I’ve got a new post at Cato about the perennial problem of poor governance at Washington, D.C.’s WMATA Metro subway system, which on Monday suffered a smoke-in-tunnel accident that cost the life of a passenger and sickened many more. Excerpt:
If the cream of the nation’s political class, living within a 50 mile radius in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C., cannot arrange to obtain competence from their elected local officials in delivering a public service that’s vital to their daily work lives, what does that tell us about their pretensions to improve through federal action the delivery of local government services – fire and police, water supply and schooling, road maintenance and, yes, transit itself – in the rest of the country?
Reactions from George Leef (“it tells us that we should ignore them”), @jasonkeisling (“If it had been Uber, the gov would ban their service. But no need to address any problems with metro.”), and Christine Sisto/National Review. The Washington Post succinctly summarizes local outrage about the service’s failure to live up to its boasts of a “culture of safety”, while Washington City Paper, Aaron Wiener reviews Metro’s sluggish response to a series of previous safety crises and breakdowns.
A lot of literature — like this recent study cited by the Regional Plan Association — tends to confirm the idea that transit operations work better when governance is arranged so as to provide clear lines of responsibility and accountability. WMATA, which has gone through many general managers over the years, suffers from a weak, too-many-cooks board structure in which two each of eight board seats are filled by Maryland, Virginia, the District, and the federal government, along with another two alternates for each of the four jurisdictions.
On Wednesday morning at 9:15 a.m. I’m scheduled to be on Fox 5 WTTG Morning News television to talk about these ideas.
More: Michael Brickman, Flypaper. @politicalmath recalls when Metro got $200 million from the stimulus program to “create a safety culture.” Another comment from @jasonkeisling: “No accountability. Imagine if a private company had an incident like this…”
5 Comments
“@jasonkeisling (“If it had been Uber, the gov would ban their service. But no need to address any problems with metro.”)”
Of course there is no need to address any problems with metro, no one important got hurt.
So what should we do? Restructure the WMATA board? Privatize it?
“…transit operations work better when governance is arranged so as to provide clear lines of responsibility and accountability.”
Isn’t this true of every organization?
Bob
John, Bob: Yes (restructure and yes that things work better w. clear accountability). At least in private institutions, there is a clear incentive (profit) to do be accountable. Fail the customer and they go elsewhere. Can’t do that with a monopoly. Also – Government boards are NOT chosen / structured for efficiency in delivery of service, they’re chosen / structured to serve the political interests of those that oversee them.
My father worked for a privatized bus company that was taken over by the city and then the state.
I remember he loved his job in the private sector because he could focus on the riders and customer service. Once the government took over, people were running the company that had no clue to the management of a transportation company. The people had a job and it was darn near impossible to get rid of them, and that attitude flowed downhill.
Service went to pot and the only solutions that people came up with was to “throw more money at it.”
People were never held accountable for anything which in some ways is a problem in all government endeavors.