“Losing passengers and revenue, the subway system seems to lack a recovery plan.” So says the Washington Post in their editorial today.
Faced with a daily shortfall of tens of thousands of paying customers, Metro seems complacent, or possibly paralyzed…
In the fiscal year that ended in June, Metro averaged about 710,000 weekday riders — drastically short of projections for 900,000, set in 1999, and also short of the agency’s updated forecast of more than 800,000, made in 2008.
Some of us saw this coming but many of our politicians did not,
The problem is that Metro’s board cannot agree on a game plan, or even leadership qualifications for a new general manager, to treat what ails its rail service. One thing is not in doubt: The cost will be colossal, measured in billions of dollars. (emphasis mine) And it is anyone’s guess where those funds would come from in an environment where passengers, fed up with plummeting reliability, are loath to pay higher fares, and strapped regional funding partners are equally disinclined to increase their subsidies.
We all know where the money will come from, the taxpayers. Before Loudoun county even has one subway stop, we’ll be paying, and paying, and paying, to fix this mess that is Metro. Read the whole editorial and remember to thank the five members of the Board of Supervisors in Loudoun who stuck us with this ever expanding, and never ending, bill for this lemon of a subway system.
