[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING METRO'S TRACK RECORD: AN OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE CHALLENGES
AND OPPORTUNITIES FACING THE WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT
AUTHORITY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 6, 2000
__________
Serial No. 106-275
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
75-013 WASHINGTON : 2001
_______________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
STEPHEN HORN, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
Carolina ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
BOB BARR, Georgia DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas JIM TURNER, Texas
LEE TERRY, Nebraska THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
GREG WALDEN, Oregon JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California ------
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho (Independent)
DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
STEPHEN HORN, California DC
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
Howie Denis, Professional Staff Member
Victoria Proctor, Professional Staff Member
Jenny Mayer, Clerk
Jon Bouker, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on October 6, 2000.................................. 1
Statement of:
Fernandez, Nuria, Acting Administrator, Federal Transit
Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation; Gladys
W. Mack, chairman, board of directors, Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority; Decatur Trotter, vice
chairman, board of directors, Washington Metropolitan Area
Transit Authority; Christopher Zimmerman, second vice
chairman, board of directors, Washington Metropolitan Area
Transit Authority; Richard White, general manager and chief
executive officer, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit
Authority; Ron Tober, chairman, American Public
Transportation Association; Dorothy Dugger, deputy general
manager, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit [BART]; Kathy
Porter, transportation planning board, Metropolitan
Washington Council of Governments; and Michael Carvalho,
Transportation and Environment Committee, Greater
Washington Board of Trade.................................. 12
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Carvalho, Michael, Transportation and Environment Committee,
Greater Washington Board of Trade, prepared statement of... 149
Davis, Hon. Thomas M., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Virginia, prepared statement of................... 4
Dugger, Dorothy, deputy general manager, San Francisco Bay
Area Rapid Transit [BART], prepared statement of........... 120
Fernandez, Nuria, Acting Administrator, Federal Transit
Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, prepared
statement of............................................... 15
Mack, Gladys W., chairman, board of directors, Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, prepared statement of. 43
Morella, Hon. Constance A., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 170
Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, a Delegate in Congress from the
District of Columbia, prepared statement of................ 10
Porter, Kathy, transportation planning board, Metropolitan
Washington Council of Governments, prepared statement of... 140
Tober, Ron, chairman, American Public Transportation
Association, prepared statement of......................... 29
White, Richard, general manager and chief executive officer,
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, prepared
statement of............................................... 66
EXAMINING METRO'S TRACK RECORD: AN OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE CHALLENGES
AND OPPORTUNITIES FACING THE WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT
AUTHORITY
----------
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2000
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in
room 2203, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Thomas M. Davis
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Davis and Norton.
Staff present: Howie Denis and Victoria Proctor,
professional staff members; David Marin, communications
director/counsel; Melissa Wojciak, staff director; Jenny Mayer,
clerk; Jon Bouker, minority counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority
assistant clerk.
Mr. Davis. Good afternoon. Apologize for the cramped
quarters. But we would not have the other hearing room
available for probably another half hour to an hour. We wanted
to get this moving in a timely manner. We may have a vote in
the middle of this. I will have to go over and vote. Ms. Norton
will be taking the Chair at that point. She has committed to me
she'll not in my absence, running the committee, she won't
bring up D.C. statehood. So with that understanding--usually
unprecedented to do, but we have a very good relationship on
this. We want to get all the testimony in and get to the
questions and try to make this an informative hearing for all
concerned.
Today's oversight hearing will focus on the Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Over the past 25 years
WMATA has built a sterling mass transit system with an
international reputation for efficiency and safety that has
proven to be a model for the rest of the country. As chairman
of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and now as a
Congressman it's been a great pleasure to work with Metro. I
know from my experience that Metro officials work hard to
provide reliable service to meet the needs of its riders.
Let me just add I had a conversation with Carlton Sickles,
who is here in the audience, one of the architects of the Metro
system early on and one of its first board members. And Mr.
Sickles, thank you for being with us in attendance today as
well.
Recently it's been tough to avoid the media reports about
the various problems plaguing the safety and reliability of
WMATA's transit services. This summer alone has seen a flurry
of incidents which have inconvenienced passengers and in some
cases even frightened them. There has been slow progress
repairing escalators, persistent overcrowding on buses and
trains, and fires in Metro tunnels. And then in July we heard
about the fiasco which ensued during morning rush hour when a
train stopped for 15 minutes just outside the Farragut North
station with a brake problem. Four cars were still in the
tunnel and the passengers remained in the cramped cars without
air conditioning. There was no communication with the
passengers to let them know the reason for the delay and the
train operator was unreachable through the intercom. The
mishandling of the July tunnel incident could have resulted in
a serious injury to passengers.
So the subcommittee is interested in examining the
mechanisms that WMATA is implementing in order to create or
augment training for Metrorail operators and increase
communication with passengers when emergencies like this occur.
Passengers who were on the train contacted us to describe their
experiences and made clear that incidents like this shatter the
public confidence in the transit system.
Now, there is no question that Metro has enacted several
significant measures to address these problems. In particular,
it has begun a $233 million capital improvement program for
fiscal 2000 aimed at preserving the system and upgrading
various facilities. Additionally it recently announced planned
improvements within 60 days to provide better training to
employees on more effectively communicating with the customers
about transit outages, and it announced a revised schedule for
accelerated repairs of the Metro escalators.
Metro's board has also approved the opening of the Green
Line extension to Branch Avenue on January 13th, 2 months ahead
of schedule. Today WMATA's rail service alone is among the
Nation's largest systems in terms of its annual passenger
trips, second only to New York City's subway system. Its
Metrobus service ranks sixth nationally.
As we all know, the economy in the Washington area is
booming. High tech companies in particular are attracted to
this area. With this kind of rapid economic development and
population increase, the Washington area's reliance on Metro
will only continue to grow in the coming years. In fact,
Metro's ridership is expected to increase by as much as 50
percent over the next 20 years. Therefore, renovation and
expansion of the system are critical to Metro's future and its
ability to accommodate customer demand.
While many problems may be the result of growing pains,
others highlight the need for improved communication and
infrastructure. The positive steps that WMATA has taken so far
has increased customer loyalty and better serve the region.
However, the subcommittee remains concerned that WMATA faces
persistent systematic problems that will hinder its expansion
and progress, and therefore we want to examine these issues a
little further.
We are going to hear from representatives of WMATA to
discuss the challenges it faces in providing adequate, safe,
secure, reliable and customer friendly transportation services
to citizens in the region. We'll also hear from representatives
of BART in San Francisco and the Miami-Dade transit system to
help us gauge how WMATA's organization and business practices
compare with other large transit agencies nationwide.
The subcommittee also expects to hear from the witnesses
about the extent to which WMATA faces unique challenges because
of its relationship to the Federal, two States and the local
governments that influence its operation and decisionmaking
authority, how WMATA funds its operations in capital
investments and how WMATA measures its performance in key areas
and how it develops its performance standards and how WMATA
gauges customer satisfaction.
Unfortunately Mr. Danny Alvarez, the Director of the Miami-
Dade transit is unavailable to testify before the subcommittee
today. A state of emergency has been declared in Miami-Dade
County because of the heavy flooding that resulted from severe
storms in southern Florida this week. Mr. Alvarez is part of
the county's emergency response team. He's responsible for
coordinating all emergency logistical transportation
operations. Mr. Alvarez sent me a letter to that effect. I will
enter it into the record. I think I can speak on behalf of all
the subcommittee members when I extend my support to Mr.
Alvarez as he works to successfully manage the crisis facing
the county.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Thomas M. Davis follows:]
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Mr. Davis. I will now yield to our ranking member, Ms.
Norton, for any opening comments she has before we allow our
witnesses to testify and go to questions.
Ms. Norton. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate your leadership in calling this hearing today. This
region of the country is increasingly dependent, and I use that
word in the best sense, on rapid transit, both bus and subway.
And I would like to see us even more dependent on WMATA than we
are today. It seems to me not only the preferred methods of
travel in this region and in this country, it is fast becoming
in this congested region the only method of travel with any
hope for getting people home in the same day in which they
started.
The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority's excellent
reputation has been tarnished by recent events related to
public safety. The most serious are fire related, especially in
Metro tunnels. Nearly 600,000 D.C. and regional residents and
tourists use Metro each day, second in passenger trips only to
New York City. Thus, failures in the system not only endanger
riders but the regional economy as well.
In 25 years of operation Metro's record of safety and
reliability has not generally been a cause of concern. However,
an apparent trend of increases in reports of fires began in
November 1999 when four, or twice the usual number of one or
two of the preceding months were reported, rising again to
February 6th to three times that number, and culminating in a
high of 13 in June.
We now see a more hopeful downward trend. Beginning in
July, there were five incidents, in August three and in
September two. I cannot imagine anything more frightening than
to be caught in a stalled and crowded subway, particularly if
there is smoke, with no communication. That sounds like a plot
for an urban horror movie.
There have been some indications that the spike in stops
and reported fires may have constituted an overreaction to bad
press and public concern rather than to danger from fire and
smoke. Even if so, that would raise questions about the quality
of management response to change and crisis within the
organization. There are undoubtedly many causes. Training and
communication both internally and with the public are clearly
deeply implicated. I do not accept that capital improvements
and upgrading of facilities may be a cause. A public carrier
has to provide public safety under all circumstances or ``res
ipsa loquitor,'' as we say in the law.
The reported incidents do a disservice to a long record of
reliability. Metro deserves credit for how it has raised
ridership on buses and subways within innovations that break
through the conventional wisdom. This is no time to countermand
hopeful management improvements in ridership with discouraging
management deficiencies and safety and reliability.
This hearing should be regarded as an important part of
Metro's own effort to regain the full confidence of the public
it has traditionally enjoyed. Only with a thorough airing of
the current problems and the proposed solutions can the public
be reassured. We offer that opportunity to today's witnesses
and look forward to
hearing from each of them.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Davis. Thank you, Ms. Norton.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton
follows:]
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Mr. Davis. I now call our witnesses and supporting
witnesses to testify: Ms. Nuria Fernandez, the Acting
Administrator, Federal Transit Administration, U.S. Department
of Transportation; Ms. Gladys Mack, the chairman of the Board
of Directors of WMATA; Mr. Richard White, the general manager
and chief executive officer of WMATA; Mr. Ron Tober, chairman
of the American Public Transportation Association; Ms. Dorothy
Dugger, deputy general manager, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid
Transit [BART], the Honorable Kathy Porter, Transportation
Planning Board, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments;
Mr. Michael Carvalho, the Transportation Environmental
Committee, Greater Washington Board of Trade; the Honorable
Decatur Trotter, vice chairman, Board of Directors, WMATA; and
the Honorable Chris Zimmerman, the second vice chairman, Board
of Directors, WMATA.
As you know, it's the policy of this committee that all
witnesses and supporting witnesses be sworn before they
testify. If you would rise with me and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Davis. We're going to start, Ms. Fernandez, with you
and then I understand, Mr. Tober, you have to catch a plane.
We'll proceed to you and then go down the line back to Ms.
Mack.
