When D.C.’s first mayor-commissioner, Walter Washington, was appointed in 1967, Representative John McMillan (D-NC) congratulated him by sending a truckload of watermelons to Washington’s office. While the overt racism is gone, the federal government is still treating its responsibility to D.C. like a cruel joke. With Washington’s Metro system confounded by hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs, it’s time for Congress to help the District that it’s ignored for so long.
General Manager John Catoe said at a meeting of Metro’s board last week that Metro needs $489 million for urgent repairs, including $244 million for immediate repairs in the next two years.
If the repairs aren’t done, safety and quality will suffer. Funds are needed to repair water damage and aging ceiling tiles, and install bumps on station floors to warn blind customers they’re approaching a platform’s edge. If Congress doesn’t give Metro more funding now, you can thank them later when the ceiling tiles start falling or a blind passenger falls onto the tracks.
“We’ve gotten assistance from them in the past in terms of capital projects,” Steven Taubenkibel, a Metro spokesman, said. The government has been remiss, however, on contributing maintenance funds.
The federal government is committing a sin that anyone who has taken Introduction to Microeconomics would be ashamed of: being a free rider. Almost half of passengers at peak hours work for the federal government, according to the Washington Post. Congressmen also benefit when their constituents ride Metro trains to see the Cherry Blossom Festival or their aides use Metro to get to work, but they still refuse to set aside dedicated funds for Metro.
The long-term solution for Metro’s money woes is for Washington to get a voting representative in Congress, so the District will have a hand in the pork that gets doled out to transportation projects elsewhere in the country. With vote efforts stalled, though, Congress should send another truck to the D.C. government, this time full of cash.
