WASHINGTON, DC — In response to the WMATA decision to close Metrorail on Wednesday, March 16 for an emergency equipment investigation, Coalition for Smarter Growth Executive Director released the following statement: “It took years for Metrorail to end up in this situation, where maintenance underfunding left us with the problems we see today. Clearly, we have a ways to go to repair Metro’s aging systems. The new General Manager Paul Wiedefeld has shown he is willing to take the tough and bold steps necessary to focus the staff on making the critical fixes the system needs, and to keep the system safe — in this case on an emergency basis.

Updated 7 p.m.

WMATA has closed the entire Metrorail system Wednesday to conduct emergency inspections of more than 600 electrical cable connections, the transit agency said.

The commuter rail system will be closed in D.C., Maryland and Virginia from midnight Tuesday through 5 a.m. Thursday. The Office of Personnel Management said federal agencies will be open Wednesday but employeeshave the option for unscheduled leave or telework.

Metro’s general manager, Paul Wiedefeld, announced the shutdown at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. Officials said it was the first time Metro would close all of its railways for any reason other than a weather emergency.

A fire on the tracks near the McPherson Square station led to major delays throughout the system Monday. The incident was traced to a faulty “jumper cable,” the same kind of electrical component that is believed to have malfunctioned last year and caused a train to fill with smoke near L’Enfant Plaza, killing one passenger and sickening dozens.

National Transportation Safety Board investigatorsidentified the need for the safety fix last year, and last June Metro’s top engineer Rob Troup cautioned that repairs requiring track shutdowns during daytime hourswould be necessary.

Wiedefeld said the threat to life is low in this case, but he was taking no chances with the safety of Metro riders and staff.

The ripple effects

Almost anyone who needs to navigate D.C. on a weekday will be affected by the decision, and there will be far more cars on the road than usual. Authorities were urging commuters to have patience. In a nod to the increased usage of roads, WMATA said parking would be free at all Metro-owned lots and garages Wednesday.

D.C. Public Schools announced they would still be open Wednesday, and were working with Metro to offer additional bus service. Tardies and absences will be excused, the school district said. As of Tuesday evening, a handful of the city’s public charter schools had canceled classes. About 87,000 students attend some form of public school in D.C.

The D.C. city government also will be open.

The VRE rail service announced it will continue to operate normal service Wednesday. The Maryland Transportation Authority said all three MARC rail lines would be operating at full service with “limited extra capacity.” Bus users should be prepared for delays because of heavy traffic, MTA said.

One type of vehicle will definitely not be on the city’s roads: The District will not send out street sweepersWednesday.

Tough decision, strong reactions

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a written statement that the shutdown highlights the need for “a permanent Metro safety office with real teeth.” The secretary has been outspoken in pushing for the transit agency’s jurisdictions to create such an entity. “While this shutdown is inconvenient, they are doing the right thing by putting the safety of their passengers and workers first,” Foxx said.

Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Virginia Democrat whose district includes thousands of federal workers, called Metro’s decision “a gut punch to the hundreds of thousands of commuters who depend on the system.” In an an interview with WAMU 88.5 News, he called it a “sad, sad day.”

An advocacy group said it was hopeful the Metro closure will encourage elected officials to support more public funding for mass transit system maintenance. The Coalition for Smarter Growth, which says its mission is to promote pedestrian- and transit-friendly communities, said in a news release that Wednesday’s unprecedented shutdown is the result of maintenance underfunding through the years.

The group credited Metro leadership for taking the “tough and bold steps” to shut the system down for an inspection.

The shutdown is likely to be a boon for taxi and ridesharing companies. Roy Spooner, general manager of Yellow Cab of D.C., said he’s calling in extra staff to help take phone calls. He sent word to his drivers to get ready for Wednesday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Photo courtesy of Martin Di Caro. Click here to read the original story.

Metro passengers and local lawmakers were trying to shake off their shock and plan alternative commutes for Wednesday morning after authorities announced that the region’s sprawling rail system would close at midnight and remain completely shuttered for 24 hours.

