WMATA

More Signs of Incompetence in Washington, D.C. Transit System

by Hans Bader on January 6, 2011 · 3 comments

in Labor, Mobility, Regulation

In the latest sign of dysfunction at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (“Metro”), the struggling subway system has appointed a supervisor of escalators and elevators — to supervise its supervisor of escalators and elevators. David Lacosse, who has been director of Metro’s escalator and elevator office for about seven years, will report to Rodrigo Bitar, who has been named to the new position of general superintendent of elevator and escalator programs.”

How many  other organizations put two supervisors in charge of the same area — with one supervising the other?

A story in the Washington Examiner notes that safety violations continue at Metro, and that Metro tracks were used as a toilet by employees. Safety problems have been left unaddressed even after being “reported repeatedly” by employees.

Last year, federal investigators rebuked the Metro subway system for a “systemic breakdown of safety management at all levels.” In June 2009, a deadly Red Line crash killed 9 people and injured 80. Four Metro employees have been killed in three recent accidents. Metro’s safety record has been called the worst in the nation.

All too often, threats to public safety are simply disregarded by Metro, and problem employees are kept on the job even after they commit safety violations or are responsible for accidents.

Metro has been informed that it has “dozens of problematic escalator brakes.” On Oct. 30, a faulty escalator brake at L’Enfant Plaza Station injured six passengers, making the escalator slide downward and dump passengers in a pile at the bottom of the escalator.

Despite Metro’s dismal record, its managers do not seem very concerned. They are immune from political consequences thanks to the rigidly-liberal constituencies they represent, where public-employee unions dominate the political landscape.

All too often, Metro’s Board of Directors has turned a blind eye to incompetence, waste, and safety hazards at Metro, even while jacking up subway fares by massive amounts. (Metro employees sometimes make more than $100,000 per year).

As Radley Balko noted in Reason magazine, Metro is extremely slow to take action against employees who pose risks to public safety, thanks in part to obstruction by Metro’s union:

“Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Area Transit Authority fired Metro bus driver Carla A. Proctor this week after Proctor struck a jogger earlier this month. The jogger was just released from intensive care at a local hospital.  It’s good to know nearly killing someone was—finally—enough to get Proctor out from behind the wheel of a public bus. Her record to that point:

• Proctor had five off-the-job traffic tickets in January alone, including driving an unregistered, unlicensed vehicle.

• In 2003, Proctor got off a bus she had been driving to check a sticky door without first assuring the bus was parked. The bus rolled down a hill without her, damaging eight vehicles, including the bus. Metro paid out $27,000 in damages.

• Also in 2003, Proctor turned into oncoming traffic, at which point her car was struck by another vehicle. Proctor’s car went flying into a fast food restaurant, injuring two women.

• In 2004, Proctor crashed another Metro bus, this time into a parked vehicle, injuring a 72-year-old pasenger.

Given the impressive record of the Metro workers union in helping scofflaws avoid discipline, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see Proctor back on the job.”

Don’t expect any adult supervision of Metro from the Obama Administration and the feds. The Obama administration wants airline security and Amtrak to become more like Washington’s inefficient Metro, by increasing the power of unions and making it harder to get rid of problem employees. For example, it’s now seeking to  unionize the TSA, even though the TSA was originally forbidden to unionize due to security concerns.

All past TSA administrators have recognized that collective bargaining and union work rules are inconsistent with the flexibility needed to protect public safety and adapt quickly to changes in terrorist tactics. (Undercover agents have managed to slip bombs past TSA screeners, and the TSA is even less effective than the private security firms it replaced.)

Image credit: afagen’s flickr photostream.

Touting Government Failures As Successes: Chris Zimmerman and Metro

by Hans Bader on November 2, 2010 · 1 comment

in Mobility, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

Arlington County Board member Chris Zimmerman is touting “his experience on the Metro Board of Directors, of which he is the longest-serving member.”  This comes not long after federal investigators rebuked the WMATA subway system for a “systemic breakdown of safety management at all levels“ that led to the deadly Red Line crash last summer and other fatal accidents.  Metro’s Board of Directors has turned a blind eye to incompetence, waste, and safety hazards at Metro, even while jacking up fares by massive amounts. All too often, threats to public safety are simply disregarded by Metro, and problem employees are kept on the job even after they commit safety violations or are responsible for accidents.

