A tenure of failure doesn't deserve encomiums: Paul Wiedefeld, WMATA CEO

WRT the encomium, maybe Wiedefeld did the best he could do.  But it's not enough.

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Almost two weeks ago, I wrote about how transit failures in the DC metropolitan area don't just have negative impact on transit within that area, but nationally, as transit opponents use failures in one place as justification for opposition for transit creation in other communities.

-- "Sometimes you have to wonder if transit/transit projects are being deliberately screwed up to make transit expansion almost impossible"

WMATA, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, operator of the Metrorail subway/heavy rail system serving DC, Northern Virginia, and Montgomery and Prince George's Counties in Maryland, has been in failure mode for more than ten years.  

Brochure, February 2000

Part of it wasn't the system's fault per se, but the failure of board members and jurisdictions to fund necessary quantum system maintenance as the system aged--they were warned.  In the 1990s, system planners warned leaders and stakeholders that this would be required in the coming years.

But nothing was done until the system started failing.

Since 2009 the system has been in perpetual crisis, when a signals failure resulted in a train crash killing 9 people--and the crash was "merely" the denouement after multiple signal failures over preceding years that fortunately hadn't resulted in death, but weren't seen as an indicator of system failure.  

But the problems haven't stopped, system service degradation as a repercussion of the system failure, tunnel fan failures (abetted by inspection failures) leading to another death, operational failures of various types, and over the past few months, a failure to address derailment/wheel problems in the 7000 series of cars which resulted in 748 cars being taken out of service, and the Metrorail system basically grinding to a halt.

Although WMATA did respond to the signals failures and need for substantive overhaul by creating the SafeTrack program to execute various system improvements (although at short term cost of closing sections of the system while repairs were made).

But the failure of the 7000 series cars is an illustration that the problems in WMATA operations go far beyond "a state of good repair."  The problems are structural, systemic.

Just after I wrote the piece, the CEO of WMATA announced his forthcoming retirement ("Metro’s general manager to retire after six years as top executive") and a few days later the Washington Post editorialized that he's great and restored the capacity, confidence, and the ability of the system ("Paul J. Wiedefeld’s tenure at Metro").

I don't think the writers ride the system much.

Wiedefeld is an experienced airport manager, but I think his tenure at WMATA demonstrates the necessity of a highly experienced rail transit professional to run the system.  

Just like his predecessor, a super experienced bus administrator, demonstrated the need for a highly experienced rail transit professional to run the system. 

(And maybe commenter charlie is right that we can't expect WMATA to run both rail and bus service excellently, that buses will always be second to rail.  See "Reviving DC area bus service: and a counterpoint to the recent Washington City Paper article," 2019).

I think this headline from a WTOP radio story is more accurate.  

At best the system is in stasis, with a repeated track record of failure over the past 10+ years, and rebuilding the confidence in transit and the consensus of the importance of transit is key.

The subway had been key to DC and Arlington County's resurgence, including residential and business attraction, and significant reductions in automobile traffic.

DC especially should be worried, not only about covid and its impact on the qualities that make urban living attractive, but about the likelihood of Metrorail recapturing its capacity to be successful.

Conclusion: What is to be done?

1.  Fix WMATA.  The first order of business is to hire top notch executives to run the system, people with experience in heavy rail, high volume transit service.  And then overhaul the agency from top to bottom.

-- "Getting WMATA out of crisis: a continuation of a multi-year problem that keeps getting worse, not better," 2015
-- "More on Redundancy, engineered resilience, and subway systems: Metrorail failures will increase without adding capacity in the core," 2016
-- "Reviving DC area bus service: and a counterpoint to the recent Washington City Paper article," 2019

Note that the first two entries were written at the outset of Wiedefeld's appointment, and I wouldn't say that WMATA is more stable and effective compared to 2015.

In Philadelphia, NBC10 is running a survey on the quality of the local transit service there ("SEPTA Riders: Tell Us What It's Like to Take Public Transit").

2.  Rebuild the regional consensus about the value of transit.  In 2009 after the crash, and in 2014, I suggested that the region needed to rebuild its consensus on the importance and value of transit.

-- "St. Louis regional transit planning process as a model for what needs to be done in the DC Metropolitan region,"
-- "WMATA 40th anniversary in 2016 as an opportunity for assessment"

This need is even greater now.  

3.  Create a regional transport association to plan, manage, and deliver transit and mobility services.  Also, I've argued that the metropolitan area/region should reconfigure how it manages, plans, and operates transit, along the lines of the German VV model.

By default WMATA is the main transportation planner and it shouldn't be.  

