The chairman of Washington’s beleaguered Metro system called Wednesday for the transit agency to be taken over by the federal government, saying there is no other way to fix the problems facing the major regional subway.
Jack Evans, who is also a D.C. Council member, is recommending that a federal control board be created as the only way to raise the money necessary to fix the system’s safety and reliability problems, while cleaning house and firing employees.
“The remedy I recommend is a much smaller board, and the one that comes to my mind is the control board, where you had five members appointed by the president,” he said at a meeting Wednesday. The current board is divided among D.C., Virginia and Maryland, which make up the interstate compact that controls and funds Metro, as well as the federal government.
“You have to have extraordinary powers — that’s the key,” Evans added. “You have to be able to negate contracts, fire people and restructure without outside interference.”
Evans has long called for the federal government to pony up more money for Metro, as a major user of the system.
Evans made the comments while responding to a question about an editorial in Wednesday’s Washington Post that recommended a federal takeover as “a radical step to arrest what looks increasingly like a death spiral” for the transit system.
General Manager Paul Wiedefeld, who took over a year ago, on Sunday proposed raising fares, cutting service, laying off 1,000 employees and asking the jurisdictions for more money in an effort to make up an expected $290 million shortfall in Metro’s next budget year, which begins July 1. Critics said the proposal would lead to a “death spiral” for the system.
Ridership dropped 11 percent in April-June from a year earlier, before the agency’s SafeTrack maintenance program, kicked off in earnest.
