OAKLAND, Calif. — Imagine Caltrans giving back $2 tolls after a wreck on the bridge costs commuters an extra hour or BART cutting fares after too many escalators break down, the Oakland Tribune reported.
Imagine airlines slashing prices because bad weather delays too many flights or they lose too much luggage.
Impossible, right? But that’s exactly what is happening on the Capitol Corridor, which carried 96,000 people by rail from Auburn and Sacramento to Oakland and San Jose in October.
Gene Skoropowski, managing director of the service, in a no-bones apology delivered to riders online and on their train seats, offered a 25 percent fare cut for December’s monthly pass after a string of mishaps he says “hammered service.” Many trains were 90 minutes late.
His offer comes when a weak economy has forced every major Bay Area transit operator to raise fares.Letter of apology Sent last week, the letter to passengers explains why trains had ground to a halt, usually at peak times, for four weeks:
– Flaggers for Union Pacific, which owns the track, didn’t show up to work.
– Freight trains broke down on the single-tracked Yolo Causeway between Davis and Sacramento.
– Amtrak, which owns the Capitol Corridor trains, had more mechanical problems than usual.
“You don’t need to be told how poor the performance of Capitol Corridor trains have been during the last several weeks,” Skoropowski’s missive begins.
He goes on to say that the mishaps were “neither intentional nor acceptable,” and wrote, “I do not like having to write these types of messages.”
Then Skoropowski did something really unusual: He published his phone number and e-mail address.
Glowing response
Passengers used them. A sample of 150 e-mails he received was glowing.
“It’s not often that folks in transit step up so visibly to admit problems, explain reasons, offer solutions, make apologies and top it off with a goodwill discount,” wrote one passenger. “Other agencies and officials could learn a thing or two by following your example.”
Big agencies, such as 300,000-passenger-a-day BART, say Skoropowski’s example would be impractical to follow.
“It’s a very difficult thing for us to do. We have had some really bad days, like when we lost all transbay service. We thought about it really hard,” BART General Manager Tom Margro said. “I’m told we tried free rides once and it was chaos.”
Skoropowski’s offer is not just in the Yuletide spirit.
“I did it partly as a gesture of apology and partly out of smooth marketing,” he said.
Ridership up
It works. He made the same gesture in 2001, and ridership went up. It continues to go up, at a rate of 5 percent a month, even as fewer people ride BART and the Bay Area’s biggest bus systems.
“It’s probably preventing a loss of revenue. It’s an obligation to our most loyal customers, who are forking out up to 300 bucks a month. These are important people to us,” Skoropowski said.
“These are not transit-dependent people. They choose to ride our trains, and they say they do it because it eliminates stress in their life. They could be on I-80,” he said.
Skoropowski grew up riding public transit in Boston, and when he took over Capitol Corridor four years ago, he required his staff to routinely ride the trains.
His career in the rail business spans three decades, and it took him to Pittsburgh’s transit system and the aborted Florida high-speed train.