LOS ANGELES —Metrolink is offering 25% discounts on monthly passes this month and in February in the wake of recent operating issues, the Southern California commuter rail operator has announced.
In an end-of-year message posted earlier this week, Metrolink CEO Darren Kettle noted that the agency’s Quality Service Pledge includes a provision for a one-month discount when on-time performance falls below 85% in a month on a line. Because that has happened on Metrolink’s San Bernardino Line, but because there have been issues elsewhere, the agency will go beyond that policy to offer the discount systemwide for two months.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Kettle writes. “This has been a challenging time for our riders, and I want to personally apologize to those impacted. We appreciate your patience as we work to improve our on-time performance and deliver the service you deserve.”
Metrolink added 32 weekday trains, a 23% increase in service, earlier this year as part of what Kettle calls “Metrolink Reimagined,” a change that also included memory schedules (with trains leaving stations at the same time each hour), and better connections between lines.
“In the case of our San Bernardino Line,” Kettle writes, “we had good intentions; our plan was to run more trains on our most popular line. What we have learned, however, is that we simply do not have enough track capacity to operate the level of service we aspired too.”
Host-railroad issues have contributed to the timekeeping problems, Kettle said. Problems on BNSF’s San Bernardino Subdivision led to almost 10,500 minutes of delays and 11 train cancellations in October and November on Metrolink’s Orange County, Inland Empire-Orange County, and 91/Perris Valley lines. Kettle and CEOs of the five county transportation agencies that fund Metrolink wrote BNSF CEO Katie Farmer about the problems. “Her team responded the same day, and I have since spoken directly with her at length about finding both immediate and long-term solutions so that they can meet their contractual obligations to dispatch Metrolink trains on time.”
Meanwhile, Metrolink is updating its schedules to address recurring delays, he writes, and the agency is working with BNSF and Union Pacific “to find solutions that will deliver meaningful relief.”
New fare structures, technologies, and infrastructure upgrades are coming in the year ahead, Kettle writes. “There are more challenges ahead as we prepare to welcome millions of visitors to Southern California for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in less than four years, but we are embracing this opportunity to grow and improve for the communities we serve today and into the future.”
The current San Bernardino Line timetable shows seven Covina turns that are poorly patronized since they don’t travel far enough from LAUS. I rode one from Covina to LA, and during the entire 37 minutes there was nobody besides myself riding on either level of my car.
This waste of resources ought to be redirected to that line’s weekend schedule where there’s a shocking three-hour interval of no LAUS departures in the late afternoon to early evening.
The class ones seem as bad as the US government was in keeping promises to the Native Americans.
Good intentions never caused the passenger train to run on time against the surrounding freight railways.