The streets around Capital One Arena were filled Wednesday night with a sea of people in red making their way to celebrate the raising of the Capitals’ first Stanley Cup banner.
Volunteers all, the members of Metro’s Riders’ Advisory Council give up one night per month to try to make Metro better. They’re people like Katherine Kortum, the group’s chair, who rides the Yellow or Green Line every day from Mt. Vernon Square to work by Gallery Place.
On this night, for their efforts, Metro gave them a small container of broccoli and carrot sticks, some sort of packaged dip and some cookies.
And the heave-ho.
For 13 years, the council has at least provided the pretense that Metro officials care what riders think. It’s a pretense, Kortum said in an interview after the meeting, because when the group weighed in on service cuts, “we would never hear back from anybody.”
Still, as Metro’s board signals that it plans to disband the committee at its meeting later this month, the optics are horrible.
“It’s laughable,” transit advocate James Pizzurro told the group, “that as the board demonstrates they still have no unified plan to correct Metro’s ridership slump, they dissolve the very council that could help them come up with a rider-sponsored approach to the ridership problem.”
There was a time when Metro seemed to want their input, said Debra MacKenzie, who represents Arlington County on the council. Recalling Metro’s ads urging riders to join, MacKenzie said, “They said they wanted to hear from riders. They reached out and some of us reached back and said, ‘Yes!’ ”
The council members at Wednesday’s meeting vowed not to go quietly, and talked about approaching members of Congress and local elected officials to intervene. But they acknowledged that salvation is a long shot.
“I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it,” Kortum said.
At previous meetings, Metro staff have usually come to brief the group on some issue or another. They backed out of coming this time, canceling a planned briefing on how a pilot project testing out cashless buses on the 79 route is going.
“Given it’s probably our last meeting, we’ll probably never have that discussion,” Kortum said of the cashless idea.
On a speakerphone, Metro board member Christian Dorsey told council members he disagrees with the decision to disband the group, but acknowledged he likely lacks the votes to stop it from happening.
He apologized and thanked them for giving up all those evenings to try to help.
He was the only one from Metro to do that. Metro Board Chairman Jack Evans didn’t come to say thanks, nor did General Manager Paul Wiedefeld.
Afterward, Kortum said she noticed. “It would have been a sign of respect for the time that we put in as volunteers,” she said.
Metro’s explanation is that it’s costing staff time to run the council. There are some vague complaints about the number of committees the body has, and that Metro could continue to get rider input through Amplify, an online survey tool it uses at times.
But the surveys only ask what Metro officials want to know, the riders said. The council would bring up issues Metro might not ask about, like how it handles communications during service disruptions.
And, as MacKenzie put it, asking riders questions online isn’t the same as rider representatives bringing ideas and complaints to Metro officials face-to-face.
Got a question? Send it to kery.murakami@washpost.com or @theDCrider.
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