Efforts to Repair Aging System Compound Metro's Problems

Chief Executive Richard A. White, who has been running Metro for nearly nine years, traces many of the problems to record numbers of riders, aging equipment and a railroad design undersized for the job. If Metro had more money, he said, he could fix much of what ails the transit system and restore its luster.

At the moment, Metro is seeking $1.5 billion from Congress. That would come in addition to $1.8 billion recently approved by local and state governments as part of an emergency plan to maintain the system and avoid what White terms a "death spiral" of deteriorating service. Metro is also campaigning intensely for a long-term source of funding, such as a regional sales tax, to buy rail cars and buses and expand stations to accommodate growth.

But a tight budget does not fully explain Metro's decline.

Management Problems

Post reporters spent six months reviewing agency records, many of which never had been made public because Metro considered itself exempt from federal, state and local public records laws. Under pressure to become more accountable, Metro agreed to release the documents and has revised its public records policy.

The documents portray an insular and often byzantine bureaucracy that operates with little outside oversight, spending tens of millions of dollars on promised fixes that don't turn out as advertised. Even when problems were flagged, the records show, little was done to address them.

Responding to those and other findings during the preparation of this series of articles, White has been announcing changes by the week in the hopes of solving problems that have festered for years.

"Every piece of dirty laundry we have, you've found it. And some problems I didn't know about -- you've probably found those, too," he said. "My job now is to demonstrate that we're not blind to this stuff, and we are fixing whatever problems need to be fixed."

After commuting to work for four years in his Metro-issued sport-utility vehicle, White in October resumed riding the system he oversees. In February, he announced the resignation of his second in command and reorganized the agency for the third time since taking the helm. He brought in outside experts to tell him how to operate the system more efficiently. And he ordered closer supervision of the programs to buy and overhaul rail cars, dispatching his most trusted lieutenants to solve the mechanical problems that have plagued them.

White said that his agency has lacked clear "lines of authority" and that about "25 percent" of Metro's woes can be traced to poor management. But he said his changes are beginning to show results. In April, for instance, the troubled new rail cars had their best month yet, helping Metro reduce the overall number of delays.

"These investments will pan out," White said. He said the system would be much worse off if the projects to upgrade cars and escalators had not been undertaken. And overall, he said, Metro is a safe, efficient system that serves its customers well.

But if it is going to meet the region's future needs, Metro must win the kind of ongoing, dedicated funding that goes to every other subway system in the country, he said. The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority, for example, receives about a fourth of its $8 billion annual operating and capital budget directly from a portion of the state sales tax and other levies.

By contrast, Metro has to ask for operating subsidies each year from 10 governments in the Washington area. That forces it to compete with schools, police and other municipal needs for funds. A 2004 Brookings Institution study found that, unless it gets a stable source of income, Metro will be condemned to a future of red ink.