When the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) opened in 1976, it received national acclaim for its architecture, cleanliness, and efficiency. Nearly half a century later, broken lights, ever-increasing wait times, and chronic safety lapses define the DC Metro experience.
Today’s riders of the DC Metro’s bus and train services often find the only reliable factor of traveling on the city’s public transportation is its unreliability.
“Why are trains not showing up more frequently?” commuter James Pizzurro said. “Why are they frequently delayed and not operating according to their schedule?”
Like many riders, Pizzurro became aggravated by continued, unexplained deficiencies with WMATA. Pizzurro is the creator of the Twitter account @dcmetrohero. He made the account to promote an app he was developing to more accurately track the position of the Metro’s trains so riders would have a more realistic timeframe for their travels. The Twitter account currently serves as a platform for DC residents to voice concerns and hold the public transit system accountable. His activism has led him to attend board meetings and ask questions brought up by riders who rely on WMATA for their daily commute, such as Courtney Indart.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve been sitting at a stop with a bus arriving in five minutes for it to either show up significantly late, or not at all,” Indart said. “I often find myself taking last minute, more expensive, Ubers.”
First opened to the public in 1976, the Metro system was designed by architect Harry Weese. The design philosophy was to create a reliable, convenient, aesthetically pleasing transit system. When finished, it stood as a symbol of American architecture and industry.
“It should be designed to set an example for the Nation, and to take its place among the most attractive in the world,” President Lyndon Johnson said in a 1966 letter to Walter McCarter, head of the National Capital Transportation Agency.
Today, a host of factors have led to WMATA being criticized daily by riders and taxpayers for its inability to reliable perform routine operations. Most egregious are the wide variety of safety and reliability issues that have emerged in the last several years and WMATA’s inability to efficiently deal with them. Issues range from the faulty 7000-series trains that were pulled from service in 2021 after it was discovered they were at risk for jumping rails, to heightened crime rates on its trains and in stations, to an apparent organization-wide mindset of ignoring repeatedly flagged problems.
An Organization in Chaos
The problems stem from WMATA’s internal confusion, lack of clear oversight, accountability issues, and communication failures.
In 2017, the Washington Metro Rail Safety Commission (WMSC) was created to independently investigate WMATA. The WMSC acts as Metrorail’s regulatory agency, performing audits and oversight investigations to monitor WMATA. The WMSC’s findings are reported to its commissioners and corrective action plans are then drafted to address the safety issues. In theory, this allows WMATA to focus on daily operations while an independent sister organization investigates issues and offers solutions for WMATA to implement. In application, this is rarely the result.
In a November 15 meeting, the WMSC highlighted multiple safety violations from a recent report. It found systemic instances of poor communication, documentation, maintenance, and training that puts riders and workers at risk.
One example discussed by commissioners detailed an instance of improper roadway worker protection. One Metro worker did not brief three different train operators that there were maintenance personnel working on the line. This resulted in a near miss that likely would have ended in fatal injuries.
“I am concerned that things aren’t happening in a timely manner,” Christopher Hart, chairman of the WMSC said during the meeting. “We are seeing the same things over and over again.”
According to the report, WMATA routinely minimized the problems, often ignoring them completely. The report states WMATA “did not provide an investigative resolution to the issue, failed to examine and address root causes, and did not offer effective alternatives.”
The WMSC report also found WMATA had failed to modernize position descriptions, instead relying on archaic terminology and outdated training.
“Metrorail job descriptions that have not been updated since the 1970s and 1980s and do not reflect current job responsibilities and necessary qualifications,” the report noted.
Prior reporting by the Washington Post, Greater Greater Washington, DCist, and other news outlets paint a picture of an organization struggling to meet safety and financial benchmarks beneath a culture of noncompliance and no oversight.
Jumping The Tracks
According to the former Investigator General of WMATA, Geoff Cherrington, WMATA suffers from competing internal forces within different levels of the organization. Senior executives were focused on updating the transit system to make it safe, effective, and efficient, but that same mindset did not trickle down the organization’s ranks.
