When the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Agency opened its color-coded Metrorail system in the nation’s capital on March 27, 1976, it was hailed as the epitome of clean, safe and reliable public transportation. Since then, Metro has become a sick transit system whose rail car doors, escalators, and even supposedly “fail-safe” computerized track circuits are increasingly unreliable. People, including passengers and Metro employees, have died as a result.

How did it come to this? Look no further than former and current members of the transit agency’s board of directors, some of whom are so disengaged they don’t even bother attending most board meetings. As The Examiner’s Kytja Weir reported Monday, even vice chairman Marcel Solomon has missed more than half of the board meetings since January 2009. Any school child with a similar attendance record would be labeled as an incorrigible truant. Yet Solomon — who represents Prince George’s County — still collected $39,656.90 for serving part-time on the part-time board despite being AWOL 51 percent of the time.