So it turns out Capital Metro isn’t going to wait any longer for us to “clap louder or Tinkerbell will die”; in the January service change, they will cancel many 984 and 986 bus runs in order to attempt to boost MetroRail ridership.

Some of those people currently riding those far superior express buses will switch; some will go back to driving.

The key here is that when you build a GOOD rail line, most people switch from redundant bus lines willingly – because the train is better than the bus. Only awful trains require you to force-march passengers away from what they choose to ride; and this only works for captive riders, and only for a while.

Once again, M1EK was right – and those of you defending Capital Metro were wrong.

Capital Metro is about to learn the difference between "captive rider" and "choice commuter" (and the rest of us are going to learn how many of each comprised the ridership of these express bus routes).

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)

Comments on this Entry:

(some short background on the taxes and Red Line issue here)

Shortly thereafter, it was retweeted by another user. Capital Metro PR guy JMVC responded (to that user, not me) that the service change resulted in increased service, and that "you should take what he says with a grain of salt". I had planned to just link to this tweet but since yesterday I've been blocked (JMVC has been non-public tweeting for a long time; although he certainly shares his opinions with most of the local decision-makers despite not being willing to be similarly available to the public). Here's the image:

So let's examine in detail. My tweet:

Continued reading Whole shakers of salt...

TrackBack (0) | Comments (6)

Comments on this Entry:

(Tim on Aug 20, 2010 3:13 PM) Do you have the link to the new system map? I think this is just more of their plan to only have service on major arterials from Walmart to Walmart. Sorry. Transit Center to Transit Center. I feel your pain. I get to walk 1/4 mile more to get better service to East Austin and worse service to downtown. In the process I lose my no-transfer access to South Congress and Little Stacy pool. But I've now got 3 buses with direct access to the Show Palace. Sorry, South Congress Transit Center.

(M1EK on Aug 20, 2010 3:22 PM) No system map until they actually make the changes. You can see the individual route changes here: http://www.capmetro.org/serviceplan2020/docs/Chapter%205%20-%20Recommendations.pdf Capital Metro still thinks nobody cares about having to transfer, of course. My sympathies there.

(Scooter Pete on Aug 20, 2010 4:40 PM) Not true. You can access the new Capital Metro schedules and system map here: http://www.capmetro.org/riding/preview_schedulesandmaps.asp They are usually up a week to ten days before the service changes in August, January and June.

(M1EK on Aug 20, 2010 5:35 PM) Ed, I'm pretty sure Tim was asking about the big map(s) that show all the routes, not the individual route map/schedule pages.

(Scooter Pete on Aug 20, 2010 5:57 PM) Hmmm... well I thought that was there too. It should be so let me see what's up. We try to post all the new information at the same time. The printed version is out and has been on my buses this week...

(Rob on Aug 20, 2010 8:18 PM) When are they going to "adjust service levels to ridership demand" based on the "very low productivity" of the Red Line? On a side note, it's funny that the liberal environmentalists in Travis Heights and Clarksville are now forced to drive and the anti-tax suburbanites get subsidized trains. Brilliant PR move by CapMetro.

The July 2010 performance report includes the picture below. (Capital Metro has suddenly decided to switch to only reporting rail numbers every two months, by the way).

Any questions? (Click to enlarge).

Continued reading Holding Capital Metro Accountable on Ridership...

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)

Comments on this Entry:

So. The Kramer shuttle. The next step from South Florida's playbook on how to rescue a commuter rail line that's foundering due to not going where anybody actually works. Is it gonna help?

Continued reading Will Kramer Save The Red Line?...

TrackBack (0) | Comments (7)

Comments on this Entry:

(Tim on Jul 29, 2010 3:21 PM) Spot on analysis. Even better question: what was the point of the Kramer Station in the first place?

(Matthew Roberts on Jul 29, 2010 4:53 PM) To actually do something good, we should take those trainsets for the Red Line and put them on inter-city service between Austin-SA, or Austin-DFW. That's what they're meant for! Intercity service!

(el_longhorn on Jul 30, 2010 11:28 AM) Very curious what the new CEO's take on all this is going to be. Hopefully it will be a back to the drawing board, all options on the table kind of attitude. The big question is when do they consider shutting this sucker down? What are the reuse/other use possibilities? Could they sell the trains? Use them on another line?