STATEMENTS OF NURIA FERNANDEZ, ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL
TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION;
GLADYS W. MACK, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, WASHINGTON
METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY; DECATUR TROTTER, VICE
CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA
TRANSIT AUTHORITY; CHRISTOPHER ZIMMERMAN, SECOND VICE CHAIRMAN,
BOARD OF DIRECTORS, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT
AUTHORITY; RICHARD WHITE, GENERAL MANAGER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY; RON
TOBER, CHAIRMAN, AMERICAN PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION;
DOROTHY DUGGER, DEPUTY GENERAL MANAGER, SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
RAPID TRANSIT [BART]; KATHY PORTER, TRANSPORTATION PLANNING
BOARD, METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS; AND
MICHAEL CARVALHO, TRANSPORTATION AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE,
GREATER WASHINGTON BOARD OF TRADE
Ms. Fernandez. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good
afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. It is
with great pleasure that I come before you today to discuss the
challenges facing the Nation's transit providers as they strive
to deliver a safe, reliable and efficient service to their
customers.
This is a significant moment in the history of the Federal
mass transit assistance program. Over the past several years
the Congress has provided transit industry with unprecedented
levels of Federal assistance. Last year alone for the first
time since the beginning of the Federal transit assistance
program under President Kennedy transit ridership in the United
States exceeded 9 billion trips, and based on recent reports,
transit patronage is up by 4.3 percent compared to the same
period last year.
These ridership gains are the result of a strong national
economy that has put a greater demand on transportation in
general and transit in particular. These gains are also due to
the very hard work by transit managers and employees and by the
investment of substantial financial resources from local and
State governments with considerable Federal assistance. As good
as all this is, however, more needs to be done around the
Nation as well as here in Washington. The greatest challenge
facing transit industries all across the country is securing
the resources to meet the increasing demands for transit
services for their communities and to assure that the current
transit infrastructure is able to accept the added stress on
its assets.
Our recent report to Congress on the conditions and
performance of the Nation's surface transportation systems
noted that record levels of highway and transit investments
have greatly improved transportation safety and enhanced system
conditions. Still further progress is necessary for this new
century to keep up with the rehabilitation and replacement of
existing transit infrastructure to maintain its state of good
repair.
All across the Nation, communities have closed the gap
between their needs and availability of funds by taking full
advantage of the flexibility that was in ISTEA and now provided
in TEA-21 in using other surface transportation funds for
locally determined priorities. I am pleased to note, Mr.
Chairman, that nationally over $1.6 billion was flexed in
fiscal year 2000 with over $6 billion flexed since start of
ISTEA from the Federal Highway Congestion Mitigation Air
Quality and Surface Transportation programs to transit systems
across the Nation. In fact, WMATA has received about $13
million in flex funding in fiscal year 2000.
Similarly, Congress has provided a range of innovative
financing tools which several of our Nation's transit providers
are taking advantage of in order to meet their needs for
infrastructure financing. Earlier this year WMATA was the first
agency to receive a loan guarantee of $600 million for the
Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act
[TIFIA]. This loan guarantee is intended to assist and expedite
WMATA's rehabilitation program.
As important as the Federal assistance is, it is at the
local level where the key decisions concerning how to develop
and fund local transit operations are made. The most important
thing for transit agencies to accomplish in order to meet these
challenges is to assure stable and reliable State and local
sources of funding for capital and operating needs. The best
agencies start with a firm idea of their goals and future
plans. They make realistic estimates of the costs to meet these
needs and develop an aggressive multifaceted approach with
local and State decisionmakers and the business community to
generate the necessary resources.
Based on data that was reported by all mass transit
systems, the larger transit agencies typically have dedicated
revenue sources of funds for their capital and operating needs.
For example, Los Angeles County Metro and the Chicago Transit
Authority have a dedicated sales tax, Atlanta has a dedicated
income tax, and Portland has a dedicated payroll tax. These
dedicated sources give a great degree of predictability to
their ability to implement their programs and satisfy their
infrastructure needs.
The committee has also demonstrated an interest in FTA's
oversight of transit agencies. In my written statement I go
into a great level of detail on our activities, including the
recent procurement systems review of Washington Metro. As the
GAO testified before Congress, FTA has improved the quality of
its Federal oversight programs since 1992, when the program was
placed on GAO's high risk list. FTA came off the list in
February 1995, and we have issued guidance for transit
financial compliance based on their recommendations.
Coming back to WMATA, WMATA is experiencing the very same
challenge faced by all of our grantees serving major
metropolitan areas, such as increased demand for transit due to
a strong economy, the need to keep pace with their
infrastructure, maintenance and rehabilitation programs, and
striking a balance in the allocation of local resources to fund
the construction of new corridors without affecting the ability
to deliver current service.
I want to thank the subcommittee again for the opportunity
to be here today to discuss the state of transit nationally and
how Washington Metro fits into this picture. We know that this
committee and Congress have shown an interest in ensuring that
the public dollars used to finance mass transportation systems
result in a cleaner, safer, reliable and timely service to all
of its customers, and I look forward to working with this
committee to ensure that the Federal resources provided achieve
the intended benefits.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Fernandez follows:]
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Ms. Norton [presiding]. Thank you, Ms. Fernandez.
Mr. Tober.
Mr. Tober. Thank you, Madam Congresswoman. Good afternoon,
Madam chairman and the members of the subcommittee. The
American Public Transportation Association appreciates the
opportunity to testify on the challenges facing the Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and other public
transportation systems. My name is Ron Tober. I am chair and
chief executive officer of the Charlotte Area Transit System,
and I have worked for a number of other transit agencies during
my 31-year career.
The detailed written statement has been submitted by APTA
for the record and I will briefly cover its main points for you
here today. Before discussing WMATA, let me talk about transit
generally and the major challenges that we face. Quite simply,
more and more people are choosing to use public transportation.
We closed the millennium by breaking the 9 billion passenger
mark for the first time in 40 years. Over the last 4 years
transit ridership in the United States has grown by 15 percent,
and public transportation generates a real return on the
Federal, State and local investment. In addition to the 300,000
people employed directly by the $26 billion a year public
transportation industry, thousands of others are employed in
the business sector that depend upon transit investment for
their livelihood.
Transit removes vehicles from traffic, saving time for both
transit and highway users. This helps increase productivity and
stimulates the economy. Traffic congestion has reached epidemic
proportions, but as bad as it is, imagine what it would be like
without public transportation. Regions like Washington, DC,
would require nearly 300,000 more cars on their roadways if
transit was not in operation in this area.
Transportation experts, however, agree that our capital
investments have not kept pace with the annual $16 billion in
transit capital needs that are present in this country. In
order to provide alternatives to traffic congestion, it is
critical to invest in all forms of surface transportation,
including public transportation.
Let me now turn to WMATA, which is an active APTA member
organization. The challenges faced by WMATA are common to those
faced by transit agencies in most large metropolitan areas.
Like every transit agency, WMATA must raise State and locality
funding to match Federal capital funds and pay for operating
costs that far exceed annual capital costs. All transit
agencies struggle to balance the need to fund capital costs,
including both capacity expansion and asset maintenance,
against the need to fund operating costs that cannot be
deferred or avoided.
Another set of challenges involve the changing demographics
and the need to provide service to employment centers that are
more centrally located. Urban sprawl requires more route miles
of public transportation service and the relocation of
businesses and suburban communities has spawned suburb to
suburb commuting patterns that are harder for transit to serve.
This--I'm repeating myself, aren't I? I beg your pardon, Madam
Chairman, I've lost my place.
Ms. Norton. It's all right.
Mr. Tober. Regarding the challenges that are unique to the
Washington area, WMATA operates a combined bus and rail system
in a multi-State region which requires the agency to seek State
and local funding from multiple jurisdictions. In terms of
revenue raised at the State and local level, which is the
principal funding source for transit operating costs, WMATA is
unusual in that it derives very little of its funding from
dedicated revenue sources.
Of the 14 transit systems in major metropolitan areas that
operate heavy rail services, WMATA is second to last in
dedicated funding, with only Boston's transit system receiving
less. WMATA receives less than 5 percent of its State and local
operating aid from dedicated sources. In contrast, New York
City Transit derives 80 percent of its State and local funding
from dedicated sources. In Cleveland nearly 97 percent of State
and local funding, or $148 million, is from dedicated sources.
WMATA compares favorably to transit agencies nationally in
revenue that it derives from fares. While the national average
is 41.6 percent of operating costs paid by fares, WMATA's fare
box recovery ratio is 51.4 percent, nearly 10 percent higher
than the national average. WMATA is responding to the
challenges that it has with a wide range of innovative
practices, including operating later night service, innovative
labor contracting, making Metrobus more competitive, and a fare
simplification initiative, improving integration of its bus and
rail systems with other regional systems.
Transit agencies are subject to a host of performance and
oversight measures. The FTA, as you may know, conducts tri-
annual reviews of every large transit agency to measure
compliance with Federal requirements. It requires transit
operators to report a wide variety of information to the
national transit data base, and it enforces numerous
procurement standards.
APTA has a number of programs to assist its members,
including rail and bus safety management programs, a peer
review service and a host of technical services.
Finally, every agency must compete for customers and
measures itself by the ability to attract and retain riders.
Success in doing this is greatly affected by the quality of the
service provided, including reliability, cleanliness, security,
convenience and other factors.
Public transportation providers are working to address a
variety of emerging trends that affect how they serve their
customers. Traffic congestion, the cost of motor fuels, clean
air mandates are all contributing to increasing demand for
public transportation service.
At the same time the demand is rising, transit
infrastructure is aging. Despite major increases in TEA-21 for
rail modernization funding, aging rail systems struggle to add
modern safety features and maintain their systems in a good
state of repair. There is not enough Federal investment for
urban communities who want to build new rail systems or for
rural systems who want public transit service for the first
time. Requests in the appropriations process for bus and rail
investment far outstrip available funding.
Madam chairman, before I conclude I'd like to make one
additional comment. As you can see from my background, I have
worked at several transit agencies that have struggled to
maintain aging rail systems. WMATA finds itself very much in
that same situation now, and I see what happens when you have a
situation like that if you do not maintain those systems
properly.
We've made enormous progress in this country and spent a
lot of money, a very good amount of money on public transit.
While it's not an inexpensive proposition, I would be remiss if
I didn't urge the members of this committee to support efforts
to address the public's demand for more transit service and
proper maintenance of our existing systems.
Again, thank you for this opportunity to testify before the
subcommittee, and thank you and the other witnesses for
allowing me to go out of order.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tober follows:]
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Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Tober. We appreciate
you being here.
Ms. Mack.
Ms. Mack. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Norton. With me today
are the Honorable Decatur Trotter, Prince Georges County, MD,
the first vice chairman of the Board, and the Honorable
Christopher Zimmerman of Arlington, VA, the second vice
chairman. They have already been introduced to you. On behalf
of the Board I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to
appear before the committee today to talk about our transit
system.
The unique Federal-regional partnership which created and
supports the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has
endured for nearly half a century, and together we have created
the finest transit system in the Nation, providing quality
transit service for the National Capital Region, Federal
employees, tourists and visitors from all over the country and
the world.
The WMATA compact enabling legislation specifies how Board
members are appointed, how the Authority is financed, and how
we procure goods and services. WMATA's 12 Board members
represent those jurisdictions that finally participate in
funding Metro. The compact also mandates consensus in that all
actions of the Board require an affirmative vote from the
District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, the compact
signatories. Jurisdictions covered under the WMATA compact are
the District of Columbia, Montgomery and Prince Georges County,
MD, Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax City, Falls
Church and Loudoun County, VA.