The Office of Personnel Management said that federal government employees could telework to avoid what could be crippling traffic jams in the nation’s capital, but several local school systems, including D.C. Public Schools, announced they would remain open Wednesday, posing a challenge for students and teachers who depend on Metro to get to class.

Metro’s unprecedented closure immediately drew complaints and concern. Riders asked why Metro hadn’t announced the shutdown earlier in the day Tuesday to give passengers more time to plan for a midweek standstill, and some said they are worried about what the episode says about the system’s overall safety.

Many in the Washington region were left with a simple quandary: How would they get to where they need to go on Wednesday without Metro, the linchpin in a public transit system that connects the District and its traffic-choked Maryland and Virginia suburbs?

“It’s going to affect our workday for sure,” said Henrik Sundqvist, who lives with his wife in Arlington, Va. Because the two have one car between them and work in opposite ends of the region — he in Dunn Loring in Fairfax County and she in Anacostia in the District — he said he has no idea how they would get to work.

The closure, which will allow Metro to inspect the lines amid concerns about the system’s electrical cables, might disrupt hundreds of thousands of lives Wednesday, but officials said it was in the interest of not putting anyone at risk on the rails.

Former U.S. transportation secretary Ray LaHood praised Metro’s leadership, including General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld, for putting safety first.

“When you discover a potential threat to safety, you must do everything in your power to act,” LaHood said. “While the shutdown is obviously disruptive to the daily commutes of many Washingtonians, it is far better to be inconvenienced than to risk another life-threatening incident.”

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) also said he supported Wiedefeld’s decision to “take whatever steps are necessary to keep Virginians safe.”

But he and many other local, state and federal lawmakers said that the shutdown should serve as a wake-up call that Metro is a troubled agency in need of serious reforms.

“It is deeply disturbing that the system is in such a precarious state that it must be entirely and abruptly shut down during the middle of a workweek,” Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) said in a statement. “This is a stark demonstration of a total agency failure.”

In a statement, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called the closure “an astonishing admission that safety has not been the priority it needs to be at WMATA,” the Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Rep. Gerry E. Connolly (D-Va.) said the announcement, which he learned of from a note passed to him on the House floor, was a “gut punch” that raises many questions.

“Was there no alternative? Is this, moving forward, how we’re going to deal with major repairs when something happens?” Connolly said. “Safety has to come first, but this must be an extreme situation to justify shutting down the entire system. And when you shut down Metro, as my colleagues here are going to learn tomorrow, you essentially shut down the federal government.”

Lawmakers from outside the Washington region took notice, as well. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a noted transit advocate, said he was “deeply concerned” by the shutdown of a system that serves members of Congress, their staff members and the federal government at large.

“It’s a very serious signal,” Blumenauer said. “We’ve known that there have been problems for a whole host of reasons. . . . But I am hopeful that everybody in Congress pays attention to that, because we all live here a third of the time. This transit system is the transit system for our employees, for the federal workforce, and it’s in desperate need of everybody’s attention.”

Were his hometown of Portland to shut down its light-rail system on a weekday, he said, “it would have extraordinarily serious consequences.”

Jim Dinegar, president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, said he is concerned that the shutdown will have a chilling effect on tourism in the short and the long term. Metro’s inspections on Wednesday could turn up new problems that further shake public confidence in the troubled rail system, he said. “They won’t find good things,” he said. “They’ll find risks.”

Many Metro advocates and passengers said the shutdown is a sign of the need for greater public investment in the system.

“We will see on Wednesday just how important Metro is to our region,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. “We hope that the ongoing chal­lenges facing Metro will prompt our elected leaders to work together to provide the funding necessary to fix long-standing maintenance and rehabilitation problems.”

During Tuesday’s evening commute, passengers were just beginning to grapple with how important Metro is to them on a daily basis — and in particular how important it would have been to them Wednesday.

