I sent in a complain by email; here is part of the canned response:
“You will receive a response as soon as possible; however, some responses can take up to 15 business days.”
There are but a few things on the planet that actually take 15 days or longer to occur.
There are a few exceptions of course.
Responding to a customer complaint does not fall in to that category.
So I calmed down a bit since my ride home Friday but I am no happier about the circumstances.
I hate to lose another night of seeing my little ones at the end of the day but I may have to on the 16th to attend the Connecticut Rail Commuter Council Commuter Summit planned for that Wednesday night.
In the event I decide against going, I wrote the following and emailed it to Metro North for whatever it’s worth:
I used to be a big fan of the railroad and Metro North but the delays and cancellations I have been experiencing are inexcusable. I was stuck on the train AGAIN (the 4:34 on Friday evening). Other trains go screaming by and I was stuck on a disabled train. If it isn’t the weather, it’s a switch problem. If it’s not a switch problem, it’s an electrical one. This day I was on a diesel engine that apparently had overheating issues. Plain and simple, if it isn’t one thing it is another but there isn’t a week that has gone by without some sort of issue and I am overlooking all the weather related problems.
The engineers on my Friday train finally got the train started but they forced everyone off the train at Stamford to switch trains; one that was short a car. Add the riders waiting to board at Stamford plus all of us and it was standing room only.
If Metro North and the MTA had to refund customers for all of these inconveniences, delays and so forth they’d be broke by the end of the shortest month of the year.
There is no reason for these types of delays on a day like Friday where there are no weather issues.
Because I didn’t want to assume the risk of being stuck in New York City without a way home, which is a direct result of the lousy service given on the Metro North line, I have lost one day of work each week for the past six weeks.
For all this, I pay $385.00 a month for the privilege to ride this decrepit fleet. Unfortunately, it is still more economical than trying to drive into the city and park each day.
I would pay twice that amount if it came with an on time guarantee on the condition of, if they were late (more than five minutes) due to non-acts of God issues, I would be reimbursed 10% of my ticket cost for each event.
The MTA and Metro North would never have the stones to implement a program like that because it would be paying out to the ridership constantly.
The worst part of this is getting home late. When the train is on time I get home by 6:45PM. I get to spend 30 minutes with my two year old and my three year old before they go to bed. Then I spend an addition hour or so with my five and six year old.
When the train is delayed more than 30 minutes I miss that time with my littlest ones and I am often resigned to just peaking into their room and seeing them sleep.
No one should have to resign themselves to a tiny consolation like that when it should be the rule to be home on time and not the exception.
As published in the Record Journal Tuesday October 26, 2010
One fine quality about New England is that its beauty is on a small scale.
This means that, for example, one can leave an urban area in Connecticut – say downtown Meriden – and in 5 minutes up the Chamberlain Highway you are passing through farmland. In 20 you can be in Hartford or New Haven, and in 40 you can be in places like East Haddam, Litchfield, Ashford or Oxford.
Our highly efficient highway system makes this convenient.
But we also have a network of rails which could make all this even easier. Improving existing rail lines so all have two sets of tracks, thus removing ridiculous limits on rail traffic, springs to mind. That would certainly aid tourism. But think also of economic development. Our towns and cities are very close together. Hartford and New Haven are only 40 miles apart, center to center. Middletown is 10 miles east of that axis, Waterbury 12 miles west, with Meriden in their midst.
Much of our region of the nation is similarly arranged. Yes, towns and cities originally followed contours of river valleys, but even rivers are all small scale. In northern New England, this pattern repeats, though with a bit more space.
What makes all this important just now is that Washington is preparing to spend $8 billion on high-speed train connections. It makes lots of sense in terms of energy and communications to be able to ship goods from place to place easily via rail and for commuting. Having an ability to sit in a rail car and eat breakfast, read a newspaper, complete work for the day to come, is a tremendous improvement on sitting in a personal car alone in one of those linear parking lots which develop during rush hour.
It’s kind of exciting, too, that Washington does not have some sort of speed requirement. Goals, in our vast open spaces, are for trains which can go 220 miles per hour (planned for the bullet train from LA to San Francisco), but these are not applied to New England. After all, if you’re only going 90 miles total, this extra speed isn’t going to change travel time much – but the convenience of traveling from center to center without negotiating ramps and feeder roads and local traffic will more than compensate.
The first step in this direction appears to be already marked out as the New Haven to Springfield line. With new stations, new complete tracks and new rolling stock, this line could be a model for the rest of the region. It sounds like a plan to us.
Speaking as the person who racked up 110,000 miles on his car over the past six years – much of it attributed to traveling to and from customer locations around New England – I wholeheartedly think this is a great investment in Connecticut.
To begin with, I would have taken the train more often when I worked for Microsoft if I could have. Over the course of my career there I had customers in Connecticut – Trumbull, Berlin, Groton and Bristol – nowhere close to the rail lines for the most part. In Rhode Island I had them in Providence; the trains on that segment of the rail lines were not conducive to commuter traffic. The customers I had in Massachusetts and New Hampshire were the same too – way too far off the rail lines to make it economically feasible. At the same time it wasn’t conducive to the amount of hours in the workday either.
I am writing this blog post from Metro North. Using my phone as a 3G hotspot, I am posting this online on my way to my present employer Bloomberg in Manhattan.
To perhaps suggest that people from the Wallingford area wouldn’t use the commuter rail line into New York City is inaccurate. There’s a co-worker of mine on the 5:40 that drives from Southington to New Haven to catch the train. There are many others getting on at Union Station in New Haven; I haven’t surveyed where everyone is from but I am sure they are not all from New Haven.