Our efforts are a case study in making regionalism work. In
January 2001 the last segment of the original 103-mile rail
system will open from Anacostia to Branch Avenue. In March we
will observe the 25th anniversary of Metrorail. It is a time
for celebration by those in the Congress, the Federal
Government and the region who have worked so hard to bring us
to this point.
Transit ridership is at an all time high and customer
demand continues to grow. Each weekday 18 percent of total work
trips are made on transit and 40 percent of total work trips to
the inner core are made on transit. With over 340,000 Federal
employees located in this area, 36 percent of our rail
customers are Federal workers. In addition, Metro serves many
of the region's 21 million visitors each year and large numbers
of people attending special events in the Nation's capital. No
other transit system in the country is called upon to regularly
handle such events.
In meeting the challenges of increasing ridership and a
maturing system, the Board and staff are doing everything
within our power to ensure that our riders have a safe,
efficient and affordable transit system. Over the years the
Board has engaged in active oversight of the Authority. In
addition to our policymaking role, the Board conducts detailed
performance reviews, monitors financial statements, ridership
trends, operations reliability, and customer feedback, and we
direct changes where indicated.
We have also emphasized fiscal prudence and have
implemented programs to assure that budget growth is reasonably
contained. The Board's Budget Committee annually conducts
detailed budget proceedings, which include the establishment of
budget guidance for the general manager, review and comment by
participating jurisdictions and the chief administrative
officers of the region. Before the budget is approved by the
Board it must be concurred in by all member jurisdictions.
These authorities are also subject to oversight by a number
of outside agencies, including the Federal Transit
Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and
the Tri-State Oversight Committee.
I would just like to take a few minutes to focus on some of
our funding challenges. Chart 1 shows that approximately 54
percent of WMATA's 2001 operating budget will be covered by
fares paid from our customers. This reflects a 69 percent cost
recovery on the rail system, the second best in the country. In
some months rail recovery is in the high 70's and for the month
of July this year it was 81 percent, a record for WMATA. These
recovery rates have steadily increased despite the fact that we
have not had a fare increase in 5 years. We can also say that
we will not have a fare increase in 2002. Approximately 40
percent of the 2001 budget will be paid for by $366 million in
subsidies from the District and the Maryland and Virginia
participating jurisdictions.
Chart 2 shows that of the $9.4 billion cost of the 103-mile
Metrorail system, approximately 67 percent was funded by
Federal appropriations and the remainder was funded by State
and local jurisdictions. We are proud that the last 13\1/2\
miles of the construction program were completed ahead of
schedule and under budget.
The last chart, chart 3 shows our 2001 infrastructure
renewal program, or capital improvements program, of $170
million, which is needed to purchase and rehabilitate rail cars
and buses and to refurbish facilities. Approximately 76 percent
of WMATA's infrastructure funding comes from TEA-21, with the
remainder from State and local sources. Annual funding levels
of $445 million are required to maintain adequate rolling stock
and to refurbish our physical plant. Of this amount, $180
million is currently unfunded. TEA-21 expires in fiscal year
2003, and we hope that Federal funding will increase when the
bill is reauthorized.
Adequate Federal funding is needed to help sustain the
Metro system. At the same time it is imperative that the region
step up to the task and continue to contribute its share of
Metro's infrastructure renewal cost.
Finally, the Federal Government and the region have created
the finest transit system in the Nation. But we find ourselves
at the crossroads that other older systems have experienced. We
must now garner the support needed to protect our enormous
investment. We cannot stand by and allow our system to decline
to a point where it cannot meet the demands placed upon it, as
has happened in cities such as New York, Philadelphia and
Boston. As we look to the future, we must be prepared for the
dynamic changes that are occurring in our region.
In 1999, the Board adopted an ambitious 25-year service
expansion plan with a goal of doubling transit ridership. We
are now working with the region and the Federal Government on
our first expansion beyond the 103-mile system, including a new
station at New York Avenue in the District and extension along
the Dulles Corridor and to Largo Town Center. We must all work
together to look for ways to meet the funding challenges
presented by our need to preserve and protect the magnificent
system and to expand both the rail and the bus systems to serve
the demands of this growing region.
On behalf of the WMATA Board, I commit to you that we will
continue the close partnership with the region and the Federal
Government to operate a transit system worthy of the Nation's
capital. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Mack follows:]
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Mr. Davis [presiding]. Thank you very much.
Mr. White.
Mr. White. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the
subcommittee. My name is Richard White, and I have been the
general manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit
Authority since August 1996. I appreciate the opportunity to
discuss with you the current state of the Metro system, our
many successes and some of our most significant challenges. I
am submitting, Mr. Chairman, my testimony for the record and
would like to use my time to try and work off of----
Mr. Davis. Your whole testimony and all of yours is in the
record. So thank you.
Mr. White. First, just to give you some information on the
size of our operation, the metropolitan area that we serve is
4\1/2\ million and it's about the seventh largest area in the
United States. Metrorail system carries 163 million trips.
That's the second largest, as we've already heard. Our bus
system carries 138 million trips per year. That's the sixth
largest. And our total system carries 301 million trips per
year. That's the fourth largest in the United States.
The size of our work force is over 9,300 positions, about
the third largest. Our operating budget is $728.5 million, the
sixth largest. The percent of people who use our services to
the urban core on a daily basis for commute purposes is 40
percent and those who use it for regional trips during the work
period is 18 percent. That makes us the second largest.
The message, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, is
the transit utilization is disproportionately greater in this
region than in most other areas of the country.
Chart No. 2 tells you about the age of the Metrorail
system. Many people still think of the system as a young
system. Its visual condition literally belies its true age.
This chart shows you the various segments of our system and the
age. Those in red are between 17 and 25 years of age. As you
can see, that's 45 percent of our system. In blue that's
between 9 and 16 years, and that's 33 percent of our system.
And less than 8 years is 22 miles, or only 22 percent of our
system.
Next year, specifically March 29, 2001, we celebrate the
25th year of the Metrorail operation and we are now beginning
to experience the effects of an aging rail system.
On chart 3, the Metrobus system was established in 1973 as
a result of WMATA's purchase of four private bus companies who
were failing in the region. Some of the facilities used today
were literally built in the early 1900's and were actually used
as streetcar barns. The average age of our fleet is 7.8 years,
which is an accomplishment for us in that it was over 10 years
just 2 to 3 years ago because of the ages of many of our
facilities, which go back as early as 1906.
Recently our ridership, just to give you an indication of
what the ridership growth has been on Metrobus and Metrorail
for the last decade, in 1990 the system was carrying 301
million trips per year. The local bus and commuter rail system
carried another 18 million trips, meaning there were 319
million trips per year carried on transit services in 1990. 10
years later, interestingly enough, the Metro system is carrying
about the same number, 301 million. As you can see, there's
been considerable differences with large growth on the rail
side and decreasing growth, or actually a steep decline on the
bus side. On top of the 301 million trips are 44 million trips
carried by county-based bus systems and the commuter rail
system. So the region is carrying 345 million trips per year.
On the bus system, the changes have been related to, I
would say, four issues. One is as we open rail services our bus
system literally is converted to a feeder bus system. Also,
some of the counties have been establishing their own local bus
services to substitute for some of the Metro services. In the
mid-1990's we had a devastating effect of fare increases and
service cuts, which led to a 20 percent reduction on the bus
system. The news for the last 3 years is up 14 percent, the bus
system is even up higher, 16 percent. So today we are literally
carrying 128,000 trips per day more than we did just 3 years
ago.
Chart 5 tells you what the effect of this public investment
in the Metrorail system has been. Each of these arrows
represents what would be a need for an additional five to six
lines of high capacity to move the same number of people that
Metro moves during the peak period. You could see that capacity
would need to come literally in the 14th Street Bridge
Corridor, Roosevelt Bridge Corridor, Wisconsin Connecticut
Avenue Corridor, Georgia Avenue Corridor, New York Avenue
Corridor, and Pennsylvania Avenue Corridor. Each peak period we
carry 200,000 people both in the morning and afternoon rush
hours; 85,000 of them are carried in the peak 1 hour. Like a
utility, we are very peak oriented. We run 480 trains during
the peak period, literally two trains per minute.
Chart 6 shows our service reliability from the period of
time January 1999 through August 2000. This is an index that
measures two things: The percent of our trips that are
completed within 4 minutes of the scheduled time as well as the
effect as to whether anybody is off-loaded off of a train and
is inconvenienced because of a mechanical malfunction. As you
can see, our performance has generally been within the 97, 98
percent range, sometimes approaching 99 percent, which means
that on a daily basis we're carrying approximately 600,000
people and we are successfully delivering 580,000 to 590,000 of
them to their destination. However, for the 10,000 to 20,000
who are delayed, we do recognize that is a serious
inconvenience to them and we are focused on trying to make
those numbers even better.
On chart 7, this speaks to the infrastructure renewal
program issues that we have, our capital refinancing issues.
These numbers in our program were developed on a very
comprehensive needs assessment that we had conducted a couple
of years ago. I would say that we really did our homework on
trying to understand what our funding needs were for capital
reinvestment, and over 25 years this shows a need to invest
$9.8 billion just to repair and replace our assets. It has
nothing to do with providing service improvements or growth
issues. This is necessary to protect what has been a $10
billion public investment in our regional rail system, which if
we were building it today would cost $22 billion to construct.
Presently this is approximately 88 percent funded, as you may
hear in testimony later, in the regional planning process. That
is a large issue that we are dealing with.
As you can see, we are today in the $170, $190 million
range of annual funding. We are growing to $265 million but
need to grow to $445 million, and the green space of the chart
shows you that $180 million per year funding level that we are
seeing ourselves being short on.
Two other arrows to point for you on this. One is the
expiration of funding agreements with our local funding
partners for which that is the only actual funding commitments
that we have in place for 2003, and also pretty much around the
same timeframe the expiration of the TEA-21 transportation
reauthorization bill, the importance of that, that
reauthorization bill to perhaps help us address some of our
issues.
If I could finish with the last chart, Mr. Chairman, to
kind of just succinctly describe what we consider to be our key
management challenges. These are explained in considerable
detail in my testimony. The first challenge of course is to
provide our basic mission of providing safe and reliable
service, which is growing more challenging in the face of
growing pains where we're serving record demand, operating at
near capacity and aging pains where we're contending with an
aging infrastructure. We have clearly had two or three wakeup
calls that have been well chronicled: In April 1999 during the
Cherry Blossom Festival, April 20th, of our fire incident and
the July 19th Red Line incident that I'm prepared to talk to
you about a little bit later and is included in my testimony.
Second challenge is the one that we've been talking about
in terms of securing sufficient funding to adequately
rehabilitate and replace WMATA's system infrastructure. I
think, as has been said, we are literally now at the crossroads
as to whether we're going to allow ourselves to fall further
behind in disrepair or meet the challenges that we need to keep
our infrastructure in the kind of condition that people are
accustomed to.
Our third challenge is maintaining the reliability of our
elevators and escalators. We have the most and deepest in the
world, and they are suffering the effects of exposure to
weather. And my testimony explains a number of things that
we're doing in that arena.
Our fourth challenge is to ensure that we do have the
sufficient rolling stock system and facility capacity to
support our goal of doubling ridership in the next 25 years,
and that indeed is a serious challenge.
