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WMATA knows what they're doing and have things under control. It's really getting tiresome to see people on this thread second guessing their every move.
5 years of broken escalators at one particular entrance to metro center shows they know what they are doing?
WMATA is a for-profit govt corporation with a monopoly product. Why would they bother fixing the escalators? Their only goal is to make as much money as possible.
All of these escalator outages pose a major god damn safety threat. If there was a terrorist attack or a fire or anything bad really, a lot of people would die simply because they wouldn't be able to get out of the station quickly enough. Remember the Dupont Circle farce a few weeks ago? The floor of the station where the escalators were was completely packed since two were out of service... and that wasn't even an emergency situation.
WMATA needs to be sued, or maybe have an Iraq pulled on them. Take out every person in charge and put someone new in there, preferably with brains.
Amen to that brother. WMATA is near collapse as far as functionality, utility, and certainly credibility. They need a real SOB with a mandate (paging Rudy Guiliani) to go in there with an axe.
Its not just the escalators- everything is falling apart.
WMATA is a for-profit govt corporation with a monopoly product. Why would they bother fixing the escalators? Their only goal is to make as much money as possible.
WMATA's not for-profit. Their only goal is to provide transit service throughout the capital region.
Amen to that brother. WMATA is near collapse as far as functionality, utility, and certainly credibility. They need a real SOB with a mandate (paging Rudy Guiliani) to go in there with an axe.
Its not just the escalators- everything is falling apart.
The rapid deterioration of the system is astounding, but shouldn't have caught Metro off guard. They had been deferring needed maintenance and repairs for years.
The rapid deterioration of the system is astounding, but shouldn't have caught Metro off guard. They had been deferring needed maintenance and repairs for years.
Quite true.
It actually mirrors what happened in New York. The same thing began in the mid-1960s and by the late 70s it was obvious. The City going broke (thanks John Lindsey!) did not help. Ed Koch began a massive rehabilitation program that continues to this day, but was paying dividends by the late 80s.
A more astounding analogy is that of Berlin's U-Bahn (subway). Here we have a system that is much, much older as well as much larger than the DC Metro. It obviously suffered from WWII and then was actually split in two along with the entire city when the DDR built the Wall.
Nonetheless, after Reunification in 1990, they reconnected and modernized it in no time. Then just got up and did it. They did not sit around casting blame or throwing their hands up in despair. They just did it.
I have never been a fan of Pat Buchannen. However, he said something a few years ago that has resonated ever since. In response to the chaos that was Katrina, he said the US was no longer a "Can Do Nation." Was he correct?
The rapid deterioration of the system is astounding, but shouldn't have caught Metro off guard. They had been deferring needed maintenance and repairs for years.
They don't have to do the maintenance--what else are you going to use to get around town--the shadow subway?
WMATA has it's own spending priorities, based on it's rational self-interest. They may have decided that providing above additional ground security in security hotspots like Gallery Place, or raising salaries to keep workers was more beneficial for their bottom line than doing maintenance on escalators that are just going to get broken again anyway.
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