D.C. METRO GOES OFF THE RAILS: PUTTING WASHINGTON'S TRAIN SYSTEM BACK ON TRACK WILL TAKE MORE THAN BETTER BUREAUCRACY.

• Author: Britschgi, Christian

THE LEADERSHIP OF the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) sounded an optimistic note in summer 2021. The pandemic, the agency said, had a silver lining for the 117-mile rail transit system, which crisscrosses Washington, D.C., and reaches into the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia.

Radically reduced demand, it continued, meant WMATA could prioritize much-needed maintenance without crippling service disruptions. A steady flow of capital subsidies approved before the pandemic, coupled with emergency federal relief, meant the agency should have the resources to get the job done.

"The region's investment is paying dividends to our customers who are getting better service," said Metro's then-General Manager Paul Wiedefeld in an August 2021 press release. "Riders who are returning for the first time since the pandemic will see a more reliable train service than we've offered in years."

The headline of an equally optimistic Governing article on October 8, 2021, declared, "D.C. Metro: Once Off the Rails, Now Back On."

Four days after the Governing article was published, a Blue Line train derailed outside the Rosslyn station in Northern Virginia. A preliminary investigation pinned the accident on wheel alignment issues with Metro's brand new 7000-series trains. Regulators said that Metrorail staff knew about the issue for years but had failed to act on the problem. A few days later, safety officials ordered all the 7000-series cars, about 60 percent of Metro's fleet, removed from the tracks.

Metro was back off the rails again.

Wait times for trains, typically somewhere between five and 15 minutes depending on the line, often became 30 minutes in the immediate aftermath of the 7000-series' removal. Ridership plummeted to 1970s levels, when Metro first opened. With fewer trains in service, the cars that were still operating were often overcrowded.

As of October 2022, most of those 7000-series cars remain mothballed; long wait times continue to frustrate the small crowd of remaining riders. Officials kept promising a return to normal order, and kept delaying that return. No one could authoritatively say when the third-largest heavy rail system in the country would be back on track.

Public transportation has an inherently difficult road to travel in America. The speed and convenience of auto travel mean that most people who can afford to drive do. Low-density zoning near transit stations means fewer people live near them, leading to fewer riders. Funding arrangements that prioritize expansion over maintaining existing lines have left many systems with giant, service-disrupting maintenance backlogs. Buy American provisions, union work rules, and environmental review have helped make fixing anything, or adding new capacity, absurdly expensive.

Even so, D.C.'s main transit agency is uniquely prone to disaster.

"WMATA has these weird problems that no other transit agency, or even no other government, has," says Baruch Feigenbaum, a transportation researcher at Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this magazine.

The problems start at the top. WMATA's large, unwieldy board of directors requires consensus to make major decisions, but it is internally divided between representatives of the three local jurisdictions the agency serves. Instead of providing effective oversight or setting strategic priorities, it often busies itself in day-to-day operations better left to professional staff.

That professional staff, meanwhile, has been criticized again and again--in congressional hearings, post-accident investigations, and press reports--for a culture that prioritizes avoiding blame over achieving safety and smooth operations. Avoidable, service-disrupting issues continue to go unaddressed.

These internal problems have been exacerbated by a pandemic-era rise in remote work, costing the agency huge amounts of fare revenue.

Even the most well-oiled transit agency would struggle to respond to a pandemic that wrecked public transit ridership across the country--and few would describe WMATA as welloiled. The agency has a culture of dysfunction and disregard for the fundamentals of safety and passenger service, a culture that has persisted even as it has attempted reforms. Metro's problems aren't going anywhere.

BOARD GAMES

IN EARLY 2017, Fivesquares Development was in the final stages of negotiations to turn a WMATA-owned surface parking lot at the Grosvenor-Strathmore station in Montgomery County, Maryland, into a mixed-use apartment and retail development. To test out potential retailers for the project, Fivesquares wanted to host some pop-up stands that would sell food, drink, and flowers right in front of the station.

Metro staff supported the idea. But WMATA's eightmember Board of Directors--composed of two directors each from Maryland, Virginia, D.C, and the federal governmenthad to weigh in.

In February, the board approved Fivesquares' plan for a few afternoon shops outside the Grosvenor-Strathmore station.

In April 2017, Fivesquares and Metro staff were back in front of the board with a different type of request: to let the developer install a piece of loaned public art at the station's entrance. In...