The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Administration has picked a 26-year veteran transit official and former District resident to become Metro’s eighth permanent general manager. But don’t expect miracles.
Since 2001, John Catoe Jr. — son of a taxicab driver who grew up in public housing here — has been second in command of the $3 billion Los Angeles transit system, which just beat out 100 competitors for the Outstanding Public Transportation System of 2006 award that insiders call “the Pulitzer Prize of the transit industry.”
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Catoe has a reputation for being an “operations guy” and for asking employees to help find innovative solutions to problems on the job. That’s an important qualification, since he’ll find a lot of problems at Metro, only one of which is figuring out how to identify convicted murderers before they are hired as bus drivers.
Catoe made a total of $335,644 in L.A., and the Metro Board offered him a $360,000-plus package ($300,000 salary, $60,000 “living allowance”) to lure him back to D.C., more than L.A. transit chief Roger Snoble makes. But the big buck compensation sends the wrong message to a transit agency that’s in deep financial trouble, partly due to out-of-control labor costs and lots of unexplained overtime.
As Examiner “Sprawl and Crawl” columnist Steve Eldridge pointed out, some Metro bus and train operators take home more pay than the Metro Transit Police chief, who earns a hefty $145,000 per year! (A downloadable database of Metro employee compensation is available at the Washington Examiner Community Action Network: (www.examiner.com/documents/DC-Examiner/MetroSalaryFile.xls).
How does a guy who makes more money than virtually any local public official convince the transit union to hold the line on future raises for Metro’s nearly 10,000 already well-compensated employees? Quick answer: He doesn’t.
Unlike predecessor Dick White (who started riding Metro only after an angry public found out he never did), Catoe plans to commute by subway when he gets to D.C. That’s great, but he’ll also get a free Metrorail pass and a company-paid car, insulating him from fare increases and major system breakdowns.
Since 1982, total government transit subsidies totaled $48 billion, while transit’s overall share of work trips tumbled to 5 percent. Even in Washington where Metro is highly regarded, it accounts for less than 10 percent of total commutes. And without any budget changes, Metro subsidies will have to increase 20 percent by FY08 just to stay even.
The same thing is happening elsewhere. New York bus and subway ridership is also at an all-time high, but ballooning debt payments and a $1 billion deficit required fare hikes and service cuts in the nation’s largest transit system. Chicago (No. 2) is already running at a $300 million annual loss and needs $57 billion more over the next 30 years, only $19 billion of which will be covered by the federal government. Boston (No. 5) spends nearly a third of its annual transit budget on debt — despite getting a fixed percentage of the state sales tax.
Already drowning in red ink and escalating labor costs, none of these big city transit systems is even close to being self-sufficient. Yet many — including Metro — have multibillion-dollar expansion plans in the works. But don’t expect Catoe to engineer a return to reality. We’ll be happy if he keeps the escalators running.
