Battling the Train
You've all heard me complain on here about the commuter train (new "reason for being late" to add to that list: disgruntled passenger on board. Seriously.) - this week I finally had the last straw. In the past two months the trains have been especially bad, I'm home late by at least 30 minutes what seems like about 60% of the time.
This week was it. Monday night I got home 40 minutes late. Tuesday night - one hour late. Wednesday morning - 30 minutes late. So I finally decided to write a letter to the head of the commuter train.
My letter:
Dear MARC administrators,
I like to think of myself as a patient person. I understand that trains don't always run on time, that bad weather happens and equipment breaks down. Unfortunately, in the past two months, I have started to lose my patience with the excessive delays and break-downs on the Penn Line as I come home from DC to Halethorpe each day.
At this point, I have a hard time believing any excuse besides incompetence for the day-after-day delays coming home. Engines keep breaking down just about every day. There have been weeks where 4 out of 5 of my commutes home have been severely delayed!
I plan on writing letters to my state reps as well, since I know some of this is a funding issue. Yet I can't blame it all on funding, I have a hard time believing that just throwing more money at these maintenance problems will make them all go away.Please get your act together - your paying customers are demanding better service.
Signed, Me
What's funny is that I got a response within 10 minutes. One sentence:
"We hope that the arrival of 26 new engines in the first quarter of 2009 will help alleviate some of these problems."
Great - but what are your plans for the next 6-9 months?
BUT! Clearly my letter was the final crack in the dam. The head of the MTA wrote an apology letter to all train commuters late Wednesday. Click here to read it.
So, I feel a little bit better about the apology, but still - commuting via train has sucked quite a bit lately. The only rewarding part is that it's brought together commuters as a whole. When we're all sitting together each day as they train suddenly stops and the conductor comes on over the intercom with an excuse - or in the mornings when we're standing at the train stop in the morning and we hear the tell-tale buzz of the intercom letting us know that the nice-sounding MARC train woman is coming on to let us know how delayed the train we'll be - we all sigh and shake our heads together. We make jokes, we laugh, we commisserate.
Laughing and jokes only go so far, though. Let's hope they figure out how to make some of the trains run a little more on time.
You've all heard me complain on here about the commuter train (new "reason for being late" to add to that list: disgruntled passenger on board. Seriously.) - this week I finally had the last straw. In the past two months the trains have been especially bad, I'm home late by at least 30 minutes what seems like about 60% of the time.
This week was it. Monday night I got home 40 minutes late. Tuesday night - one hour late. Wednesday morning - 30 minutes late. So I finally decided to write a letter to the head of the commuter train.
My letter:
Dear MARC administrators,
I like to think of myself as a patient person. I understand that trains don't always run on time, that bad weather happens and equipment breaks down. Unfortunately, in the past two months, I have started to lose my patience with the excessive delays and break-downs on the Penn Line as I come home from DC to Halethorpe each day.
At this point, I have a hard time believing any excuse besides incompetence for the day-after-day delays coming home. Engines keep breaking down just about every day. There have been weeks where 4 out of 5 of my commutes home have been severely delayed!
I plan on writing letters to my state reps as well, since I know some of this is a funding issue. Yet I can't blame it all on funding, I have a hard time believing that just throwing more money at these maintenance problems will make them all go away.Please get your act together - your paying customers are demanding better service.
Signed, Me
What's funny is that I got a response within 10 minutes. One sentence:
"We hope that the arrival of 26 new engines in the first quarter of 2009 will help alleviate some of these problems."
Great - but what are your plans for the next 6-9 months?
BUT! Clearly my letter was the final crack in the dam. The head of the MTA wrote an apology letter to all train commuters late Wednesday. Click here to read it.
So, I feel a little bit better about the apology, but still - commuting via train has sucked quite a bit lately. The only rewarding part is that it's brought together commuters as a whole. When we're all sitting together each day as they train suddenly stops and the conductor comes on over the intercom with an excuse - or in the mornings when we're standing at the train stop in the morning and we hear the tell-tale buzz of the intercom letting us know that the nice-sounding MARC train woman is coming on to let us know how delayed the train we'll be - we all sigh and shake our heads together. We make jokes, we laugh, we commisserate.
Laughing and jokes only go so far, though. Let's hope they figure out how to make some of the trains run a little more on time.
posted by H at
2:55 PM
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