Posts about RAC

In the case of Metrorail performance data, Schmitt sought the raw data used to calculate the summary metrics provided in the agency's Vital Signs Report, including on-time performance. The agency claimed that the data—about 40,000 records per day, or 29 million for the 24-month period covered by Vital Signs—were too voluminous for them to produce.

Dan Stessel, the agency's spokesman, told the Examiner that WMATA objected to "mining 29 million data points", but sought to fulfill the request in other ways. Unfortunately, when it comes to computing on-time performance, there's no substitute for the raw arrival and departure data.

WMATA's fear of the volume of data also betrays a lack of good data management practices on their part; while 29 million rows might seem like a large quantity of data, in this era of "big data" and petabyte-scale databases, it sounds more like a smokescreen.

Schmitt also requested information about the Metrorail signaling system, its safety, and changes made in the wake of the 2009 Red Line crash. Here, WMATA denied the request due to the agency's involvement in ongoing litigation connected to the crash.

Yet, as Schmitt noted in a message to the RAC, a great deal of information on the subject has already been released to the public, through NTSB reports and other publications, and the agency's response is indicative of an unwillingness to sort out information which actually must be protected from disclosure from other information:

In the case of the ATC data, assuming for the sake of argument that a PARP exemption does apply, WMATA has a duty under its policy to segregate exempt from non-exempt information. WMATA has made no effort to fulfill its duty, and it is not credible to claim that every item of information regarding ATC and collision avoidance in WMATA's possession is subject to exemption. At the least, considerable information maintained by WMATA is already in the public domain, such as via NTSB reports. If information is publicly available, it cannot be withheld as exempt. Therefore, WMATA's position is unreasonable on its face.

Regardless of the reasons for the agency's denials, they are merely symptoms of a much larger, more serious problem: an ongoing lack of transparency and meaningful oversight at WMATA.

WMATA's board is unable to provide independent oversight, and, under the agency's "performance-based management" program, receives only summaries of performance data. The WMATA Office of Inspector General conducts audits, but the recommendations in their reports seem to go mostly unheeded. The Tri-State Oversight Committee, a group which became prominent only after the 2009 Red Line crash, is independent of WMATA, but lacks the staff and funding to conduct the most detailed of investigations; beyond that, their remit covers only safety issues.

After an accident, the National Transportation Safety Board has the jurisdiction to conduct an investigation and issue a report; their criticism of WMATA is routinely scathing, yet the accidents continue. The NTSB cannot compel compliance with their recommendations, and so the same recommendations to WMATA appear in NTSB report after report.

That leaves the Riders' Advisory Council, the group Schmitt sat on. The RAC lies somewhere between being merely a glorified focus group and an actual oversight body; they lack independence from WMATA and, in the wake of these events, apparently have no real investigative powers of their own.

In his resignation letter, Schmitt criticizes the RAC for having gotten too cozy with WMATA and for failing to press hard enough for real transparency. He's perfectly right to do so, and yet at the same time, there's no way that a group created by an act of the WMATA board, operated and funded by the agency, can ever have real independence. As Schmitt notes in his letter of resignation, however, the agency desperately needs independent oversight:

Taken together, the denial of the information requests, the resultant loss of the RAC's independence, and the unwillingness of the RAC to defend its own interests mean that there is no institution within Metro dedicated to transparency and aggressive pursuit of information that is of significant rider interest.

Despite some limited improvement, Metro remains a deeply troubled agency, rife with problems that demand accountability and transparency, and which are too numerous to enumerate here. I hope that in the future, a greater dedication to meaningful information access will develop. This would be a starting point for necessary reforms, as well as for establishing the RAC as an independent, robust voice on behalf of riders.

Given that the organizational structure of the RAC effectively precludes meaningful and independent oversight, transit riders in the region should consider forming a completely independent oversight and advocacy group akin to the Straphangers Campaign in New York City.

The campaign, a project of NYPIRG, independently advocates on behalf of New York City's transit riders. But more importantly, the Straphangers are able to conduct their own investigations, including a survey of announcements in the subway and a survey of payphones in the subway.

Though the Straphangers Campaign performs political advocacy, similarly to groups like the Action Committee for Transit and Greater Greater Washington do locally, it also has the ability to collect its own data and form its own judgments, rather than being limited to carefully-selected and carefully-screened presentations like those the RAC gets now.

This means that the campaign is able to independently assess the performance of the transit authority over time, rather than being dependent on the agency's own (potentially flawed) data.

