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| Re: WMATA Board Approves Fare Hike (533938) | |||
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Re: WMATA Board Approves Fare Hike |
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Posted by Mirai Zikasu on Sat Dec 15 13:04:08 2007, in response to Re: WMATA Board Approves Fare Hike, posted by rideonrulez on Fri Dec 14 11:50:08 2007. The way that Catoe can fix the system is by getting his bum thrown out. I'm currently a university student in D.C. and ride the Metro regularly. This past summer, I had a summer job with a daily commute between Farragut North and Union Station. Traveling back and forth five days a week, I got caught in a breakdown about once every two weeks. A few times on the Red Line, there were door problems and the train I was on would be unloaded at somewhere like Metro Center, and everyone would have to cram onto the next train. This happened on the Blue Line a few times. Then, there was the Rosslyn Tunnel breakdown on the Blue/Orange Line back in early August when the train I was on got stuck in the tunnel for an hour and all hell broke loose after finally getting to Rosslyn to the point where they had to shut down the station until they could get trains running again. There were also many trains back in the summer with air-conditioning that didn't work, an experience I've never seen before this past summer, Then on the weekends, there would be trackwork--for example, out on the Red Line between Medical Center and Bethesda--and passengers between that point and Shady Grove would have a notice on the WMATA website to leave extra time. These advisories forgot to mention that service would be cut everywhere else on the Red Line and what should have been a seven-minute wait became fifteen or eighteen minutes with neither warning nor explanation. Also, Catoe wanted to cut late night weekend service which personally was important to me as I worked a restaurant job that went on until midnight or one in the morning, and then one of his goons recently tried to cut train lengths on the weekend which resulted in massive overcrowding.In addition to all of this, I also used the 80 bus--which was a direct route between my workplace and home--and the Circulator for appointments and errands in Georgetown. The Circulator was often up to half-an-hour late, and the 80 bus would often magically disappear late at night with no explanation and the driver of the next bus becoming indignant when I would ask him if he knew anything about the bus that was supposed to show up half an hour before him. I've experienced Metrorail breakdowns, frequent Metrobus lateness and disappearances, and lackluster and sometimes downright rude customer service on the D.C. Metro. Then, I've watched Catoe's misguided focus on cutting costs at the expense of system aesthetics, service, and screwing with car layouts to squeeze ten more people in each at rush hour rather than decently maintain the fleet and system to prevent problems from happening in the first place. Now, there's this horrible fare hike which was unpopular from the start and yet Metro's board approved a variation without even trying to look at alternatives such as perhaps lobbying local governments to take care of a public good through increased subsidies or a loan. Instead, Metrorail riders are disregarded and punished with a 20-some percent fare hike for taking public transportation in the first place. I'm convinced that Catoe and his goons are too concerned with the bottom line than operating a system designed to serve the public. Don't get me wrong; I fully understand the value of business-like fiscal responsibility in a capitalist society, but Catoe has thus far demonstrated that he and his lackeys either lack the respect or knowledge that a public transportation entity exists to serve the public EFFECTIVELY and EFFICIENTLY. I say throw the lot of them out and put someone in charge who cares about a public transportation system and the riders for whom it is designed. |
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