For Chris Zimmerman to tout his tenure on Metro’s Board is like George Bush praising himself for how he handled Hurricane Katrina, or Obama boasting about the government’s slow and inept response to the BP oil spill.  Heck of a job, Zimmie!

Washington Subway Terrorist Bomb Plot Leads to Arrest

by Hans Bader on October 28, 2010

in Labor, Mobility, Regulation

Federal authorities arrested Farooque Ahmed for plotting to bomb the Washington Metro subway system.  Ahmed, who immigrated from Pakistan, “conspired with people he thought to be al-Qaeda operatives to bomb the Arlington Cemetery, Pentagon City, Crystal City and Court House stations, according to a federal indictment.”

Don’t count on the subway system itself to guard against terrorism, though.  Many of the Washington, D.C. Metro’s unionized employees are incompetent or grossly overpaid, and some simply disregard threats to public safety, as a letter writer recently chronicled in The Washington Post.  Members of its governing board, like Arlington County politician Chris Zimmerman, have turned a blind eye to incompetence, waste, and safety hazards at Metro, even while jacking up subway fares by massive amounts. Federal investigators rebuked the subway system for a “systemic breakdown of safety management at all levels” that led to the deadly Red Line crash last summer and other fatal accidents.

The Obama administration is undermining airline and railroad security against terrorist attacks by pushing policies that benefit public employee unions at the expense of competence and public safety.

Massive Fare Hike in Washington, D.C. Subway System; Public Sacrifices, Overpaid Union Doesn’t

by Hans Bader on May 28, 2010 · 7 comments

in Labor, Mobility, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

The mismanaged Washington, D.C. Metro system is pushing through huge fare hikes,  not only increasing subway and bus fares, but adding a new 20 percent additional surcharge for rush hour.

But it’s refusing to engage in any sensible cost-cutting, such as service cuts that few passengers would ever notice, like ending subway service after 2 a.m. on weekends that results in virtually empty trains (but more high-paid work for unionized D.C. Metro employees).

Metro is almost unbelievably indulgent towards incompetent employees, who are allowed to drive buses despite a steady stream of accidents and traffic violations. Many Metro employees have $100,000-plus compensation and incredibly generous pensions.

Metro is padding its payroll while cutting funds for routine maintenance and safety (despite recent highly-publicized Metro crashes that killed passengers).

Metro’s Board includes Chris Zimmerman, an Arlington County Board member and tool of the public-employee unions who recently raised Arlington County taxes 10 percent to increase government spending in the middle of a recession, and take the Arlington County government on a billion-dollar spending spree.   Lazy board members like Zimmerman have long refused to conduct vigorous oversight over the Metro system or ask necessary and probing questions of incompetent D.C. Metro employees, which might offend their transit union.

The public interest takes a back seat to union special interests at the national level as well.  The Obama administration wants airline security and Amtrak to become more like Washington’s inefficient Metro, by increasing the power of unions and making it harder to get rid of problem employees.

A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA’s failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security. In tests, TSA failed to detect fake bombs 60 percent of the time at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and 75 percent of the time in Los Angeles. Yet the Obama administration backs collective bargaining for the TSA, even though collective bargaining makes it even harder to get rid of lazy employees and demand high performance.  The Obama administration is also undermining the security of railroad passengers by gutting an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, despite its efficiency, because it is not unionized.

D.C.’s Metro engages in massive racial discrimination in employment against non-black applicants.  Its workforce statistics go well beyond giving rise to a prima facie case of intentional, pattern-or-practice discrimination under the Supreme Court’s Teamsters decision.  (Note that I said “intentional.”  I am not talking about “disparate impact” or advocating racial proportionality or quotas relative to the general population.  Disclosure: I used to bring discrimination class-actions before working at CEI.)