As an agency formed by interstate compact, WMATA is subject to even less scrutiny than the average transit authority in this country. While an independent riders' group would be no more able to compel action than the RAC is now, they would have the advantage of being able to conduct their own investigation and advocacy work, independent of WMATA and its constituent jurisdictions.

Christopher Schmitt sought for the RAC to become "an independent, robust voice on behalf of riders," but riders may be better off finding their own voice.

Broken rail-car air conditioners have been thrust into the spotlight thanks to the rabid persistence of an IT whiz known on Twitter as @fixwmata. The 32-year-old Atlanta native, who asked not to be named because he insists the story shouldn't be about him, began riding Metro last April.

Over the summer, he noticed complaints about hot subway cars on Twitter and decided to put his analytical skills to good use. He created what's known as the #hotcar list, a crowdsourced database tracking rail cars with broken AC.

At first FixWMATA got no response from Metro. Then, Dan Stessel showed up, and started communicating back, which FixWMATA loved at first. But then, Stessel couldn't give him details of which air conditioners were being repaired.

FixWMATA, who has about 1,300 followers on Twitter, isn't buying it. And now he believes that the rosy media coverage of Metro's latest PR effort is harmful. He called the Post "an advertising arm of WMATA" when the paper covered Stessel's social media frenzy last month.

"Not having a response from Metro last year actually worked out a little bit better," he says. "Because Metro last year also wasn't really talking to the media. So we had the media on our side last year, and we had a lot of reports—both on TV and on the Web—from journalists interested in what's going on."

He's not the only one who thinks the local media have fallen for Metro's tricks. The journalist behind the Unsuck DC Metro blog—complaint central for disgruntled riders since 2009—calls Stessel's effort "Band-Aids on the public image" for a reactive agency that lacks accountability. He thinks Metro's campaign is better than nothing but doesn't address the malaise he says afflicts the agency's middle management.

"People do seem to respond to Dan saying, if somebody tweets, 'Oh, this car's hot,' Dan tweets back, 'We're on it' or 'We're checking it out. We'll check it out tonight,'" says Unsuck, who also asked to remain anonymous, because he says he's received threats from Metro employees. "That seems to convince some people that they really are. You decide for yourself if they really are. I know they're not."

What does FixWMATA mean by "our side"? Is it the side of fixing things? Because there are a lot of people at Metro who also want to fix things, though there are also folks who stand in the way. Or is "our side" those who just want to throw barbs at WMATA, no matter what?

For a long time after the 2009 crash and even to this day, there are those on Twitter who periodically call for just "blowing up" the whole Metro system, whatever that means.

I disagree with FixWMATA's view of the change in the press. To me, the press went through a period of overly sensationalistic "gotcha" reporting. Ann Scott Tyson's coverage at the Post, in particular, made a large headline out of any piece of data that put Metro in a negative light, regardless of whether there was a larger context.

That had the disappointing effect of making some WMATA employees even more reluctant to talk to anyone about anything, a trend that has thankfully started to reverse with Stessel and his bosses, Lynn Bowersox and Barbara Richardson. Yet when anyone praises these tentative steps toward openness, some claim that it's "advertising."

One of the biggest pieces of context is that Metro has been drastically underfunded for years and treated as a political football. It still is, like when House Republicans tried to cut its repair funding and Bob McDonnell stonewalled for months about asking his party colleagues not to destroy Metro.

Unsuck wrote, "As many long-time readers may know, Unsuck lived in Japan a while back. My experience with Japanese mass transit is a major reason I am so critical of Metro." One thing they do in Japan is they actually have money to maintain their mass transit and build more lines.

Underfunding doesn't excuse bad practices, but we need to understand the root of a problem in order to fix it, and not just heap the blame on those most visible.

John Hendel sums it up on TBD:

The contrarian view is that Metro is a perpetual screw-up—that the trains are always late, that the communication efforts are hardly ever enough and are often off-base or obtuse, that the system deteriorates, that the reform efforts are maddening, that the idea of "strategy" at Jackson Graham is the equivalent of a fairy-tale myth. The attacks are often biting, caustic, and frustrated, and the intense bitterness that characterizes some of the jibes lacks as much realistic perspective as constant Metro cheerleading.

What we need to do to fix WMATA for real is to tease apart those problems which just stem from insufficient funding, and those which come from actual bad management practices, bad employee behavior, problematic union work rules, or other non-funding problems.

