The WMATA Board of Directors is considering a proposal to permanently end late-night rail service. Many elected officials from Montgomery County have spoken up to oppose the cuts, as has the public. Now, Prince George’s leaders are doing the same.

Photo by James Jackson on Flickr.

Metro staff is proposing that cuts to late-night rail service, which are currently in effect as part of SafeTrack, become permanent so that there’s more time for much-needed system maintenence. As of now, if this plan moves forward, Metro customers would have to turn to paltry bus service for public transportation late at night.

WMATA staff has asked the Board to make one of these sets of hours of operation official. Image from WMATA.

Many Greater Greater Washington contributors have called the idea terrible from the start, describing how it’d leave Metro with the most limited hours of any major transit system in the US and saying Metro has provided far too little evidence for why such a drastic move is actually necessary.

Last month, 40 Maryland elected officials, mostly from Montgomery County, sent a letter to WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld saying they, too, think this is a bad idea (though Montgomery County Council Transportation Committee chair Roger Berliner and County Executive Ike Leggett were notably absent from the letter). But when September’s letter went out, there was a key contingent missing from the group of signatures: most leaders from Prince George’s County, including the whole county council, were never given the opportunity to sign on — or not.

As an elected official in Prince George’s, I volunteered to help set the record straight. Over 50 elected leaders, including seven members of the state legislature and three county council members from Prince George’s County, have joined me to send a letter (which you can read in full here) to hammer home the following points:

  • No proposal put before the public has explained why permanently closing every line of the Metrorail system during the pre-SafeTrack late-night hours is necessary on a continuing basis.
  • The economic future of our region depends on achieving a jobs-housing balance through transit-oriented development, including in mixed urban-suburban jurisdictions like Prince George’s County. A transit system that supports live-work-play hours, not just white-collar work hours, is an essential foundation and a social justice issue.
  • We ask that the WMATA Board provide a more transparent study of the equity and ridership impacts of this proposed change as well as consider alternatives to improve maintenance before making a decision.

I thank my council colleague Jesse Christopherson and County Councilmember Deni Taveras for their invaluable help in circulating this letter for consideration. Every county council member, along with County Executive Rushern Baker, had the chance to sign on. As in Montgomery County, I’m struck by how many local leaders do not seem to realize the significance of what is at stake for Metrorail.

The overwhelming response from many local municipal leaders, who are closest to the people who will be most impacted by this proposal, and many of whom are personally, professionally, and politically invested in Metrorail speaks volumes. But it is clear to me that we will all need to engage more as advocates to help our county and state decision makers understand what WMATA needs, and how vital WMATA is to our communities.

So…what’s next?

Before the board makes any decision, WMATA staff will analyze whether the proposed service change would violate the civil rights of minorities and low-income people (this is called a Title 6 analysis). I spoke to Malcolm Augustine, Prince George’s County alternate representative to the WMATA Board, who asserted “that analysis and the impact…is a part of the information that goes into any kind of position that the board will eventually take.”

Augustine also emphasized that SafeTrack alone is not sufficient to clear a maintenance backlog that took decades to accumulate, and that more track access at night means more continuous hours for maintenance.

Maintenence doesn’t have to mean permanent closures

Will suspending late-night service for some length of time create enough of a window for WMATA to clear the maintenance backlog? Will the board consider weekend closures on a line-by-line basis? There are very basic questions still to be answered before this proposed change in service can be thoughtfully considered. I hope the WMATA Board will ask these questions, and not just react to the proposal that is in front of them.

We all understand the imperative to improve safety and reliability in the system. Otherwise, the downward spiral ridership is in will only accelerate. However, to pose a strict dichotomy between safety and service is a false and harmful framing.

WMATA needs to transparently document all the achievements and outcomes related to improved maintenance and reliability beyond increased track access, especially the corrective action items still pending from last year’s FTA review, many of which concern WMATA’s troubled Rail-Operations Control Center. The bottom line is that transit is far and away the safest mode of transportation, and reducing access to the safest mode in the name of safety cannot be a permanent solution.

Permanent is not reasonable. So the question for WMATA is, what about one year? 18 months? With measurable conditions that the board can revisit on a specified timeframe? SafeTrack has enjoyed wide support because of its transparency and widespread understanding of it’s necessity, but also because so many share the goal of seeing Metrorail be a safe, reliable, world-class transit system. Let’s be specific and transparent about a plan to get there.

Tracy Hadden Loh is Chair of GGWash’s Board of Directors and she represents the District of Columbia on the WMATA Board of Directors. She loves cities, infrastructure, and long walks on the beach looking for shark teeth. She is a Fellow at the Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. She previously served two years representing Ward 1 on the Mount Rainier City Council in Prince George's County, MD.