(M1EK on Jul 30, 2010 12:02 PM) You're way too optimistic - there is zero chance Cap Metro will ever admit this line has failed - they are going to have to be forced to change by an outside entity (new CEO is an insider). Tri-Rail spent 20 years and hundreds of millions double-tracking the line only to see the temporary boost they thought was from double-tracking evaporate as gas prices went back down. (this is a post I have in the hopper). That's what they'll do here unless they're stopped, which is why I'm still voluntarily submitting to be the "why do you keep beating this dead horse" pinata.

(Kevin Madden on Jul 30, 2010 5:02 PM) Just a slight correction. Pickle employees do pay for parking. The cheapest faculty/staff permit that allows day parking is $138 per year and UT employees ride rail and bus for free. Personally I think $138 per year is nothing for the convenience and it's less than what a commuter who has to pay for rail and bus would spend in a year. I pay almost three times that for garage parking on the main campus after putting up with the overcrowded 1L/1M for 5 years. It's totally worth the cost to me and the Red Line hasn't changed my mind.

(A B on Jul 31, 2010 9:28 PM) I agree with your point of view, and preach your gospel on transit to others, but you do yourself a disservice when you refer to white collar jobs as "real jobs." As opposed to what? Fake jobs that people who don't have cars and have to take public transit have?

(M1EK on Aug 1, 2010 2:07 PM) A B, Thanks for reading and preaching. I should be more clear on that; I'm comparing to university and/or politics jobs - perhaps I should use private-sector instead.

(thanks to reader @T_Starry for the posterized version).

I still have charts ready for a post about double-tracking, but that's a longer-term effort; in the meantime I'd better address this one.

Continued reading Will adding later morning runs help the Red Line?...

TrackBack (0) | Comments (7)

Comments on this Entry:

(Tim on Jul 23, 2010 8:08 AM) I had the same skeptical response to this "plan." I just couldn't put it into coherent sentences. Nice job. Can't wait to hear about double tracking (btw, is there room to double track?).

(Tim on Jul 23, 2010 9:48 AM) I think the late night is the best idea. But they need to be consistent. Make it essentially a night owl route or not. People aren't going to take your commuter rail if they can't remember if it's running.

(Breadthfirst.wordpress.com on Jul 23, 2010 11:39 AM) I’ve agreed with you from the start that the Red Line is a bad idea, and I don’t think it’s likely that this will improve things, but don’t you think it’s at least worth trying to see what happens? You say “We have now entered the ‘throw stuff against the wall and see if it sticks’” as if it’s a bad thing, but how else can you learn what works? Yes, it would have been great if we’d done something more similar to what’s worked in other places but, given that this system is in place, doesn’t it seem like a decent idea to experiment a bit to see if things can be improved? Do you think that the system is so broken that the best idea is to stop running everything entirely? Even if that’s true (and from a pure cost/benefit perspective, that seems likely), the political cost of doing so might be so high that it would prevent light rail, or other viable alternatives from getting off the ground in the future.

(M1EK on Jul 23, 2010 12:54 PM) Hi Breadth (or Mr. First?), thanks for reading. Key here is that the measure they're talking about here will dramatically increase operating costs with little to no influence on ridership. My preferred option which is within the range of politically feasible is to keep running but spend no more capital dollars and keep the operating dollars tightly controlled - so that more money is available on the capital side for rail that will actually work for Austin in the future, and on the operating side for buses that actually work for Austin now. Need to address both of these, because if CM is not stopped, they will ruin us on both counts. The #9, #21, and #22 buses are being cancelled or truncated as we speak - and the operating costs of the Red Line are a big reason why.

(ruben on Jul 23, 2010 1:50 PM) It doesn't matter what the subsidy per passenger comes out to. All that matters is the contribution margin for operating the line after hours. It's the incremental revenue gain less the incremental cost of service. If it's positive, and they aren't bumping freight from the rails, they should run it. Simple business decision.