Take the hotcars. What is really going on? How often do these units break? How quickly do they get fixed? Does management really know when they're out? For that matter, how much should Metro prioritize fixing them over fixing escalators or replacing "track modules," the signal components that allowed the 2009 Red Line crash?

Looking through the capital priorities list and discussing tradeoffs is a lot less sexy and doesn't fit in 140 characters, but it's far more vital to the task of actually fixing WMATA.

In other words, if you were Richard Sarles, what would you do? Lining everyone up against a wall and shooting them, which some people on Twitter suggest, does not fix the problem, by the way.

Nor is WMATA management a monolith. From far enough away, it looks that way. But get closer, and you discover a wide range of quality among the executives. Same for the individual employees.

Public pressure is good, but also can be bad. If an agency feels little pressure, there's not enough impetus for change. But too much criticism, and it just demoralizes the good people. I found it frustrating enough to work inside a large, sometimes-bureaucratic organization (Google) where the press constantly showered praise, much deserved, some not. I have to have enormous respect for those change agents who stick it out inside the organization and fight hard to make things better despite working for an organization that garners such vitriol.

Get to know those change agents, and they'll tell you they're frustrated too. They have coworkers who play politics instead of focusing on what to do. They have employees who aren't productive, take up budget, but can't be removed. They have an organizational culture that resists change. They don't have enough money to do much. They get shot down by their own board. Local jurisdictions fight their ideas. Local elected officials criticize any move they make. Bloggers and tweeters have endless nitpicks.

When I started criticizing WMATA, I went to a board meeting, and Jim Graham said, hey, why don't you be on the Riders' Advisory Council. The RAC has a certain ability to ask staff to make presentations on detailed topics that a random person can't necessarily get, and to ask questions of staff.

Being on the RAC hasn't magically fixed everything, but it helped me push for open data, and more importantly, get to know the good people at WMATA so that I could help them bring about even more change. It's slow, and maddeningly frustrating, but that's how change usually happens.

It would be great to have FixWMATA and Unsuck on the RAC. There's a vacancy in DC right now, and likely one coming up in Maryland; plus, every year 1/3 of the members come up for renomination. I don't really buy that FixWMATA needs to be anonymous to make the conversation not about him, or Unsuck because of threats (Unsuck also was anonymous from the start as well, and also said it was to keep the conversation from being about him).

If they want to really fix WMATA, it's time to come out from behind the keyboard and start engaging directly with the agency. Join the RAC; I'll lobby hard for either to get appointed and would welcome having their energy to delve into problems. Try to figure out what's really wrong, deep down, instead of just what outcome is problematic. Then we can all lobby for whatever changes are necessary, whether it's funding, management fixes, labor work rule changes, or a combination of all of those.

The reports provide a monthly overview of key performance indicators (KPIs) for Metrorail, Metrobus, MetroAccess, and the Metro Transit Police Department. The report contains not only the KPIs themselves, but also explains, for each KPI, why the information is relevant, why the performance has changed since the last reporting period, and shows the steps being taken to improve performance.

This is all valuable information, but should not be the only glimpse the public gets into how the transit system is doing.

An example of the current framework's shortcomings is that the public lacks access to statistics on the performance of the most heavily-used escalators, such as those at the seven transfer stations in the system. Burnside's response to the RAC was that the Vital Signs Report was only intended to convey system-wide statistics.

There's a great escalator status page showing current outages, but not their past performance. Having the raw data available would make it possible to analyze things like escalator malfunctions at transfer stations, and generate more specific performance indicators than those Metro unveils in the report.

The benefits of releasing raw performance data are substantial. An enterprising software developer could, for example, build a customized dashboard which would allow riders to view statistics specific to stations and routes they use. This would empower riders by allowing them to better understand the agency's performance in a personally meaningful way.

Unfortunately, WMATA's strategy for reporting performance indicators (pictured above) entails releasing only the least detailed of reports to the public, while the General Manager receives an intermediate level of detail, and heads of individual departments receive the most detailed data.

This makes it impossible for members of the public to independently analyze the data, whether to create their own more localized metrics, develop charts and maps to better visualize the data, or to merge the data with outside information, such as weather patterns or traffic conditions.

Performance data also should to be released more often. WMATA intends to cut the Vital Signs Report's production from monthly to quarterly, saying that many of the actions being taken to improve performance are difficult to measure on a month-to-month basis. Expecting to see results one month after a change is implemented, Burnside said, is unreasonable. However, this change also means that there will be times that the latest publicly-available data will be at least three months old.

