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.
Solomon is not alone. As Weir reported, six of Metro’s 14 directors were absent during one of every five meetings, a 20 percent no-show rate. Even when they did make an appearance, some directors arrived more than an hour late or ducked out before the meetings ended in order to make phone calls. D.C. Administrator Neil Albert missed 24 board meetings — including the one on May 27 at which the Metro board approved major fare increases.
Board members are supposed to be public advocates on serious matters of safety, fiduciary responsibility and overall policy, but this lackadaisical attendance record is just another example of how lightly board members view their responsibilities. It also goes far toward helping to explain the board’s failure to ensure that Metro managers implemented past recommendations by the National Transportation Safety Board. Most important, it sheds light on why Metro managers got away for years with their indefensible lack of emphasis on making absolutely certain that maintenance and safety programs came first — even if doing so led to confrontations with the transit union.
Washington-area residents used to be justifiably proud of Metro, but the second-largest transit system in the nation now too often inspires pity and fear. Metro’s tragic — but by no means inevitable — decline is the direct result of hooky-playing board members who have grossly neglected their primary mission.
