A wise man once told me that if you lower your expectations enough, you’ll rarely be disappointed. It appears that philosophy has found a home at WMATA, where a new report shows that Metrorail trains are now meeting agency goals for on-time performance — but only because the transit agency lowered its standards.
Kytja Weir reports that Metro’s trains were on time 90.9 percent of the time in May, which is above the revised goal of 90 percent. (Previously, the bar had been set at 95 percent.) But reduced standards were not enough for the agency to meet goals for on-time bus performance — a mere 74.5 percent of buses arrived at their stops within in nine-minute window that Metro considers to be “on time,” short of a 78 percent standard. Working escalators also fell well below reduced standards, as one out of every six escalators were not functioning during May.
On time standards are a sticky issue for WMATA — after all, it’s important for the agency to hold its services to a certain expectation of performance, but setting unrealistic goals doesn’t really do the system much good, either. (Not to mention the latter is hardly the best public relations strategy.) The report on the performance findings — which you can read below — suggests tweaking the definition of what qualifies as on-time instead of the percentages, though that kind of increased expectation is obviously dependent on resources (read: money) which the transit system just doesn’t possess. WMATA’s board of directors will discuss the report tomorrow.
