House lawmakers tore into officials at the troubled Washington Metro rail system over the safety and service issues the agency has experienced in recent years.
Florida Rep. John Mica told top leaders of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority during an oversight hearing Wednesday afternoon that the agency’s problems are due to continued poor management, not a lack of funding. Mica reminded members of two House Oversight subcommittees the legislative branch has given Metro more than $783 million for capital improvements, which has not been spent.
But Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Reston, Va., defended Metro from Mica’s attacks, saying the hundreds of millions already has been allocated for major expenditures, such as new railcars and buses.
The hearing, the first since the system’s March 16 shutdown for emergency maintenance, is part of a years-long continuum of meetings among Metro’s board chairman, the Federal Transit Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and House lawmakers.
Lawmakers did not address the possibility that the Blue Line could be shut down six months for repairs. Instead, Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans brought up the elephant in the room nearly two and a half hours into the hearing.
“The question you haven’t asked me today is about the Blue Line,” Evans said. “If we close it entirely, I can do [repairs] in six months for $5 million. If we do half, it’s gonna take 18 months and $12 million. If I do it a lane at a time, it’s even worse. It’s convenience versus safety versus time versus money, and we have a region that has to decide that.”
But North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, chairman of the Government Operations Subcommittee, told Evans that was not an option.
“If I haven’t been clear before, let me be clear: Closing the Blue Line for six months is not an option. Do you understand me?” Meadows said.
Evans pushed back, “But what we’re doing now is also not working, which is the other extreme, three hours a night and on the weekend single-tracking. So somewhere between those two extremes, we have to come up with a …”
Meadows interrupted Evans, “You know I’m a numbers guy and I agree with you ’cause I went through and looked at the traffic … Actually we could close down the Metro on the Blue Line maybe at 10 at night, work all through the night and have it back up by 5 the next morning, have a normal work period, do more work on Saturdays and Sundays.”
He said under his recommendation, the number of people affected would be “infinitesimal compared to the 200 million” who use the system.
Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld is expected to introduce the agency’s plans for repairs in six weeks, a plan that Congress made clear in Wednesday’s hearin, they only want to go their way. Wiedefeld said last week that he did not see a need to close down any line for six months.
Evans also asked appropriators for an additional $300 million in operating funds, which would bring the annual subsidy for the agency to $1.2 billion since Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia currently pay $300 million every year toward the system.
