Chron: METRO's crowded trains, buses frustrate NCAA fans
Reporter Zain Shauk verged from from the (sub)standards established by previous Chron journos in covering METRO (most recently Mike Snyder) in a story today highly critical of the agency's ability efficiently to deal with the thousands of extra people in town for the Final Four (many of whom probably had no idea what sensible Houstonians know -- it's always best to ignore the proclamations/promises that emanate from METRO's bloated/expensive PR shop and make other arrangements if possible).
Here's Shauk's lede:
A doubly complicated commute to tonight's NCAA men's basketball championship game will test a public transit system that was already overwhelmed by Saturday's record crowds.
And here are some other snippets:
Trains were severely overloaded, thousands of fans were stranded without rides and scores found themselves suddenly left by bus drivers at an intersection on the fringe of downtown.
* * *
At light-rail platforms, most fans did not pay their fares because the large number of travelers, eager to get on the trains, overwhelmed pay stations.
* * *
Officials spent months coordinating a transportation plan for the Final Four, drafting a nearly four-inch book of maps, guides and schedules. The team's command centers at Reliant Center and the Hyatt Regency in downtown are fitted with TV screens monitoring Metro cameras, traffic patterns and the movement of private shuttles and buses.
Be sure to check out the rest of the story, because stories so critical of METRO generally do not appear in the area's cheerleader newspaper of record (this sort of writing seems to be preferred).
Of course, it's not surprising that a transit agency headed by a guy whose expertise is not transit (which he tries to portray as a strength here) and that still seems to have the OLD METRO habit of prioritizing PR above Moving People didn't actually.... move people very well during Houston's latest signature event.
Not to worry, though. We're sure all those people frustrated by NEW METRO's inability to get them around as promised were surely happy that METRO's bloated/expensive PR department was out distributing trinkets. And they were surely impressed as well when METRO's expensive new addition to its bloated PR department swung into action today (no doubt directing much energy towards the Chron's reporter, and perhaps even his editors):
Metro spokesman Jerome Gray added that many riders Saturday night were lost because they could not remember what rail stop they had boarded before the games.
Right. All the new customers were surely the problem (not the inability of a tram -- that's what they call these dinky "trains" in Amsterdam -- posing as a "mass transit system" to accommodate so many visitors, or the inability of METRO to anticipate customer needs and plan adequately).
NEW (PR REBRANDED!) METRO, same attitude and performance issues.
BLOGVERSATION: Harris County Almanac.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 04/04/11 06:51 PM | Print |
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