Metro’s new guard met for the first time in February, eager to demonstrate that they could repair the region’s grand but aging subway system — and keep it running at the same time.
But there was a problem with that, according to the newest D.C. appointee to the 14-member Board of Directors, Tom Downs: midnight to 3 a.m. service on weekends was making it hard to repair tracks during off-peak, early-morning hours.
He suggested the possibility of scaling back or curtailing that service, which had long been zealously protected by District board members. Downs was breaking free of convention — and dropping a bombshell.
Such thinking will need to become standard fare on the board if Downs and six other newly appointed members are to put the financially strapped Metro, which turns 35 on Sunday, back on track. Their first order of business will be to take hold of Metro’s massive six-year, $5 billion rebuilding program.
The seven new members, appointed since December, represent the biggest changing of the guard in the board’s history. They join the first two federal appointees, who arrived just over a year ago. Two more are expected to be named in coming months, bringing the board’s membership to 16. Congress mandated those four seats in return for dedicated federal funding.
Although any curtailment of midnight to 3 a.m. weekend service was shelved, the new members are nonetheless staking out aggressive positions on issues ranging from crime prevention to random bag inspections. They are going to extremes to emphasize a regional approach — illustrated by Downs’s proposed cutback of weekend service. And they are adopting a more strategic view of Metro’s long-range problems. Meanwhile, they have embarked on a plan to redefine the board as a policymaking body, after criticism in two recent reports that the board tends to be parochial and micromanaging.
The new board members represent a mixture of skills, including current and former elected officials, government and university administrators, transit experts and those who know little about Metro. They are unified, however, in recognizing that the next two or three years of their tenure will mark a critical juncture for the Metrorail system, the nation’s second busiest, serving about 750,000 people each weekday.
“The challenge is how we all guarantee that this system is still around in usable form for the next generation,” Downs said.
If anyone has a clear view of how far Metro has declined since the shiny new rail service opened with a 4.6-mile segment of the Red Line on March 27, 1976, it is Downs.
A veteran transit industry professional, Downs was chief executive of Amtrak in the 1990s, and chairman of the New Jersey Transit board.
Thirty years ago, he also served on the Metro board. At that time, the challenge was how to fund and complete the construction of the system. Now, he says, it’s basic maintenance.
The Metro board has already asked the system’s new chief executive, General Manager Richard Sarles, to provide a long-term assessment of the time required to complete track work and maintenance on the rail system, as well as critical safety upgrades recommended by the National Transportation Safety Board. Until recently, such work was ad hoc and planned only a few months in advance. In addition, the board is updating Metro’s strategic plan, which is obsolete and has not been revised since 2001.
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