Kevin Desmond, the general manager of Metro, just spoke to the city council about Metro's response during the snowstorm. Overall, Desmond came across as more willing to admit fault and less defensive than Grace Crunican, the director of the city's transportation department, did yesterday—appropriately, perhaps, given that Metro did a truly abysmal job at getting information to the public and providing riders with timely updates. At the very least, the lessons Metro says it has learned are the right ones: Create a plan for catastrophic weather events, get more people on the phones, and come up with a better system for getting information to the public.

Here's some of what Desmond had to say.

On customers' plight during the storm: "We deeply appreciate the patience of our customers and we also certainly understand the frustration that our customers felt… Nobody likes to wait by the curb for a very long time for buses that may or may not show up or buses that pass because they are very, very crowded. ... I know it’s very frustrating when you’re waiting for a train or bus that’s not going to show up."

On the transit agency's lack of a "snow plan" for major storms:

"We were fully prepared for [the initial storm the night of December 17]. ... We had taken our articulated trolley buses out of service and started operating on pre-established snow routes throughout the region. .... [However], during the 18th, conditions deteriorated quite quickly throughout the county. We saw quickly that morning that our articulated [long-bus] fleet began to fail and our trolley network began to fail as well. ... That morning we had over 200 buses stuck at one point in time... We then had to immediately create an ad hoc 50 percent service plan. That was not something we had pre-established or pre-planned. That then became the plan that we had operational for roughly the next seven or eight days."

On Metro's "Achilles' heel":

"About half of our fleet are either articulated [double-length, flexible] or electric trolley buses. ... Those [buses] serve Metro and this community very, very well under normal circumstances. But
during these snow events they are, in effect, an Achilles heel for the organization because they do not operate very well. ... People were saying, 'Why can't the bus run? My street is clear.' ... Trolley buses have to turn around at their terminals, and if terminal locations, which tend to be deep into communities, are not accessible, even if large portions of the route are clear we just can't operate the trolley network."

On the breakdown in communications:

"Customer and public communication... really is the biggest problem we faced in these events. And unfortunately, it’s going to continue to be a problem in future events. ... The nexus of everything that happens at Metro is our radio control center. That radio control center is completely limited by the number of radio channels available to us [four] and the number of people who can sit at those stations. We're building a new system that will dramatically increase the number of channels available, but that will not be online until 2010. [In the meantime], a coordinator can get a call on the radio and not be able to answer it for eight hours."

On "unpublished routes" and other flaws in getting information to customers:

"Our 80 percent plan includes published routes. Once we went off of that that is when we started to break down in our ability to really convey good information, because we were making up routes or portions of routes kind of on the fly. ... The web site didn’t work particularly well for what we ended up doing. Even where we had buses on routes and they were operating we still were faced with a lot of conditions we couldn’t control. ... We have some 9000 bus stops in the system and trying to get information to each and every one of those bus stops is obviously a challenge."

On the lessons Metro has learned:

"In something as dramatic as this event, we need to create, say, a 50 percent plan … [in which buses operate] only on those arterials and streets that we know... we can keep open. The tradeoff is there will be less scope of service. People will have to walk. But at least we can be confident in keeping service operational. ... [Second], improving coordination with SDOT... deploying resources directly at SDOT's facilities. [Third], augmenting staffing. We had a huge number of people that couldn't get through [Metro's phone lines] because of a busy signal. Fourth, improving our information flow. As we get our new [radio system and GPS trackers in buses, in 2010], that will make a difference, but even before then we need to improve. Our web site does not do justice to what our consumers need."

Desmond will do a similar, but "more elaborate," presentation to the King County Council next Monday, January 12, at 9:30 am.