While monthly reporting is a good start, WMATA should begin to take steps towards making vital information available on a real-time or near-real-time basis. Many indicators, like bus and rail on-time performance, and the availability of elevators and escalators, are based on electronic records that the agency already uses for operational purposes. So it's only a matter of developing the necessary analysis tools for riders to be able to, for example, examine the on-time performance for each day's service at the end of the operating day.

WMATA released service reports daily until February 15, 2011. These detailed Metrobus and Metrorail ridership and summarized Metrorail service disruptions. Metro discontinued these, maintaining that they were too labor-intensive to produce. Metro should make daily service reports available once again, and they should be enhanced to provide additional valuable data.

San Francisco Muni's exemplary Service Delivery Daily Reports provide a considerable amount of information about the previous day's service: the availability of each type of vehicle in the agency's fleet on that day, operator absenteeism, and precise information on accidents and any incident causing more than 20 minutes' delay to a line. They detail the start and end times of the incident, the location and nature of the incident, actions taken to restore service, and the identities of transit vehicles, staff members, and police units involved in the incident.

As fantastic as Muni's daily reports are, they can't be put to their most effective use because they are released in rigid PDF format. If one wants to conduct an automated analysis of the data, as our own Michael Perkins did with Metrorail disruption reports, one cannot simply load them into a spreadsheet or database without time-consuming copying and pasting of each individual number.

Releasing Metro's monthly Vital Signs Report to the public is a good first step, but it should release information to the public on a daily basis which is already gathered electronically, to encourage different types of analysis. Summaries like the Vital Signs Report, which take time to prepare because of the depth of analysis involved, are best released on a monthly or quarterly basis. But raw performance data, including service disruption reports, should be posted considerably more frequently.

A governance committee, ably led by Mary Hynes of Arlington, has formulated bylaws and procedures for the board which better define its role. This year, after most members turned over and the reports came out criticizing past board actions, the board has indeed started focusing effectively on the high-level decisions that it needs to make to keep Metro running smoothly.

The GAO report says, "These draft bylaws represent a good first step toward addressing some of the concerns discussed in this report but will need to be adopted and then effectively implemented to achieve their desired effect." The report also criticizes past boards for doing a poor job of strategic planning, suggesting the board develop a better plan and then commit to implementing it.

The executives and DOTs of DC, Maryland, and Virginia were waiting to see the GAO report before moving ahead further on structural changes. The Board of Trade report last year suggested removing alternates, giving the governors one extra appointment of their own, creating an added "super-board" above the current board to supervise the board, and changing the jurisdictional veto.

The Riders' Advisory Council, on the other hand, argued that these changes were unnecessary and possibly counterproductive. Its report argued that the problems could be fixed by doing a better job appointing members and by the members developing better policies around these issues. (Disclosure: I was the principal author of the RAC report.)

The GAO took a similar stance to the RAC's report. They wrote:

Our analysis, however, indicates that most of the recommended changes have trade-offs—there are both benefits and drawbacks to them. We compared the various recommendations to leading governance practices, approaches taken by other transit agencies, and the views of board members and stakeholders. Board members and stakeholders indicated that proposed changes to the board's structure and processes—such as eliminating alternate board members, changing the size of the board, or eliminating the jurisdictional veto—have trade-offs, and we did not find consistent support among leading governance practices or other transit agencies that these changes would improve governance.

The [Board of Trade/COG] Governance Task Force recommended that the signatories and the appointing authorities form a WMATA Governance Commission to make improvements to the authority's governance structure and hold the board accountable for its performance. ... Such a commission was viewed by some stakeholders we spoke with as redundant because it would be comprised of most of the same membership that is responsible for appointing the board of directors.

The GAO paid special attention to the federal government's involvement, which includes the General Services Administration appointing a set of federal members. The GAO says that GSA lacks clear procedures for selecting and appointing these members. The GSA replied that while it's true it doesn't have formal procedures, it doesn't think that's interfered with selecting qualified candidates.

Moving forward, this report confirms what's become increasingly clear: WMATA can be fixed without rearranging the organizational structure. Doing that could fix some problems but create others, and would ultimately be a distraction from the work of actually governing better.

Already, we've seen tremendous progress. The NTSB feels safety is improving. Communication has taken huge steps forward with WMATA now tweeting and generally using two-way communication. The board passed a budget that avoided service cuts and without any major acrimony. Local jurisdictions stepped up with needed funding.

Now, we should let the current board and management keep making the strides they have. The executives and DOTs should let this issue rest.