I can do work while I am riding in. I can read the newspaper. I can chat with people (on the ride home – it’s more or less understood in the AM that you’re going to not be carrying on a lot of conversation for the most part.)
Most likely, I’ll finish this post and the online copy of the RJ and nap from Stamford to Grand Central.
The time on the train is mine and I blow by traffic sitting at a standstill on I-95.
The cost for my monthly rail pass is $385.00 and it costs me $85.00 for the monthly parking pass at the Temple Street Garage (Union Station has about a two year waiting list).
When you divide that into 22 workdays you’re talking about a daily expense of about $22.00.
You can’t even park in the city for less than twice that amount.
There is going to be way less wear and tear on my car once this all comes to pass on the New Haven / Springfield corridor.
I’ll be walking the two miles to the station from my house.
The only way this could get any better would be if I could take a deduction on my taxes.
I realize the real cost of the train fare is subsidized. If I had to pay twice as much I wouldn’t necessarily like it but I would still do it as it is more economical than the alternative.
If we need to subsidize anything then the American worker is something I am going to pick every time.
There are uses for the train beyond commuting to work.
If there is a spur into Bradley International Airport just think of the ease of having someone drop you off at the Station in Wallingford or Meriden or where ever it is close for you and stepping off the train about an hour later at Bradley. No long drive there, no parking fees, no worries if your plane is late getting in as the trains will probably run every hour or so.
I could probably justify going down to one car in my household – four kids and all. The savings on insurance, taxes and upkeep would pay for any personal additional costs of taking the train from Wallingford to New Haven if I were to go that route.
For those that say the New Haven / Springfield line wouldn’t carry the ridership to justify the costs I say look at the success of Shoreline East from Old Saybrook to New Haven before you pass judgment.
How many cars are not on the road along those points due to that commuting option? How much in emissions is removed on a yearly basis? How much in total over the years?
I believe all the pluses outweigh the minuses.
The best part is you still have freedom of choice. You can always still take your car if you really need or really want to.
As Published Tuesday, December 8, 2009
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By Merrick Alpert – Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate
I recently walked across Connecticut — from Stonington to Greenwich along Route 1 — to express my opposition to the war in Afghanistan. Carrying a U.S. flag, I began on the Rhode Island border and trekked for five days until I reached New York.
Having served as a U.S. military peacekeeper in the Muslim nation of Bosnia, I know from firsthand experience about both the power and limits of military force.
As a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat occupied by Christopher Dodd, I wanted to make clear my opposition to the war.
Eight years ago, following the 9/11 attacks, we appropriately used military force to overthrow Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, a regime that had hosted and aided al-Qaida’s 9/11 plotters.
Phase I was a textbook example of how to wage modern warfare using “hard power.” American forces consisted of less than 500 Special Operations members on the ground and overwhelming U.S. airpower. They worked collaboratively with 15,000 members of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance. The indigenous ground component was crucial in ensuring the operation had an Afghan and — more importantly — Muslim face. And it limited American casualties.
Then, the Bush administration and congressional Republicans — aided by sycophantic Democrats and an enabling media — ignored a century’s worth of lessons in counterinsurgency warfare.
The opportunity to launch a successful Phase II “soft power” operation, where civil affairs forces and multinational peacekeepers were deployed to build a democratic Afghanistan, was squandered.
Instead, the Bush-Cheney faction commenced the Iraq fiasco. The focus was taken off Afghanistan. The Taliban gained strength. Pakistan became safe haven for terrorists. International support evaporated.
Now, the Obama administration is embarking on a similar ill-fated effort. The president, having recently authorized 20,000 additional troops, this week authorized some 30,000 more. The U.S. troop count will soon stand at more than 100,000, just as our allies are abandoning the field.
Against this backdrop I began my 117-mile walk across the state. As dawn broke on Nov. 10, I stood at the war memorial on the Rhode Island side of the bridge over the Pawcatuck River. I reflected on the facts that inspired my march. One thousand of our troops had already perished. Our real enemy — al-Qaida — numbered less than 100 in Afghanistan. We had become so desperate for a partner that we were propping up the ineffectual Karzai government that had just rigged an election at U.S. taxpayer expense. And, there was no end in sight.
Yet as I began the march across Connecticut, I became convinced that the essential problem with the Afghan war was not just military: It was also economic.
I slogged past hundreds of boarded-up businesses that would never open again. Many were so recently closed that the wood over the windows didn’t show any weathering. As I pushed west across the Thames and Connecticut rivers my talk of effective counterinsurgency fell silent to scenes of schools in disrepair. As I trudged through East Haven and crested the hill to look out over New Haven harbor, I saw poverty and despair. I saw a city where half the minority students never graduate from high school. Drawn west into the darkness, I walked over roads and bridges that were crumbling. And as I stopped to talk with people along the way they would repeatedly tell me that they were “forgotten.” Forgotten became the word I heard the most.
Those who have voted to support the war in Afghanistan, like Dodd, have gotten it backward. Why are we sacrificing Connecticut’s prosperity for a war the goal of which cannot be explained? Why are we forsaking the schoolteacher in Groton, the storeowner in East Haven, and the unemployed African-American in Bridgeport for a corrupt regime in Afghanistan?
I am more interested in rebuilding Connecticut than Kabul. My vision is for a Connecticut where we invest in job creation, educational opportunity, and health care. Those that have spent the last 40 years in Washington creating the problems we face today are incapable of solving them. It is time for career politicians with “seniority” to walk across the state and assess the carnage their war and misguided priorities have inflicted.
Career politicians, like Dodd, are too distant from our suffering to understand it.
And now it is time for them to take a hike.
The writer, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, lives in Mystic with his wife and three children.
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