Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., said Tuesday that private companies should be allowed to help fix Washington, D.C.’s broken Metro, which will run on a reduced schedule over the next year in order for repairs to be made on the system’s infrastructure.
Comstock said at a Tuesday hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that she has discussed the maintenance issues facing the system with businesses that “tell us we can do this at lower cost than we are currently paying.” However, she said the current union labor agreement prevents the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority from contracting out maintenance services.
She suggested such restrictive policies may make it so the system does not have “the flexibility to realize the cost savings of contracting out track work and having the best people at the best price to do this work.”
“We need to find new ways to run this rail,” she said at the hearing.
Comstock said federal data shows WMATA is 120 to 150 percent more expensive than comparable transit systems. She concluded that reform efforts cannot continue to simply throw more money at the system, and instead must consider creative structural changes.