Our fifth challenge is to meet the growing demands of a
changing population employment center in this metropolitan
area. Much of our growth is now occurring in the outer suburbs.
It is estimated by the year 2025 two-thirds of the trips will
be suburb-to-suburb trips, and that clearly brings some new
challenges for us.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, the last key challenge that I would
point to is the need that we would have the capacity inside of
our organization to enhance and ensure that we have that
capacity to continue to do the job that we do and to meet the
challenges ahead.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to comment.
[The prepared statement of Mr. White follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Thank you very much.
Ms. Dugger.
Ms. Dugger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congresswoman Norton.
I'm Dorothy Dugger, deputy general manager of the San Francisco
Bay Area Rapid Transit District [BART]. I'm pleased to
participate in today's hearings. I hope in exploring some of
the issues faced by WMATA and the other systems you've invited
here today, the subcommittee will hear some of the common
issues confronting rail transit properties such as ours and
that those concerns can be further examined in the context of
the upcoming reauthorization of TEA-21.
BART operates a 95-mile, 39-station rapid rail transit
system that serves four counties and 16 cities on both sides of
San Francisco Bay. The nine-member board of elected directors
governs the agency and we employ a work force of just under
3,500 people.
In recent years we've undergone tremendous growth and
change. We've just completed the first expansion of the
original system, adding 24 miles of rail and five stations.
Construction of an 8.7-mile, four-station extension to serve
San Francisco International Airport is almost 70 percent
complete and will add 70,000 trips to our system. We very much
appreciate our partnership with Congress, which has yielded a
multi-year new starts funding commitment that will cover about
half of the cost of that extension.
Since service to the public began in 1972, BART has been a
vital part of the Bay Area's transportation network and never
more so than today. Our region is experiencing a booming
economy. Record low unemployment and tight housing markets have
exacerbated the jobs and housing imbalance, resulting in longer
commutes and ever growing congestion. Transportation
consistently ranks as a top priority in Bay Area public opinion
polls, and the newspapers and airwaves are filled with reports
of growing congestion.
Against this backdrop more people are riding BART than ever
before. Average weekday ridership is up to 330,000 trips per
day, a full 12 percent higher than a year ago, and is growing
every month. Indeed, we are about 4 years ahead of our
ridership forecast at this point. In addition, special events
such as this week's division playoffs in the Bay Area swell our
ridership on regular occasions. We've just set a new record
yesterday of 374,900 trips, which exceeded our prior 1-day
record of 357,000, which occurred notably after the Loma Prieta
earthquake disabled the Bay Bridge and BART was operating 24-
hour service at that time and was the only link across the Bay.
To put this ridership in perspective, BART carries about 50
percent of the peak period, peak direction trans-Bay commute.
In other words, without BART the Bay Bridge would need an
additional deck to accommodate the morning commute.
This extraordinary increase in ridership is very welcome
and contributes to our continued financial health, but it is
straining our core system capacity, presenting significant
challenges for our aging system and placing a premium on the
reliability and quality of the transportation service we
deliver.
In the early 70's we were the first of the new generation
heavily automated rail systems to be built in the United States
in about 60 years. Now we are no longer young. We are in our
28th year of revenue service. Signs of age have begun to show
on virtually every aspect of our system, affecting reliability,
maintainability and appearance.
In order to sustain the reliable and quality service that
our customers demand and support the growing numbers of riders,
it is imperative that there be regular ongoing reinvestment in
our existing physical infrastructure. To ensure that we are
able to do that, we embarked on an initial 10-year, $1.1
billion renovation program in 1995 under our General Manager's,
Dick White, at the time, leadership. The cornerstone and
largest element of that renovation program is the renovation of
our original fleet of 439 railcars. It will add about 20 years
to the useful life of that equipment at about half the cost of
buying new cars. We're also replacing or overhauling
escalators, elevators, fare gates, ticket vending machines, and
upgrading train control and computer systems and traction power
systems. These improvements will help us maintain our schedule,
mean fewer train delays, more reliable service and more
comfortable facilities for our customers.
This is not, however, a one-time 10-year program. This will
be an ongoing requirement as our system continues to age if we
are to avoid the experience that Ms. Mack referred to earlier
that several older properties have faced before us; namely,
underinvestment, service deterioration, loss of ridership, loss
of revenue, leading to further service deterioration, and so
the cycle continues.
As we are aging, we are also growing, and investment to
increase the capacity of our core system to support increased
ridership is also required. To understand these needs we are
conducting a 30-year system capacity enhancement study to
identify, quantify and establish priorities for these core
system improvements. We are looking at systems such as vertical
circulation in our stations, access parking and other modes,
maintenance shop capacity, track flexibility, rolling stock,
and so on.
Strategic system expansions to serve new corridors in our
growing region are another critical component of BART's program
of capital priorities.
And, finally, in our area seismic safety is a major
concern. We are looking at the retrofit requirements of our
system. In addition to investment, however, maintaining service
quality and reliability on an aging system requires an ever
greater emphasis on adequate and effective maintenance
resources and programs, a keen focus on customer service, as
well as operating recovery strategies to quickly mitigate
service disruptions when they inevitably do occur.
Given the density of service, closer headways and more
crowded trains, when we do have service disruptions, there is
less recovery time. More trains and thus more people are
unfortunately ultimately affected.
To summarize, we face a number of key challenges in
implementing our program of capital priorities to enable us to
continue to deliver high quality, reliable, convenient and
efficient rapid transit service to the growing San Francisco
Bay Area. System renovation, expanded core system capacity,
strategic expansions and seismic retrofit are all critical
capital needs that must be addressed in order to support
growing levels of service.
We recognize that achieving our goals requires regular
ongoing investments. One of the key messages I want to
emphasize today is the need for a stable, predictable, adequate
fund source for rail properties that are being squeezed by high
service levels, increased demand for service and an aging
physical plant that can't be ignored.
We are extremely fortunate to receive 75 percent of a one-
half cent sales tax that is permanently dedicated to fund our
operations. That revenue stream combined with a double A bond
rating has enabled us to issue bonds to help support the
capital reinvestment program. However, our needs, as you heard,
exceed available resources and we welcome the opportunity to
work in partnership with our colleagues in the industry, with
our local, regional and State funding agencies and with
Congress to explore potential funding opportunities to meet
these needs.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Dugger follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Thank you very much.
Ms. Porter.
Ms. Porter. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Ms. Norton. My
name is Kathy Porter. I'm the mayor of Takoma Park and the
chair of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning
Board [TPB], at the Metropolitan Washington Council of
Governments. The TPB is the officially designated metropolitan
planning organization for the Washington metropolitan region
and is charged with implementing Federal requirements for
metropolitan transportation planning. The members of the TPB
include local effected officials, the transportation agencies
of D.C., Maryland, and Virginia and WMATA.
As a long-range planning organization, the TPB is
especially concerned about the challenges facing Metro, which
has played a critical role in our regional transportation and
development plan since the 1960's. As has been noted, the
Metrorail system today has the second highest ridership levels
of all metropolitan rail transit systems in the country. Over
the next 25 years we are relying on the Metrorail corridors to
absorb an even larger number of trips and to act as the
backbone of our regional development framework. The Metro
system plays a crucial role in regional land use policy and
economic development, issues that extend far beyond the needs
of riders who depend upon the system every day.
In the Washington Metropolitan Area we are currently facing
funding challenges that directly affect the future of the Metro
system. The TPB has become acutely aware of these issues in the
course of carrying out one of its most important planning
functions, the development of the region's long-range
transportation plan. One key Federal requirement of this long-
range plan is that it can only include projects and programs
for which funding is, quote, reasonably expected to be
available. This means that no matter how important a new
transportation project is, it can only be included in the long-
range plan if funding for the project can be identified.
I should reiterate, as has been mentioned before, that this
region has no dedicated regional source of transportation
funding. The revenues for the region's long-range plan come
from Federal, State and local governments and from transit
fares. The long-range plan is based on the revenues identified
by the agencies responsible for these funding sources over the
25 years of the plan.
We are currently in the middle of our 3-year update of what
we call the constrained long-range plan. This update has
received considerable attention because the funding identified
is not sufficient to include many of the programs and
facilities needed to address our growing mobility needs.
The needs of WMATA have received particular attention
during this update of the long-range plan. We project that
$76.8 billion will be available for the projects and programs
of all modes in the plan over the next 25 years. This is in
constant year 2000 dollars. According to current estimates, 52
percent, or $40 billion, of the total revenues for the plan
will be designated for public transit, including local buses as
well as WMATA. Of this $40 billion, $27.8 billion, or 36
percent, of total plan revenues would be used for WMATA
operations and preservation. On the revenue side this is
partially offset by the $11.5 billion, or 15 percent, that
comes from WMATA fares.
Nevertheless, the funding allocated in the long-range plan
update for rehabilitation and preservation of the Metrorail and
Metrobus system is less than is requested by the WMATA Board of
Directors. Further, the funding agencies could not identify the
resources requested by WMATA to accommodate ridership growth
over the next 25 years, funding that is needed to purchase
rolling stock and to improve stations and other facilities. In
carrying out the financial analysis that we are required to do
under this planning process, we determined that the available
funding is not sufficient to meet these WMATA requests without
seriously undermining the region's ability to maintain and
upgrade other critical elements of the transportation system.
In addition to developing a long-range transportation plan,
the TPB is also responsible for certifying that the plan meets
air quality requirements. In doing our analysis, we had to
consider how WMATA's unfunded needs would affect air quality,
assuming that a significant number of additional riders who
would otherwise be using the system would not be accommodated
after the year 2005 because of the lack of funding for system
improvements. Using this assumption, we found that more than
100,000 additional daily trips would have to be absorbed by the
highway system in the year 2025, causing an increase in
emissions.
Work trips on transit would be particularly affected by
this constraint. If Metro ridership growth were constrained
because of funding issues, transit work trips would increase by
20 percent by 2025, compared to a 37 percent increase if full
funding to accommodate ridership growth were available.
Furthermore, our analysis assumed that fares on Metro would
rise with the Consumer Price Index after 2002. If fare
increases were held below the CPI, ridership could be expected
to increase even more substantially, which would create even
greater unfunded needs.
The funding shortfalls identified in the long-range
planning process have been sobering for members of the TPB who
are deeply concerned about growing traffic congestion and its
effects on our regional economy and quality of life. Only 2
years ago the TPB adopted a bold policy framework, the
transportation vision, that was intended to guide our
transportation investments into the next century. One of the
goals of the vision is ``adequate maintenance, preservation,
rehabilitation, and replacement of existing infrastructure.''
The inadequacy of funding in the long-range plan, which applies
to highway maintenance as well as transit, undermines our
ability to meet the goals of this vision.
At our October 18th meeting, the TPB will consider final
approval of the long-range plan update along with a resolution
expressing the TPB's serious concerns regarding the region's
inability to meet the goals of our vision due to the shortfall
in funding. In addition, in order to begin to address this
funding shortfall the TPB is planning a series of intensive
meetings and briefings with key stakeholders. Staff from the
TPB and COG have already begun meeting with State
transportation agencies and WMATA to discuss the transit
agency's funding needs. On November 30, we will host a
structured briefing and discussion for key State level
officials on regional transportation needs for transit,
highways and other travel modes, with the goal of building
consensus on actions needed to address these needs.