Governor McDonnell did succeed in using the frustration over Metro to let him take away some power from Northern Virginia, giving him a direct appointment to the board who will likely replace Mary Hynes entirely or move her to an alternate position and bump Jeff McKay. Either way, that will be a big loss for Virginian interests, since both have effectively represented their constituents. The legislature should reverse this hasty decision before the appointments are made or renewed at the end of the year.

If you get asked to appear on WAMU, they offer you a free parking pass, which you can print out and bring to the station. Why not also offer a free Metro ride to Tenleytown as another option? Imagine if an organization could send you an email, which you could open up on your mobile phone and which contains a special code your phone would recognize and use to add value to your stored fare?

Michael Perkins has been promoting adding more flexible passes like those used in the Seattle area. WMATA has said they need to wait for upgrades to the fare payment system to be able to consider this. Will the new system allow the Board to consider a wide range of options like Michael's?

In December, WMATA issued an RFP for the next generation of the payment system, and hopes to award a contract this summer.

WMATA got into trouble with the existing Cubic system because any change requires lengthy RFPs, bids, and custom programming that cost lots of money and took years. That limited their options for fare changes that could help riders.

With this new system, it's important to build in the flexibility they would need. The new contract should anticipate many of the possible innovations, and make sure that the vendor can provide those should the Board choose to pursue them. It should also make it relatively inexpensive and relatively quick to make other modifications we don't anticipate today.

Now is a good time for riders to give suggestions of what they'd like to see in the new system, or what issues might arise with features, usability, and more that staff should keep in mind as they pick technology vendors.

If you want to learn about the details of this process and give rider feedback on the decisions being made, come to the RAC's meeting tonight. You don't have to be a RAC member to ask questions or give comments. The meeting will start around 7:00 pm in one of the rooms at the lobby level of WMATA headquarters, 600 5th Street, NW.

I'd like to know what this is costing and whether there are other ways to spend the money. It's been reported that these are TSA personnel, not MTPD. It was also reported that this money is coming from federal grants. But if MTPD wanted the TSA to instead be patrolling the platforms with dogs to sniff for bombs, or with behavioral profiling experts to look for people that might be about to attack the system, could they use the money for this instead?

And what's the effectiveness? Have such programs in other cities actually deterred any attacks? Did Metro have any data on the value of this kind of program versus others?

Civil liberties advocates have also asked whether these searches are looking for other items that aren't related to the actual safety of Metro. The ACLU points out that searches for "general crime control" are not permitted (and even the constitutionality of this program is doubtful).

DC will soon start to have legal medical marijuana, but that remains illegal under federal law as well as in Maryland and Virginia. What will MTPD do if a rider boarding a station in the District has marijuana? Whose laws are they obligated to enforce?

What else would you like to know? What do you think the RAC's resolution should say?

Regardless of how you feel about personal liberties or the Fourth Amendment, there are several reasons you should oppose these screenings. Any one of these should be enough to give you pause.

The bag checks do nothing to secure the Metro system. If this morning is any indication of Metro's plans for screenings, they'll take place only at a few stations at any given time, probably less than 5 of Metro's 86 stations. They may even be restricted to rush hours. This morning's checks appear to have ended by 8:45, according to news reports.

Most importantly, anyone can refuse the checks and still be allowed to board a train or bus. If you don't want to be screened for whatever reason, all you have to do is tell the officer that you don't want to be screened. You won't be permitted to enter that station with your bag, but you will be permitted to enter the system elsewhere.

At a place like Vienna, that might be a challenge for a terrorist without a car. But at any of the downtown stations, or in other close-in neighborhoods, it's a short walk to another station. And Metrobuses tend to provide a link between stations, as well.

One could easily conceive of a terrorist deciding not to be screened at a station like Farragut North simply walking to Farragut West and boarding a train there.

Or to think of it another way, imagine that prior to September 11, there was no airport security. Afterwards, they put security in place at Boston Logan, Newark, and Washington Dulles only. It would still be easy for a terrorist to hijack a plane. All they'd need to do is start their journey from a different airport. Metro's permeable and brief security barriers will do nothing to stop even a moderately determined terrorist.

They're easy to avoid. Because these checks are considered outrageous by many people and because of the prevalence of social media tools like Twitter and Facebook, it's easy to determine ahead of time where these checks are happening.

A terrorist could easily check Twitter (as UnsuckDCMetro pointed out this morning), as can anyone else wishing to avoid the hassle.

They draw resources from real crime prevention. The Metro Transit Police Department is an asset to this region. I respect their officers for what they do to keep Metro safe.