-- "Don't over focus on "fixing" the WMATA Compact. Instead create a new Regional Transit Compact, of which WMATA is one component," 2017
-- "The answer is: Create a single multi-state/regional multi-modal transit planning, management, and operations authority association," 2017
-- "Route 7 BRT proposal communicates the reality that the DC area doesn't adequately conduct transportation planning at the metropolitan-scale," 2014

Although in the US, I've argued that such associations need to have a more expansive membership, and include for profit providers when appropriate ("Another example of the need to reconfigure transpo planning and operations at the metropolitan scale: Boston is seizing dockless bike share bikes, which compete with their dock-based system," 2018), airports ("Transportation demand management gaps, Salt Lake City International Airport and car sharing," 2021), and even highway operators ("Washington Post letter to the editor on repair-related closure of Rockville and Shady Grove Stations and corridor management," 2021).

-- "DC is a market leader in Mobility as a Service (MaaS)," 2018

4.  Elect the Board of Directors.  And that WMATA's board should be popularly elected, and treated as members of local government systems ("Why not elect DC's representatives to the WMATA transit agency board?," 2019, "Should DC's representatives to the WMATA Board be popularly elected?," 2014).  Eg., DC's elected board members to WMATA should serve on DC Council's transportation committee as ex officio members, and on a city transportation commission if one existed (item 9, "How I would approach organizing the DC master transportation planning process and plan," 2013)..

But this should be extended to the entire board, and include the representatives from Maryland and Virginia too (Virginia jurisdictions in the WMATA Compact mostly have transportation commissions already. Rockville, a part of Montgomery County, does also.)

5.  Fix funding.  I have also written that it was unfortunate that when the system was successful, the jurisdictions didn't come together and vote for permanent sales taxes to fund the system (""Let's Talk" -- What to do when your transit authority needs more money?: Washington region edition," 2014).  Now with the system's repeated failures, not to mention Republican Governors in Maryland and Virginia, it's almost impossible to believe that this could be accomplished.

6.  Expand and intensify the transit system.  You can't have a transit city without continuing to expand and intensify the system.  But WMATA only cares about Metrorail, and to some extent regional bus service.  That's why a transport association is key.

WMATA isn't interested in other modes, be they streetcars, light rail, railroad passenger services, etc.   For example, the light rail Purple Line will be run by the Maryland Transit Administration (as is the Takoma Langley Crossroads Transit Center) because WMATA wasn't interested.  (To extend the point made by Ted Levitt about GM in the book Marketing Imagination--WMATA isn't a transit/transportation "agency" but an operator of heavy rail and bus services.)

-- "Update to the Paul J. Meissner produced integrated high capacity transit map for the Washington metropolitan area," 2017
-- "One big idea: Getting MARC and Metrorail to integrate fares, stations, and marketing systems, using London Overground as an example," 2015
-- "A new backbone for the regional transit system: merging the MARC Penn and VRE Fredericksburg Lines," 2015
-- "Setting the stage for the Purple Line light rail line to be an overwhelming success: Part 2 | proposed parallel improvements across the transit network," 2017
-- "Using the Silver Line as the priming event, what would a transit network improvement program look like for NoVA?," 2017
-- "A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for a statewide passenger railroad program in Maryland," 2019
-- "A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for the Metrorail Blue Line," 2020
-- "Metrorail shutdown south of AlexandriaNational Airport would have been a good opportunity to promote ferry service," 2019 (speaking of ferry service, "Ferry to D.C.? New analysis underway," Inside NoVA; note fwiw, there have been ferry studies off and on since 1992)
-- "Will buses ever be cool? Boston versus the Raleigh-Durham's GoTransit Model," 2017

-- Georgetown Gondola proposal (which isn't necessary with a separated blue or silver line)

WMATA has come up with some ideas of its own for Metrorail expansion ("The Blue Line Could Go to National Harbor One Day," Washingtonian), and they're better than previous iterations, but not expansive enough.

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What's a transport association?  In 1960, transportation planners in Hamburg realized that transit riders didn't care who provided what service, whether it was a bus, subway, train, or ferry in the core of the city or in the suburbs, that riders wanted an efficient and inter-connected set of transit services that was logically and comparatively easy to use.

At the time they started--and it took five years to get the organizations to agree to work together--it took as many as seven different providers and fares to get from one end of the region to the other.

-- HVV, Hamburg Transport Association
-- "HVV Celebrated 50 Year Anniversary, City of Hamburg
-- "Verkehrsverbund: The evolution and spread of fully integrated regional public transport in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland," Ralph Buehler, John Pucher & Oliver Dümmler, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation (2018)
-- Transport Alliances - – Promoting Cooperation and. Integration to offer a more attractive and efficient Public Transport, VDV, the association of German transportation associations. (NOTE: clicking on the link triggers a file download.)

The city planners organized the transit providers into a single association and began the process of integrating services, schedules, and fares, and creating a separate planning and coordination system. Who offered what service was determined by who could do it best--in any case, transit planning was separated from transit operations.

Two agencies, Hamburg Hochbahn (subway and bus) and Deutsche Bahn/S-Bahn (commuter railroads) provide the bulk of the service, and a third, HADAG, ferry services. But 30+ operators provide services within the system, mostly bus, but also exurban rail services--the City-State of Hamburg is a partial owner of many of these services.