Where the Metro riders are, and aren't

via Greater Greater Washington on 7/28/09

By Matt Johnson

How full are Metro's trains at any point in the system? What routes do riders take when confronted with a choice between two transfers, or between a longer one-seat ride and a transfer? Last year, in discussing maps I created about the proposed Blue Line reroute, a reader asked about this, but Metro hasn't collected the data.

To answer this question, classmate and frequent GGW commenter Reza and I created a non-scientific survey, and used the data to build a diagram of passenger traffic on Metro system. This survey was unscientific and the results should not be considered as absolute facts. It does show potential trends, but a larger and broader sample would be necessary to validate these results.

A diagram of estimated ridership on the Metro system. Click to enlarge.

The survey first asked respondents to state a certain preference, like the top factor they use to decide on a route. Later, it presented a specific scenario and asked respondents which route they would choose. Overwhelmingly, survey respondents primarily prioritized getting to their destination in the shortest time. A plurality of 44 percent chose minimizing transfers as the second most important factor. For the third choice, a plurality of 37% said, given the option, they'd choose a line with more frequent trains.

Based on the responses, Reza and I created a decision tree to assign the trips from the 2007 Ridership Survey to the links of the Metro system. On the segments of the system without alternative routes, the diagram is 100% accurate from Metro's origin and destination data. For example, ridership between Takoma and Silver Spring is definitely almost twice as high as between Silver Spring and Forest Glen, which is why Metro turns back half of Red Line trains at Silver Spring. Inside the area with alternative routes (bounded by Fort Totten, Metro Center, L'Enfant Plaza, Rosslyn, and Pentagon), the diagram relies on the non-scientific and possibly non-representative survey.

A geographic representation of estimated Metro ridership. Click to enlarge.

This information is very important to helping Metro make good decisions about service. Dropping the percentage of rush hour Blue Line trains at Rosslyn 40 percent to only 20 percent, as Metro proposes, would make the most sense if about 80 percent of riders at Rosslyn were on the Orange Line. But some readers of Greater Greater Washington and elsewhere commented that their Blue Line trains between Rosslyn and Arlington Cemetery seem pretty crowded, and that they probably would become even more so if Metro halved the number of trains.

Metro's May 2007 ridership survey lists the number of trips made from any station to any other station, on average, but not which path riders take to get there, when they have a choice. We don't know what emphasis riders place on factors transferring versus travel time, and therefore can't ascertain what routes people would choose if given an option. Of course, a trip from Shady Grove to Dupont Circle can only happen via the Red Line, but from Van Dorn Street to L'Enfant Plaza, the rider has to choose between the one-seat Blue Line ride and a transfer to Yellow, or a trip from Woodley Park to Prince George's Plaza involves a transfer at either Fort Totten or Gallery Place.

Metro needs accurate models to make decisions about service levels given its budget and infrastructure constraints. They periodically take a statistical sample of riders to determine where people are boarding, where they're exiting, and how they get to and from stations. But they have little data about how people get from point A to point B. One method that Metro uses to determine the ridership on certain line segments is to station workers on the platform to count passengers on trains, but this doesn't capture all information about route choices. WMATA should consider adding those questions to their ridership surveys.

The ridership per link estimated by our survey and assignment model show some interesting relationships.

As mentioned above, ridership drops by half on trains going northbound through Silver Spring. The decision to short turn trains there (because of the presence of a pocket track) was a good one. The phenomenon does not repeat itself on the other side of the Red Line. Volumes never drop significantly at any one stop, although they do taper as the line approaches Shady Grove. During rush hours, half of all trains turn back at Grosvenor, but unlike at Silver Spring, there is no major drop off in volume there. In fact, there are more riders in the link south of Grosvenor than there are in the link south of Silver Spring and ridership is higher at every single link north of Grosvenor than it is on the link between Silver Spring and Forest Glen.

Downtown, the Red Line is very busy. As one would expect, there is a significant jump in ridership at Union Station when coming from Glenmont. Ridership jumps by almost half from the link north of Union Station to the link south of Union Station. It might be worthwhile to find a way to insert a pocket track into the southern tip of Brentwood Yard and run some rush period trains from Shady Grove to New York Avenue.

