Sun times Metra pay

[MRChiCity]

It seems people at that the sun times is trying to manufacture outrage about the pay of Metra Conductors and Engineers. http://chicagosuntimes.com/news/metras-100000-club-includes-conductors-engineers/ If people are "outraged" then go to 547 west Jackson and apply, and have fun working nights, weekends, and holiday's. If anything all Metra has to do is hire more people instead of paying so much overtime as mentioned in the article. Thoughts?

[Busjack]

The only thing I figure is that this has to be negotiated with the unions under the Railway Labor Act, so it isn't as easy as whoever the head of Wrapports just dumping the Sun-Times staff.* Also, Metra has to be somewhat competitive with the freight railroads.

Apparently, the 11% fare increase isn't going over so well, which provokes this kind of article, but there is basically nothing that is going to be done about that.** For a similar bunch of complaints and "responses" to them, see these Daily Herald articles 1, 2.

________________

*According to Robert Feder, no fan of his former employer, the S-T only published a template for a time today.

**The RTA Act gives each board the power to set its own fares and level of service. This board doesn't seem much moved by the public hearing comments.

[trainman8119]

For what it is worth, here is a letter Martin Oberman sent to the Sun-Times regarding their article:

Metra engineers, conductors do a great job for riders

Publication: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
Date: November 23, 2014
Section: Commentary Page
Page: 28
Word Count: 679
Memo: Fact Box:


The Chicago Sun-Times, without any evidence, insinuates that Metra engineers and conductors are overpaid because we use a century-old pay structure that other commuter railroads no longer use [“Money Train,” Nov. 12]. You demean these employees by portraying them as members of some exclusive club — never mind that they work very long hours, never mind that their pay is commensurate with the industry, never mind that they are responsible for the safe operation of trains carrying up to 1,500 riders, and never mind that cutting the overtime pay of these workers (who for the most part are paid straight time for overtime, not time and a half) would end up costing Metra even more money. Yes, we use a complicated pay formula that evolved in the decades before Metra’s formation. And yes, some engineers and conductors make good money. But that’s only because they work far more hours than a conventional 40-hour week. For example, a conductor working a standard 40-hour week would make about $81,000 a year. When those conductors effectively put in an extra one-third to one-half of a year’s work — some of our assignments regularly call for a 70-hour week — their annual pay increases proportionately and may exceed $100,000 per year, as it should for that much work.

But as one of your own experts pointed out, changing the formula is not the same thing as changing the pay. It would be difficult to get their unions to agree to a new formula that reduces their pay. (We closely watched last summer’s labor dispute between Long Island Rail Road workers and New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which went to two Presidential Emergency Boards and resulted in wage increases similar to ours.) And like it or not, the standard for their pay is largely set by national labor agreements. We either keep pace with that standard or lose employees that we’ve already spent money to train. For those reasons, we can confidently assert that a new formula would not only be difficult to negotiate but would not result in any lower wage levels.

There is a way we could reduce the amount of straight-time overtime pay to these workers: hire more of them. You’d see fewer six-figure workers because there would be a lot less overtime to go around, and the Sun-Times would find it harder to sensationalize about their pay. But you’d see the overall cost to Metra go up. We’d be paying to train new people, and paying all their fringe benefits, so we could pay the new workers at the same rate we are already paying the existing workers. We don’t think the Sun-Times, or our riders, would think that is a desirable or economically sound alternative.

It is disappointing that the Sun-Times chose to highlight the pay of conductors and engineers in such a disparaging way rather than recognizing that these are veteran, experienced employees who work early in the mornings and long into the evenings, on weekends and on holidays to earn their wages and who carry heavy responsibility for providing safe, reliable transportation to millions every year.

