peak of the peak for the Thursday and Friday rounds are over $4.00.

The assertion that $8 is a reasonable charge in comparison to bus fares in the region is equally laughable. The T2 bus runs from Friendship Heights Metro to Rockville Metro, stopping at Congressional Country Club. A round-trip fare on this bus (using SmarTrip) is $3. Even if spectators are making multiple round trips, which is highly unlikely, two trips to and from the course would still be only $6.

Jones implies that they chose to make Metro a secondary option this year because the closest stations weren’t as convenient to access as LIRR in Bethpage or Metra at Olympia Fields. Yet USGA chooses not to run shuttles from the closest Metro station, while offering free shuttles that go twice as far to free parking lots farther from the city center.

This is the epitome of the kind of mentality that is keeping most Americans, not just Washingtonians, from enjoying easier access to more efficient and affordable alternatives to driving. If you are planning to attend the US Open and feel that the USGA should offer you the same benefits to ride the Metro as they do to drive your car, email Reg Jones and tell him.