WMATA to destroy internal capacity by closing construction department

The more things change the more they remain the same. Congress forced the dissolution of the streetcar system in DC. A subway system was constructed in its place, although the two moves were not connected. By eliminating construction capability, is WMATA being as similarly shortsighted as Congress was in the mid-1950s? Horydczak Photo, Library of Congress.

From "Metro Announces Phase-Out of Construction Department," from ABC7:

Cost cutting efforts at Metro will cost about one-hundred of the transit agency's employees their jobs. General Manager John Catoe has announced plans to phase out the agency's Office of Construction as current projects are completed. Catoe says over the past 30 years, the agency has been involved in building and operating a transit system. He's now narrowing the focus to maintaining and operating that system. Future expansion projects of the Metro system will be coordinated by the jurisdictions where they take place. Catoe's shifting Metro's Office of Infrastructure Renewal Programs focus to improving bus facilities. That office will also look for ways to reschedule major rail improvements so available capital funds can be used for other needs. Catoe has been looking for ways to eliminate a $116 million shortfall.

We can see from the conduct of the creation of the "Silver Line" expansion to Dulles Airport that individual jurisdictions do not plan for the system, but for their own perceived needs.

For example, this expansion could (have) be(en) used to augur capacity downtown. See:
-- Riding on (and capacity of) the Metro
-- Dan Tangherlini and WMATA planning and DC planning
-- Blinking on urban design means you limit your chance for success; and
-- Transit without borders or five omissions "in" the Transportation Element of the DC "Comprehensive" Plan.

From the last entry, here's point one:

1. Regardless of the cost, the idea of adding capacity to the subway system, along the lines of the long since dropped separate blue line proposal from 2001-2002 (and earlier), needs to be put back on the table.The subway system is getting great usage. It needs more cars and a better intra-car seating configuration to get more throughput. But at some point, only so many trains can get through the system, based on the current configuration. One issue is the subway tunnel at Rosslyn. But another is that there are only two tracks. For redundancy and throughput purposes, this must be addressed.

Dan Tangherlini brought up streetcars as a way to improve intra-city transit, in response to the WMATA plan, because he said that it won't be possible to raise the money to create this separate line (which had two proposed H Street NE stations by the way). But it needs to be reconsidered.

"Coming to a Curve: Region's Subway System Begins to Show Its Age, Limits" By Lyndsey Layton, Washington Post, March 25, 2001;
"Crowds Could Derail Decades of Progress," By Lyndsey Layton, Washington Post, March 26, 2001;

From this article:

Many of Metro's capacity problems can be traced to its design. It was built as a two-track railroad, with five lines stretching from the city core to the suburbs in a hub-and-spoke arrangement.

The two-track design means big trouble when a train breaks down. The train has to be hauled down the track until it reaches one of just a few sidings where it can be pulled off the main track. That slows movement on the entire line and explains why a breakdown at Farragut North can affect passengers waiting for trains at Union Station."

We're like a two-lane country road with no breakdown lane," White said. The two-track railroad also prevents Metro from running express trains. And 24-hour service is out of the question, because Metro needs to shut down its system several hours a day to perform track maintenance. Larger systems such as New York's, which has up to six tracks at some stations, can perform maintenance on two tracks while running service on others, and can operate round-the-clock.

The other crucial flaw is the fact that four of Metro's lines share track for significant stretches. The Orange and Blue lines, for instance, merge at Rosslyn, then share track through a tunnel under the Potomac River and across downtown Washington until they separate at the Stadium-Armory Station.

Forcing the lines to share track cuts the capacity of each by half and is the main reason inbound Orange Line trains at, say, West Falls Church are standing room only during rush hour. Because a certain distance must be maintained between trains, there's a limit to the number of trains that can be sent down the Orange and Blue track each hour. Plans to extend rail service to Dulles and Tysons Corner may help ease crowding on the roads in an area that lacks rail service. But lengthening the Orange Line to Dulles will exacerbate crowding, by reducing the capacity of the Orange and Blue lines even further.

-- "Metro Construction Projects Creak to Halt; Economic, Political Changes Cancel Expansion Plans, Spur Job Cuts, Early Retirements," Lyndsey Layton. Washington Post, July 13, 2003. pg. C.01. (I can't find this story online.) From the article:

Metro headquarters pulsed with big plans. P. Takis Salpeas, the head of construction, was swimming in fresh designs: rail to Tysons and Dulles, a Purple Line that would circle the city, a rail line over the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a new subway line through downtown that would finally bring Metro to Georgetown and release the railroad's choke points.

That was two years ago. Today, those plans have largely evaporated, victims of a soured economy and fractured local politics. Metro is not building the next generation of transit -- it is barely able to run its existing system. As construction money dwindles from the current fiscal year through fiscal 2009, Metro's stable of well-regarded architects, engineers and construction managers will be cut from 237 to 23.

This move does not benefit the transit system as a whole.

This is bad. Very shortsighted.

I have been meaning to write a blog entry about a major negative consequence from outsourcing, which is a loss of internal capacity, not to mention disconnecting caring about quality from the profit motivation.

This is another example of how outsourcing doesn't help governments do better work. Why should the State of Virginia pay Bechtel to learn how to get better at subway projects? Why not capture that experience within the WMATA system, and then use that experience to do other good projects?