I have no illusions that the funding challenges we face can
be resolved quickly or easily, but we must begin to take steps
now to protect the investments we have made in our
transportation system, and particularly in Metro. I believe our
intensive effort this fall working with the key officials from
the State funding agencies and WMATA will ultimately pay off in
a renewed effort to address the challenges we all face.
In closing, I also want to mention that the TPB's vision
contained another ambitious goal that is very germane to our
discussion today. In the vision, the TPB called for ``an
enhanced funding mechanism for regional and local
transportation system priorities that cannot be implemented
with current and forecasted Federal, State and local funding.''
The important point here is that a mechanism or mechanisms need
to be established to create a fiscally sustainable
transportation system so that we are not simply moving from
this year's funding challenge to a new one next year.
Throughout the coming months I hope that we can engage in an
open discussion with citizens and with our elected leaders,
including Members of Congress, that will help us move toward a
more permanent funding solution.
Thank you for this opportunity to testify.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Porter follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Carvalho.
Mr. Carvalho. Chairman Davis and members of the
subcommittee, my name is Michael Carvalho, and I both work and
live in the District of Columbia. I'm also a member of the
Greater Washington Board of Trade and serve on the Board's
Transportation and Environment Committee.
I'd like to preface my remarks today by taking this
opportunity to thank Chairman Davis for his outstanding
leadership in resolving the budget issues associated with the
new Wilson Bridge project, which will go a long way in reducing
congestion in our region.
Founded in 1889, the Board has a long history of working to
improve the quality of life in this area. We have a
longstanding support for transit and in 1912 first contemplated
the idea of a transit system for the District of Columbia. This
led to a series of steps in advocating for transit, with a
critical milestone being our 1966 testimony here on Capitol
Hill supporting the creation of WMATA.
Throughout Metro's two and a half decades of providing
quality public transportation to the citizens of our region,
the Board of Trade has been a tireless advocate in promoting
Metro's benefits as part of a balanced transportation system.
We have helped fight for additional funding and for funding
targeted expansion of service. We remain a strong advocate of
transit-oriented development, both because it improves system
efficiency and leverages Metro's role as a catalyst for job
growth and economic development.
The most recent example of this is the New York Avenue
Corridor in the District of Columbia that will soon benefit
from a new Metro station. In addition, Metro is a key
ingredient in our working to revitalize the District of
Columbia and in putting brownfield sites back into productive
use.
Today, less than 6 months shy of Metro's 25th anniversary,
it is still the best system in the world. Our region has the
second highest transit ridership nationally and Metro has
enjoyed double digit ridership increases on both its bus and
rail systems. It has set a number of ridership records this
year alone, carrying in excess of 600,000 passengers on a
weekday on Metrorail numerous times. Indeed, I personally rely
on Metro for my commuting needs on a daily basis, having sold
my car 2 years ago.
As you and I know, however, Metro service has recently
encountered some challenges. The system has suffered through a
spate of delays brought on by malfunctions, smoke and fire.
Metro mechanics tried, but could not keep pace with escalator
and elevator repairs. In short, while we have an outstanding
system, it's a system that is showing its age.
Therefore, the first institutional focus of Metro, as
referenced in the 1997 Board of Trade transportation study,
must be on maintaining the existing system. ``Fix it first''
must be the mantra of WMATA. Failure to do so threatens an
already stressed transportation network and compromises the
region's high quality of life. To maintain what we have, Metro
will need funds over the next 25 years to service the buses,
railcars, systems and structures that are in place today. While
most of these resources are identified, there remains a funding
gap that the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia,
along with the Federal Government, must find ways to close.
Last, while investment in the Metro system is necessary to
serve future riders, new construction must be balanced and made
within a broader framework of other regional transportation
needs, including new bridges and roads. Our region still lacks
the new Potomac River bridges and parkways required to link
suburban activity centers and to address today's predominant
suburb-to-suburb trips as well as the daily trips that Metro
cannot carry. Additionally, these new corridors will serve
future suburb-to-suburb Metrorail or Metrobus service.
In summary, we must maintain our existing system at its
highest possible level of service. Future expenditures on
transit roads and bridges as our limited funding allows must
balance every new investment decision through filters of cost
effectiveness, the ability to connect high density activity
areas and its impact on the greatest number of the region's
residents.
Metro is a shining star of our region, but it needs a
serious infusion of investment for the challenges ahead. I
respectfully urge to you support Metro's maintenance funding
request so it can continue to remain the world class system we
are so proud to call our own.
Thank you for this opportunity to comment.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Carvalho follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Well, thank you very much.
Mr. Davis. We're going to proceed to questions. I think I'm
going to start. Let me start by asking Mr. White. You are
probably best equipped to answer this. What's accounted for the
increase in bus service, the number of bus ridership in Metro?
For a while it was going down as more and more local
jurisdictions assumed bus service for various reasons. Now I
see it's going back up fairly significantly.
Mr. White. I would say the most significant factor was a
rather bold action our Board took not too long ago to approve a
fare simplification and integration strategy, which essentially
we had one of the most complex bus fare systems in the United
States, multiple zones. You really had to know an awful lot to
know what the right fare was to pay. We basically simplified
that down to one standard fare, for all intents and purposes.
We used to charge to transfer, which is a great disincentive.
We used to charge a full fare to transfer from bus and rail and
we reduced that. So we provided some very significant financial
incentives for people to use the bus system and for it to be
easy for people to use the bus system, No. 1.
No. 2, we've replaced an awful lot of old buses. We had one
of the oldest bus fleets in the Nation. We've been spending a
lot of money replacing our bus fleet and of course people are
going to find that more attractive. Recently we've been funding
that. We have been having enough operating money to start
growing our services. One of the things you need to do is to be
able to provide enough service and a service frequency for it
be convenient for people.
So, Mr. Chairman, I would say that those are possibly three
factors that have contributed to that.
Mr. Davis. Are local governments continuing--the local
governments are not continuing to go out and run their own
systems then in increasing numbers? That's stopped at this
point and stabilized?
Mr. White. Yes, that trend had been quite acute for a
period of time. In 1975 Metrobus ran about 95 percent of the
service in the region and recently it's been about 75 percent.
Indeed, I think that I had been a reflection of where people
saw our service quality as being quite good. They were critical
of the cost of delivering that service and made steps
accordingly.
Recently, in our last labor contract we made significant
improvements in our cost structure. We've actually competed in
bids for service even against the private sector and have won
several of those to provide service as a contract provider. So
I think that has begun to have people look at us with a little
bit different eye and with the knowledge that we are more cost
competitive than we were in the past.
Mr. Davis. You dominate the bus service in the District?
How does it rate the District, Maryland and Virginia?
Mr. White. In the District, we provide all of the bus
service. The District does not run any service itself except of
course for special education. We're actually the school bus
system for the District of Columbia as well.
Fairfax, VA, has its own fairly large bus system. Arlington
has just recently started one. Alexandria has one. Fairfax City
has one. They are all fairly small. In Montgomery County, the
largest operator in the region is the Ride-on service in
Montgomery County, and Prince Georges County has a service
called the Bus.
Mr. Davis. But even in those jurisdictions, it's a
combination of both the local and the Metro service?
Mr. White. Yes. All of the jurisdictions utilize the Metro
for some large piece of their service, yes.
Mr. Davis. I want to briefly address the addition of new
stations to the Metrorail system. That must place increased
pressure on the capacity of the station, such as Metro Center,
which is not only used for making Metrorail connections, but it
also serves as the final destination for commuters who work
downtown. How does WMATA plan to alleviate that pressure? It's
a tough enough financial pressure getting new stakes without
the other priorities you have for repairing the Metro Center.
What is it going to do to that?
Mr. White. Mr. Chairman, that's an excellent question and
one we are just now beginning to try and find the answer to. We
are engaged in a very comprehensive review called the core
capacity review. It's probably one of the most ambitious ones
in the country, which is to examine very much the issue that
you speak of. If our goal is to double ridership in the next 25
years, and if we know that goal is largely going to come 60
percent through a normal service growth and 40 percent from
capacity expansion, that means that there's going to be
enormous pressure put on the core of our system to support that
ridership growth.
One-third of our rail customers transfer when they take
their trips, so a number of people are moving from one line to
the other. Our core capacity study is going to examine the
answer to the question, what happens to that core system when
the ridership doubles? What happens to our ability to have
power distribution systems that can move our trains, signaling
systems, vertical movement of people in and out of stations,
and all the myriad of things?
So I can't answer your question as I sit here today. Twelve
months from now, next September, is the schedule when we have
all the answers to these questions. We've assembled a very
impressive group of people who have tremendous knowledge and
experience around the country and the world dealing with these
issues. And I think in about a year from now, we'll know the
kinds of things we need to do to our system to have the ability
to support that kind of ridership growth.
Mr. Davis. Great. Thanks. Anybody else want to add anything
to that? All right. I know that there has been a significant
delay in scheduling the numerous escalator repairs. What kind
of plan have you proposed for eliminating the backlog of
escalator repairs? When will this be implemented? Also, are
there preventative measures that WMATA can take now to
alleviate the necessity for a high volume number of repairs in
the future?
Mr. White. We have 205 elevators and 557 escalators. It's
the largest number of any transit property in North America and
perhaps in the world. To give you an example, the one who is
second to us is Los Angeles, 307 versus our combined 762.
Another factor is that the vast majority of all of our
escalators are exposed to the weather; 119 are unprotected. And
the second one in the country is Miami with 76. And places like
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and others have zero.
So in addition to the numbers that we have, they are the
deepest in the world also. Our system, as magnificent as it is,
was built quite deep because of geological considerations and
other considerations, and that has presented us with some
challenges because of the depth of the escalators.
What we are doing about it, Mr. Chairman, is we have a
multi-faceted program. We're under contract now to spend over
the next 6 years at least $120 million. We're going to
rehabilitate one-third of our worst performing escalators, 170
of those escalators.
Now it will take us 6 years to complete that task. What we
recently did at the Board's urging was to come up with a plan
to shorten that to the maximum extent possible, and we found an
opportunity for some number of those escalators to reduce what
normally takes 16 weeks to rehabilitate a single escalator and
move that down to 12 weeks.
So that was an improvement there. The second thing we're
doing is going to be putting canopies over our exposed
escalators to protect them from the debilitating effects of the
weather, particularly water runoff. And in addition, we've been
increasing both our own internal capabilities to maintain the
escalators by doing things such as creating our own
apprenticeship programs to make sure we have people to do this
work, but in the interim we are contracting out more of that
work. We're right now using two firms who are maintaining those
170 escalators that they are rehabilitating, so we get more
resources out there, more maintenance resources than we have
today.
So that's essentially the full range of things that we're
doing to try to address this problem.
Mr. Davis. Thanks. On August 10th you instituted the 60-day
action plan that was going to improve rail services and
communication with rail customers. What were the specific goals
for improving service within that 60-day period? To what extent
did you achieve those goals? And what else do have you to do?
Mr. White. Mr. Chairman, this was a program that was
designed, in its most basic way, to greatly improve our ability
to communicate with our customers. And in your opening
statement, you of course referred to a couple of incidents that
we had significant difficulty, most especially that July
incident on the Red Line. And we have found that we have not
been able to perform the way we would like, and our focus has
not been where it should be on making sure that our customers
are fully informed when we do have these kinds of service
delays.