In Virginia, there are significant drops in ridership west of Ballston and west of West Falls Church. West of Ballston, ridership drops by approximately one-quarter, and then by another third west of West Falls Church. Currently Metro does operate some trains from/to West Falls Church during peak periods. It might be helpful, especially after the Silver Line opens, to construct a pocket track in the median of Interstate 66 between Ballston and East Falls Church. This would allow some trains from or to downtown to serve the crowds of the Wilson Boulevard corridor. This will be especially important once the SIlver Line starts to reach ridership targets because Arlingtonians will find it harder to get on already crowded trains from the suburbs.

Volumes also drop on the Blue and Yellow Lines south of King Street. The combined ridership south of King Street is 20 percent lower than on the segment north of King Street.

What about Rosslyn, the spot which started this whole endeavor? Based on our analysis, of the riders traveling on the two links immediately outbound from Rosslyn, 62 percent are on the Orange Line and 38% are on the Blue Line. This matches closely current service levels.

At Pentagon, a similar look shows us that of passengers traveling on the two links inbound of the station, some 54 percent are on the Blue Line and 46 percent take the Yellow Line Bridge. This also closely matches current service levels.

This brief analysis demonstrates some of the difficulties with understanding ridership patterns on the Metro. It shows why it is so important for Metro to find some way of surveying patrons on how they travel, not just where they travel. Unfortunately, because of the limitations on our surveying it is difficult, if not impossible, to draw substantive conclusions about ridership patterns themselves. However, it does offer an interesting glimpse at a better way to plan for service alterations.

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Related posts:

• A cheaper route to Metro core capacity, part 3: More complex service patterns (Jul 1, 2009)
• A cheaper route to Metro core capacity, part 2: Virginia service patterns (Jun 30, 2009)
• A cheaper route to Metro core capacity? (Jun 29, 2009)
• Help us understand route decisions on Metro (May 1, 2009)
• Getting more out of Metro with "skip-stop" (Mar 4, 2009)

Use a 3:2 Inhale-Exhale Ratio for Improved Runs [Running]

via Lifehacker by Azadeh Ensha on 7/29/09

The right equipment, training, and running route isn't always enough to ensure a good run, especially if your breathing is all over the map. To help stabilize yours, try incorporating a set inhale-exhale ratio.

Photo by aarmono.

The aptly named Complete Running Network details how to breathe properly when running. Included in their list of seven tips is the importance of establishing the right inhale/exhale ratio. Specifically, they suggest that runners should take three footsteps for every inhale and two footsteps for every exhale, which puts them at a 3:2 ratio.

This means you INHALE on the LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT foot strikes and EXHALE fully on the RIGHT, LEFT foot strikes. This pattern is not that hard to turn into a habit, but it may require you to slow your pace down for a few runs to master the technique. You will notice a lower heart rate as you are able to get more oxygen in and more importantly push all the carbon dioxide out of your body. You may notice that you naturally drop to a 2:1 ratio when you are really pushing it to the finish. That is OK.

The article also says that to help remove more CO2 from the lungs, more focus should be placed on exhaling fully than on the inhale, and that the breaths should come from your diaphragm rather than your chest (where the breathing is more shallow). Once you have your breathing down pat, you may even want to try ditching your shoes for an even better run.

How to Breathe When You're Running [Complete Running Network]

The Impact of Corporate Policies on Web Working Employees

via WebWorkerDaily by Dawn Foster on 7/28/09

Last week, there was quite a bit of discussion about how some social media web sites, including Twitter, were being blocked for at least some White House staff members. The end result was that people were simply finding ways around the policies by accessing Twitter through third-party clients or using their phones and other personal devices. I’ve been running across more and more companies and organizations that have strict policies about using social media or are even blocking access to various social web sites through the corporate network.

On the surface, it can seem like a good way to cut down on goofing off, but the reality is that many people use these sites to get information and, increasingly, to communicate with customers. While this can be a problem for some employees, it can cause a devastating productivity issue for those of us who do most of our work online.

