Last night was my first Connecticut Rail Commuter Council Meeting, and I apologize to that entity for taking so long to show up for one, because its 100% relevant to Connecticut Metro-North passengers and deserves better exposure from StationStops.

They are very informative, open to the public, interface regularly with ConnDOT and MTA, and I would encourage any Metro-North rider to check them out.

Most importantly, as uncompelling as the meeting photographed above might appear, most of what they discussed were issues totally interesting and relevant to riders – because the board is comprised of riders.

These guys are the real deal. Have a bone to pick with Metro-North? Who doesn’t? Well, you can mutter it to your spouse on your cell phone on the way home from Grand Central, or you could show up for a CRCC meeting. I can personally attest that the latter is more productive.

They save the boring agenda stuff for later, so you can just leave when you lose interest – it can go pretty late.

Last night the council had a special guest – Connecticut DOT Commissioner Joseph F. Marie (far right in my lousy photo), who fielded lots of tough questions from council members.

The minutes from the meeting are not yet available, and I did not take detailed notes, but I wanted to note some of my takeaways from the discussion:

1. The 10% budget-related fare hike is definitely NOT ‘off the table’.

This was the hot topic. The budget has been passed, but the language of the relevant passage is not entirely understood by Commissioner Marie, who will be meeting with state Senators for clarification.

From my understanding there is definitely a gap in transit funding that is unaddressed. How it will be addressed is TBD.

Update: Council Chairman Cameron says this hike, if approved, would likely not be actionable until March or April, like the 1.25% hike mentioned below

2. M8 Fare Hikes Delayed

The 1.25% fare hike scheduled for Jan 2010, to pay for the new railcar infrastructure, most likely will not be implementable until March or April 2010 due to procedural requirements.

3. The M8 Railcar Delivery Schedule

First cars arrive in November 2009, first cars go into service in June 2010, last cars go online sometime in 2012.

However, Marie, a former employee of railcar manufacturer Bombardier, noted in detail that the delivery schedule of the M8 cars was ambitious to the point of it nearly being unprecedented for a US equipment delivery, at the rate of 10 cars a month.

So there’s that.

4. Fare collection rates.

This was my one point of surprise during the meeting – the Commissioner seems satisfied from his information that Metro-North has a low incidence of fare avoidance (specifically, conductors not collecting fares, like when a train is overcrowded and they don’t want to get lip service from passengers).

The daily commuters on the council disagreed vehemently. I am not a regular commuter, and I find this hard to believe as well. Even traveling occasionally on Metro-North, I have had a few incidences when conductors did not collect tickets.

At the very least, I would have to say that Metro-North is worse at collecting money owed than ‘any other entity I pay regularly’ – because almost all of them are 100%. Cablevision doesn’t skip me once in a while and decide 91% collection is ‘good’.

Normally, I’m like ‘cool!’ when tickets aren’t collected, and in the case of a packed train, I like seeing the passengers get ‘guerilla compensation’ for service issues once in a while. Also, I don’t like to see conductors get harassed by passengers for stuff that’s not in their control.

Some council members, being closer to the financial realities of MNR, do not share this view. I think their major concern is that if MNR reliably collected fares, it reduces the need for fare hikes. I appreciate that argument.

Some members even mentioned that they knew of riders who are purchasing two 10-trip tickets rather than a monthly pass, knowing it would probably last the month due to fare avoidance.

The Metro-North rep noted that audits are performed regularly by auditors undercover as riders, and the numbers are good.

5. Stamford Parking

A developer presented some drawings of a Stamford parking station proposal.

There isn’t much to tell about this as its early-stage and to be honest, not having to park at Stamford, it lost my attention.

6. Parking pass hoarding.

Unemployment has resulted in some former Metro-North commuters hoarding their passes in expectation of a new job – can’t blame anyone for that, I say.

So the topic came up of ’subletting’ parking passes, which may or may not be specifically prohibited from town to town.

There is some discussion about this subletting actually being a workable solution to pass hoarding.

One attendeee noted that Greenwich had actually gone so fare as to arrest drivers for this activity.

7. Metro-North dropping Fall Customer Satisfaction Survey

Metro-North is not doing its fall survey, much to the chagrin of the council.

In my opinion, this needs to be conducted by a third party anyway. I don’t trust MNR to measure themselves, especially when they just decide not to measure at all once in a while.

8. MTA Data Scheduling

I presented StationStops case against MTA to the council. I was glad to hear that the commissioner and other attendees already had some awareness of the conflict through the media.

Overall, the council was supportive and passed a motion that it supported schedule data be ‘distributed as widely as possible’, which I appreciated.

The next meeting of the CT Rail Commuter Council will be Wednesday October 21st at 6pm in the vicinity of Grand Central Terminal in New York City.

For more information about the CT Rail Commuter Council visit www.trainweb.org/ct