[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING THE SAFETY AND SERVICE OF D.C. METRO
=======================================================================
JOINT HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND PUBLIC ASSETS
AND THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 13, 2016
__________
Serial No. 114-88
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.house.gov/reform
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah, Chairman
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland,
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Ranking Minority Member
JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
JIM JORDAN, Ohio ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
TIM WALBERG, Michigan Columbia
JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee JIM COOPER, Tennessee
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania
CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TED LIEU, California
MICK, MULVANEY, South Carolina BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
KEN BUCK, Colorado STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands
MARK WALKER, North Carolina MARK DeSAULNIER, California
ROD BLUM, Massachusetts BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
JODY B. HICE, Georgia PETER WELCH, Vermont
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico
EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin
WILL HURD, Texas
GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
Jennifer Hemingway, Staff Director
David Rapallo, Minority Staff Director
Katie Bailey, Government Operations Staff Director
Ari Wisch, Professional Staff Member
William Marx, Clerk
Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets
JOHN L. MICA Florida, Chairman
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois, Ranking
JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR. Tennessee Member
JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky MARK DeSAULNIER, California
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin, Vice BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
Chair
------
Subcommittee on Government Operations
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina, Chairman
JIM JORDAN, Ohio GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia,
TIM WALBERG, Michigan, Vice Chair Ranking Minority Member
TREY GOWDY, South Carolina CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina Columbia
KEN BUCK, Colorado WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands
GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on April 13, 2016................................... 1
WITNESSES
The Hon. Jack Evans, Chairman of the Board, Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Oral Statement............................................... 9
Written Statement............................................ 12
Mr. Paul Wiedefeld, General Manager, Washington Metropolitan Area
Transit Authority
Oral Statement............................................... 16
Written Statement............................................ 18
Mr. Christopher Hart, Chairman, National Transportation Safety
Board
Oral Statement............................................... 24
Written Statement............................................ 26
Ms. Carolyn Flowers, Senior Advisor, Federal Transit
Administration, Accompanied by Mr. Matthew Welbes, Executive
Director, Federal Transit Administration
Oral Statement............................................... 47
Written Statement............................................ 49
EXAMINING THE SAFETY AND SERVICE OF D.C. METRO
----------
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Transportation and Public Assets,
joint with the Subcommittee on Government
Operations,
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Washington, D.C.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:28 p.m., in
Room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John L. Mica
[chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Public
Assets] presiding.
Present from Subcommittee on Transportation and Public
Assets: Representatives Mica, Amash, Duckworth, and DeSaulnier.
Present from Subcommittee on Government Operations:
Representatives Meadows, Walberg, Jordan, Buck, Carter,
Connolly, Maloney, Norton, and Plaskett.
Also Present: Representatives Comstock, Hoyer, Delaney, and
Beyer.
Mr. Mica. Good afternoon. I'd like to welcome everyone to
the Committee on Government Oversight and Reform. And we have
this afternoon a joint subcommittee hearing. The Subcommittee
of Transportation and Public Assets, which I am pleased to
chair, and we have our ranking member, Ms. Duckworth; and then
we also have the Government Operations Subcommittee, which is
chaired by Mr. Meadows, and Mr. Connolly is the ranking member.
So I would like to call the meeting to order. And, without
objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess at any
time.
I would also like to announce the order of business. We'll
first hear from the chairs and ranking members, and then we
will go to questions. And first I will introduce the witnesses
and swear them in. And we welcome them today. In just a few
minutes we'll get to them. So that's the order of business for
the joint subcommittee hearing today.
And I also would like to note the presence of our
colleagues. We have Congresswoman Comstock of Virginia. We may
expect--I'm not sure if he's going to be here, but we would
certainly welcome Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland.
Congressman--is it Beyer?--okay--of Virginia and Congressman
Delaney of Maryland. I'm not sure if Congressman Delaney is
here. But I'll ask unanimous consent that they also be allowed
to participate. And, without objection, so ordered.
So while they are not members of the committee, we
appreciate their participation. The order of business is we'll
go through members of the subcommittee and our OGR committee
and then recognize those individuals. I plan to yield some of
my opening statement time to Ms. Comstock. And we'll proceed in
that order.
So today I would like to begin by making some remarks, some
opening statements, and I'm pleased again to welcome everyone.
This is not a new kids on the block hearing. This is actually a
continuum of hearings that we've held. I had the opportunity to
chair the Transportation Committee and we looked at the
problems with WMATA and Washington Metro during that tenure.
On the 12th of January, 2015, last year, we had a horrible
incident, an accident in which an individual lost their life in
the Metro system. I called a hearing February 13 of 2015, that
was our first OGR hearing, to review what had taken place. We
personally visited NTSB. We looked at the problem that was
identified. We tried to find out what was going wrong at that
point, what made that incident occur, and then seek
remediation.
We did a second hearing, I might remind members, July 21,
2015. And I'm very concerned that after talking with Mr. Hart
we'll hear from in a while from NTSB, that some of his
recommendations, he told me, were passed on from the fatal
incident in June. I'm not sure if they were taken care of.
We had the latest incident, we had a shutdown of the system
for, what, 29 hours, March 16, last month. I gave enough time
for folks to prepare for this hearing. I wanted to do something
immediate. We do have some new leadership at WMATA, and I
wanted to make certain that everyone had time to prepare for
this hearing.
