Crazy Train

New at Reason: Hurricane Isabel gives a new mission to D.C. public transportation—making people stay home. Charles Paul Freund explains.

Comments

[Sir Real]

Mr. Mountain- meet Mr. Molehill.

[Jason Ligon]

Is it as big as PATRIOT or globalization? No.

Does it speak in at least a brickbattish way about mission creep and the mentality of the nanny state? Absolutely.

Invariably, public services become excuses to restrict private decisions and petty dictators roam the countryside.

[joe]

Huh? It's good for Metro to shut down to keep people safe, but to do it early is inappropriately stepping into areas of morality, because...why? Because the people who get stuck without transit still have several hours to get home before things get dangerous? Because it will keep people even safer? Don't you think closing when winds hit 40 mph is designed to limit people's ability to ride the Metro, just as much as closing earlier?

I could see slagging Metro on practical grounds, but I'm not following the overarching philosophy of government angle here.

[Jason Ligon]

Joe,

The point, to me anyway, is what is the purpose of public transportation and what is the job of the transportation official?

Shutting down the trains when the wind hits 40 mph IS a matter of safety (not least for Metro employees), but shutting down earlier is about encouraging preferable behavior that may or may not make sense to individuals. I don't need a transportation official telling me that I should go home now, I only need him to run trains that I was told would run reliably.

This is a hypothetical me, as there I in general don't support public transportation anyway.

[Warren]

This is just SOP for government agencies. It's all about the pork. I'll bet dollars to donuts that metro employees are unionized and got paid for not working.

[bennett]

Can't you just let us make fun of the government?

[Lazy, No-Good Union Member]

This is just SOP for government agencies. It's all about the pork. I'll bet dollars to donuts that metro employees are unionized and got paid for not working.

You're right! Those damned unions are just too powerful and devious, willing and able to singlehandedly close down the public transit system for a large U.S. metro area just so their members could have some free time, see a movie, play golf, whatever. I'll call them what they really are: anti-American Osama lovers.

[Jason Ligon]

Lazy,

Unions were perfectly willing to shut down shipping to the West coast for two weeks to prevent the docks from adopting the latest in 1982 technology - a barcode system.

Your sarcasm is lost on me ...

[Keith]

OK, devil's advocate.

Which of these scenarios leads to minimum civil chaos:
1) METRO: The metro will be closed six hours in advance of the storm. You can COUNT on it.
You: Damn, I can't get to work. Grumble.
2) It's 11 PM, you're on the platform, and you and your washingtonian cohorts haven't seen the train in an hour and a half. You're cold, wet, hungry and tired, there's no one around, and then the power goes out.

Now here's a question: are there any design documents or covenants anywhere in the Metro's paper universe that nail someone with accountability? An engineer's report on the weather resistance of the infrastructure, or a level-of-service agreement with city government, what may pass for a PUC in DC, or the congressional committee that runs the district?

And what ever happened to the selfless service part of public service (heh heh, yeah, I know who my audience is here 🙂 )? Like they said back in the day in the Coast Guard (well, US Lifesaving Service): "the book says you have to go out. It doesn't say anything about coming back"

[Douglas Fletcher]

Anyone who's lived in DC for any length of time should know that Metro is very bad at making judgement calls about anything. Think back to the escalator maintenance problems, when they decided to skimp on the maintenance of escalators which, big surprise, came back to haunt them when the escalators started breaking down. One poor fellow even had a heart attack and died because he tried to walk up one of those mile-high escalators at a station where all of the escalators were broke down at once. This wasn't some lardo slob, either, as I remember it news reports said he was apparently fit and exercised regularly.

About the union connection, remember this was a decision that was made by management, not by the union. Still, lazy and hostile are words I would use to describe a good many Metro employees I encountered over the years.

But DC is the best city in the world, so don't worry about it...

[Keith]

I hear they're particularly draconian about beverages (coffee in lidded cups; bottled water) on the Metro. Viva SEPTA!

[Random Numbers]

Having ridden the DC Metro and busses, I'd have to say tht their very existence encourages me to stay at home (or get a car..the Beltway isn't THAT bad..)

[s.m. koppelman]

It's cute to see Mr. Freund holding up Miami's maligned, inadequate white-elephant mass transit system as an example of "doing things right". It's easy to have a policy like Miami's when you have a transit system like Miami's: one that's all above-ground so flooded tunnels aren't an issue, one that's a tiny fraction of the size and extent of metro DC's, one that has a daily ridership on its busiset day that's far, far lower than any single DC metro line's on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I can't help but think--maybe unfairly--that Mr. Freund sees the Metro as this magical thing in which doors open in some genteel suburb and after 20 minutes of magical rumbling, open again in Dupont Circle.

If the DC transit authority waited until 40 mph sustained winds hit the area, what then? Would they have trains empty out all their passengers at the next stop and leave them to find their way home? Do they leave the trains where they are in tunnels that may well flood, or do they route them back--at reduced speed in the high winds and rain--to depots, and then when winds have reached 60 miles an hour and sheets of rain are falling sideways, do they wish the conductors and dispatchers and maintenance staff the best of luck for a trip home that many normally make on the Metro?

In Miami, at least, the mass transit staff doesn't have this last problem. Metrorail serves very few residential areas, and the ones it does serve are largely affluent these days. I'd reckon most of the dozen or so conductors and dispatchers involved in running the city's piddly rail transit system drive to work.

[Reyes Oscar]

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DATE: 05/20/2004 06:43:58
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