Janice Williams, a house cleaner from Hyattsville, Md., said she will have to take three buses to get to work Wednesday. She was frustrated but said she is glad officials erred on the side of safety.

“It sucks that it has to happen, but you don’t want to worry about people getting hurt,” Williams said, sitting on a concrete bench in the Metro Center station. “There could be worse things.”

Michael Laurion, 26, who is in town from Dallas for an accounting conference in Arlington, said he had planned to take the Orange Line on Wednesday morning from his downtown hotel.

Now the only thing he knows for certain is that he will be late.

He said he still loves the District and is even thinking of moving here. But the fire that paralyzed three Metro lines on Monday and now the 24-hour shutdown have given him pause about the city’s public transit.

“It makes me wonder how safe, I guess, it really is,” Laurion said.

Others received the news with resignation, having been disappointed by Metro many times before.

Heather Bodenhamer, 24, said she has experienced her fair share of delays and poor service and smoke on the tracks during the past five years. She used to travel from Rockville, Md., to Clarendon in Arlington for work, and because of frequent Metro troubles, she had to leave her home two or three hours early to ensure she would arrive at work on time.

“There were so many times I was late to work,” she said. “It’s sad how unreliable it can be. You never know what’s going to happen.”

Heidi Schriefer said she considers herself one of the lucky ones. She has several options for commuting to work and won’t be terribly thrown off the by the shutdown. Instead, she plans to take a bus from her home in Old Town Alexandria to her office in downtown Washington.

“A lot of other people won’t be able to make it in,” she said. “It’s just irritating that they announced it last minute, on a weekday, and it will affect the whole system.”

That, she said, is the Metro trifecta.

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Metro’s new general manager outlined a broad agenda in his first major remarks since taking the job in November, promising to improve rail service for customers and create transparency across the troubled transit authority.

Speaking at a luncheon televised live on CSPAN-2 from the National Press Club, Paul Wiedefeld said Metro’s problems are worse than the public has been led to believe, but his focus will be on short-term fixes to convince riders that their time and safety on the rail lines are paramount.

Metro is “not coming out with a five-year plan. We have those things in place. It’s really about the nuts and bolts of where we can start to make changes that can impact the customer,” Wiedefeld said.

On Sunday the new boss of the second-busiest subway system in America, whose bus and paratransit arms combine with rail to employ 13,000 people, posted an open letter to riders outlining a 28-point plan to fix rail operations and Metro’s shaky finances. Now, the challenge is convincing labor unions, politicians, and riders to go along with it.

“We’ve called for a team effort. The general manager is doing his part. Obviously the management that work for him and the line staff have to do their part, and the unions, the business community and most importantly, the elected officials,” said Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a transit advocacy group.

Jim Dinegar, the president of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, a business group, also applauded Wiedefeld’s comprehensive approach.

“Metro is the economic engine that drives this region and without it we are crippled,” Dinegar said. “It is not lost of me that [ridership] has really slid. That is a very big concern. We are not just losing them to Uber. We are not just losing them to bikes. People have had shaken confidence in Metro. We have to restore that confidence.”

Much of Wiedefeld’s remarks touched on the system-wide problems detailed in a consultancy’s report obtained by WAMU 88.5 last month. The consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, is expected to provide a series of recommendations in the coming weeks, but Wiedefeld already is implementing changes to his upper management team with promises to overhaul an ineffective management structure at WMATA.

Among the new general manager’s near-term challenges is reigning in unsustainable expenses, which mostly are driven by growing labor costs. The contracts for three unions, including ATU Local 689 which represents about 8,000 workers, expire in June. Negotiations are expected to ramp up soon.

Photo courtesy of Martin Di Caro. Click here to read the original story.

You don’t have to be a Metro rider to know that the region’s  subway system is in trouble. In fact, that’s why many of you have stopped riding.

A quarterly report — prepared by staff for Metro board’s finance committee meeting on Thursday — says ridership in the second half of 2015 remained at levels not seen in more than a decade.