I worked for a company a couple of years ago that blocked IM. We could use IM within the company to communicate with other employees, but it was blocked for any IM outside of the firewall. I like using IM for getting quick answers and checking in with people. While this may not sound like much, it was a big inconvenience for me because I worked with many consultants, contractors and customers who were not employees of the company. It didn’t take me long to find a way to bypass the corporate policy by using a new and nearly unknown web-based IM client. For me, the goal was to get more done as efficiently as possible, despite the obstacles.

When spending time working remotely and telecommuting, these social tools can be a great way to keep up with co-workers and colleagues. I often use Twitter to get answers to tough problems or find information that I need to do my job, since I can’t just drop into the office of another employee who might have the answer. Blocking social web sites only makes it more difficult for many employees to get their work completed efficiently. Let’s face it, those employees who are spending four hours a day goofing off on Facebook will find another way to spend their time goofing off, and the real solution is to deal with the problem employees, not to use broad policies to deal with a few isolated performance issues. Many employees will simply see this as a challenge to be overcome by finding interesting technical solutions to circumvent the technology used to block the web sites.

How have similar company policies impacted your productivity on the job, and did you find ways to get around those policies?

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Why the Manager’s Schedule Blows Creative Productivity

via Smarterware by Gina Trapani on 7/28/09

In his latest essay, Paul Graham describes the difference between what he calls the maker’s schedule and the manager’s schedule. Makers–the writers, coders, designers, editors, creative types–need half or whole days to produce anything that solves complicated problems. Managers schedule out their workdays in hour-long blocks. When managers schedule makers into midday meetings, they kill creative productivity in real but not-obvious ways. Graham considers himself a maker, and describes why meetings are the enemy of creativity:

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.

This resonates with me deeply.

As a freelancer, I get lots of requests to “grab coffee” (as Graham describes) with folks who are just interested in seeing if working together is a possibility. Whenever that happens, my heart sinks. If I’m on deadline or deep in a programming project, grabbing coffee midday with someone I don’t know and might not have any good business reason to talk to changes the tenor of the entire day. When I can, I usually I turn down these types of speculative meetings because the costs are too high–but I always feel bad about it, and never know how to word my response. (Generally I say, “Sorry I’m just too busy.”)

But the fact is that creative types do have to go to meetings. If you can control when those meetings happen, Graham suggests putting aside end-of-day office hours, which don’t split the day in half. I’d add that breakfast or early morning coffee meetings are also a good alternative.

Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule [Paul Graham]

Killing Email: How and Why I Ditched My Inbox

via Zen Habits by Leo on 7/28/09

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me on Twitter.

I’ve declared independence from email.

After more than 15 years of dealing with email, of checking email multiple times a day, of responding over and over throughout the day, of deleting spam and unsubscribing from newsletters and unwanted notices, of filtering out messages and notifications, of deleting those dumb forwarded jokes and chain mails …

I’m done.

It feels so good to say those words! It’s so liberating to break free from my inbox!

I’m done, because email takes up too much of my time. I’m done, because I don’t like being at the mercy of every incoming request, because I would rather spend my free time creating than replying to emails.

I could go much further into explanations, but I think you get the point. I’ll let others argue the point for me — a number of people have talked about and experimented with killing email … here are just a handful:

• Can we kill email?
• How to kill email before it kills you
• Video: One man’s experiment with email independence
• Declaration of Email Independence
• Business email overload

How I Ditched My Email Inbox

I’m actually experimenting with this over the next couple of weeks, phasing out email instead of ditching the inbox immediately. But the transition has already started, and I think by the end of today, I’ll be able to stop checking email entirely, or once a week at most.

Here’s what I’m doing:

1. I’ve set up an autoresponder for my email that explains what I’m doing and how to contact me and for what reasons. I know, I hate autoresponders too, but I’m hoping people will get tired of seeing the autoresponder and stop sending me emails. I’m curious what will happen if someone send me a vacation autoresponder, and then my autoresponder goes back to them, and theirs goes back to me, and so on for infinity. Anyway, I’ve set up a filter with a few keywords so those who want to advertise or do a few specific things can still get through to my inbox. I’ll discuss those below. (Btw, feel free to test out my autoresponder: email zenhabits (at) gmail dot com.)