But they have limited resources. The MTPD has only 423 sworn officers, certainly a small force for an agency spread across 3 "states", 86 stations, and hundreds of miles of bus lines.

Metro is not increasing the size of the Police Department as a part of these random bag checks. And that means that officers that otherwise would have been riding trains and buses, circling parking lots, or walking platforms are being pulled away from those duties.

There have been some high-profile crimes on Metro lately. In August, a brawl erupted at L'Enfant Plaza that injured 4, and reportedly involved 70 people. Metro Police officers were able to respond from Gallery Place, probably because the agency stations extra cops there to deal with unruly teenagers. What would have happened, however, if those officers had been assigned to Dupont Circle to do random bag checks?

Are these checks worth it if even one old lady gets mugged because an officer who otherwise would have been on her train was scanning bags elsewhere? How many iPhone thefts is this security theater worth? How many teenage brawls?

We already know that MTPD response times are poor. Putting officers behind security checkpoints will only exacerbate that problem.

And that seems to be the case even if TSA personnel are stationed at the checkpoints, since it appears that Metro Transit officers will always be present at the bag checks, too.

The searches decrease the utility of transit. Traveling on Metro is not always easy. All too early in the evenings, train frequencies drop precipitously. Riders who have to transfer often spend more time standing around on platforms than they do riding on trains.

These bag checks mean that riders have to add more time into their schedules. While the checks can take at least 8 minutes, even a shorter one can mean missing a train. And if they're only coming every 20 minutes, that is a significant delay to a rider. If it makes them miss the train which would connect with their hourly bus, it's even worse.

These checks make riding transit less attractive for those who choose to take Metro. And it makes it less convenient for everyone, especially those who have no alternatives.

And that probably means that some people are going to get pushed into other modes, like driving. Lost revenue for Metro is bad, but worse is increased traffic on the Beltway, more pollution in our neighborhoods, and an increasing number of car crashes.

Metro's fare increases have already driven transit ridership down, especially for short trips, where Capital Bikeshare, walking, Metrobuses, or taxis are increasingly taking up the slack. These bag checks give riders one more reason to abandon the system.

The checks could open WMATA up to lawsuits. While similar checks undertaken by the New York City MTA were upheld by the Second Circuit in MacWade v. Kelly, that does not immunize WMATA from lawsuits.

Metro operates in the Fourth Circuit and the DC Circuit. These checks are not a part of settled case law here, and it is very likely that someone who objects to these searches will sue WMATA.

And even if those circuits uphold the searches as in MacWade, there are other grounds for lawsuits. For instance, how does Metro inform riders that they can decline the search? If they do not, does that trigger a Fourth Amendment violation?

If the Transit Police are not informing each searchee that they can decline and if the searchee does not fully understand that, it would seem to bring up circumstances similar to those adjudicated in Miranda v. Arizona.

Regardless, for no apparent security benefit, WMATA would appear to be welcoming a court challenge. And as a taxpayer and daily rider, I find that troubling.

They infringe upon privacy rights. Americans are sensitive about their privacy. As well they should be. These checks do nothing to secure our transportation network, and yet they significantly infringe upon our right to privacy.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures. These searches are far from reasonable, for the variety of reasons listed here.

Random inspections are often ineffective. And even if a terrorist went to a station that was being checked, he or she might not even get selected for screening.

Truly random screening means that the vast majority of those screened are innocent commuters. And those that look or act suspicious are not necessarily screened.

Profiling like that seems to violate case law in the Second Circuit. While WMATA is not located in the Second Circuit, the only place these checks have been tested is there, and WMATA has cited that case as justification.

In New York's MacWade decision, the Second Circuit held that in order for the checks to be constitutional, they had to meet several conditions. One of those was that "police exercise no discretion in selecting whom to search, but rather employ a formula that ensures they do not arbitrarily exercise their authority" [emphasis mine].

That means that this approach checks hundreds of innocents and does not ensure that even suspicious individuals will get checked. That doesn't sound like a good approach to safety.

Of course, officers can already search someone based on probable cause, but they don't need checkpoints to do that. And using checkpoints to generate probable cause would seem to violate the spirit and letter of MacWade.

They create false perceptions in the traveling public. These searches create two false perceptions in riders, though not both in the same rider.

On the one hand, the mere fact that screenings are taking place creates an atmosphere of threat. It reminds people that they need to be suspicious and afraid. After all, a terrorist could be lurking just behind the next platform pylon.