So we decided now might not be a bad time to ask a bunch of smart people what Metro should do to restore confidence in the system and reverse a ridership decline that looks pretty bad.

How bad? The report is “unrelentingly dismal,” as our colleague Dr. Gridlock put it. Ridership fell 6 percent on weekdays in the second half  of 2015, compared with the same period 2014. Weekend ridership fell 12 percent.

The drop affected virtually every station, every time period, and every type of trip. The usual culprits — bad weather, say — couldn’t be blamed for the pervasiveness of the decline, either. More likely explanations were service problems, such as increasingly erratic train schedules, the report says. Riders, meanwhile, have pointed the finger at other issues, such as safety or security.

In  any event,  ridership hasn’t  been this low since 2004.

So Tripping asked a leader of the new Metro riders union, a smart-growther, a community activist and a few others what they would suggest. Here, with some editing, are the Top 10 things (or five or six, or seven things, depending) that Metro should focus on to halt its skid:

Graham Jenkins lives in D.C. and is an everyday Metro rider. He boards the Silver or Yellow lines, depending on his work situation. Graham, who hopes someday to ride in a 7000-series car, also happens to be vice chair and communications director of the WMATA Riders Union. Here’s what he has to say:

• Run trains more often during off-peak periods. Period.Running trains more frequently would win riders who currently don’t see Metro as a viable option. It would also help space out weekday commuters, alleviating the pressure on normal rush hour service.
• Cut all fares by 10%. Riders are no longer receiving the service they’ve paid for. For many, the prospect of interminable delays and offloads now outweighs any savings provided by riding. Reducing fares would certainly cut into revenues, but this would to some extent be made up by increasing ridership. And that unto itself would go a long ways towards reversing the “death spiral.”
• Develop a pass system that makes sense. Right now, every trip – save for those few who purchase the wildly expensive, 28-day-only “monthly” pass for $237 – is on a pay-per-ride basis. This makes every ride, essentially, a discretionary one. By offering an unlimited monthly pass for a reasonable price (and an entire month), WMATA could encourage trips beyond just those of the commute. And it would also ensure itself a steady source of revenue rather than losing money every time it snows, for instance.
• Make police more visible. While the overall odds of being attacked or harassed remain low, there are mounting fears that Metrorail is becoming more dangerous to one’s personal safety. By stationing more visible Metro Transit Police officers on trains and at “hotspot” stations, riders would gain some reassurance that their safety is being looked after.
• Run more buses. Much like rail service, bus service outside of peak hours is woefully infrequent. For many, trips would be better served by bus than rail, especially those within D.C. or a given jurisdiction; yet, the infrequent and delayed buses do not seem like a suitable alternative. Running more off-peak buses would provide people with better alternatives to rail service, particularly in the event of delays. Running supplemental buses on routes that coincide with rail lines undergoing track work would also be of great use.
• Run only 8-car trains on weekends. With fewer trains in service less frequently, there’s no excuse for not maximizing the capacity there is. Waiting 20 minutes for a train, only to see a six-car train pull in that’s standing room only, is one of the most infuriating aspects to off-peak Metro. And, obviously, the rail cars are available.
•  Be transparent. This covers a lot of ground. But, more specifically, announce a timeline for the remainder of track work and give an explanation for its distribution (as opposed to focusing on single segments until everything is done). What’s left to be done? Where? Why not do it all in one section at once? We still don’t have answers to these questions, and without a light at the end of the tunnel, it’s hard to hold out much hope that track work and reconstruction will end. Ever.

Paula Bienenfeld is an archaeologist, a consultant and president of the Montgomery County Civic Federation. Paula  lives within walking distance of North Bethesda’s White Flint Metro station on the Red Line and rides regularly.  She says she and her husband made a deliberate decision to purchase her current and previous homes to be within walking distance of Metro.

“This system used to be one of the best in the world — but now, not so much,” Paula says.

