Tag Archives: Washington DC

Some called it the Great Society Subway, and like a metaphor for the failure of Lyndon Johnson’s grandiose plans, the Washington Metro Rail system is slowly breaking down. No less than the Washington Post calls it “a slow-rolling embarrassment whose creeping obsolescence is so pervasive, and so corrosive, that Washingtonians are increasingly abandoning it.” System ridership is down by 5 percent from a year ago even though other transit agencies in the region have seen growth.

“Last Monday morning, all five Metrorail lines were beset by mishaps, the second such one-day calamity in three weeks,” the Post editorial continued. “The comatose escalators; the crumbling ceiling at Farragut North, year after year after year; the funereal lighting; the frequent signal problems; the routine single-tracking that makes weekend Metro use torturous–all of this takes a toll on riders that Metro officials too blithely dismiss.”

Metro’s general manager gets paid $350,000 a year to watch the trains and rails rust away, and as if that isn’t enough next year Metro’s board is giving him a raise to $366,000. One excuse for such high pay for what amounts to a failure is that it wasn’t all his fault; but really, why should managers of rail transit agencies get paid so much more than managers of agencies that only run buses?

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Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood says that Washington DC’s Silver line is a “model” for “other places in the country.” Let’s see:

Is the line over budget? Of course.

Will the new line disrupt service on other transit lines? Totally.

Is the region building new rail transit lines even when it doesn’t have enough money to maintain existing lines? Absolutely.

There are some glaring holes on this roster, and Pioli viagra vs generic is responsible. Components: Revita is sodium lareth/lauryl you can try these out order viagra online sulfate (SLS) free. It prevents neurodegenerative tadalafil tablets prices diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s from developing. It is termed priapism, a prolonged erection. purchase viagra Is the line being built mainly for the benefit of a few developers? I would say so.

Is the rail line being built by an agency known even to LaHood for its corruption? Yep.

Is the rail line being funded by stealing money from other transportation users? Naturally.

That’s quite a model you have there, Mr. Immobility.

“How many Washington Metrorail employees does it take to change a lightbulb?” a friend who would probably rather not be named asked recently. “Three: one to screw a lightbulb into a faucet, one to assure the public that the system was safe, and one to explain to the media why this proves Metro needs a dedicated funding source.”

The good news about last week’s derailment is that it probably was not due to the poor maintenance that plagued the Metrorail system in 2009. Instead, it appears that the driver of a train ran a red light. The train then entered a side track where it ran into a safety device called, naturally enough, a derail, aimed at preventing a train from going where it wasn’t supposed to go.

This still leaves a mystery. Did someone see that the driver was blowing the red light and purposefully switch the train to a side track? Was there a failsafe system no one remembers? Or was the switch in the wrong position in the first place, meaning the train would have derailed even if it hadn’t blown the light?

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Some people have even suggested spending untold billions of dollars “snowproofing” the Metrorail system, as if that would be enough to keep the government from having to shut down on the very rare occasions when a particularly large snowfall hits the capital city. After all, less than 20 percent of commuters who live in Washington, and less than 10 percent of those in the DC urban area, take Metrorail to work. Since nearly three out of four urban-area commuters drive to work, it would make more sense to spend a little more money plowing the roads.

Of course, I don’t find it particularly upsetting to hear that the federal government has been shut down, since it mostly means that busy-bodies inside the beltway will fall behind in their efforts to regulate everything that people outside the beltway do. The more snow days, the better.