2. Twitter will be my main form of communication. I know, not everyone uses Twitter, but the people I communicate the most with (mostly) are on Twitter. What I love about Twitter is that it’s very limited (140 characters), so you have to keep things brief, and also there isn’t the expectation that you’ll respond to every message, as there is in email. Friends can DM me on Twitter for personal communication.

3. For longer conversations, there’s IM or Skype chats. These will be required to be scheduled, and are for friends, interviews or close colleagues only — you’ll have to DM me on Twitter, and we’ll set up a 10-minute chat. This is much more effective than email.

4. For collaboration, I’ll use Google Docs and/or wikis. I’m looking into whether wikis are necessary or desirable. It might be that I just use Google Docs, which have worked great for me so far. Still, maybe a wiki would be good for holding an entire project together. At any rate, collaborative online software is much more effective for working on a project with others than email is.

5. Friends and family can call me. Especially if they don’t use Twitter. They already do, actually, so email isn’t absolutely necessary. The phone is better for personal communication anyway.

6. A few types of emails will get through for now. My filters allow emails for advertisers, interviews, refunds, and people who want to hire me, to get through to my inbox. I’ll be checking this once in awhile (every 2-3 days), but I’m working on automating these processes via the web — people would get a link to schedule an interview with me, or a page to buy an ad, or do a refund, etc. This will eliminate the need for these emails.

I think this will work, but we’ll see. It’s possible that within a couple of weeks, I’ll return to email. I’m always willing to experiment, to try new things, to find the method of working and living that works best for me.

Will it work for you? Perhaps not. If you get a lot out of using email, don’t stop just because I am. Do what works for you — as for me, I’ll be focusing more on creating, and less on processing.

Frequently Asked Questions

A few questions I’ve been getting so far:

Q: Why so extreme? Why not just filter and check email less often?

A: I’ve tried a number of tactics with email, including extreme filtering. For awhile I set up a special email address for friends and family and close colleagues, and everything else was shunted into a special folder to be read less frequently. It still took up too much of my time. I don’t check email as often as most people, but it was still a chore I have been enjoying less and less. So I decided to try something different.

Q. Why not just get a Virtual Assistant?

A. I actually had one for awhile, and it worked fine, but inevitably there are emails I need to respond to. I’m going to try this and I really think it’ll be easier.

Q. Won’t you lose your connection with your readers?

A. Maybe a little, but to be honest, email hasn’t been my favorite way of connecting with readers for awhile now. I much prefer the comments section here on Zen Habits, as well as Twitter. I love connecting with readers, but there has to be a balance between connecting and creating, and I have to find a way of living that works for me.

Q. I couldn’t do it — it’s required for my business.

A. Possibly, and I’m not saying you should. I really think all businesses could rethink their use of email, and use it less. There are better solutions for collaborating, for scheduling meetings or events, for getting group decisions, for managing group tasks, and so on. But people will do that when they decide email isn’t working for them as it should.

Q. What about friends and family?

A. They know how to get ahold of me. I much prefer the phone as a form of personal communication anyway. Those who want to send me messages can get on Twitter, which they should have done by now anyway, the dorks.

Q. Won’t you lose customers?

A. It’s possible. I really think people who want to get in touch with me will — I’ve provided a way to do that. If that doesn’t work for some people, it’s something I’ll live with. I can’t live my life dictated by trying to find what works for every single person.

Q. Is Twitter really any better than email? Won’t it just be another inbox?

A. I’ve found that I don’t need to check Twitter as often, or spend as long processing it. It’s not an always-connected, always-communicating tool that some people think it is — you can choose when and what to process, and only do it 1-2 times a day if you like, scanning your messages and not necessarily replying unless you feel the need to do so. It will be another inbox, but not as tyrannical as email.

***Live Video Chat with Leo***

In a little more than an hour, at 7 pm EST (on Tue July 29, 2009), I’ll be doing a live video chat with any Zen Habits readers who’d like to join me here: Zen Habits Ustream channel. I’ll be on video and you’ll just be on text chat, or you can just watch if you like. I announced this on Twitter last week, for those who’ll say I didn’t give enough notice. :) I’ll be answering any questions you might have — it’s just for fun, and I hope you enjoy it!