(M1EK on Jul 23, 2010 2:04 PM) That's right, Ruben, but the subsidy is gigantic right now (I'm comparing to the baseline of bus service - I'm not asking for no subsidy; not even a small one; just one that's smaller than roughly 35 bucks per ride). There would be fewer, not more, people riding trains leaving Leander at 9:00 AM compared to existing traffic. Hence, an even higher operating subsidy. Nights/weekends is a harder case. A lot more guessing - I don't think the trains would be full because people would still have to drive back from the stations way up there (and people in Austin itself would have no good way to use the train just like today). Might be worth the trouble and might not, but we're not talking about cutting into UT students hitting 6th street here - you're drawing from the pool of Leander and Cedar Park and Round Rock at best.

(ruben on Jul 23, 2010 2:19 PM) Yep, you still need sober drivers at the Park N Rides. And I could see frequent weekends being problematic with freight losing a huge chunk of availability every week. They should probably stick to special events like Pecan so the freight schedules can be planned well in advance.

1. The freight train derailment. It's happened several times before in the recent past - the tracks are pretty crappy in that part of town and have not been replaced. So is this the fault of the Red Line? Not directly; no. The tracks were bad before the Red Line was a gleam in Mike Krusee's eye. HOWEVER: if we had built light rail in the 2000 plan (if Krusee hadn't forced it to the polls early); we'd have two brand-new, presumably better-engineered and more safe tracks through the whole corridor - so a derailment would have been less likely.

2. MOPAC managed lanes. I say the same thing now that I said THREE YEARS AGO: If the lanes don't have a dedicated exit or exits, and there's no indication TXDOT has changed their plans to add any, they will be completely useless - they will quickly degrade to the speed of the general purpose lanes as people in the managed lane struggle to merge back through 3 lanes of traffic to get off the highway.

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)

Comments on this Entry:

According to Ben Wear (and confirmed today by Capital Metro); average weekday boardings for May 2010 were a whopping 779.

Don't buy the hype that this was purely due to school either - the two trips I took to the MLK station in early May while school was still in session had 2 people disembarking at 8:25 (train starting at Howard) and 15 people disembarking at 8:02 (train starting at Leander) - and these were the best times (not too early, not too late) - there were probably a total of no more than 30 riders disembarking at MLK in the morning put together. Overall ridership excluding UT is gradually dropping as well.

As for Capital Metro themselves - their response is to take the unused shuttlebuses from the downtown and MLK stations and repurpose them for the Kramer Station, hitting the Domain, IBM, and maybe NI and a couple other employers.

This is, of course, completely useless - nobody who isn't willing to ride the bus to those places today will be compelled to hop the train when it requires another bus ride at the end of the trip - for the same exact reason that relatively few UT people and almost zero downtown folks were willing to shuttle. Don't expect Capital Metro to admit this, of course; it'll be double-tracking that'll solve all our problems after this fails (post in the hopper for later this week).

TrackBack (0) | Comments (1)

Comments on this Entry:

(el_longhorn on Jun 29, 2010 11:09 PM) Wow those are bad numbers! Tough choices ahead for the Cap Metro board.

I was actually not going to bother with a blog post on this since this is so demoralizing and I'm pretty damn busy with my real life and (NON-POLITICAL) real job, but two of my facebook 'friends' insist that it's unbecoming to demand that those who have attacked and belittled for all these years sack up and admit they were wrong. I don't take direction well.

From this post in 2004:

The danger here is that a starter line that is bad ENOUGH will completely destroy the momentum among the public (that actually WANTS rail right now by at least a slim margin, in Austin itself). This is what happened in South Florida with a system which is identical in every way that matters to the one proposed by Capital Metro.

From another 2004 post:

The second message, and the one I'll talk about today, is the idea that we can get light rail in the urban core "later" if we approve this plan now. The genius of this message is that it does a fairly good job of lumping opponents like me in with kooky pie-in-the-sky non-pragmatists who are unwilling to get something running on the ground because of the pursuit of the perfect solution.

The problem is that this message is misleading at best, and a lie at worst. The reason to oppose this plan is because it's deadly to future transit operations in this city. IE, not just because it doesn't do enough right away, but because it will actively prevent more effective solutions from ever happening.

Hey, decision-makers? How about we stop listening to the guys who were wrong, and start talking again to the guy who was right? You have my email address; some of you even wrote back once or twice.

TrackBack (0) | Comments (3)

Comments on this Entry:

(heyzeus on Jun 17, 2010 4:07 PM) Demoralizing indeed. So given another 2 years of low, low ridership on the red line, and who knows how many Cap Met scandals between now and 2012, is there any reason to think the voters will approve a new rail line then as opposed to now?

