Metro interim manager Dan Tangherlini says he has accepted a “once in a lifetime” opportunity to help presumptive mayor Adrian Fenty run the District of Columbia government as city administrator. Tangherlini — former head of the D.C. transportation department — has been as popular and responsive as his predecessor was not; unlike Dick White, he actually rides Metro’s buses and trains, talks to his employees and has been widely praised for improving customer service in a transit agency practically legendary for its absence. Fenty is moving wisely in recruiting Tangherlini to help bring the politics of accountability to District government.
But Metro Board Chairwoman Gladys Mack — who favored Tangherlini as White’s permanent replacement — was surprised. “My heart is broken,” she said melodramatically, as though Tangherlini had just announced his own demise rather than a job switch. What’s more likely broken is her plan to tilt the balance of power on the six-member board D.C.’s way. In July, the two board members from Virginia balked at hiring the 39-year-old Tangherlini without assurances that he would be, in the words of Fairfax Board Chairman Gerry Connolly, “an enthusiastic cheerleader” for the controversial $4 billion Dulles Rail extension, just like Connolly himself.
Tangherlini’s imminent departure gives the Metro Board another opportunity to hire someone willing and able to make the kind of systemic reforms that Tangherlini may not have been able to accomplish. Like its trains, Metro’s problems run deep. What they all have in common is management’s stubborn neglect of basic maintenance and safety issues on the existing system while they focused almost exclusively on expanding Metro’s range.
Poor planning and even poorer resource allocation are the reasons why eight-car trains are still not running every rush hour at stations designed to handle them more than 30 years ago. Even adding 50 new railcars by the end of this year will only bring the total of eight-car trains to a pathetic 20 percent — in the nation’s second busiest subway system. With ridership increasing 40 percent over the past decade, Metro officials failed to purchase more railcars to alleviate overcrowding because their focus was being diverted elsewhere.
Poor management also explains why Metro hired a convicted killer to drive one of its buses, spent $58 million on a communications system that still doesn’t work properly and racked up more than $70 million in overtime in 2006 alone. Tangherlini has made some notable improvements during his brief tenure, including posting Metro’s internal audits and contracts online for the first time ever, adding advertising screens in the subway tunnels to raise revenue and even letting riders use credit cards to exit Metro parking lots.
Given the national talent pool of people with hands-on experience running big-city transit agencies, the obvious danger is that the Metro Board — which should have been monitoring the $1 billion, 10,000-employee system — will recruit a Dick White clone who is oblivious to the need to change Metro radically one department at a time and fire anybody who stands in the way. An outsider is more likely to pull this off and be able to return Metro to what it once was — a beautiful, well-run transit system that Washingtonians brag about.
