The future of Houston's METRO?
Both Tom Kirkendall (Houston's Clear Thinkers) and Tory Gattis (Houston Strategies) call attention to the first of a series of Washington Post articles on problems with D.C.'s mass transit agency (Metro), and wonder if Houston's own METRO is due for similar problems.
Here's a sample of the Post story:
Washington's world-class subway system, which for three decades has shaped the metropolitan region and delivered thousands of commuters to work on time, has fallen into a decline -- and mismanagement has been a key factor, records show.
Trains break down 64 percent more often than they did three years ago, and the number of daily delays has nearly doubled since 2000. Although the vast majority of trains are on time, more than 14,400 subway riders a day are inconvenienced by a delay or a mechanical problem that forces them off broken trains.
Metro officials have spent nearly $1 billion in recent years to turn around the nation's second busiest subway system, but internal records show that the projects have created new problems.
To ease chronic crowding, Metro purchased 192 rail cars at a cost of $383 million. But the agency tried to rush the cars through production and often missed mistakes made on the assembly line. And on average, the new cars need major repairs almost as often as the oldest ones in the fleet.
Metro is spending an additional $382 million to rebuild rail cars bought in the 1980s. Officials failed to closely monitor the repair work, didn't catch mistakes and ignored warnings from auditors about the lack of supervision. The refurbished cars are now breaking down far more often than those that haven't been overhauled.
[snip]
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.
Is our own METRO headed down the same path?
Certainly, it misled poor voters when it promised them it would boost bus service by 50% while at the same time operating expensive rail lines. Critics whose safety concerns about at-grade rail were pooh-poohed have turned out to be right. The organization has had to take on "short-term" debt for the first time in its history. It treats federal officials responsible for funding with unbelievable arrogance. And it's recently asked for $104 million to buy (unneeded) new rail cars and fix known design problems.
METRO doesn't seem to be headed in the right direction, in terms of responsiveness to taxpayers or to the city's mass-transit needs. But maybe their latest expensive study will put them back on the right track (bad pun intended).
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 06/06/05 08:59 PM | Print |
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