Tag: Metro

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom responsibility too much government

No Other Options?

Washington D.C., metro, repairs, closed, government, waste, efficiency, accountability

Long I have criticized the Washington, DC, Metro — the transit authority in our nation’s imperial capital — most recently in March. But I am foursquare in support of the government body’s recent hazard warning: “Only take Metro if you have no other option.”

Good general principle.

But what’s the particular occasion? There will be “Major 24/​7 Construction Activity” for 15 days in mid-​August. The service is advising usage of buses and even freely-​provided shuttle services to compensate for commuters stuck in the repairs.

Christian Britschgi, writing at Reason, actually dared ride one embattled line. He found what you might expect: a long history of lazy, perverse incompetence at Metro, bordering on corruption. When concrete started falling from the ceiling at one station in 2016, “an internal investigation … uncovered Metro safety inspectors at the station had taken to just cutting and pasting positive evaluations from prior year reports instead of actually checking for damage in some hard-​to-​reach areas of the station,” Britschgi explains

This is the kind of thing you expect to find in government. Why? Because we don’t allow government projects to go under, even after repeated and massive failures. Ignominy.

Should we be shocked, though? No. Spectacular non-​success is close enough for government work. Markets work better because of important communication via profit and loss. Without that stick of loss, governments just take our taxes as their carrot. 

Not a whole lot rides on actually serving riders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard nannyism porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Bailing on Mass Transit

mass transit, metro, cars. low income, recession

Around the country, our major metropolitan transit systems have hit the skids. “Between 2016 and 2017, ridership fell in each of the seven largest transit markets,” the Washington Post informs.

You might guess that the reason for declines in ridership might have something to do with bad planning and poor service. Washington, D.C.’s Metro system, with which I am all-​too familiar, is a horror … run by people I wouldn’t trust to sweep your driveway much less mine, and certainly not to manage how I get between those (or any other) two locations.

But the Post quotes an urban planning scholar who attributes the decline (in part) “to increased car ownership, particularly among low-​income and immigrant populations, who were in a better position to afford cars following the Great Recession.” 

This puts planners in a pickle since, he explains, if “low-​income people are doing better, getting the ability to move around like everyone else, it’s hard to say that what we should do is get them to remove themselves from their cars and back on trains and buses.”

Shockingly sensible — especially coming from a planning specialist. “Transit systems should deliver quality service to low-​income people,” he insists. “But low-​income people do not owe us a transit system.”

Well, maybe that’s the problem, this notion that governments “owe” this service to “low-​income people.”

After all, web-​based services like Uber and Lyft have shown how market innovations provide the best ways to move millions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Who Should Steer the Bus?

Metropolitan mass transit systems run buses and light rail trains. There’s not much evidence they do it well.

But boy, do they know how to spend money!

Now that the economy has hit the skids, tax revenues are down and metro boards across the country are hurting for money. King County, in Washington State, is no exception. The Metro system there has a multimillion dollar shortfall in funds, and the board threatens to cut services by 17 percent unless more revenue gets raised.

The Metro board suggests a tax hike — what they call a “congestion tax” — on cars.

Tim Eyman, the Evergreen State’s number one tax-​hike watchdog, argues that the voters should get to decide whether to increase taxes to fund existing levels of bus service.

Great idea. Consent of the governed and all. 

It’s amusing to read accounts of the debate over the proposed tax. Once again, we hear stories of bus after bus running without being anywhere near full.

If metro buses were my business, I’d want to make sure it ran in the black.

But with government, alas — relying on taxes for continuous bailout — that’s not even within the bounds of polite discussion. 

And while it might make sense to run some buses on a fixed, reliable schedule, other buses could be supplied to commuters “as needed.” With modern technology this is eminently doable.

But first, let citizens decide how much money they really want to throw at the system.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

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.