(VladTheImpaler on Jun 18, 2010 6:39 PM) With a weak recovery, uncertain tax revenue and the like we are backwards. Should have started out with an excellent light rail plan and then could have sold expansion to the voters in the down times.

(el_longhorn on Jun 21, 2010 2:07 PM) Gotta agree. Hard to even see light rail in Austin's future at this point. The question is what is the CapMetro board gonna do after they have some real data on MetroRail's performance? It will be interesting to see what the CEO wants to do.

Continued reading April ridership data for Red Line...

TrackBack (0) | Comments (1)

Comments on this Entry:

(Tim on May 25, 2010 9:52 AM) awesome album cover

I estimate 25-30 people got off the train here, which is a bit more than I expected given the MLK experience on Wednesday (same train; 15 people going to UT or Capitol). From this we can extrapolate that about 40-45 people get off at the two stops where you can get to actual workplaces on what I expect is the busiest trip of the morning (see end). Add in 5-15 more for all the other stops put together, and you get 45-60 people per day as a ceiling. (An aside: I overheard one passenger say "56 people" as she walked by; I don't know whether that was a coincidence or maybe an actual passenger count).

Let's be charitable and pretend that each and every one of the six morning trips carries that many people (even the ones starting up in Leander at 5:25 AM and 6:00 AM; even the one trip that starts at Howard and only had 2 people on it when I watched it arrive at MLK on Monday).

We've got a basic ceiling (charitable) estimate of 360 boardings in the morning by this method. IE, I would be greatly surprised if more than 720 boardings per day are now happening on weekdays on this line.

Meanwhile, Phoenix's light rail line, built like our 2000 line would have been (except with less speed in suburban areas), has now passed 45,000 boardings per day.

This isn't a ridership figure we can approach by running the Red Line more often and/or on two tracks. The reason Phoenix sees tens of thousands while we see hundreds is quite simply this: Phoenix made sure the train went where lots of people live and lots of people work (and even more go to school), rather than sticking a train on existing tracks that didn't go near anything worthwhile. Phoenix did what we would have done in 2001 if Mike Krusee hadn't forced us to the polls early, in other words; or what we should have come back to in 2004 instead of falling for commuter rail's promise of "almost as good and a lot cheaper".

This isn't something we can fix by extending the Red Line to 4th/Brazos. You're still stuck with a strategy that can never, ever, ever serve UT or the Capitol or the northern half of downtown (we will never run these DMU vehicles in front of UT or the Capitol - too stinky and too porky to make turns).

This is a dead end that we got because people trusted Capitol Metro rather than listening to those who have experience with another system just like this one.

(Why do I think this is likely the busiest trip of the morning? The trip after this one is the one that starts at Howard Lane and only had 2 people get off at MLK on Monday; the one after that doesn't get downtown until 8:56, meaning most passengers to both UT and downtown would arrive after 9:00; and the trip before this one starts in Leander at 6:35 AM; the two before that are even more pervese - 6:00 and 5:25 AM respectively).

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)

Comments on this Entry:

I got let out of empanelling kind of late at about 1:00; walked quickly to Texadelphia and had a very good but surprisingly expensive lunch (low snack availability = big-time starving) and then walked over to Lavaca to find the first northbound stop.

1:52 PM: Picked up by the #5 bus heading northbound from 15th and Lavaca. Nice. Was about to call Cap Metro to decide whether to wait for the #5 or just get on the first #1 I saw (runs more often, but would have much longer walk to house). There were 7 people on this bus before I boarded; total count now 8.

Stopped for about a minute by the light at MLK. Rapid Bus (were we on it) would not have helped here; the red light was stale when we arrived. One person got off the bus at Guadalupe/20th; total count now 7.

BIG backup at 21st st. Took a while to clear out as the lights turned green many blocks ahead. Another place where Rapid Bus wouldn't have helped. Got hit by a fresh red at 21st right as we got there - Rapid Bus might actually have helped here (were I riding the #1 replacement, that is; rather than the #5). Lost about a minute here due to this.

1:58 PM: Bus arrives at ped crossing between 22nd and 23rd; 9 people got on, including a confused elderly passenger who held up the bus for about 2 minutes by asking the driver a bunch of questions. I presume Rapid Bus wouldn't put up with this but don't know for sure. Total count now 16.