So we are now in the process of retraining all of our train
operators, more than 500 of them, and that program will be
completed by November, with a really new sense of commitment to
communications, particularly when we are experiencing some
passenger delays. We've literally adopted a policy called ``we
stop, we tell,'' where the customer, if they're on the train,
they're going to hear something from a train operator if
they're caught in a delay.
Also, our central control office who controls all of our
movement centrally, train movements centrally, is also more
focused on making passenger announcements to stations and also
to remind the operator have you communicated with the customer
if they're experiencing a delay?
So those are the major things that we're doing. There are a
number of things that are part of our call-to-action program.
We are reporting to our operations committee of our board next
Thursday, as a matter of fact, with our assessment of how we've
done in that 60-day period. We've also conducted some focus
group sessions with some of our customers to get their own
input. We're going to be reporting back on that to our
operations committee next week. I think, by and large, my own
personal experience using the system and knowing what I know
about the customer, the focus feedback, I think, a good number
of our customers are seeing that we're doing a better job with
our communications.
Mr. Davis. I wanted to ask, Ms. Dugger, BART uses a nine-
member board of elected directors. Are they elected directly?
Do you like run for chairman of BART, for the BART board?
Ms. Dugger. They're directly elected by the public from
specific districts in the three counties.
Mr. Davis. So San Mateo could get a district or the city or
however it works?
Ms. Dugger. San Mateo isn't a member of our BART district.
But that is the idea. There are three counties that form the
BART district, and some of those are, in some cases, multi-
county seats.
Mr. Davis. Alameda whatever.
Ms. Dugger. OK.
Mr. Davis. My last question, right for this round, I
address it to you again, Mr. White, and if anyone else has any
thoughts, as you know we passed our transportation conference
report today, and aside from the Wilson Bridge, we had $217
million contingent commitment authority that allows WMATA to
move ahead with construction of the Dulles line. How will that
affect WMATA's ability to apply for Federal grant money?
Mr. White. As you may know, right now we're conducting an
environmental assessment of this project going through the NEPA
process. So obviously, we're not in a legal position to do
anything until such time as we get a record of decision. We're
expecting that to occur by the spring of 2002. About all those
appropriate qualifiers this program in this corridor, a very,
very important corridor to be served, is expected to be served
with transit investments that phase initially with the bus
rapid transit system growing to an extension of the rail
system, the Metrorail system, first through Tysons Corner as
the second segment, and then finally to Dulles Airport and to
Loudoun County as a third segment.
So that's how the project is currently envisioned. Thus
far, the Congress has appropriated, assuming that this year's
appropriation is approved by the President, which I'm sure we
are all confident that it will be, $86 million will have been
appropriated by the Federal Government plus the contingent
commitment that you refer to will put that Federal commitment
to over $300 million.
Right now, the Commonwealth of Virginia, who is the sponsor
of this project, is projecting that its request will be a 50
percent Federal share for the project. So if we assume that to
be the case, that would then generate somewhere around $600
million for this project at this particular point in time. The
bus rapid transit piece of that is expected to cost in the
vicinity, if you accept just general references, approximately
$250 to $275 million. So clearly, this would be enough to get
the bus rapid transit system built and enough to perhaps begin
getting us to Tysons Corner. We would need to have additional
funds in the next reauthorization bill to complete that rail
segment, but this certainly moves the project along, and the
bus rapid transit phase, and begins to get to a critical mass
on the rail, first phase of the rail extension.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much.
Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. White, pleased to see the improved statistics. They may
be hard for the public to translate. That's why, for example,
your explanation to the chairman about, ``we stop, we tell,''
was very reassuring, since the lack of communication may be
worse than what may have occurred in a given tunnel or at any
given time.
But I'd like to ask a question about the first few weeks
when there seemed to be a stop and a delay every time we were
told someone thought there was a little bit of smoke, that--and
we are told in here, I'd like to hear your rendition here as to
whether or not this is true, that in response to the fire, that
there was an overreaction, or a sense if there is a little bit
of smoke, then the whole works stops, that of course, leads to
questions about whether or not management is prepared to make
adjustments and changes as needed as opposed to taking a system
like this and putting it on hold until you calibrate to the
point where you know what you want to do. So let me ask a
question, suppose there's a little bit of smoke today when some
of these folks go home, how would the system handle a little
bit of smoke in a tunnel today?
Mr. White. If I could answer that question, Ms. Norton, by
taking you through what has admittedly been some changes in our
procedures as we responded to the April 20th tunnel fire, and
clearly they have, particularly during the month of June, they
had an acute effect on some of our service reliability issues.
Let me also preface it by saying that as we have moved in this
district, what we have been seeking to accomplish is to find
the optimum medium between safety considerations and service
reliability considerations. I would say that in June when we
made our first procedural change, it was actually June 5th
where there was a sense that we didn't have procedures that
were sound enough that would govern how we would respond to a
set of questions when there were fire and smoke detected. We
moved to a procedure that was a very, very conservative
procedure, seeking the high ground on the safety side.
And that procedure said that whenever there is any sign of
any kind of fire and smoke detected, and I would also say that
there is literally almost any number of things that can cause
that kind of event. And the vast majority of those are just
extremely minor in nature, such as some debris blowing into the
tunnel and coming in contact with the third rail, which
immediately extinguishes itself, brakes that go on and causing
malfunction, and it's really the vehicle that emits a little
bit of smoke and sometimes there's a sense that perhaps that's
a more serious condition.
So our procedures that any time we saw any fire and smoke,
we would stop the train. We would notify the appropriate local
fire department. They would be dispatched and they would then
clear the scene.
Well, when that happened we saw a remarkable series of
serious delays that occurred for 2 weeks and the vast majority
of those were really related to very minor events. We then saw
at that point in time that we were probably not where we wanted
to be with our procedure. We modified it a second time on June
17, and I would also say that each time we made these changes
we did it in consultation with the local fire chief to make
sure we were in proper coordination with them. The second
procedure recognized that we probably should be capable of
diagnosing smoke conditions unless it was obvious that there
was a severe, heavy smoke. The fire department said it was OK
for us to proceed and to take action on those conditions that
were smoke related, and those that were fire related we would
yield to the fire department. In all instances we always
notified the fire department, even when we're handling the
situation, so in case it gets out of control and we've
misdiagnosed it, they're there on the scene and they will not
be delayed in getting there.
That second procedural change came close to right-sizing
us, if we examine the statistics that you were looking at, Ms.
Norton. That occurred in the middle of the month of June and we
found that was in the beginning to put us in the direction that
we needed to go.
The third change we made, which is where we are today,
recognizes yet another condition, and that was imposed in July
of this year, which indicates that--and also for purposes of
education when people hear about a fire in a tunnel we're a
system that's basically concrete and steel. There's literally
nothing to burn in our system. Most of these conditions are
power-related conditions and arcing-related conditions that are
classified as a fire condition. We have 50,000 of what are
called insulators that work with our power distribution systems
and sometimes those, when they're subjected to water conditions
and if there's any kind of debris near it, get into a condition
called arcing where they're kind of glowing. And under that
condition the fire department has recognized that's a power
issue. They don't want to deal with that themselves. But they
allowed us to start to deal with those conditions on our own
and we have found since that month of June that our situations
are now literally on the average of only three to four per
month, which has been about the average that we had experienced
in the year before.
So I think we are now exactly where we need to be as
compared to a year ago and we are still working with the fire
department to determine whether there are any other
circumstances that we can be qualified to handle.
Ms. Norton. That certainly is reassuring. The notion though
that in order to decide what to do, obviously if you didn't
know what to do you did the right thing. You're a public
carrier and so you're responsible. I mean, the negligence is
yours no matter what you do. The notion of shutting it down and
finding out what to do is understandable but only because
obviously there was not a worst case scenario that in advance
would have told you what to do. I think that WMATA lost the
part of its reputation that was tarnished, not so much from the
fire but from the successive shutdowns thereafter, which said
to people, my god, this is chronic. They haven't fixed it. So
here you were shutting down for precautionary reasons for the
most part but the message sent to the public said these guys
are burning up now. We expect fires to come time and time
again. That, it seems to me, speaks to the failure of
management in advance to have foreseen that such matters could
arise and to have had in place already a way to deal with them.
What I take it--I understand you all are having--what do
you call it? Not raids but----
Mr. White. Surprise audit reviews.
Ms. Norton. Yes. Does that kind of thing--I call it worst
case scenarios, so that people are already trained, so that
this could never happen. But suppose it does, this is what we
do if the impossible happens so that people immediately go into
that. I mean if you're in the military that's how you would
have to behave. And I guess when you are a public carrier you
either behave that way or you're right, you shut the business
down and do worse by yourself than if something had actually
happened.
Mr. White. Yes, Mrs. Norton, we do regular emergency
disaster testing drills that put us to the test with all of the
local fire departments. We actually did one recently that was
quite unprecedented. We did it involving Amtrak and the
commuter rail services as well to test a worst case event in a
common corridor where Metrorail shares the same type of track
or adjacent track with passenger and freight railroads.
The other thing we have done recently that in my opinion
has proven to be one of the most successful things that we have
done is we, each month now, have on a regular basis a set of
after-action meetings where we bring in all the fire chiefs
from all of the departments and sit down and review what
happened that month for after-action reviews and lessons
learned. And it used to be that didn't happen very regularly
and when it did it only happened with the jurisdiction in which
the event took place. Now everybody would like to know what
happened there, if it happens in my part of the service
territory, did I learn something about how Montgomery handled
that that could be a benefit to the District. So that has
worked quite well and I think is also another reason why our
events have now normalized. I would agree with you the month of
June was about as bad as it could get. It was a very difficult
month for us and there were a lot of lessons learned.
Ms. Norton. The chairman and I want to explore these
funding problems. The chairman and I were looking at this graph
that showed how much you were unfunded. Of course everyone says
what everyone always says. We look to the Federal Government to
fund us. Well, you know, good luck. Look what it has taken with
the London Bridge falling down with the Woodrow Wilson Bridge
to get what it should have gotten from the Federal Government
for a Federal bridge.
I want to explore this dedicated source notion that Ms.
Fernandez talked about, that Ms. Dugger talked about, first of
all, somebody testified, I think it's Ms. Fernandez, I don't
know if this is said with pride or blame, but that WMATA gets
more funds from the box than other systems. Should I applaud or
is that part of the problem?
Mr. White. No, that's a good statement.
Mr. Davis. It depends on your philosophy, I guess.
Mr. White. That's true. It is a reflection of how much we
charge our customers.
Ms. Norton. Let me go to my next question. Lately--the
chairman wants to soak the poor. I am trying to find out how
to--I am a Democrat. I am trying to increase ridership.
Mr. Davis. She wants to soak the middle class.
Ms. Norton. I am trying to figure out how to increase
ridership. And some of what you've done in recent years has
amounted to saying we're going to give up money in order to get
more people; for example, your hours that have been lengthened,
which costs you more money, but then you get an increase in
ridership. Which leads me to why should I applaud that more
people, including more poor people in the District of Columbia
you know are paying through, are paying through the box and
that cost is not being shared more equitably throughout the
region, which has one of the highest incomes in the United
States. Why should I applaud that people who make minimum wage
jobs in the District of Columbia pay a greater amount of the
cost of WMATA, are paying through the fare box then, that
somehow this cost is spread around the region. So far you have
not gotten at least one hand clapping here in the District of
Columbia but perhaps you can enlighten me.
