Photo by JamesCalder on Flickr.

Metro doesn’t know the root causes of its problems with escalators and elevators. Not only does that prevent fixing the problems, but it leads Metro to prioritize maintenance based on whatever problem most recently hit the media.

Metro is not in control of the news cycle because it is not in control of its information. When concerning details leak out about Metro’s operations, which is unavoidable, the press and public don’t know how problematic the concerns are because Metro doesn’t know how problematic they are.

If Metro were able to demonstrate the causes of downtime or safety issues, they could by extension show that everything else is not causing downtime or safety issues, or is causing far less critical or likely downtime or safety issues.

The result is the media-driven repair plan that Metro is unable to avoid because it is unable to state the actual root causes of escalator and elevator downtime.

The media expose brake failures, and Metro, unable to state exactly why brakes are failing and which brake conditions are actually causing brake failures, reactively inspects every escalator brake in the system. But what are we looking for if we don’t know what is causing the brake failures?

Blogs criticize the pick system of work assignments, and Metro, unable to state whether this is a cause of downtime or not, is thrown back on its heels again.

The unfortunate result of Metro’s inability to win the news cycle through a demonstration of what is causing, and what is not causing, downtime, is a penchant to blame its workers.

VTX’s findings, combined with Metro’s own inspections, affirm that one of the major factors of the state of Metro’s escalators and elevators is a result of many years during which there has been a lack of adherence to Metro’s own maintenance standards.

The Metro mechanics would probably not appreciate this spin, given that Metro did not allow VTX to verify the mechanics’ stated reasons for why they weren’t following maintenance standards.

Furthermore, Metro should have known beforehand that these maintenance standards weren’t being followed. It’s in the TOC audit of Metro conducted this past summer:

Deficiency 14B-2. Escalator preventive maintenance compliance for April 2010 (latest month available) was 56.1 percent.

When organizations conduct root cause analyses, the analyses that have yet to be conducted with Metro escalators and elevators, the root causes are never wide scale worker error and incompetence. By not discovering the root causes of escalator downtime, however, Metro is creating a situation in which news cycles spin out of its control and its own workers are unfairly blamed.

The next time you see an escalator or elevator mechanic in the Metrorail system, thank them for their hard work. And, if you are in an oversight or journalistic role with respect to Metro, ask Metro executives when they will know the specific reasons why downtime is occurring and why brakes are failing.

Ken Archer is CTO of a software firm in Tysons Corner. He commutes to Tysons by bus from his home in Georgetown, where he lives with his wife and son.  Ken completed a Masters degree in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America.