Metro Plays Hooky Roulette

Government-​run mass transit is not merely a tragedy of inefficiency, in Washington, DC, the Metro has proved itself a danger to life and limb.

Five Metro workers have been killed on the job in roughly the last year. Before that, a June 2009 Metro train accident that killed nine people and injured seventy more. In a June 27 Townhall​.com column, I lamented that even after all these deadly accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board complained there remain “significant deficiencies in their safety culture.”

Now, thanks to a Washington Examiner report we find out that Metro’s deficiencies start right at the top. During the last 18 months, six of Metro’s 14 appointed board members have no-​showed for at least 20 percent of the meetings.

Vice Chairman Marcell Solomon, the board’s highest paid member, missed over half the meetings. Of course, D.C. Councilman Michael Brown was worse, skipping out on two-​thirds of the meetings in the same 18-​month period.

If this were a private business it would be going belly up from paying out large settlements for the death and destruction it has wrecked across the region, or shut down for gross mismanagement equal to gross negligence.

But Councilman Brown says he’s improved this year, only missing half the meetings. “My attendance hasn’t been great,” Brown concedes, “but my engagement has always been there.”

Metro trains keep rolling dangerously down the tracks with a politicized management that is asleep at the switch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.