Made all green lights with no stops all the way to Dean Keeton, then turned and made it through another couple greens to the red light at Speedway (stale; no help from Rapid Bus). Thanks, mid-day light traffic. At the big stop on the north side of campus right after this light, dropped off 2 and picked up 6; for total count of 20.

Picked up one more at San Jacinto/30th (unusual), total count now 21.

Dropped one off at 31st; and then no more drop-offs until I got off the bus at 35th/Speedway with a couple other passengers; leaving 17 people still on the bus heading north.

Conclusion for urbanites: All-in-all, a good local bus experience, except for the long delay with the passenger who didn't know where he wanted to go. Little delay due to traffic; bus well-used but nobody had to stand.

Special bonus for suburbanites: If you wanted to get a self-fulfilling prophecy and see this bus almost empty, you probably would have had to observe it north of the northern edges of Hyde Park or the Triangle area. Try Woodrow up around North Loop, or even Anderson near Northcross Mall.

TrackBack (0) | Comments (1)

Comments on this Entry:

(natrius on May 6, 2010 3:36 PM) There's an easy place to point the "empty buses" folks to: http://www.capmetro.org/serviceplan2020/route_profiles.asp It's not easy to tell from those maps how many people are on usually on the bus at a given time, but you can at least see how many people use each stop daily. (I think those are daily figures, but it doesn't say anywhere...)

(An aside: Why use the MLK station? It serves UT and the Capitol; - i.e. 2 of the 3 major employment centers in the urban core; it's one of two stations with shuttles; and one of two stations with non-trivial arrivals in the morning - it's harder for me to stop by and watch the downtown arrivals although I'll try to do it one of these days).

This morning, the 8:02 AM arrival (southbound) at MLK disgorged 15 passengers, 2 of whom were riding bikes. 12 people (both bikes) got on the first shuttle to UT, capacity roughly 40. The second shuttle remained empty. 2 other passengers got on the first Capitol shuttle (capacity roughly 40, again). The second shuttle remained empty. One person actually walked off towards MLK (I have no idea where she was headed).

Get this out of the way first: This is a lot better than the whopping 2 people that got off the other train on Monday!

Let's assume that all the other morning arrivals at MLK had 15 passengers disembark (even that arrival that, on Monday, had only 2). There are 6 arrivals in the morning at MLK (several at ungodly early hours, meaning I'm likely being way too fair by assuming the 8:02 is typical instead of higher than average). That gives us 90 people going to UT and the Capitol on the train.

90 people. Per day. This is, by the way, far, far, far less than the number of people using express buses to get to UT every day (not sure about the Capitol).

180 boardings. Maximum.

Assume for every one of those there's a downtown passenger (likely not, but assume so. When I've watched downtown trains go by in the early afternoon whilst stopped on Red River at 4th, there's been less than 10 per train). That takes us up to 180 people; 360 boardings.

Don't believe that this is far less than predicted? Ask yourself this question:

If these 15 people on each train represent the service 'succeeding', or performing up to expectations, why did Capital Metro plan for 2 shuttlebuses EACH to UT and the Capitol (two of the obvious target markets for any transit service)?)

Giving Capital Metro the best possible benefit of the doubt - assuming they thought they needed two buses to each destination because there was a slight chance they'd have one more person than could fit on one shuttle - you've still got a projection of roughly 80 (1 shuttle to each place) versus an actual performance of 15.

Or, hell, just go back to boardings. We know the first week of pay service (with plenty of joyriders still extant) was averaging about 1000 boardings/day (half of early projections). Anectdotal reports indicate further declines since then - and the immediate switch away from weekly reporting of ridership is also suspicious, as is the decision to suddenly hold a special day of Saturday service and a Friday afternoon event. My very charitable math above gives us a ceiling of perhaps 500 boardings per day by now, absent joyriders (still happening sometimes). Is there anybody out there who seriously thinks Capital Metro decided to switch to monthly reporting after their first weekly paid-fare report was so bad just as a coincidence? They don't have the counts? Funny, they came up with the count real quick for Saturday's barn-burner!

My guess is that boardings have sunk well below 1000/day now - barring outliers. Who's willing to argue otherwise at this point? Let me know and I'll even give you full-post treatment.

