President Obama said Thursday he wants the Washington Metro to get its act together because he might become a rider come January.
Obama has an interest in the transit authority that runs Washington’s subway system, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, cleaning up its house because “he could soon be a customer, a passenger,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said on Thursday.
The Obama family plans on staying in Washington after Obama leaves office in January so his youngest daughter, Sasha, can finish high school at the city’s elite Sidwell Friends School. That could force Obama to trade in helicopter rides on Marine One and jet jaunts on Air Force One for trips on the subway, but one that has been plagued by delays and is in the middle of a year-long repair effort.
“The president believes that a well-functioning transportation infrastructure is important for the capital region,” Schultz said. “There’s no question we need real solutions here,” Schultz said about the system’s dire safety and financial problems. “This is a transit system that needs to get its house in order, but it doesn’t help that Congress has stalled funding for what has traditionally been a bipartisan priority.”
On Wednesday Metro’s chairman, Washington City Councilman Jack Evans, proposed a federal takeover of the teetering system.
Metro implemented “SafeTrack,” an intensified maintenance program that seeks to accomplish three years’ worth of work in one year, after it was forced to implement an unprecedented 29-hour shutdown in March on the heels of several fires.
Delays associated with the program have forced ridership down six percent, exacerbating the transit authority’s financial hole, which could reach $1.1 billion by 2020.
