By
Jeffery Morris
Chairman,
Customer Advisory Committee
As we are all now aware, SunRail
(aka the leaders at FDOT) has proposed a schedule change cancelling the
#NightTrain, and substituting a southbound 1:00 p.m. train from DeBary. With this change, they also intend to adjust
the morning schedule forward by 15 minutes. This proposed change only offers a
diversion from the problem of the gaps in service, as opposed to offering real
solutions, and ignores recommendations of the Customer Advisory Committee (CAC).
When we learned about this
schedule change at our last meeting, the CAC unanimously disapproved and
renewed our prior recommendation to add a train an hour later at 2:00 p.m.
train from Debary, which would serve northbound afternoon commuters during the
3:00 hour. To date, SunRail management
has ignored our recommendation and signaled that they intend to push forward with
a new schedule in late December. This
would be a mistake.
It is not difficult to see why
it is necessary to add the train we have recommended and to close the afternoon
service gaps.
The 7:00 a.m. train from DeBary
and the 4:15 p.m. train from Sand Lake are the busiest trains. This is because
these two trains comport best with the normal 8-hour shifts worked by
commuters.
The 6:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.
southbound trains do not have return trips any earlier than the 4:00 hour,
which creates significant gaps between the end of a normal commuter’s shift and
the first return trip home. These gaps
are clearly the biggest obstacle to increasing ridership in the service. Commuters want to be able to leave work and
go home when they done working, not one to two hours later!
Hopefully, SunRail will see
that this as a problem worth fixing, even if it takes a very modest investment
to do so. Perhaps SunRail managers should
ride a train and talk to commuters, including caregivers from Florida Hospital
and Orlando Health. The only consistent
suggested improvement by anyone who rides these trains (or who would ride) as a
commuter is that the SunRail needs to:
1) Offer
a southbound morning train between 8:00 and 9:00;
2) Offer a northbound afternoon train during the
3:00 hour
3) Close
the two-hour daytime schedule gaps.
One
thing that has never been suggested:
add an afternoon southbound train from DeBary at 1:00.
Out of 80,000 prospective
riders in downtown, it appears that SunRail’s marketing efforts combined have
only yielded a 7 percent (less than approximately 250 people per day) increase
in ridership over last year. This isn’t because the marketing efforts are
ineffective. It’s because the schedule of the service being marketed is poor.
The only way to improve the
product is to improve the schedule. SunRail
managers explain that adding a train would require the hiring of an additional
crew to run it, and that this would make any of the proposed changes that the
CAC has proposed impractical.
However, one thing is
certain: SunRail owns enough equipment
to give us the service we want. SunRail
wouldn’t need to spend millions on more equipment. SunRail would only have to hire a crew. The riders and potential riders are worth the
investment.
Fix the schedule so that the
marketing experts and media companies to whom SunRail is paying significant
sums have something worth selling.
Otherwise, suffer the lackluster ridership increases, and the cost
overruns that will come with it.
Please help deliver the
message to SunRail management that we don’t want the new schedule with the 1
p.m. train. Contact FDOT and your
respective elected-official representative on the Central Florida Commuter Rail
Commission:
