(Photo by Oliver-Ash Kleine)
By DCist contributor Oliver-Ash Kleine
Metro workers rallied this weekend to call on regional leaders and Congress to meet the struggling system’s needs. At the top of the list of priorities: a dedicated funding source. No surprise there—alarms of Metro deteriorating without more and consistent funding have been sounding unheeded for years.
“If buses are crowded, we make it work,” said union President Jackie Jeter to workers filling the pews at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on Saturday. “If you don’t have the right tools and the right parts, we make it work. If you don’t have enough manpower, we make it work.”
According to Amalgamated Transit Union local 689, that can-do attitude has kept Metro running without enough resources for years, but the state of the system today demonstrates that workers can only keep doing more with less for so long.
The union held conversations with more than 2,000 members about what’s needed to fix Metro to put forward a list of priorities. In addition to dedicated funding, the union is calling for Metro to prioritize safety for both workers and commuters over revenue, invest in training, protect pensions, and reject efforts to privatize parts of the system. Union members took the stage to explain the problems Metro is facing to the policymakers in attendance.
“If we want personal development many times we have to use our own time or spend our own money to take these classes,” said Metro worker Kevin Laws.
Jeter says training is important, but Metro doesn’t have the manpower. “I can’t let him off to go to training because I need someone to fix that train,” she said.
More workers cost money, and so does paying for the pensions of retired workers—currently Metro has an unfunded pension liability of $2.8 billion. With changes coming to Metro and real concerns about the budget, some employees worry they could end up with a raw deal in an effort to cut costs. Earlier this summer, Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld announced 500 jobs would be eliminated. Wiedefeld was scheduled to attend the rally but didn’t attend due to the investigation into last week’s derailment.
Sporadic calls to fix Metro by privatizing the system have come from the conservative Cato Institute, a few op-eds and a disorganized group of what could be college frat bros. Jeter says she’s concerned about WMATA trying to contract out jobs and privatize certain services, noting that the transit agency is considering partnering with Uber or Lyft to provide an alternative to MetroAccess.
The bottom line from the union: WMATA needs more money to keep Metro running, revamp the aging system, and fairly compensate workers. D.C. Councilmember and Metro Board Chair Jack Evans has been the most vocal advocate of dedicated funding in recent months. During the rally, he called on Congress to pay $300 million dollars a year into the system—that’s about what Maryland, D.C. and Virginia each chip in. Evans argues it’s only fair, half of federal employees in the region get to work using Metro.
“I know it’s hard,” he said. “I know there’ll be opposition, I know all the reasons why they can’t do it. I’m not interested in good intentions. I want my $300 million.”
Evans says he’s been meeting with members of the region’s Congressional Delegation to try to get them on board, though getting congress to increase funding may be an uphill battle. Advocates for dedicated funding are also hopeful regional policymakers will approve a tax plan to support the system, which hasn’t been politically viable in the past. Already this year, leaders in the Virginia General Assembly, which is controlled by Republicans, said the idea was a non-starter. However, Evans says the need for dedicated funding is urgent and getting the funding is finally feasible—he noted it was a problem when he started serving on the Metro Board in 1992. Now that Metro is quite literally starting to fall apart, the hope is Maryland, D.C. and Virginia are listening more closely to Metro’s financial woes and will pitch in to keep the trains running.