Here’s her list:

• Make safety top priority. Implement effective, regular safety training for employees, and make sure they have it and make sure the training is repeated at least bi-annually.  Follow up.
• Improve communication with riders. When trains are halted or delayed, have the conductor explain immediately what the situation is and why the train is stopped. Right now I go to @unsuckdcmetro [on Twitter] to find out what’s going on. Also, get rid of communication “dead zones”  (see point No. 1).

• Listen to the feds. Metro must address issues that outside auditors and the federal government are saying need to get done.
• See that your employees work as a team, and take ownership. The other year when it was snowing, there were bags of snowmelt on the platform, and people were slipping as they came off the train. It was a dangerous situation.  I went upstairs to ask if they would open the bags and sprinkle the snowmelt on the platform.  The answer was, ‘We are operations. You have to get maintenance to do that.’  So, the bags just sat there.
• Make Metro a clean, well-lighted place. Improve the lighting in the stations. Keep the stations–and the cars–clean.
• Fix the signage on the trains.  In cases where two lines run on the same track, the commuter, and the tourist, needs to know which train is arriving.  Many times the electronic signage on the outside of the car doesn’t work, and it’s not possible to identify the train.
• Use recorded messages to announce every stop.  This is done in the Chicago “L” system, which began in 1888, and works very well.  In Washington, we still have announcements that are interrupted and full of static, and no one can understand them. How is it that a system that is well over 100 years old has a better message system than our Metro?
• Put more maps in the trains.  Right now, there is mostly advertising where there needs to be Metro system maps.  If there is no room, place smaller maps on the dividers at the doors so that people, especially tourists, can figure out where the stops are, and where they are.
• Fix your clocks so off-peak fares are really off peak. Don’t charge rush hour prices when rush hour service is not being delivered.

As a former Navy aviator, Stewart Schwartz flew around tracking Russian submarines. Now he keeps an eye on urban sprawl. He is executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a 19-year-old nonprofit that focuses on land use and transportation. Metro is a big priority for the group, and Stewart says he tapped his staff to come up with these ideas:

• Make real-time train arrival information more accurate and available. Arrival times should be available at station entrances to allow riders to decide their best transportation option before descending into the station. Metro should also make sure arrival time information is accurate and synchronous — across stations, across PIDs (the screens), and apps. It should also change how real-time arrival information is displayed on screens:  instead of filling the whole screen with delays and announcements, scroll some information across the bottom of the screen so that arrival times are always visible.
• Let people know when arrival time isn’t accurate. Riders should be able to know when real time arrival information isn’t accurate, especially because of single-tracking and delays. Correct the information by making announcements.
• Do better with Twitter. Metro should ensure that someone is staffing WMATA’s social media accounts 24/7, or at least during all hours when bus or rail service is running.
• Consider shutting down whole sections for repairs instead of  single-tracking. If single-tracking isn’t allowing fast enough progress on system repairs, consider closing portions of the rail system for longer periods to complete all backlogged maintenance in that closed section. Get it done, and then reopen with full service.
• Communicate better with us. Metro should do more to tell riders about the purpose, duration, and benefits of all track work by using announcements, signage, the WMATA website, social media, and regional media. While travel delays will still be frustrating, they will be infinitely more tolerable when riders have this information — thereby building more trust and understanding, and winning WMATA the support it needs to address other issues.
• Communicate better among  yourselves. Metro needs to improve its internal communications, promote more information-sharing within the agency, and instill a stronger safety culture. Every employee is a safety officer, and safety must be in the forefront of everyone’s thinking.
• Work more closely with local governments on building transit-friendly neighborhoods. Metro needs to improve the joint development process with local governments, accelerating the redevelopment of WMATA property and surrounding land into walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods. Building out transit-oriented development will generate more riders, fare-box revenue, and property taxes, and it will help reduce regional traffic congestion.
• Find the money. The restoration of Metro cannot happen without adequate and consistent funding. Start an open and inclusive dialogue with the public and elected officials about funding challenges and solutions.