But on the other hand, they also generate a false sense of security. Why should a rider be alert if people are screened before entering? Unfortunately, the ineffectiveness of this security measure means that transit riders are really no more secure than they were before the checks.

Treating customers with suspicion is not the way to win their patronage. As noted earlier, close to all of those being screened are going to be regular, innocent riders. Treating them like potential terrorists is insulting and inconvenient. And it's unlikely to encourage them to ride transit again.

They show poor resource planning. The planning profession is often associated with urban planning, but it's actually a much larger field. And it includes strategic and resource planning.

Planners are taught to use the Rational Planning Model to evaluate policy.

Essentially the model works like this:

1. Identify the problem
2. Generate solutions
3. Generate objective assessment criteria
4. Choose the best alternative
5. Implement chosen alternative
6. Continuously evaluate outcomes and repeat model as necessary

It's clear that the bag check policy was not subjected to that model.

Terrorism is a real threat. And it is a problem that needs to be addressed. But looking carefully at the approach which has been taken shows that it is riddled with holes, fails to address the core issues, and generates unintended consequences which may be larger threats to the agency than the original problem.

Metro and the Transit Police Department need to cease this program of bag checks immediately. They have angered the public, inconvenienced riders, and failed to solve or even reduce the terrorism problem.

These random bag checks make riding transit less safe. And as long as Metro wastes resources this way, it will continue to exhibit its general inability to deal effectively with the real problems of the agency.

You can speak up at the Riders' Advisory Council meeting on Monday, January 3. It's at 6:30 pm in the committee room at WMATA HQ, 600 5th Street, NW, left and then right after security. Any rider can speak, and the RAC has reached out to MTPD to see if someone can make a presentation and answer questions.

Earlier yesterday, advocates from a number of transportation advocacy groups including myself met with Gray transition transportation co-chair Tom Downs, who said Gray hasn't made any decisions and of course isn't even mayor yet. He plans to analyze the report and the RAC report and give people a chance to weigh in before endorsing or promoting any specific recommendations.

Downs took responsibility for the press release not matching his own earlier statements. He said that he had sent it to Gray's PR person just for review, but failed to clarify that it was just a draft, and so she sent the release out to the media before it was done.

Downs has shown himself to be a real stand-up guy through this and the meeting in general; he also has a very thorough grasp of transportation issues, from Metro to bikes and pedestrians to Circulator and streetcars. Some observers believe he is a likely appointee to the WMATA Board for the new administration, which would be an excellent choice. (He served on the Board during his previous stint in the DC government as well.)

The COG report itself contains a number of recommendations which agree with RAC suggestions, a number of other interesting ideas, and a number of recommendations that seem designed to increase Governor McDonnell's and the Board of Trade's own power without any clear explanation of how they will improve WMATA governance.

Here are the recommendations that also appear in the RAC report:

• Make the chief executive a CEO. The clearest path to making WMATA more effective is to get an extremely capable leader and give him or her more power to bring change to the agency. The RAC report gets into more detail about how to accomplish this and the specific ways in which the Board is curtailing the General Manager.

• Clarify the role of Board members. There isn't a clear job description or set of roles and responsibilities for members, and different jurisdictions' members sometimes see things differently. BOT/COG feels that the suggestion higher-level Governance Commission ought to do this, while the RAC felt that the WMATA Board itself could probably do a fine job of making those decisions.

• Stop automatically rotating the chair. As the RAC also suggested, the Board should pick a chair who has the support of all members regionally and ideally reelect a good chair for more than one year instead of just automatically rotating through all six principal member seats.

Some other ideas from the BOT/COG report have merit:

• Coordinate policy on compensation of Board members. WMATA doesn't pay Board members. Virginia law says that officials who serve on boards get a token $50 per meeting, if they show up. Meanwhile, Prince George's County was paying Marcel Solomon $39,000 to serve on the Board. It would make sense to get regional agreement about payment. I'd suggest Board member uniformly not receive any payment.

• Give the chair a 2-year term. This could further add continuity to leadership on the Board.

• Create an orientation process for new Board members. Great idea.

One recommendation is already the case:

• Require a majority vote to change committees and procedures. This is already true. Each year, the Board passes a set of official procedures which can include a few changes from last time. BOT/COG seems to be under the misconception that the incoming chair simply dictates these. This is not the case. The group has to agree to any changes.

