Hi all, I hope you're all having warmer weather there!  Here in New York it's freezing.  I had to finally break out the winter coat for the first time this season.  I seem to recall when I got here last October, there were finer autum days than this.

But, speaking of stepping out of Tampa, I thought I'd focus on two stories that have nothing operationally to do with Tampa or Hillsborough County's light rail eventuality but which I do find fascinating nonetheless as lessons Tampa might learn from now.

Different Lines, Incongruities Can Cost

The first struck me as more interesting than perhaps useful.  It involves the Boston's "T".  As you may or may not know, Boston can lay claim to title as America's first subway system (you might have thought it was New York City's, but that didn't start rolling until the early 30s.  Boston's system was running underground as early as 1897). 

Different lines, different cars, different expenses for each.

They evolved over time in seemingly hodge-podgy fashion, and, as a result, wound up with separate lines where the subway cars that run on them are completely incompatible with one and other - save for the odd juncture.  A car running on the Orange Line cannot run on the Red line, for instance.  An article running at the Boston Globe, "Subway, Bus Costs High; Light and Commuter Rail Compare Well", we learn a little something about the cost of incohesiveness in infrastructure. 

There's nothing to suggest that Hillsborough County's plans would ever digress into an infrastructure jigsaw puzzle.  All transit systems since, no doubt, have benefited from understanding uniformity in hardware and planning.   Still, it may be a read of more interest to TBARTA-scale planners where the vulnerabilities of mis-matched rail systems between the counties is perhaps somewhat more likely if strong controls aren't committed to early on.

The Dart Fart (Cuz I'm Somewhat Juvenile and Like That Rhyme)

But, one thing Hillsborough County should pay attention to is an incident in Dallas just yesterday.  One that I am sure will go down as one of the greatest service delivery disasters ever in urban rail service.  Hundreds if not thousands of riders were stranded in light rail cars enroute to the Cotton Bowl which left them arriving after the game had started and beyond its first quarter.

What makes this such a horror story is that the DART line in question, a new one opened only last month, was loudly touted as a special event transportation solution for people to get to football games like the very one they were trying to deliver passengers to Saturday.  The cry to take rail was effective, and the system got slammed.  Suh-lammed.  See, people do ride rail when it's available.  It's preferred over cars and buses when everyone knows that, basically, everything will go well.  But now, it seems, DART is in the precarious situation of having to draw riders back to trying the line again in all future events after all this bad publicity.   The scary question is, will the situation be the norm for the line - truly gutting its own promise forever, or, will it prove to be an ill-timed flook that will gradually fade from memory as everyone embraces the line under more normal operational circumstances.  Remember, the DART light rail system is widely regarded as one of the most popular as well as most sizable, otherwise.

You can read the stories yourselves and do some arm chair analysis of your own.  There is "Red River of frustration: DART should learn from huge rail delays Saturday" by the Dallas Daily News, and "DART Train Breakdown Angers Football Fans".  There's also "Football Fans Say DART Fumbles Green Line Test" at the website of WFAA.

The lesson for Hillsborough light rail planners?  Be wary of suggesting that light rail will be immune to the same fallibilities of highways and the roads when it comes to highly charged special events that bring out the crowds.  There's a joke that goes along the lines of "people support mass transit - they support other people using it", that actually tends to work in favor of mass transit in situations like this.

By the way, this story is not so much a concession that light rail is somehow and suddenly a failure; it's to point out the dangerous way people think and what grief urban rail has to take for it when not pre-managed.  When people sit in cars and wind up late for a game (which many of the same people who were on those light rail cars would have been), they blame the traffic and their own inability to plan ahead (get there early, take a longer highway route, etc).  When they show up at a light rail station, get on board, and wind up having to wait, they blame the light rail.  Or, in the most forgiving of circumstances, the transit agency running it.  Either way it's not a good thing.

I don't know the answers.  When the experts pick this apart there may be things that they have within their control to fix.  I for one know that it would be crazy not to have a standby at whatever controls the mechanic couldn't reach for 12 minutes (read the stories) due to the crowds onboard a particular train.  Next time, one had better be right there.