Randal O’Toole is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who writes about urban growth, public land, and transportation issues. He lives in Camp Sherman, Ore. (pop. 233) but visits Washington often. He has ridden Metro, studied it and written about the region’s mass transit here, here, and here. He is the author of Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It. He is also wearing some very cool-retro Western neckwear in his bio blurbfor Cato. Here’s what Randal has to say: 

• Stop building rail lines the region can’t afford to maintain. The Silver Line is a disaster, hurting ridership on the Blue Line without adding large numbers of riders itself. Rather than learn that lesson, Metro endorsed the Purple Line, which will only draw more resources away from Metro Rail’s critical maintenance needs.
• Replace obsolete rail lines with buses. As Metro rail lines wear out, replace these with modern, efficient buses. Buses on a high-occupancy freeway lane can move more people than a Washington subway line, and adding a new bus line doesn’t reduce the capacity of other lines the way the Silver Line reduced the capacity of the Blue Line. Most important, bus capital and maintenance costs are much more affordable than rail, and buses can be just as, if not more, attractive to riders as rail with on-board WiFi and a higher percentage of people comfortably seated rather than standing.
• Let the computers do the driving. On rail lines that aren’t immediately replaced with buses, Metro should put a higher priority on restoring the signaling and computer systems that once controlled train speeds. The lurching, stuttering human-driven trains since the 2009 fatal collision are uncomfortable to riders and offer little assurance that trains are safer than when they were run by computers.
• Privatize. WMATA should contract out both rail and bus operations to private companies such as First Transit, Coach, Virgin, or Veolia. Experience in other cities has shown that private operators can save agencies a considerable amount of money, freeing up funds for rail maintenance and bus improvements.
• Get a sponsor. WMATA should seek corporate or other sponsors of individual rail stations. In exchange for maintaining elevators and escalators, keeping stations clean and attractively decorated, and perhaps even paying for station staff, sponsors would have naming and advertising rights at the stations.
• Forget dedicated bus lanes.  As Metro develops bus-rapid transit routes, it should avoid the mistake of insisting on expensive and underutilized dedicated bus lanes. Except possibly where numerous bus routes merge in downtown Washington, such dedicated lanes are completely unnecessary. Transit riders are more sensitive to fares and frequencies than speeds, so the best way to boost ridership at a low cost to taxpayers is to offer reasonably priced bus service on major routes at least every five minutes during rush hour and every 10 minutes during other times of the day.
• Work to convert HOV lanes to bus lanes. In order to have a broad network of bus-rapid transit lines, WMATA should support the construction or conversion of high-occupancy lanes (either free or tolled) along every major highway into and around D.C. Such lanes are a low-cost way of both relieving congestion and providing congestion-free bus routes throughout the region.
• Make buses more rider-friendly: try “branding” them. One reason some people say rails are better than buses, despite their higher cost, is that rail lines are more “legible,” meaning it is easier to figure out which line to take to a particular destination. That’s only true because there are fewer rail lines than bus lines. But one solution is to paint buses on different routes different colors. This makes it impossible to substitute buses from different routes for one another, but as former FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff notes, paint and buses are cheaper than trains.
• Follow London’s example: up top, people. Consider double-decker buses for high-use routes. Unlike articulated buses, which are long and clumsy, double-decker buses occupy no more road space than a standard, 40-seat bus, yet can carry twice as many people.
• Put your financial house in order. WMATA has more than $2.5 billion in unfunded pension and health-care obligations. How will it fund those obligations if it doesn’t have enough transit riders to justify continued subsidies? [And O’Toole warns that shared, self-driving cars are going to do to mass transit what Uber and Lyft have been doing to taxis.] If WMATA doesn’t start to solve that problem now, it will likely end up defaulting on those pension and health care funds.

