Posted on 12/01/2020 8:12:00 PM PST by dynachrome
Facing a hole in the budget of nearly a half-billion dollars, Metro’s general manager is proposing massive budget cuts to rail and bus service that would take effect this summer.
General Manager Paul Wiedefeld said in September that without more federal help, big cuts would be needed.
Overall rail ridership is down more than 85% most weekdays, while bus ridership is less than half what it was in 2019.
Among the things Wiedefeld is proposing for Metrorail:
In addition, Metrobus would also face big cuts. Wiedefeld is proposing only having a total of 41 bus routes. Those routes would be longer, covering the same territory that 60 bus lines currently cover.
Wiedefeld says overall bus service would be about 45% of pre-COVID-19 levels. He says bus service would actually be added on weekends to try to make up for having no weekend rail service.
Although Wiedefeld is trying to minimize the number through buyouts and negotiations with the union to not give salary increases next year, he says thousands of jobs would be cut under his proposal.
“We’re looking at roughly 2400 hundred positions that we have to eliminate on top of the 1400 that we’re eliminating right now in [current] budget,” he said. “So that’s roughly 3800 positions, almost a third of our entire workforce. So that’s extremely difficult.”
Metro has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in fare money from riders after the pandemic caused ridership numbers to plummet. Although Wiedefeld expects some riders to come back next year, he doesn’t think it will be nearly enough to avoid big cuts.
(Excerpt) Read more at wjla.com ...
Covid caused this issue? Not by a long shot.
More likely, the filth, the unsafe conditions, the sheer apathy of the Metro employees to their customers.
Especially the feces laden areas.
Covid. Hah!
What will the homeless do now when they can’t ride the subway?/s
The buses I guess. Subway cars are still there for toilets and sleeping.
LOL, welcome to the world you folks voted for in the D. of C.
Honestly, I think folks thought everyone was lying to them
when we told them how bad it was going to get.
Biden and his ‘crew’ may actually be the savior of our
Republic if he overplays his hand.
Even Lefties will draw the line at some point.
If he trashes the place too bad, folks will be screaming
for help.
They’ll still be able to get the high-quality service the Metro has always provided them, as the free-fare customers that they are... /s
Actually, it’s most likely a true statement.
The homeless will continue to find the lines open and the Metro employees will care even less, as they’ll just be glad to be getting their [truly] unearned wages.
So ridership is down and they want to keep everything at a level revenue won’t support by sucking up taxpayer dollars instead of cutting costs.
These people should be horsewhipped, not taken seriously.
L
Well, Joe said the covid emergency restrictions will last his entire first term.
That’s not much the Metro I knew.
It’s a good system. Maybe not quite as good as it was when I commuted that way long ago, but still good.
No question COVID hysteria is the main problem.
A lot of minorities are low level employees of DC public transit. A lot of them will be laid off soon and become new residents of the Franklin Square. This is the place a few blocks from WH where many homeless hang out.
Thanks for the mention.
There seem to have been an awfully lot of people who didn’t
vote before, doing it this time.
They were sold a bill of goods. Boy is it going to be fun
to watch them mouth off about what Biden does.
Right now I’m enjoying folks like CNN, newspapers, and others
for complaining what Trump is doing, as if it is illegal.
Hey, they wanted a nation with no laws. That’s no grounds
for going after Trump.
This is the new nation they wanted.
It’s the Management of the current employees that suck.
All for a patented, bio-weaponized cold virus.
If this continues, most Americans will work for Chinese boss. Their landlords will be Chinese, too. But pointing it out will be a severe hate crime.
Pointing out anything the Chinese do that is wrong, will be
grounds for a trip to a reeducation camp, or Potter’s field.
Yeah, because we’ll be seen as equal to what the Taliban are
today.
Looks like the swamp has turned into a cesspool with a great deal of help from the democrats and their globalist buddies.
Oh, by the way, the first globalist were communists, followed by fascism. They are both socialism with beliefs in world domination.
Putting the homeless in the street, shameful
I trust all of the democrats who “work” at metro lose their jobs. I suggest they learn to code.
JoMa
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