Meanwhile, a number of ideas would simply change the allocation of power over WMATA without any convincing explanation of why this would improve things for riders and for the region:

• Create a new super-Board with less local involvement. The BOT/COG report recommends a new layer of bureaucracy, a special "Governance Commission" that includes the Virginia and Maryland governors, the DC mayor, the GSA administrator, and the heads of the NVTC (which appoints Virginia members today and mainly represents local counties and cities), the WSTC (which appoints Maryland members but is largely controlled by the Governor), and the DC Council.

  This gives localities a fairly small role. The RAC report argued that local jurisdictions need to feel a greater sense of responsibility for WMATA, not less. In particular, Montgomery and Prince George's officials should be a part of WMATA's governance. The WSTC is three-sevenths appointees of the Governor of Maryland, so putting the WSTC chair on the proposed Governance Commission wouldn't give those counties much involvement in these decisions.

• Remove alternates from Board meetings. Today, half the members are "alternate members," who get to participate in debates and vote in committees but not actually vote at full Board meetings unless a principal member is absent. That includes the appointees made by Montgomery and Prince George's county officials and from the City of Alexandria. BOT/COG wants to remove them entirely. There's no evidence, though, that alternate members are any worse than principal members; some are, but others are great.

• Add one executive appointment from each jurisdiction. In place of the alternates, BOT/COG suggests letting the governors and mayor each appoint one additional member. This would mean that the Governor of Maryland would appoint all three members instead of just the two principal ones, the DC mayor two of three, and that the Governor of Virginia would get one. This gets at the core of what we always feared was the true goal of this commission: to move the power over WMATA away from officials who listen to riders and into the hands of officials who listen to the Board of Trade.

• Give Board members fixed 4-year terms and only allow reappointing them one time. This reflects their thinking that Board members should be outside individuals as opposed to local representatives. A 4-year term seems reasonable for the subset of members who aren't public officials, but it doesn't make sense for elected officials who serve on the Board.

  More importantly, limiting members to only serving 8 years would simply remove the strong level of institutional memory many members have, which improves their decisions since they know how an issue relates to decisions made in the past. The BOT/COG report gives no reasonable justification for this idea.

• Give the chair more control over Board members. The report actually suggests the chair should have the power to prevent individual members from talking to the public and media. Muzzling members is also not the answer. In fact, the chair sometimes has too much power; some past chairs have told staff to remove pages from presentations they planned to make to the Board because they didn't like some of the information being released. The chair should just facilitate the debate, not control the others.

• Weaken or remove entirely the jurisdictional veto. BOT/COG was very concerned with the existing veto, which allows the principal members from any one jurisdiction (DC, MD, or VA) to block action if they all vote against a measure. While the veto has been abused at some times in the past, it's also a necessary element to prevent any two from "ganging up" on the other.

  BOT/COG suggests limiting the veto only to budget matters or to system expansion. This seems okay, but in truth nearly everything affects the budget and system expansion. Escalator maintenance costs money. Changing the SmarTrip rules could affect fare collection. WMATA has a complex formula for allocating costs among jurisdictions. If two can vote, say, to change MetroAccess eligibility rules, the third will have to pay or will save money as a result.

  As another example, Matt Watson, a former DC member, noted in his discussions with the RAC how DC once prevented having Green Line trains run on the Red Line during the time when the inner Green Line wasn't yet built. They feared that if that happened, the segment through Columbia Heights and Petworth would never get built. Therefore, DC vetoed this until WMATA had put out contracts to start building the line. This "related" to system expansion, but it was actually a veto of a service pattern change. It also had some budgetary impact, surely, but a small one.

  The bottom line is that it's impossible to define exactly when the veto is and isn't appropriate. The veto doesn't get used on really minor things or things that don't affect the vetoing jurisdiction, and some amount of public shaming has put natural caps on its use in unreasonable ways.

  Setting out a general policy listing some occasions that are appropriate or inappropriate, however, is a sensible idea.

The Board of Trade is clearly moving very fast to try to ram this report through. Governor McDonnell wants it since most of the elements reflect exactly what he's been looking for. Since he agreed to co-chair the task force, Kwame Brown is in a difficult position since it's now harder for him to oppose elements even if most DC residents come out against a part of the report.

However, Governor O'Malley and Vince Gray should restrain themselves from letting McDonnell and the Board of Trade steamroller them into poor choices. They have an alternate report that actually came from riders through a more open and public process rather than the secretive one of the BOT/COG task force. The best move would be to implement the RAC report's recommendations, which overlap considerably with the BOT/COG ones, and which actually focus on those elements that will improve governance versus just reshuffling deck chairs to benefit a few groups.