After last week’s Metropocalypse, we all took in the reports as to how major loss of service happens, and the fallout after the fact.

But nothing really hit the nail on the head like Lena H. Sun’s half-report, half-plea for the future. Sun touches on most of the points that seem (at least to us) to be regurgitated over and over these days:

• Metro’s infrastructure is old – trains are past their primes, overworked stud bolts can overheat and cause fires, and track needs replacing – to name a few immediate concerns.
• Gas prices are high, and cars are environmentally unfriendly.
• Consequently, ridership on Metro is constantly reaching record highs, even when nothing special is going on.
• Perhaps most of all, Metro is completely at the mercy of uncontrollable forces, like extremely hot or incredibly wet weather, and there’s nothing to say that something like this won’t happen again without immediate funds to rectify the problems.

Metro is the largest transit system in the country without a dedicated funding source, forced to beg over and over at the hand of federal and local governments that seemingly can’t get enough of building more and more roads, despite all evidence that transit is a much better option in the long run.

We now have some federal funding in place for Metro over the next ten years, with matching funds from the District, Maryland and Virginia pledged as well. But given that the system urgently needs $489 million in capital repairs, that’s all the work on the system we’re likely to see in the near future (and by near, we mean like, hopefully 2011). Will the aging Metro system be able to keep up with demand in the meantime? Last week didn’t give anyone a lot of confidence that the answer to that question could be yes.

Photo by spiggycat