Union Blocks Action Against Dangerous Bus Drivers at DC Metro; Obama Expands Union Power at Expense of Airline and Rail Security

by Hans Bader on September 28, 2009

in Labor, Mobility, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk

Thanks to their union, bus drivers for Washington’s Metro system can be dangerously incompetent and still draw a government paycheck, avoiding discipline for repeated accidents.   (Metro employees sometimes make more than $100,000 per year).

Yet the Obama administration wants airline security and Amtrak to become more like Washington’s inefficient Metro, by increasing the power of unions and making it harder to get rid of problem employees.

As Radley Balko notes at Reason magazine’s Web site,

“Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Area Transit Authority fired Metro bus driver Carla A. Proctor this week after Proctor struck a jogger earlier this month. The jogger was just released from intensive care at a local hospital.

It’s good to know nearly killing someone was—finally—enough to get Proctor out from behind the wheel of a public bus. Her record to that point:

• Proctor had five off-the-job traffic tickets in January alone, including driving an unregistered, unlicensed vehicle.

• In 2003, Proctor got off a bus she had been driving to check a sticky door without first assuring the bus was parked. The bus rolled down a hill without her, damaging eight vehicles, including the bus. Metro paid out $27,000 in damages.

• Also in 2003, Proctor turned into oncoming traffic, at which point her car was struck by another vehicle. Proctor’s car went flying into a fast food restaurant, injuring two women.

• In 2004, Proctor crashed another Metro bus, this time into a parked vehicle, injuring a 72-year-old pasenger.

Given the impressive record of the Metro workers union in helping scofflaws avoid discipline, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see Proctor back on the job.”

Rather than try to improve or privatize metro, officials in the D.C. government have tried to restrict the growth of competing private buses.

A left-wing union is about to unionize the Transportation Security Administration, which is in charge of airline security. Thanks to the Obama administration, the union will now be able to demand job rules that make it harder to get rid of lazy, incompetent, and careless employees.

The Washington Times reports that the unions want to get rid of basic skills tests for employees, and to destroy records of poor job performance.  The unions have “urged TSA Acting Administrator Gale D. Rossides to suspend use of the agency’s skills test for screeners. Failure rates this year reached more than 50 percent and were as high as 80 percent at some airports. The skills test shows that large numbers of airport screeners are failing at jobs that are intrinsic to keeping our airports and commercial airplanes secure, and the union’s response is to get rid of the test. The government employees union is also pushing to have failed screeners’ records cleared because pay and bonuses are tied to performance and unsatisfactory employee records prevent those who were fired for poor performance from being reinstated. So much for worker accountability.”

In the aftermath of 9/11, a foolish Congress shifted airline security screening to the inept Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which fails to detect explosive ingredients and fake bombs, in performance tests.   Now, the Obama administration is making matters even worse by undermining both airline security and railroad safety.

A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA’s failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security.

In tests, TSA failed to detect fake bombs 60 percent of the time at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and 75 percent of the time in Los Angeles. Yet the Obama administration plans to make TSA even more bureaucratic by introducing collective bargaining, which will make it even harder to get rid of lazy employees and demand high performance.

Rather than having the federal government take over airline security screening, the Feds should have stepped up policing and monitoring of the private companies that performed it, to weed out bad companies and promote the best.

Bush initially objected to congressional demands for a federal takeover, but then knuckled under for political reasons.  Ironically, even in European countries governed by socialist parties, airline security and screening is generally in the hands of private companies, because private companies are usually more diligent and innovative and less bureaucratic and inefficient.

The Obama administration is also undermining the security of railroad passengers by gutting an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, despite its efficiency, because it is not unionized.  Political cronyism is also playing a role in the gutting of Amtrak’s Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO).  Ultimately, OSSSO’s “highly-specialized officers” will likely be replaced by unionized employees with ”alarmingly low pass rates” in “basic” classes.