Will nine deaths lead to a better governance, oversight, and management system for WMATA? Or not?

A few weeks ago I wrote an entry commenting that the focus on WMATA not having a dedicated funding stream misses the real point about overall governance, management, and oversight.

The fact that BART in the San Francisco Bay region is overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission, while WMATA has no real regulatory oversight is troubling.

The Post editorializes about this today, in "Unsafe, Unaware, Unscrutinized: Is Metro's lack of effective oversight contributing to its safety problems," in response to Sunday's article about the equivalent of a voluntary oversight board with no authority, the Tri-State Oversight Committee, in the Sunday paper, "Subway Safety Panel Foiled by Constraints: 12-Year-Old Oversight Committee Has Little Influence."

It might not be so bad if absolute excellence was demanded throughout the organization. It's not.

I think it's clear that getting rid of the engineering and construction people (partly in 2003, and then after the current General Manager came on board, see "Metro to Cut Construction Staff to Help Close Budget Gap" from March 2007 and "Improved Safety and Service Are Focus of Reorganization, Chief Says" from April 2007, from the Post) likely has removed a level of expertise within the organization concerning rail operations.

Recent failures in the S-Bahn system in Berlin--none of the failures led to casualties!!!!--resulted in wholesale change in the management of the transit system. See "Safety Issues Ground Hundreds Of Berlin S-Bahn Trains" from the German radio network NDR. From the story:

The executive management of S-Bahn Berlin was asked to resign this past week: included among the casualties are Tobias Heinemann (chief officer), Thomas Prechtl (head of finance), Olaf Hagenauer (personal director) and just recently hired technical director Peter Büsing.

Allegedly the company ignored a safety directive issued by the EBA, the German equivalent of the U.S. FRA, after the May 1^st incident in Berlin-Kaulsdorf station. The EBA required that the company perform a repetitive inspection of all wheels of similar design as the failed wheel every seven days. The company assured the EBA that it would comply with the new safety directive, but an audit by the EBA on the 29^th of June determined that the company had mostly ignored the safety directive.

The problems with WMATA have led Maryland's MTA to back off from saying that the Purple Line would be integrated into the WMATA transit system and managed and operated by WMATA after it is constructed. See the Dr. Gridlock column from Sunday, "Purple Line and Metro: Will They Work Together?," versus the letter from then Maryland Secretary of Transportation Porcari to the Town of Chevy Chase from May 2008 , which stated:

2. The fare and transfer policy for this corridor has not yet been established. The MTA views the Purple Line and Metrorail system as part of an overall system of transit service in the Washington area. Future policies, should the Purple Line be constructed, are expected to reflect that view and include the use of modern fare collections methods such as Smartcards. Therefore, the report’s assertion regarding full transit fares for both systems in calculating the cost of a transfer is a policy decision that cannot be assumed;

which can be construed to imply that WMATA would end up integrating this light rail line into its transit system, comparable to how after the Dulles corridor (Silver Line) extension is constructed not by WMATA but by the State of Virginia it will be integrated into the WMATA subway system.

Not now, or at least not while WMATA's management capabilities are called into question. (And remember the concerns expressed by the Federal Transit Administration over the expansion of the system via the Silver Line, versus WMATA focusing on current operations, "Feds Slam Dulles Rail Project" from the Dr. Gridlock Get There blog.)

This is what I wrote on July 27th:

Missing the real issue about WMATA

The Washington Post editorialized, in "A Broken Metro‎," once again about how all of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's problems have to do with the lack of a dedicated funding stream.

Nothing could be further from the truth, as the newspaper's own reporting ought to be communicating to us.

Here are the issues with WMATA:

- general vision and leadership
- the governance structure (members appointed to the board by the various jurisdictions that are members of the WMATA Compact--but too many of them have overly constrained worldviews about what they are doing and who they truly represent)
- the lack of a real system of regulatory oversight*
- funding of current operational deficits**
- funding of capital improvements***
- management of the organization
- operation of the organization
- how the organization treats and serves riders.

* The article in the Post about how BART has a redundant train control system to ensure that all trains are accounted for on the system at all times off-handedly mentioned that BART is under the oversight of the California Public Utilities Commission. See "Sister Transit System Took Steps to Counter Hazard: BART Saw Circuit Problem At Center of Metro Probe."

From the article:

Shortly after BART started operating in 1972, it installed a backup system. Initial tests of the main train protection system failed to detect the presence of a train in a few instances, according to Mike Healey, a longtime BART spokesman who retired in 2005. A subsequent 1972 BART accident involving a train that mistakenly received a command to double its speed instead of slowing down, sending the train off track and into a parking lot, was the catalyst "to have some redundancy to back up the primary train protection system," Healey said...

Willard Wattenburg, an electrical engineer and inventor retired from the University of California at Berkeley, said intermittent failures were frequent on BART in the early 1970s. Wattenburg analyzed BART's initial design for the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates transit systems, and crafted some corrections. BART officials at the time said the failures were flukes, but regulators insisted on the design changes. .

This used to be the case for the old streetcar system, which was overseen by the DC Public Service Commission.

There needs to be a joint commission, with appointees from DC, MD, and VA, to oversee the system and ensure that it meets the highest operational standards.

** Dedicated funding is important but is more focused on managing annual operating budgets. The cost of providing transit is greater than farebox and other revenues. Therefore, funds are provided by the member jurisdictions of the WMATA "Compact" to make up the difference.

*** While the annual appropriations include some money for capital improvements, it's never enough, especially when it comes to system expansion, or replacing large amounts of rolling stock.

Dedicated funding gets at just a little bit of the issues that are in play with WMATA generally.

We can argue that the accident is an indicator of a far bigger systems failure than the circuit system.

That's what we should be coming to realize as we are learning about the systematic failures of this system and the neglect of dealing with it--something that predates General Manager John Catoe.

See "Investigators: Metro equipment at crash problematic for 18 months," "Investigators examining glitches around system" AND ESPECIALLY THIS STORY "Metro operator: Recent crash failure echoes 2005 near-miss" from the Examiner.