Mr. White. Let me try to answer this in one of two ways.
The first is that the fair recovery ratio is the product of two
factors. One is an expense factor and the second is a revenue
factor. So it is the two working in harmony. And a great deal
of our improvement is as much related to expense containment as
it is to ridership growth and the customer paying a particular
share.
Ms. Norton. You haven't raised fares since what?
Mr. White. 1995.
Ms. Norton. Any fare increases in the offing?
Mr. White. We have made pledges as an institution to go to
at least 2002 before we even consider it, and I would say a
good number of the members of our board would like to be able
to stretch that commitment much longer than that. So I think
from that point of view it is commendable in that it is as much
a factor of expense as it is revenue.
The second one, Ms. Norton, is that factor is a combination
of two issues. The bus fare recovery ratio is about 35 percent
and 45 percent of our riders are district riders on the bus
system. So that is subsidized two-thirds in recognition that
it's a more labor intensive situation to run a bus situation.
The rail recovery ratio is in the vicinity of 75 percent and
again most of the District riders are one zone riders. So the
rail system being as efficient as it is because of the volume
of people it carries and the densities does bring in 75
percent. And again that's a combination of expense and revenue.
But you put those two factors together then you get our system
percent, but those who use our services who are most in need,
and that in many instances is our bus customer, does much
better if you will. And beyond that things that we did in
recognition of that is until the last fare simplification we
used to charge a customer every time they transferred from one
bus to another. And about 40 percent of our people on the bus
system transfer, and even though it was 10 cents that's a major
inconvenience. Throwing the cost of that transfer out, which we
did, is a major benefit to the people, particularly in the
District of Columbia.
Ms. Norton. That's exactly what I meant.
Mr. White. Maybe I can get one hand, if not two.
Ms. Norton. Because it paid not to take more money in order
to get more riders. I want to know about dedicated sources of
income since that is talked about over and over again. First of
all, is there any other jurisdiction in the United States that
has a Metrorail system that does not have a dedicated source of
income or are we unique or fairly unusual in that regard?
Mr. White. The couple who are at the bottom of the list are
ourselves, Boston and Miami, I think are the ones who are
lowest down on the list on the major urban systems.
Ms. Norton. Lowest on the list in what way?
Mr. Lynch. Meaning least amount of dedicated resources that
come their way. A number of systems are in the nineties and
eighties and those are typically the California systems that
Ms. Dugger had referenced, their access to a half cent sales
tax and a property tax.
Ms. Norton. Let me ask Ms. Dugger something.
Mr. Davis. Would you yield to me?
Is one of the problems you have to go through Virginia,
Maryland and the District to try to get it and if you had one
jurisdiction----
Mr. White. It greatly complicates the fact that every year
we must go through multiple jurisdictions.
Ms. Norton. I was sure that was going to be a great part of
the answer, but Ms. Dugger, is the system which deals across
jurisdictional lines in California funded by the State or does
each of those counties have to somehow come together to decide
something with respect to funding?
Ms. Dugger. There are two pieces of the funding puzzle, if
I may. On the operating side we do have access to a portion of
a half cent local sales tax that was established by the State
legislature with the advocacy and consent of the parties in the
region. That contributes to our operating budget where we too
have a strong fare box recovery ratio. This year about 68
percent of our operating cost coming from our fares which in
turn allows us to use a portion of that half cent sales tax
revenue as a revenue stream against which we bond to generate
some predictable long term, multi-year funding to support our
ongoing capital programs. Typically these projects require up
front contractual commitments of a relatively large nature,
many of them well exceeding what we might get in an annual
appropriation process be it at the local, regional or State or
Federal level. So the ability to have that ongoing permanent
revenue stream which we can go to the market and say this is
reliable and we can issue bonds against it has helped us in
managing our capital investment program.
On the capital side we are in a very competitive
environment in a nine county Bay Area region with over two
dozen transit operators providing service in that environment.
So even the formula funds which flow to our region, whether it
be from the Federal or State level, go through a fairly
competitive process. I am not familiar, I am not intimately
familiar with the details of WMATA but where we too have to get
consensus within our region of multiple players, multiple
decisionmakers in that funding environment.
Ms. Norton. Mr. White, what difference would it make,
perhaps it doesn't make as much difference as we think, what
difference would it make if you had a dedicated source of
revenue for WMATA?
Mr. White. I think it's an important point to clarify that
there is this notion of dedicated, which says there is a
singular form of taxing revenue that comes directly your way,
and that's one way some systems go. A way other systems go is
access to what I'll call adequate, stable and reliable source
of funding, which doesn't necessarily mean it's one singular
source. I think----
Ms. Norton. I'm sorry. You have to give me an example of
what you mean by that.
Mr. White. I think the State of Maryland, for example,
would say we provide you with a dedicated source of revenue
because we have a bunch of taxing revenues that go into our
transportation trust fund and then they go out and they make
decisions what goes to roads, what goes to transit, what goes
to aviation, and although we can't count on the knowledge that
we're going to get so much every year it's a source of revenue
that is managed through their trust fund. And they might
contend that it is some sort of adequate, stable and reliable
funding.
Ms. Norton. A trust fund, just to make sure, a trust fund
at the discretion of the local jurisdiction to decide how much
money you get is a reliable source of revenue for you?
Mr. White. At the discretion of the State, yes. This is all
managed at the State level. But to my way of thinking, Ms.
Norton, I think the issue really is how can we with some degree
of certainty have a knowledge that there is a predictable
amount of funding that is going to come and we know generally
what that level is and we know that it's good every year so we
can do some long-term planning. And we are hampered a bit in
not being able to do long-term planning, working off of hopes
and expectations. Now, for example, we do have a funding
agreement with our local funding partners to handle this
rehabilitation thing through the year 2003 and that is
reassuring in that our local funding partners have said we're
good for this, this amount of money, during this period of
time, but after that we would have to wait and see what
happened. So to my way of thinking, what it is is to have some
degree of knowledge no matter how the fund sources are applied
that it's adequate, stable and reliable.
Ms. Norton. I don't know what we can do for you because the
political leadership in this region as well as it works
together is completely bollixed up, I must say, ideologically
on this score about how to do it. And perhaps the jurisdictions
themselves need to get together if they're serious about things
like roads, where the most serious problem exists, and to
straighten it out. I recognize that mass transit is doing the
best it can. But you are going to reach a problem and I can
tell you that Congress is not going to just come up with money
to make up for that gap.
Finally, let me say to you, Mr. White, we in the District
are pleased that WMATA has appropriated or agreed to buy some
natural gas buses instead of all diesel buses. And as you know,
I have been trying ever since that decision was made to get
some Federal funds to make up for the loss that you would
encounter because those buses apparently cost you more. Now
that came late. And the money from transportation, the bill
that just went through was earmarked up the gazoo and we have
not been able to get money from the Federal Government.
I would like to know if at least some natural gas buses
nevertheless can be purchased in light of the fact that you are
frankly choking to death little children in the District of
Columbia. Our asthma rates are some of the highest in the
country and your buses have a lot to do with that. We may be
able if we keep up, because I think it's $5 million or more
involved, to get some money. But we would hate to see given the
emergency nature of the health crisis affecting children in
particular with asthma in the District--we don't live in the
wide open spaces of Fairfax County. We would particularly want
you to spend some of that money on diesel buses and I ask you
are you prepared to do that? I mean natural gas.
Mr. White. Ms. Norton, our board has directed me to find
out how to finance 100 compressed natural gas buses.
Ms. Norton. You say what?
Mr. White. The board has by its own policy resolution
indicated that we're going to buy 100 compressed natural gas
buses as our next purchase and they have directed me to come
back to them in the month of November with an assessment of how
we're going to finance that. So my job as directed by the board
is to figure out how to do it, not whether we're going to do
it. And we'll be reporting back in November with what our best
hopes are as to how we're going to do that and we'll figure out
a way to do it. There may be some financing involved. There may
be some additional issues if we're not able to find a singular
pot of money, but we're going to find a way to buy 100
compressed natural gas buses.
Ms. Norton. Oh, my goodness. That's the very best news to
come out of this hearing for me, and I very much appreciate
what you've just said. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Davis. Thank you. Let me piggyback on that question.
Natural gas buses cost more obviously to buy because of supply
and demand. They're not that much in demand. How about the
operations?
Mr. White. Mr. Chairman, our board asked panel of experts
from around the country to come and testify in their
experiences so that they would have a full benefit of what's
going on in the industry. And the answer to that question is
that it's largely driven by what the environmental conditions
are of each particular area, what the cost of natural gas is,
which fluctuates quite dramatically. Depending on where you are
in the United States, the price fluctuates. Generally, most
people say that it's either fairly equivalent or the
differential is not so significant as to warrant a decision on
that basis alone. So that's the information we're going with.
Mr. Davis. OK.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, could I piggyback on that as
well?
We understand that Washington Gas built for Montgomery
county a facility for fueling this, but then we heard, we said,
well, perhaps we can get that, and we thought that was done,
and probably in order, to show that this can work. And then we
found out, or at least we were told, and here I am asking for
information here that, in effect, Montgomery County was going
to end up paying the entire cost at premium rates for it, and
therefore, this was not much of a savings one way or the other;
is that the case?
Mr. White. Well, maybe. My mother certainly told me that
nothing in life is for free, and if it sounds like too good of
a deal, it probably is. In some instances what happens, and we
did meet with the official of Washington Gas, so that we had
the benefit of their perspective on this issue, and there are
others who, on a commercial basis, provide a service which says
that we'll build, operate and maintain your facility for you.
We'll take care of it. You won't have to pay for it. It is
clear they need to recoup their investment. They are not in the
business of being so generous. So clearly, these arrangements
are such that they are repaid in some form or fashion, and that
may be in what the cost of the gas is that you purchase.
Mr. Davis. Thank you. Let me ask a question, unlike the
BART system in San Francisco, if I can draw a parallel, I
understand Metrorail doesn't run the full-length, eight-car
trains during rush hour; is that correct?
Mr. White. Yes, sir. Our system has the physical capability
to physically accommodate eight cars in a station, and that
would take us literally from almost every square inch of one
end of the station to the other. By the way, BART operates 10-
car trains and was set up to operate 10-car trains, and also
has an added advantage of something called programmed stop in
its automatic train operations, which allows the train to be
stopped with more precision than ours can.
We know that there is probably only two fundamental ways
that we're going to be able to expand our capacity in our core
system, and it's going to come from some combination of these
two factors, if not one or the other. We are going to have to
figure out how to run eight-car trains in order to carry more
people through the system and figure out what kinds of things
we need to do to support being able to run eight car trains. Or
we need to reduce our headways or the intervals between trains
by coming up with--accessing some new train technology. And
there are those around the country, particularly in New York
who are leading the industry right now in evaluating wireless
train control technology, which has great benefits in allowing
you to run more trains through the rush hour.
So those two things are being studied. Those are two key
questions, Mr. Chairman, that are being reviewed in our core
capacity study that I referred to you that the answers to those
questions would be ready by next year. And it is our staff's
preliminary belief that that's where we got to go, in one of
those two directions.
Mr. Davis. How often do you have however many trains--
what's your usual train load?
