Posted on 04/12/2016 4:55:39 AM PDT by Kaslin
If you live any distance beyond the Capital Beltway you probably didn't notice, but an important part of government in Washington shut down on Wednesday, March 16. That's when the Metro subway system's recently installed general manager, Paul Wiedefeld, ordered a one-day shutdown of the entire 117-mile system for emergency inspection of track-based power cables.
The result was not quite as dire as many feared. Some Metro commuters took a day off; others climbed into buses or cars early to weather expected traffic jams. The federal government and the city's lawyers and lobbyists continued to function.
Worse is likely in store. On March 29 at the Mayflower Hotel, half a block from a Metro station opened in 1976, at a forum entitled "Metrorail at 40: Restoring a World Class System," Wiedefeld announced that there could be extended shutdowns of any of the system's six subway lines.
"It may come to the point," said Jack Evans, Metro board chairman and D.C. council member, "that we have to close the entire Blue Line for six months. People will go crazy. But there are going to be hard decisions that have to be made in order to get this fixed."
In other words, the gleaming Metro system is increasingly (to paraphrase the title of Ralph Nader's 1965 book on auto safety) unsafe at any speed.
That's been apparent for some time. In June 2009 a crash at the Fort Totten station killed nine passengers and hospitalized 52. In January 2015 a woman died when smoke was blown by an improperly directed fan in a train stopped at L'Enfant Plaza. A derailment at Smithsonian closed six stations at rush hour; a fire at Stadium-Armory caused weeks of delays. In October 2015 the Federal Transit Administration took over safety regulation of Metro.
How did this happen? Luke Mullins and Michael Gaynor, in a December 2015 Washingtonian, describe the "insular culture" of Metro's Rail-Operations Control Center. It has been chronically understaffed, with old-timers relying on outdated rule books and personal lore, freezing out newcomers so they can accumulate overtime pay that might entitle them to generous pensions. Controllers feuded routinely with "train-breaking" drivers.
People noticed. Despite the capital area's booming economy and gentrifying neighborhoods around many Metro stations, ridership declined 5 percent between 2010 and 2015.
Metro wasn't supposed to be like this. Historian Zachary Schrag's thoroughly researched and gracefully written "The Great Society Subway" tells how Metro was conceived in the 1960s and built in the 1970s as an alternative to city-shredding freeways -- a triumph of forward-looking planning, regional cooperation and aesthetically pleasing design.
If government is what we decide to do together, Metro seemed to be government at its best.
But after 40 years it has come to be government at its dreariest, with problems overlooked, maintenance deferred and safety scanted by employees secure against discipline or dismissal and more concerned about overtime pay and pensions than serving the public. We have seen the same phenomenon across the country in the Veterans Affairs scandals.
Metro has suffered also from the nature of political incentives. Board members, who represent local governments, get credit for a new station or bus line but not for routine safety measures and necessary upkeep. Metro decided to keep stations open till 3 a.m. on weekends to accommodate partying young gentrifiers (who could easily use Uber or increasingly competitive taxis to get home) -- which squeezed out time for necessary maintenance.
There is a certain romantic appeal to rail transit. Central planners love the idea of channeling the masses into fixed pathways and forcing everyone to live and work in high-rise clusters around stations. It's a good lifestyle for many, but not for young families -- and not when the trains stop running for six months.
Aaron Renn of Urbanophile.com points out that cities that "build a rail system ... not only have to pay to build it, they pretty much have to pay to rebuild it every 40 years." Meanwhile, Washington has squandered hundreds millions on a 2-mile trolley line, which, unlike Metro, will never get much usage.
"It is becoming increasingly apparent that progress tends to arise from the evolution of decentralized trial-and-error processes more than from grand schemes launched by planners and revolutionaries," writes economist Arnold Kling in the spring issue of National Affairs.
The plight of Metro, a system designed and built by unusually gifted planners, is a tragic example.
If you live around an urbanized area outside of the US, you tend to notice five central and key things about subway or light-rail success.
1. They don’t allow thugs, punks, or criminals to be part of the landscape.
2. There’s a continual day in and day out maintenance plan. Most operations shut down at midnight, and have a full-up crew...maybe even five or six crews...that have assigned tasks for each night open period.
3. There’s a simple explanation on firing public transportation workers. If confidence is shaken or cannot be established to do your job....they will help you find work elsewhere.
4. Railway cars are typically on a replacement plan.
5. People in executive positions of a network get fired if serious issues become public. You typically don’t find work after that point..
I spent three years in the DC region and used the bus and subway extensively (I never had a car while in DC). It can work....but about every six weeks, there’s some bus or train or safety issue that arises.
I can rattle off five or six subway stations in the DC area (not on the VA side) that I consider somewhat unsafe and probably need massive lighting increased, five or six cops walking the beat continually, and a multitude of cameras added.
About half the employees need a random drug test....every single week.
The cars should have been replaced a decade ago.
All the issues go back to one fundamental problem....bad leadership from the top guy and the next dozen people under him. Sadly, it doesn’t matter if they leave....another group of incompetent mental midgets are hired to replace them.
I’ve ridden Metro regularly for the past 25 years.
The article doesn’t get to the biggest fundamental problem - WMATA has essentially been an inner-city “jobs program” from its inception. The workforce is unionized, has gold-plated benefits, and it is virtually impossible to be fired. I have never seen a more unproductive workforce anywhere. You routinely see Metro employees standing around in groups shooting the breeze, deadheading on the trains doing nothing, and you ask yourself - does anyone actually WORK here? There surely are some mechanics, train operators, etc. who take pride in their jobs and work hard, but the overall impression is that all the money over the years has gone to salaries and benefits and nobody has actually been WORKING to maintain the system. All those chickens are coming home to roost and I suspect it will only get worse over time.
The Metro is expensive and unreliable. Jobs in the system are patronage. It’s disgraceful how unsafe it has become. The extension through Tyson’s Corner and out to Reston was one of the most expensive public works projects in national history. And it still doesn’t go to Dulles (couldn’t PO the taxi service lobby!).
Calgary Transit had a strike back in 2001, and the agency did such an effective job of dealing with it that the employees came crawling back on their knees. An employee who knows that he is redundant and replaceable tends to be a responsible and competent one.
This is sad news to me. I arrived in the NCR (National Capitol Region) just as Metro was finished. It made my work life tolerable. Sounds like I retired before the decline! Sad.
“more concerned about overtime pay and pensions than serving the public”
Government, and anything run by government is not about any particular function.
They inevitably become make-work jobs programs, medical benefit distribution schemes, and pension systems, with a secondary effect of providing the service that taxpayers pay for.
hey if that is all it takes to shut down the fed govt because people stay home....
SHUT IT DOWN PERMANENTLY...
all better off
govt workers are truly nothing but overpaid welfare recipients....with an inflated opinion of themselves...
producing nothing OF ANY economic value
ULTIMATE PARASITES.... TOTALLY USELESS
DC looks like imperial rome ...
federal contractors, lobbyists, congress, agencies..... SCUMBAG CENTRAL ROBBING TAXPAYERS ....
Lurker’s Law 1. Government f**** up every thing it touches.
L
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