Martin Oberman, chairman,

Metra Board of Directors

[BusHunter]

Holy Cow, they get paid that much? That's more than an starting OTR trucker that does not see his family for sometimes up to 3 weeks. That's more than our self acclaimed attorney makes. And then they get paid for downtime? Damn they might see record turnout at 547 W. Jackson That's way overpaid, what union do they have? You know the average air traffic controller only makes 78K and they are in charge of over a 100,000 people in the sky at once. That's around the pay scale of CTA brass not a standard employee. No wonder Metra has money issues, how can they come out even?

[Busjack]

...how can they come out even?

They don't, since they only have a 60% recovery ratio.

But maybe you can do some research into the rail brotherhoods.

Also, as I mentioned they could also get jobs on the freight railroads. Nobody else here is offering jobs to L operators. Competition sometimes sets pay rates.

[BusHunter]

They don't, since they only have a 60% recovery ratio.

But maybe you can do some research into the rail brotherhoods.

Also, as I mentioned they could also get jobs on the freight railroads. Nobody else here is offering jobs to L operators. Competition sometimes sets pay rates.

You know San Diego has a train called the Sprinter that Metra should look into. It's a DMU with no conductors (that i can see) offers $2 fares and it's clean, picturesque with it's big windows, and it's a state of the art modern look at rail transit. I'm really impressed with what I saw. Here's a youtube video on the Sprinter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEfl-SNSAeM

[Busjack]

You know San Diego has a train called the Sprinter that Metra should look into. It's a DMU with no conductors (that i can see) offers $2 fares and it's clean, picturesque with it's big windows, and it's a state of the art modern look at rail transit. I'm really impressed with what I saw. Here's a youtube video on the Sprinter.

....

They also run trolley cars.

In effect, you are suggesting something Oberman suggested that didn't make any sense: flat fares for Metra. Right now the fare to Zone I (Winthrop Harbor, for example) is $7.25 and proposed to go to $8.25. Should they pay only $2? Or should the fare from Ravenswood be raised to $8.25 from $3.50 (even though it will be $1.25 more than CTA fare anyway)?

Also, it appears from the video that it is taking or took 10 years to construct this from scratch. Can you do this with Metra? What's the capital cost? Especially when Metra already has a $9 billion capital deficit.

The DMUs were hashed out here before. Certainly don't make sense on most rush hour routes, unless you are going to have an 18 car train and block grade crossings in suburban downtown areas even worse.

[BusHunter]

The whole idea though is cheap fares that attract customers, get rid of conductors and pull themselves out of a deficit. If they took a page from the CTA and tried to get a grant to fund it like the red purple line rebuild, they wouldn't have to pay too much to do it out of their own pocket. One line at a time, it might take awhile, but CTA has just about rebuilt their rail system since 1993. CTA could be close to a full rebuild in 10-15 years. So it would be a 30 year project for a full Metra rebuild.

[Busjack]

The whole idea though is cheap fares that attract customers, get rid of conductors and pull themselves out of a deficit. If they took a page from the CTA and tried to get a grant to fund it like the red purple line rebuild, they wouldn't have to pay too much to do it out of their own pocket. One line at a time, it might take awhile, but CTA has just about rebuilt their rail system since 1993. CTA could be close to a full rebuild in 10-15 years. So it would be a 30 year project for a full Metra rebuild.

I think you forgot that all budgets indicate that the CTA has a $21 billion capital deficit, and even the CTA budget indicates that they are putting band aids on such things as structures that have exceeded a 90 year useful life. If money existed like you think, CTA would not be putting a $450K lipstick on a pig job on the Blue Line, but would have dug a subway already. Similarly, their crying about lack of funds for the RPM (permanent fix, not last year's patch job) and 130th Red Line extension.

A Metra rebuild already contains stuff like the UPN line in the city.

Besides that, other than Pace, which has CMAQ grants, the transit boards here are not interested in increasing ridership. Each rider is considered a 40% loss, and Metra currently doesn't have the capacity, or else it would not have purchased back the C&NW cars. Sure, a $2.00 fare would increase ridership, but in a manner that would not be economically sustainable.