The Four Day Work Week

via Matthew Yglesias by myglesias on 7/28/09

(cc photo by Ed Yourdon)

The traditional 40-hour workweek is composed of five eight-hour days instead of four ten-hour days. But the historical reasons for that are fairly arbitrary, and trying to get firms to switch to a four-day workweek has long struck me as a relatively painless way to reduce gasoline consumption. Brad Plumer lets us know that the state of Utah actually tried this and had state employees take Friday off and work longer hours the other four days of the week. According to Scientific American the results were impressive:

For those workplaces, there’s no longer a need to turn on the lights, elevators or computers on Fridays—nor do janitors need to clean vacant buildings. Electric bills have dropped even further during the summer, thanks to less air-conditioning: Friday’s midday hours have been replaced by cooler mornings and evenings on Monday through Thursday. As of May, the state had saved $1.8 million. …

An interim report released by the Utah state government in February projected a drop of at least 6,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually from Friday building shutdowns. If reductions in greenhouse gases from commuting are included, the state would check the generation of at least 12,000 metric tons of CO2—the equivalent of taking about 2,300 cars off the road for one year.

Another variant of this, discussed by Aaron Newton, would be staggered four-day workweeks that could substantially cut down on traffic congestion (a smaller proportion of the population commuting on any given day) at the expense of reducing the gains in building energy efficiency.

Elsevier's Prototype: Is This The Scientific Article of the Future?

via ReadWriteWeb by Marshall Kirkpatrick on 7/24/09

Giant science publisher Elsevier announced this week that it is developing what it calls The Article of the Future, a new method of leveraging the web's multi-media capabilities for presenting academic articles online. The company says it seeks to offer readers "individualized entry points and routes through the content, while using the latest advances in visualization techniques." It's got AJAX and it's got real-time web search.

Some parts of the available prototypes are interesting but opinion in the scientific community seems split. Is this ground-breaking stuff or yesterday's news repackaged by another industry threatened the web? That depends on who you ask.

Sponsor

The proposed new format incorporates things as simple as bullet point summaries and playable audio interviews with a paper's author and as complex as click-navigable data visualizations and real-time citation analysis. Some of the AJAX implementations are quite smooth and useful looking. The full summary of proposed features is available on Elsevier subsidiary publisher Cell's site and the company is seeking public comment.

Science blogs and websites are weighing in with different points of view. James Dacey writes at PhysicsWorld that "I reckon this is another key development in an interesting transitionary period for both the publishing and media sectors." Several commenters on this article on Canadian Law Library blog Slaw were far less generous.

A reader named Gary P. Rodrigues had the following to say there:

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of the 'future' in the 'Article of the Future'. Rather, it seems to me to be a collection of everything that it is possible to do now, but for which there is no commercial demand. Reed Elsevier faces a major challenge to its dominant position in the market for scientific journals from the Open Access movement. It needs to do something major to meet that challenge. The prototypes just don't live up to the hype.

Indeed, the article prototypes are reminiscent of what in the tech world was being called the Social Media Press Release, an attempt to make press releases multi-media and filled with social media hooks that could make them more useful to journalists. That effort seems to have petered out as most people in relevant industries found the format more trouble than it was worth.

There is a possibility that The Article of the Future will suffer the same fate. Elsevier says that it hopes the new format will make consumption of scientific research more efficient and interdisciplinary. We suspect, though, that many people who are interested in reading a paper titled "A Dynamic Pathway for Calcium-Independent Activation of CaMKII by Methionine Oxidation," for example, would prefer to keep out the clutter and stick with a familiar, scannable, academic format. Some of the features proposed are undeniably useful, though, and could lead to change that's incremental, if not revolutionary.

For a more in-depth look at other attempts to disrupt the scientific publishing industry, see Michael Nielsen's article on the topic, this Nature blog post about scientists' use of social networks and this profile of a new social network for scientists called MyExperiment.

Discuss