Photo by Becky Little.

By DCist Contributor Becky Little

Continuing his publicity blitz, new Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld fielded questions from riders last night at a public forum hosted by the newly formed WMATA Riders’ Union.

Wiedefeld began by saying that the levels of safety and communication at WMATA were not up to his standards, and emphasized to the crowd that he was a Metro rider just like them.

“I take the Red Line to work, for what it’s worth,” he said. The remark drew a favorable response from the crowd, but it also opened the floor for complaints about that notoriously unreliable line.

“We’re paying more to go beyond Silver Spring, and we’re getting half the service,” said one rider, upset that half of Red Line trains will take him only as far as Grosvenor during peak hours.

Another Red Line rider spoke of his “constant frustration” with the unreliable rail and bus schedules, saying that it makes it difficult for people without a car to plan anything.

“People can handle things when they know what to expect,” the rider said. “It’s when they can’t count on anything that the frustration builds and builds.” This was met with thunderous applause.

The event had more than 100 people attendees voicing their complaints about the lack of safety, transparency, and disability access in the transit system.

Wiedefeld addressed these and other issues with rail delays by saying that he wanted to take a look at the logic behind the decisions about track work and transportation schedules. He said he’d explore how he could make those schedules better. He also acknowledged that track work is necessary, though he’d like to get more input from the community about when it should happen.

Another issue raised that night was the accessibility of Metro cars.

“Is it possible that you could make the new train cars line up with the platform?” asked a rider who uses a wheelchair. He said that when the train floors don’t line up with the platform—if they are higher or lower than it—he can’t get off at his stop. And if the train car is too far from the edge of the platform, he fears that his wheels will get caught in the gap.

“That’s a safety issue,” he said.

A rider who is blind said that when she hears there are cuts to buses, she cringes. When bus lines are cut, that means that the Metro Access vans are, too. Those vans drive disabled riders from their doors to their bus stations, and are a necessary means of transportation for many riders.

“Where the buses don’t run on weekends, what are we supposed to do?” she asked. “Disabled people want to go out on weekends, on non-rush hour—how else were we gonna get there?”

Though Wiedefeld didn’t always have a response to these complaints, citing that he had only been on the job for two weeks, he encouraged people to keep reporting their issues so that he could do his job better.

“Keep up the pressure,” Wiedefeld said. “It’s my job to keep pushing, and to deal with it.”