TrackBack (0) | Comments (2)

Comments on this Entry:

(The Dude on May 6, 2010 12:52 AM) So, how did this metrorail thing ever get passed? I remember hearing the ads on the radio for something like "It won't cost anything cause it'll use existing rail!!". I also thought it was pretty weird how they did that saturday service thing. I guess I just don't understand capital metro. It's like CapMetro has a list of the worst ways to handle public transportation and they're following it to a T. As you've pointed out, and as you've been pointing out practically forever, the train doesn't really go where people want to go, and they don't want to ride shuttle busses either. I did the park&ride thing for a semester at that ACC Rio Grande campus, and it sucked. Driving in your car, parking, getting on the bus, getting off the bus, and walking to the school. Once you're already in your car it's kind of a pain in the ass to get out of it and transfer to slow transit.

(Tim on May 6, 2010 7:47 AM) Not taking you up on your bet--it's probably below 1000 boardings. Talked to a guy last night who took the train this weekend to the Pecan festival. Thought it was great, crowded but great. I then asked him what he thought about using it daily. He just laughed and said "I don't work at the Convention Center."

The 8:25 train arrived on time. Two of the four shuttle-buses arrived at the same time; the other two arrived shortly thereafter.

There were TWO PEOPLE that got off this train. TWO.

One was a woman with a bike; the other a man in a suit. For these two people, four shuttlebuses were deployed. (I think the woman just rode off on her bike, but didn't get a good view as I was leaving).

Want to know why the train was so crowded on Saturday and so empty today? It's really quite simple; I've been talking about it for six years now:

Most people will ride a train if the station on the other end is within a short walk of their office. Most people will not ride that same exact train if you expect them to ride a bus to get to their office from the train station.

I just sent this to the busriders-austin list in response to a post from our old friend Lyndon Henry:

Continued reading Epic MetroFail...

TrackBack (0) | Comments (1)

Comments on this Entry:

(Steven Johnson on May 4, 2010 4:29 PM) Hey great post I barely come on your blog and recently i was browsing through Auto Shipping Network http://www.autoshippingnetwork.com/ website while i was finding a way to ship one of my automobile overseas and i happen to stumble upon your blog, great post, very informative. Cheers

The prevailing wisdom has been that a project in Smart-Grown Austin, serving major trip generators like UT and the Capitol complex, supported by Cap Met's ample sales tax revenue, would be a slam dunk for a "highly recommended" rating. (Conversely, the original Red Line, which had far lower ridership and -- even though it was on existing rail right of way -- only marginally lower projected costs, was headed, Cap Met insiders say, for a "not recommended" kiss-of-death rating, which is why the transit authority switched tracks at the 11th hour.)

The differences between that "original Red Line" and the current Red Line that Krusee and Capital Metro forced on us in 2004 (now producing stunning ridership results for us) is that it would have had double tracks and electrification on its whole route (i.e., the Feds back in 2000 were telling Capital Metro that today's Red Line AFTER adding a second track and electric wires would STILL produce disappointing ridership and that they wanted no part of funding it).

Guess what Capital Metro's plans are to improve rail transit in Austin now?

TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)

Comments on this Entry:

There were 2 people on those buses, combined. One driving one bus, the other driving the other bus.

To be fair, these were likely the second shuttle in each case (I'm being charitable here - I have no way of knowing for sure). There are two buses running the same route for each train arrival - because Capital Metro was telling everybody they expected overflow crowds on the train. There's likely more than zero people still getting off the train at MLK and heading to UT, in other words, but for the station that's supposed to be the busiest these days, not being able to fill up the first shuttle enough for even one person to ride the second one is, well, according to Capital Metro and idiots like John Cowman, I guess, a positive sign?

Another point: Checking the schedules, the second UT shuttle was actually supposed to be at the drop-off at 23rd/San Jacinto at 7:42. Yes, the shuttle schedules, padded as they are, apparently aren't padded enough. The capitol shuttle was actually later still; supposed to be at 18th/Congress at 7:39.

TrackBack (0) | Comments (1)

Comments on this Entry:

(The Dude on Apr 28, 2010 10:31 PM) Well, I think there's final exams coming up and then there's the summer semester. So during these times there probably wont be as many people using that stop that's supposed to be the 'UT' stop.