Stephen C. Fehr is an officer at a nonprofit in Washington, and a Metro rider for 33 years. He also happens to be a former Post reporter who covered the transit agency from 1991 to 1996. Here are Steve’s thoughts:

• Keep to promised headways. What damages Metro’s credibility the most is the failure on many days to deliver rush hour service at the promised intervals between trains. If Metro can’t stick to its advertised schedule, change it to be more realistic.
•  Improve the public address system in stations and trains. One of my fears living in Washington in an era of terrorism and deteriorating subway safety is of being a Metro passenger during an emergency and failing to hear instructions in stations and trains. It boggles my mind that Metro has failed to keep up with sound technology or that federal homeland security officials apparently have not ordered fixes. No train should leave a rail yard without a working, clear-to-understand PA system, and Metro should do a sound retrofit of its stations.
•  Make fare increases more predictable. [W]e never know when or how much Metro is going to hit us with a fare increase. Consider instituting a multi-year fare plan in which you raise the base fare, say 5 or 10 cents, on July 1, 2017 and every two years thereafter. The predictability benefits riders and Metro.
• Stop scolding riders for stuck doors. Metro riders did not design the rail cars with the super-sensitive doors. We know most other transit systems do not have this problem. It is reasonable for an operator to firmly ask passengers not to lean on the doors but it is out of line to berate them for halting the train because of a flawed design.
• Enforce the no eating/no drinking rule. We’ve come to expect riding dirtier rail cars than in the past. Contributing to this is the lax enforcement of no eating or drinking rules. Riders know they can get away with it.
• Take care of the little things. On many weeknights, here’s how Metro says goodnight to Silver Line riders exiting at Wiehle Avenue: Train pulls into station and stops. Riders get up and walk toward the doors. Operator then “adjusts” or pulls the train forward a few feet on the platform in a jerky, start-and-stop manner. Startled riders lurch forward, grumbling as they leave the train. Many operators do give warning, but not always.

Kathy A. Gambrell lives in Bethesda. As a “content strategist” in a local business, she uses Metro three or four times a week to meet with clients in downtown Washington, D.C.  Here are some of the ideas she emailed after reading Tripping’s original post:

• Open your ears to the community, riders, the feds, everyone.Stop being tone-deaf.
• Jump on the shuttle buses so people can too. Mobilize the shuttle buses — lots of them — as soon as a Metro station shuts down for a problem, such as a loss of power. Then tell riders exactly where they are….not where they are “supposed to be.”
• Cut fares–especially monthly passes. When it costs anyone anywhere more to ride Metro than to drive everyday, then the fares are too high.
• Set a uniform policy on young riders for all jurisdictions. Montgomery County has a Kids Ride Free Program that allows free rides on buses and certain routes for children under the age of 18 (or older if the person is still attending high school). The young person has to register for a Youth Cruiser SmarTrip Card. In the District, young people can get a DC One Student Card. In Prince George’s County, students can present proper ID to take advantage of TheBus after school dismissal on regularly scheduled school days. There should be a universal policy for kids who use the local transit systems and Metro.
• Improve customer relations. Have a system to file a complaint about bad customer service that gets results. Give riders who have had a bad experience a reason to return as a customer.
• Discipline bus drivers who are verbally abusive. You have cameras, and they should watch more than the passengers.
• Ditch the posters threatening to throw people in jail for not paying bus fare. It makes Metro look petty and inflexible. Give drivers flexibility to offer free rides when it is appropriate.
• Practice what you preach. Require Metro’s board members to ride the bus on the coldest days of the year or in rough neighborhoods.

Elizabeth Young, who has worked for the federal government for 20 years, lives in Friendship Heights and rides Metro’s Red and Yellow lines to her job in Crystal City. Her top three priorities:

• Improve safety. Do what the feds and auditors tell you to do.
• Increase the numbers and visibility of security personnel.
• Arrive on time.

“Would I get on an airplane or AMTRAK train that had Metro’s problems?” she writes. “No way. I don’t understand why we allow these ticking time bombs to continue.”

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We’re happy to hear your nominations, too. If you have a Top 10 list of what Metro should focus on, please send them to Tripping c/o fredrick.kunkle@washpost.com.

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