[BusHunter]

I don't know for someone that don't have much money how do you justify a $200 million dollar rebuild of a previous station from 40 years ago that has already been rebuilt once with elevators. (95th/Red line) Plus if the 130th extension happens and it probably will, that bus terminal is going to be lucky to see half the buses they were seeing before. Then let's not even mention they rebuilt the Red line Dan Ryan branch twice basically so they have close to a million dollars invested in that branch.

I don't know if you would call complete tear downs and rebuilds (exactly what is going on now on the Milwaukee elevated) a band aid approach. It's a mystery to me why they didn't make those stops accessible, that's about the only thing they didn't do. Plus newly built subway projects are big projects, that's a complete fantasy.

[Busjack]

I don't know for someone that don't have much money how do you justify a $200 million dollar rebuild of a previous station from 40 years ago that has already been rebuilt once with elevators. (95th/Red line) Plus if the 130th extension happens and it probably will, that bus terminal is going to be lucky to see half the buses they were seeing before. ...

I agree with this.

....

I don't know if you would call complete tear downs and rebuilds (exactly what is going on now on the Milwaukee elevated) a band aid approach. It's a mystery to me why they didn't make those stops accessible, that's about the only thing they didn't do. Plus newly built subway projects are big projects, that's a complete fantasy.

The real issue is that this is not a complete tear down. A complete tear down would have been like what they did with the Pink Line (parallel to Cermak and on the Paulina Connector north of Congress) where they tore out the structure after putting new supports under it, if you are assuming that the result should be a modern elevated rather than a subway. Instead, this project sounds pretty similar to the Brown Line one. The impression they tried to give at the time was that they upgraded the entire Brown Line from Mdse. Mart to Kimball, including substation work and the like. They did $500 million of work, but then all the sudden they needed the Armitage to Mdse. Mart connector project, the Armitage and Hill substations project, replacing rotten platforms, and the like. The $500 million at least bought elevators on all platforms and completely rebuilt Fullerton and Belmont stations, which the Blue Line project won't.

[BusHunter]

Yeah but it's as close as you can get to a complete teardown. They probably couldn't do the footings and replace steel without a long closure and that's a main line, without a good alternate but the O' Hare Kennedy segment was from the ground up. So they probably would've done it otherwise. The main things that bother me with the O'hare branch is not the track structure but the station structures. I know the Harlem bus bridge has had a metal plate on it for some time. Sounds like they need a bridge repair there and alot of the station doors are old and half work. For an accessible person there's not really a good crosswalk that's marked for the accessible. Jeff Pk comes to mind. Also those curtain doors should have a manually operated opener. I'm surprised the handicapped community doesn't complain about this.

As far as the tracks, one area that needs attention is the NB kimball subway, it crawls into Logan Square and the turn north of Logan is slow too.

[MTRSP1900-CTA3200]

You know San Diego has a train called the Sprinter that Metra should look into. It's a DMU with no conductors (that i can see) offers $2 fares and it's clean, picturesque with it's big windows, and it's a state of the art modern look at rail transit. I'm really impressed with what I saw. Here's a youtube video on the Sprinter.

[Vidya]

Apparently a DMU was part of the Metra STAR proposal.

Call me old fashioned (and biased against DMUs), but I prefer the locomotive/unpowered car system Metra, NJT, MBTA, and many other commuter rail systems use. I feel as if those DMUs would be loud since the engine and passengers are in the same place. And Metra has cars with big windows too (although they are tinted green).

The video also points out the 99% on time rate of Sprinter. Although Metra delays have been brought up on this forum, I have only personally been delayed on a Metra train once for about 15-20 minutes.

[Busjack]

Apparently a DMU was part of the Metra STAR proposal.

....

I believe so, but only because it was a substitute for extending the Blue Line via the I-90 median.

