A few weeks ago, I wrote a short list of what I thought a good general manager candidate for Metro might bring with him. I suggested that they come from a system that is smaller than our Metro but is innovative and creative. I also thought it best that the candidate not be from some federal agency.
With the selection of John Catoe Jr., I think the board of directors has filled most but not all of the boxes. The Los Angeles transit system is a bit of an afterthought, and I wonder how a person coming from that environment will really get how important our system is.
In Los Angeles, the bus system is more of a prop than a service — ever see the movie “Speed”? In Washington, the Metro is so much a part of our existence that we would collapse without it and, if it doesn’t grow with us, it will hurt our continued growth.
It’s nice that Catoe used to live here, but I can assure him that this city has changed a little since he last lived here. The pace is a lot faster than it oncewas, and the needs for good transit services are immediate and severe. It’s telling that a city four times as big as Washington has only a fraction of the transit service. We take this stuff very seriously because we depend on it for more than just a backdrop to somebody’s cinematic vision.
The thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet about Catoe is his work on new technologies in the transportation world. He has served as president of the Advanced Transit Vehicle Consortium, which is looking into fuel cells and other alternatives. He’ll be happy to see that we have hybrids and clean diesel and compressed-natural gas and even hydrogen resources. I hope that he makes these activities as big a part of the system as he has in the past.
If the only goal is to improve bus service, then I believe he’s going to be rather disappointed. The buses are what they are, and the chance to increase ridership is limited at best. The only real solution would seem to be increasing routes and frequencies to make the buses more attractive. The problem, as he will realize, is that the money to make all these things happen isn’t really there.
Speaking of Metro and of buses, I am happy to see that Metro is not making any changes in the 30 Route buses. These buses run rather long routes and the proposal was to break them into shorter routes. The truth is that the buses just need better scheduling. Realizing that the length of the route has an impact on scheduling, it is still ridiculous the number of times that 30 Route buses are bunched up in Tenleytown. The Pennsylvania Avenue 30s have some of the highest ridership in the system. Metro is NOT making the proposed changes because passengers attending public meetings told staff they didn’t want them, although they would like to see the service improved in general.
Questions, comments, random musings? Write to [email protected].
