Public Transportation in DC and Larger Symbols

Today was the first time in a long time that I rode the DC metro during the workweek, since I had jury duty. I am an enthusiastic advocate for public transportation, especially in DC where

1. parking is non-existent
2. ozone triggers my astham

Today's subway ride was very disappointing and, I believe emblematic of two things: Society as a whole, and government in the US. What did I find and what do I mean?

First, you never expect all the escalators to work, and indeed you wouldn't have been surprised to find broken ones at almost every stop. There were also ever-present postings of elevator outages. AC was almost non-existent, and that was especially troublesome because on the ride back, one 8 car train had only 6 cars available (the dark cars were locked as they should be). So everybody piled into the remaining cars, cheek by jowl, and -once again, there was no AC. I felt like I was riding in a third-world country.

When I got off at Tenleytown, I hurried to the waiting bus only to have to navigate a maze of bent and falling over  chain link fencing. All this in the US capitol.

What did I mean about this being emblematic of our society and government? First, nobody gets an award for maintenance; we get bonuses for cost-cutting. And that's what happened for 30-40 years in the metro system, which is now literally falling apart. They've recently raised the fares (and another fare increase is coming soon), but this nickle-dime stuff will take a long time to pay for new cars, fix the escalators, etc.  We love low costs, but we get what we pay for. It costs much more to fix a car engine than it does to perform routine oil changes and maintenance, but we are often short-sighted and just keep our fingers crossed that big bad things won't happen.

Some problems also have been reported about operators texting while driving, and there have been fears of drugs (which seem to be everywhere). Yet the terrible crash that killed the driver and several others last year was not due to any of those things. It was due to bad brake warning systems on the tracks. 

And where is governmnet in all this?  There was of course the after-crash NTSB investigation, but that saved nobody's lives and surprised nobody with the result. Nobody in government wants to be proactive to fix the metro infrastructure before parts of it break or kill people. It doesn't help that the Metro DC system is paid by three jurisdictions --DC, Maryland, and Virginia, and even then there is no ongoing source of funding. It's "pass the cup" among these three groups each year to run the system for another year. Everybody knows this is no way to run a railroad or a metro system, but nobody stands up to say so.

If you think we can somehow fix the metro system, going green with propane-powered buses etc., any time soon, then you're crazy. We all know this will take a very long time, if it ever gets fixed correctly.

In the meantime, as peak oil and climate change problems loom larger and we depend even more on public transportation, the system will become even more stressed.

"Thank you for riding Metro."