Coverage of local news, a major focus of The Washington Examiner since it first began publication eight years ago, ends today. As Bob Hope used to sing, “Thanks for the memories.” We’ve had a good run. The Examiner was the first to quote a top Federal Transit Administration official’s warning that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Administration was billions of dollars short of needed maintenance funds. That warning went unheeded until 2009 when a Red Line crash killed nine people and injured dozens more.
The worst accident in Metro’s history was followed by a scathing report by the National Transportation Safety Board. It took a fatal accident to finally force the WMATA Board to address Metro’s serious safety issues, which it should have been doing all along, but didn’t, because the independent authority is not accountable to the public.
