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.
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.