Home

DC Metro’s Problems With Aging

Today, the Washington Post carries more of Metro’s whiny excuses for poor performance. For those readers who don’t live in DC, Metro has second largest and second busiest rail transit system in the country and transports nearly one third of the federal government to work.

The past week at Metro has been dismal with

track fires yesterday in the heart of downtown Washington, on Metro’s highest-ridership Red Line, and blackouts at several key downtown stations from a Pepco power failure ended a difficult week for Metro. The fires and blackouts yesterday followed a derailment and a heat-related track problem that caused disruptions and delays earlier in the week.

Most of these problems have been blamed on

The rail system, which opened in 1976, has reached the point where many components must be refurbished or replaced, and the strains are showing. As of yesterday, Metro reported 1,729 incidents that resulted in service disruption this year, compared with 1,564 for the same period last year, agency statistics show.

“It’s not brand-new anymore,” said Metro board member Peter Benjamin, a former longtime Metro planner and executive. “We need to be replacing track, we need to be replacing power and propulsion systems in the trains, and we’re reaching a point where we have to replace our oldest cars.

So is this news, Mr. Benjamin, you clown? Did it sneak up out of the blue and unexpectedly smack you in the face that you would eventually have to replace some of the components of this system as it aged? Don’t you wizards have any trolls down there who pay attention to this stuff before it reaches critical mass?

To be fair to Metro, the federal and state governments in the area aren’t really helping out much.

Metro is the only major transit system in the country without a significant reliable stream of funding. While transit systems that include those in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Philadelphia are guaranteed a portion of a gasoline tax, sales tax or other revenue to help pay costs, Metro must seek financial aid each year from the District, Virginia and Maryland.

But why are we waiting until things are broken before we ask for money to fix it?

We’re treated to other revelations in this article expounding on the need for more than two tracks in each direction. Thanks, Captain Obvious. This is one of the few areas in this country where the mass transit system is actually serving demand for the services and it isn’t disproportionately funded compared to its ridership. You don’t need to be a genius to figure out that we need to expand the system.

A quick perusal of Wikipedia will show you a half dozen expansion projects that are sitting on the shelf – the only one that seems to be moving forward is the Silver Line Dulles expansion.

WHY?

Who holds these people accountable? Since no one seems to directly fund them, I would say probably no one. The mode of operation probably resembles this: if a local government doesn’t feel that Metro is doing a good job, they just don’t fund things. The problem with this is that it punishes riders without punishing the morons responsible for this derelict system.

The problem extends beyond Metro too – the local governments that choose this weak-ass method of accountability are just as culpable.

This is awful. This is shameful. This needs to be fixed.

What we don’t need to hear are more whiny excuses about why an aging system can’t meet new ridership demands. We need to hear about how we’re clearing the dust off of the expansion plans and rolling up our sleeves to expand this system to meet the needs of its ridership.

We also need to establish some clear chain of responsibility for this mess and hold someone’s feet to the fire.

I have to suffer through this abysmal morass every day; the service on this system gave rise to the “outrage” in the title of this site. I’m starting to reach the limits of human endurance with this. I don’t think I could care one iota less about the excuses why things don’t work - I want them to work. I want them fixed. And I want politicians who have nothing but double talk and weak excuses to shut their mouths and solve this problem.

Captain Weak Ass Says: WMATA and I are kindred spirits - we’re both weak and poorly executed. Remember not to piss off Judd and Lewis. Till next time, I’ll still suck!