Welcome to Twitter Tuesday, our roundup of the latest Metro related tweets. To get our attention, add the #MetroLosAngeles tag to your tweets and subscribe to our feed if you haven’t already. For specific complaints and customer service, please use the Customer Comment Form on metro.net.
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http://storify.com/metrolosangeles/metrolosangeles-twitter-tuesday-april-9-edition
Many more tweets posted after the jump!
http://storify.com/metrolosangeles/metrolosangeles-twitter-tuesday-april-9-part-dos
Categories: Feedback, Twitter Tuesdays
Will the next fleet of rail cars have a different seating configuration in consideration to have increased capacity per rail car? It won’t make a difference if the next fleet has the same seating pattern as the current old one.
I think common sense logic and reasoning is that reconfiguring rail cars is a lot less expensive than buying new rail cars that’s not going to come until the next decade. Just chop down one seat from each row and make them face the aisle.
Are you saying that its going to cost bazillions of dollars and several years per each rail car to do this?
Or is it another lame excuse like their gate locking and TAP fiascos for Metro not even bothering to do this because they see it that it’s more easier to ask taxpayers to foot the bill for new rail cars?
I wanted to offer a counterpoint to commenter above about the new signs. They are much clearer and more resemble SF Bart in signaling when the next train will arrive. “2 mins” is much more helpful than “6:04 pm” for example since I would have to know what time it is right now.
Also, it would be really nice to know how much time I have to catch a train. Monitors outside or just inside the station would help a lot.
I actually don’t like the new layout of the electronic displays at the Red Line/Purple Line stations – the old displays used to show which train (i.e., Red or Purple) was arriving. Now, there’s no indication and considering how frequently people have to ask if the train is going to Hollywood or Wilshire/Western, it would be good to have that on the displays. It’s sometimes difficult to see the display on the sign of the train as it is pulling into the station (esp for people who are not familiar with the train and assumes the red trimmed livery means every train is a Red Line train).
And I couldn’t tell what the sign was telling me. I thought it was the minute portion of when the train would arrive – so like if it said “2,12”, I thought it meant the next train would arrive at the 2nd minute of the hour, and then the 12th minute of the hour. Would it been that difficult to add the letters “mins” next to the numbers?
Metro can easily increase capacity without adding rail cars by changing the 2×2 configuration to 1×1. That way you gain more a wider aisle space for standing room passengers. Or just change the seats to face the aisle.
Why doesn’t Metro do this?
At this point, Metro Rail cars have pretty good capacity although there are certainly times when it’s crowded. The issue with reconfiguring the cars is that it’s pricey and it would require taking cars out of service at a time when Metro needs rail cars out there running. In addition, some of Metro’s current fleet are scheduled to go out-of-service in the next decade so there’s the issue of revising something that won’t be of use for that much longer.
Steve Hymon
Editor, The Source