[andrethebusman]

The real scandal appears to be that Metra on the routes they operate directly was winking at the federal 12-hour hours-of-service law last winter, and apparently with the full knowledge and implicit approval of upper management basically allowed crews to go over 12 hours on a regular basis. This would go a long way to explaining why the UP and BNSF operated routes had the worst delay and cancellation problems - these outfits know what kinds of trouble they can get into violating the "hog law". On the freight railroads, 12 hours means 12 hours, period. I have seen a NS freight coming into Landers hit 12 hours at Western Ave, and they had to send a new crew out to pull the train across the street and into a yard track. Now I'm sure the commuters appreciated Metra's attitude of "finish the run, no matter how long it takes", but if something had happened one day and somebody had gotten hurt or killed, I'm certain some injury lawyer would have brought up "but the train driver was on duty 14 hours!". In fact, I am surprised that after the initial revelation in the papers, nothing else has been said. I imagine FRA is looking into this, and very possibly there will be consequences.

In general, there is more and more evidence that over the years Metra has gotten quite lax as far as operations. Running on time seems to have taken precedence over safety. One wonders if the two derailments near 47th Street weren't at their core the result of engineer being afraid to be behind schedule? If they were both the result of engineers not being able to correctly read signals, that is even worse indictment of the operation. Signals do not have to be consistent, the crews just have to know what this particular signal means. These days with many freight railroad crews operating thru Chicago on foreign roads to deliver trains, they see signal displays different from the ones on their home road, and yet do not seem to be confused. Metra's engineers having trouble with interpreting their own line's signal indications? Come on now.

[andrethebusman]

Apparently a DMU was part of the Metra STAR proposal.

Call me old fashioned (and biased against DMUs), but I prefer the locomotive/unpowered car system Metra, NJT, MBTA, and many other commuter rail systems use. I feel as if those DMUs would be loud since the engine and passengers are in the same place. And Metra has cars with big windows too (although they are tinted green).

The video also points out the 99% on time rate of Sprinter. Although Metra delays have been brought up on this forum, I have only personally been delayed on a Metra train once for about 15-20 minutes.

The Sprinter is operated by the North County Transit District, which also runs the Coaster commuter trains and the Oceanside-are bus system. It is a different agency than the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, which is responsible for the San Diego Trolley. Sprinter is a relatively short light rail line out of Oceanside that runs on a former ATSF branch line, and is basically operated as part of the bus system. It's closest cousins are the A-train in Ft Worth, Texas and the RiverLine in Camden, both operated with Stadler DMU's. Basically all three are services which would have been standard light rail lines except that it was thought that the costs of electrification would make them financially unfeasible, so they went with self-propelled LRV's instead. Better something than nothing.

[andrethebusman]

Yeah but it's as close as you can get to a complete teardown. They probably couldn't do the footings and replace steel without a long closure and that's a main line, without a good alternate but the O' Hare Kennedy segment was from the ground up. So they probably would've done it otherwise. The main things that bother me with the O'hare branch is not the track structure but the station structures. I know the Harlem bus bridge has had a metal plate on it for some time. Sounds like they need a bridge repair there and alot of the station doors are old and half work. For an accessible person there's not really a good crosswalk that's marked for the accessible. Jeff Pk comes to mind. Also those curtain doors should have a manually operated opener. I'm surprised the handicapped community doesn't complain about this.

As far as the tracks, one area that needs attention is the NB kimball subway, it crawls into Logan Square and the turn north of Logan is slow too.

If one looks at Jeff Park, that place has a lot of problems these days. The bus terminal is badly cracked, and recently there was a lot of coldpatch applied to the worst holes. Harlem and Cumberland have deteriorated very badly. The parking deck at Cumberland has big temporary beams holding up several sections of it. Also, the pavement and sidewalks are cracked in many places. River Rd isn't as bad, but the doors downstairs are barely useable, at least one is permanently closed. But considering how old these places are (45 years for Jeff, 32 years for further out), they have held up pretty well. This isn't like things built in the 1910's that were so over-built that they have lasted over a century. By the late 20th century, the idea of how can we cut costs in construction had already taken its toll. The Douglas L lasted a hundred years in its original form. Rest assured the rebuilt version won't.