Mr. White. Most of our trains are six-car trains, some of
them we still run four-car trains. And it's only because we
don't have enough rail cars to make them----
Mr. Davis. So it's not market-determined?
Mr. White. Right now it's driven by the rail fleet at the
moment, yes.
Mr. Davis. Let me ask, if I can, Ms. Fernandez. Mr. White
testified that the FTA recently completed a procurement review
system at WMATA and it performed under a contract by Harris
Consulting. The Harris report concluded that only 9 of 51
elements were deficient, and 42 elements were not deficient.
However, there's a concern that the negative findings might
have been downplayed, for example, 23 of the elements found not
deficient had at least one deficiency associated with them more
over several of the elements; 19, 43 and 48 were determined to
be not deficient, even though 25 percent of the files reviewed
contained a deficiency of some sort. I wonder if you could
explain to us just the criteria Harris used to conclude that
elements were deficient or not deficient, and then give us your
overall feel and try to make us feel comfortable with the
findings.
Ms. Fernandez. Yes, I'll be glad to do so, Mr. Chairman and
Ms. Norton. I will say that these reports that were issued by
our financial auditor, in fact, was a technical report, and
that report was then interpreted to reflect information
inaccurately. So I just wanted to make that statement. The
procurement systems review is a system review that we conduct
of all transit systems across the country. We do them in
increments of 20 properties per year and the intent, the
purpose is to ensure that the third party contracting
requirements of our statute are, in fact, being followed
through sound practices as it relates to the hiring of
consulting services, the procurement of goods for these transit
systems.
In its executive summary, our consultant indicated that, in
fact, of the 51 elements, 9 of those elements exceeded 25
percent, which is a threshold that the industry has identified
as an average, as a threshold. So 9 of the 51 exceeded 25
percent, and that's what was attempted to be conveyed in the
executive summary, and that's what you've been reading in the
local media.
Mr. Davis. In September 1997 the FTA completed a safety
review of WMATA's Metrorail operations that cited serious
weakness in the transit agency's safety procedures and
practices, have you performed any followup of WMATA's safety
operations since then and if so what have you found.
Ms. Fernandez. Well, we have several oversight programs
that are in place right now. One of them is our management
oversight program of WMATA's capital program, which includes
the construction of the light rail system, which is in addition
to any projects within the CIP program for the bus services.
That oversight is done on a priority basis. The safety
oversight that you referred to earlier was one that did, in
fact, identify a number of incidences where there were issues
with the way that data was being collected and audits were
being performed, particularly on the drug and alcohol program.
But once we identified those deficiencies to WMATA, they took
great strides in completing a corrective action plan. And we
are very satisfied with what they have in place, their
commitments include everything from training of personnel to
hiring additional resources to ensure that these difficulties
that were encountered earlier would not be repeated.
Mr. Davis. OK. Thank you very much. Let me ask Ms. Dugger a
question. Has your reinvestment program at BART led to some of
the same public frustration that Metro has experienced.
Ms. Dugger. One of the biggest challenges I think of
delivering a reinvestment program on an operating system,
especially when we're carrying record numbers of riders, is
that you're taking equipment out of service to repair or
overhaul or replace it just at a time when demand for the
equipment and the service it provides is at its greatest. So
maintaining customer loyalty, keeping focused on communicating
with our customers to explain what is occurring is, of course,
a critical requirement.
I think the other realities of a renovation and
reinvestment program as opposed to new construction is that it
is somewhat less predictable. We are in the midst of rehabbing
about 120 of our escalators on our system and inevitably,
despite the best assessment going in, when you open up the kind
of mechanical system, you find different rates of wear and
different problems than you anticipated and the work itself can
take longer than was estimated, longer than was advised--than
the customers were advised of. So yes, it is a challenge. I
think we are asking for our customers' patience and in so
doing, trying very hard to articulate the long-term benefit and
reliability and service improvement that this short-term
inconvenience is causing.
Mr. Davis. Thank you. Let me ask Ms. Porter a question.
What are the difficulties you have--I used to serve on that
panel that you're chairman of. What are the difficulties you
have encountered in working with WMATA's board in key State and
local stakeholders to identify funding, and what's the
relationship between your board and the other stakeholders? I
guess you come out of the same government, and you do the
planning, but how does that relate to the funding?
Ms. Porter. The transportation planning board is, as its
name suggests, a planning organization. We don't control any of
the funding sources that go for the transportation projects in
the long-range plan. WMATA, as well as the local elected
governments, are all part of the transportation planning board.
We serve an overall regional function in bringing together
sources of funding that are identified by these various funding
sources and allocated to projects that they have set their
priority on.
As I said in my testimony, the problem that we've
identified is not that WMATA is getting too small a share of
the pie. The problem is the pie is too small. There is, as Mrs.
Norton correctly identified, a problem in getting sufficient
funding for all transportation projects in this region. WMATA
is not the only agency that has a problem with funding. We also
have difficulties funding, as you mentioned, road repair and
improvement projects, also. So the problem as we have
identified it is that there is a lack of adequate dedicated
funding for transportation in the entire region.
Mr. Davis. OK. Thank you very much. Mr. Carvalho, let me
ask you a question. Does the board of trade have an official
position or do you have a position on the impact of the
Metrorail projects such as Largo and the Dulles lines, which
address the need created by expansion in the suburbs, and how
do you rank them with the priorities for repair and maintenance
of the existing system?
Mr. Carvalho. The expansion is clearly an important
component of the overall transportation system. I think our
focus here in what we're trying to convey is a fix-it-first
mantra where funds, as they become available, go into
maintaining a safe and reliable transportation system.
Mr. Davis. Ms. Norton.
Ms. Norton. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I have only two more
questions. One has to do with the later hours, Mr. White. I'd
like some notion of what the number, or even better, increased
percentage of riders has been relative to what you expected it
to be and whether or not you are considering making the hours
even later.
Mr. White. Our board has made permanent the extension of
our hours from midnight to 1 a.m., so that's now on a permanent
basis, and in this fiscal year, we are now operating on a
demonstration basis until 2 a.m. So we've extended it that
second hour. We're supposed to report back to our board in the
spring of next year with an evaluation of how we're doing. I
would say right now thus far that the experience has been
largely close to what we had predicted it to be in terms of the
number of people who use the system during that 2 hour period.
It's generally, if I am recalling correctly, approximately
10,000 additional trips each weekend that occurs because of the
extra 2 hours of service.
So I think that we've attempted also to try--these things
require a little bit of extra time to see where the market is,
to be able to experience periods of time when there's good
weather and things like that. So I think we will have a very
good data base by April of next year to report back to the
board, and then it will be their policy decision as to whether
we should keep the 2 a.m. in effect on a permanent basis.
Ms. Norton. It's very important to do it over a space of
time so you have a reliable sense that these numbers will
reoccur. Do you have any sense of whether the increases in
suburbs or city are relative to what you expected?
Mr. White. It tracks largely where you would probably
intuitively think where there is the most night life and
reasons why people might be attracted to the system from a
restaurant point of view and others, but one of the interesting
things that we are seeing in a marketplace that is emerging as
being an important marketplace are those who are using it to go
to work. Those people who are working later hours in service
industries and things of that nature find that it is to their
benefit now to be able to actually literally work their work
shift, which might be the non-traditional work shift, and to be
able to get home at night on a late-night shift.
And that's becoming a marketplace that we had not
anticipated at the level that we're seeing it. So but
generally, to answer your question, it's largely in the
District of Columbia, in the Bethesda area, and also in a
sections of Arlington is generally where most of this
utilization is.
Ms. Norton. Well, that's where the action is in this city,
Mr. White?
Mr. White. Right.
Ms. Norton. Ms. Dugger, what are the hours of BART? Here
we're talking about weekend hours here up to 1 a.m. It doesn't
sound like much of a night town, I know.
Ms. Dugger. We go to bed early in the Bay area too, so we
can get up early and meet the east coast financial market
opening. Our hours of service on weekdays are 4 a.m. until 12
p.m. The last train gets back to its home yard, 1 or
thereafter, so if you're in the system anywhere by 12 p.m., we
say you can get home. On weekends we start a little later, 6
a.m. on Saturdays and 8 a.m. on Sundays.
The early weekday shift, or shift to earlier weekday
openings to 4 a.m. was frankly a move we made after the Loma
Prieta earthquake in 1989 when we were running 24-hour service
for a period of months at that point because the Bay Bridge was
out of service. What we found at that time--I wasn't at the
organization at that time--but what was found at that time was
a new market which was the early morning financial commute
market; people going into downtown, as I say, to be there for
the East Coast start of the financial market.
We've continued that early morning service. Frankly, one of
the challenges, we too are getting increasing requests for
staying open later at night, in part to support the service
industry. The pressure that starts to create for transit
systems like ours, and I believe to a somewhat lesser extent
WMATA, but with a very inflexible infrastructure, basically
with tracks--only one track in each direction, we have a very
small maintenance window when revenue service is not operating
now.
It's really from 1:30 a.m. until 4. So we have about 3,
3\1/2\ hours every day during the week to get the wayside
maintenance, the track maintenance, work done that we need to
do. So that is one of the balances as we look at extended hours
of service.
Ms. Norton. They learned to do it in New York with a much
longer system.
Ms. Dugger. New York has much greater flexibility in terms
of express tracks and being able to isolate one track for work
while still operating service. In our case we don't have that
flexibility to pass or to shift from one track to another.
Ms. Norton. Did you say what you all do on weekends?
Ms. Dugger. We begin revenue service at 6 a.m. on Saturdays
and 8 a.m. on Sundays, and we end at the same midnight closing.
Ms. Norton. I see. Finally, I am intrigued, Mr. White, in
your testimony by the increasing indications that you come in
under budget in construction. How are you able to do that?
Mr. White. Well, of course, it's good management, Mrs.
Norton.
Mr. Davis. You have to stop right there.
Mr. White. The last 13\1/2\ miles of our fast track segment
was a $2.1 billion budget, and at this stage we are $250
million under budget for that construction program. It's been
applied to things we wouldn't otherwise be able to do, such as
purchasing rail cars and building a rail maintenance facility.
I would say it is attributed to a few factors. One is the fact
that some of our price estimates or our cost estimates were
built upon our previous experiences, and we did suffer through
some very high inflation years, particularly in the 80's where
that was extraordinarily high inflation.
So we've been able to take advantage of lower inflation
rates recently. We always try to promote the maximum amount of
competition. And of course, as we all know, the more
competition, the better the pricing. And we've been quite
successful at attracting competition.
And the other things we do as well is we take very
seriously doing value engineering, which takes a critical look
at all the elements that go into your system, and do you need
all of those elements? You, of course, never want to sacrifice
something that you really need, but if there are things that
are not quite necessary, or if there's cheaper ways to do them,
we take advantage of value engineering. And finally, we use the
most advanced tunneling techniques that are available in the
world to try to minimize the cost.
Ms. Norton. I recognize some of this may be the good
economy, but it's very nice to hear about underbudget other
than cost overruns for a change. Thank you very much, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. Anything anyone wants to
add on the panel before we adjourn? I want to thank all of you
for participating today. I want to enter into the record the
briefing memo distributed to the subcommittee members. We will
hold the record open for 2 weeks from this date for those who
may want to forward submissions for possible inclusion, and
these proceedings are closed.
[Whereupon, at 3:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Constance A. Morella and
additional information submitted for the hearing record
follows:]
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