“The senior executives… their goal, from what I observed in my five years was 100% to make the system safe, effective and efficient,” Cherrington said. “Now, I’m talking about the executive level. There’s obviously a different culture between the operator level and the mid-manager level.”
When pressed in an interview to describe the culture, Cherrington answered that he was “not comfortable answering that question,” but stated WMATA is an organization people should be concerned with.
“I felt that if the taxpayer, and we’re not just talking about the taxpayers in Maryland, Virginia, and DC… who’s funding the DC metro through taxpayer dollars, should be concerned about what happens with those dollars.”
One of WMATA’s responsibilities is adapting to change and growing to accommodate its riders. This translates into purchasing new equipment to update its fleet of vehicles, and resulted in the purchase of the controversial 7000-series trains.
During the initial procurement process, former General Manager Paul Wiedefeld explored a variety of different options. His goal was to acquire high tech trains in a cost-effective manner that would function for years without additional resource cost.
“The focus was on basically getting, you know, the top quality from around the globe to participate in that procurement,” Wiedefeld said. “You need to make an investment, because it’s an investment much larger than just the transit system.”
On paper, the 7000-series was a perfect upgrade to the aging 6000-series cars riders were accustomed to. However, the necessary inspections and testing did not occur to ensure the new trains were fully compatible with the routes and speeds they were expected to take. Issues with construction that would have been identified during thorough inspection went unnoticed until it was too late.
The 7000-series were taken out of service in 2016 along the Blue, Orange, and Silver lines when it was discovered they could lose contact with the third rail on steep curves. In 2018, the Washington Post reported that every 7000-series came with defective wiring that had to be replaced. Additional issues continued to plague the fleet for years. Despite being aware of the issues, WMATA kept the trains in service. This eventually led to a train derailment between Rosslyn and Arlington National Cemetery in October, 2021. This October, the WMSC agreed to return all 7000-series train cars back to service, with restrictions.
Over a year after the Arlington Cemetery derailment, Soohyun Kim still uses the DC Metro to commute three times a week. She relies on the public transportation but is perpetually frustrated by the lack of coordination and number of reliable train cars, even after WMATA added more train cars to its fleet.
“Waiting time shouldn't be more than four minutes,” Kim said. “I often miss the transfer from Green line northbound to Yellow line southbound… by 30 to 60 seconds and have to wait 15 minutes for the next yellow line southbound.”
The “Culture of Noncompliance”
A theme of the WMSC’s recent findings is WMATA’s repeated minimization of problems, often ignoring issues completely. One report flatly stated that WMATA “did not investigate resolution to the issue, failed to examine and address root causes, and did not offer effective alternatives.”
During an interview with WMSC Communication Specialist Tiffany Minor, she confirmed that the safety commission’s audits, “…identified that there's elements of Metrorail that have a culture that accepts noncompliance with written rules, instructions and manuals.”
Geoff Cherrington served as the Investigator General for WMATA from April 2017 to April 2022. He served his five-year term, acting as the organization’s internal watchdog, identifying numerous safety, operation, and health issues during his posting. However, WMATA did not reappoint Cherrington for a second term and no official reason has ever been given.
Repeated inquiries were sent to WMATA’s Media Relations Manager Ian Jannetta to ask about the WMSC’s findings and why Cherrington was not reinstated for a second term. Despite initially agreeing to answer questions in email interviews, he did not answer the questions provided, nor did he respond to repeated follow-up emails or phone calls. While reporting for this story, it was discovered that the telephone number to reach Janetta, the only number listed for WMATA’s media communications, does not allow for leaving a message and often rings with no one answering.
Since his dismissal from WMATA, Cherrington has reflected on his service and said his greatest challenge was frustration in wanting to affect change.
“When I left… I knew a lot. I knew where the bodies were buried, so to speak,” Cherrington said. “I signed an NDA (nondisclosure agreement) so I have to be very careful about what I say.”
WMATA board member Kamilah Martin-Proctor was asked by email if she would like to comment on this story. After agreeing, a follow-up email was sent asking if it was normal for WMATA inspector generals, government public employees, to sign NDAs. The email remains unanswered at the time of publication.
Additional Reporting by Katie Marlow-Benedick and Annabel Randolph.