We have a Metro system in crisis in Washington, D.C., and
we need to find out what has gone wrong, what steps have been
taken to correct the problems. We need to look at the
management restructuring and we need to look at the financial
structuring that is currently in place.
There are few transit systems in the United States that
receive the subsidization that Metro does in Washington. So we
need to again hold people's feet accountable and see what's
wrong, look at what's been done, and then look at solutions for
the future. That's the purpose of this hearing. That's what
we're going to do today.
I'd yield the balance my time to the gentlelady from
Virginia, Mrs. Comstock.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
yielding. And I'd also like to thank him for this hearing in
allowing us in the Metropolitan Washington area to join. This
is a vitally important issue to my district and to our entire
region.
And I appreciate our new manager. And I'd like to emphasize
so everyone in the audience does understand that Mr. Wiedefeld
is the new general manager of Metro. And we appreciate his work
with us. I know when he first came and met with all of the
Washington area, my colleagues, we all emphasized the cultural
change.
And I appreciate how much you are taking that to heart and
really facing a lot of what you have called the hard truths of
the system.
We were together at an event yesterday in Loudoun County
and I want to say how much people did appreciate again your
talking about the many hard truths that we have on how we are
going to have to deal with this on the long road ahead to
regain that public trust given we've had a dropoff in Metro
ridership because of the lack of reliability and the increased
concerns for safety.
So I do appreciate the March report where you, yourself,
have publicly called on Metro to accept these hard truths, and
you noted that safety culture at Metro is not integrated with
operations and is not well rooted at all levels.
I know yesterday when you spoke you talked about how you
are already eliminating a lot of the silos, because what was
happening with all the direct reports to you, when something
went wrong everyone looked to somebody else. So you really did
highlight some of those problems well and acknowledged that
Metro is actually at this time doing less with more, to quote
your statement. And in nearly 10 years there have been no
significant reductions in workforce resulting in redundant
positions among back office staff that will be abolished
through attrition where possible.
I think it is important to note that you've identified sort
of in the need to modernize this that the back office staff
that we might not need now needs to be reallocated. We need to
have management changes there or labor changes, as you noted,
that we will probably need to change this. We can't have these
redundant positions that are unneeded soaking up the resources
that we need to put on the front line. And I particularly
appreciate that you are putting more safety resources into all
the stations as you're going through this process.
The organizational span of control we know is too wide, as
you noted in the meeting we had yesterday, and it is not
mission focused. So I appreciate particularly what you have
been highlighting on the customer focus of Metro and the need
to have a much more customer-focused workforce and to have that
be certainly a top priority.
I was able to go up to the ROCC recently, the Rail
Operations Control Center, and I know one of the biggest
concerns that I'd had when I read articles like the
Washingtonian back in December, which we have discussed, was
the training process. And I noted in the recent audit that they
also identified the training as a key problem area. So any way
we can be helping you as you go through that process of how
we're going to revitalize and change that training so that we
have the best people available so we get the most value for the
money and resources we're putting in here.
So, again, I think the chairman for allowing us to join you
here today. I thank the general manager for his work, and
particularly in recruiting the new safety officer that I
understand you just announced later, I guess it was a little
while after we met yesterday, New York City Transit's Patrick
Lavin to now be our new chief safety officer. And, of course,
never has there been a time when he is more needed.
So I appreciate the opportunity to be with my colleagues
today and look forward to discussing this more.
Mr. Mica. I thank the gentlelady from Virginia.
I recognize our ranking member, Ms. Duckworth.
Ms. Duckworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In the United States rail transit ranks among the safest
modes of transportation. However, as our famed pilot ``Sully''
Sullenberger wisely warned of the commercial aviation industry,
and I quote, ``It is important not to define safety as the
absence of accidents. When we've been through a very safe
period it is easy to think it's because we're doing everything
right. But it may be that simply we are doing some things
right, but not everything, and we simply can't relax.''
Unfortunately, a series of rail accidents in our Nation's
Capital reminds us of Sully's statement and how it also applies
to mass transit. Over the past 7 years, nine passengers and
seven employees have been killed on the Washington Metrorail
system and many more have been injured. Riders have lost
confidence in Metro and rebuilding trust will require far more
from WMATA than simply reminding passengers that driving is far
more dangerous than riding.
Of course, Congress must also hold itself accountable for
creating a weak Federal Transit Administration. Compared to
FTA's DOD counterpart, the Federal Railroad Administration, and
especially the Federal Aviation Administration, FTA lacks the
authority, resources, and experience necessary to make sure
State safety oversight agencies effectively protect rail
transit passengers and workers.
I'm concerned that the entire rail transit sector may be
out of step with the positive safety trends experienced by
other forms of transportation, such as by the global aviation
industry. In aviation we've managed to cut the rate of crashes
and fatalities in half between 2000 and 2012.
Moving forward, rail transit must learn from past
experiences of other transportation industries. It's worth
remembering the observation from Ms. Deborah Hersman, a former
chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, who when
describing aviation sector's evolution to a more, quote,
``proactive approach to safety,'' grimly noted that in previous
aviation eras, and I quote, ``the lessons of accidents used to
be written in blood where you had to have an accident and you
had to kill people to change procedures or policy or
training.'' I fear that her morbid description of aviation's
past safety culture sounds all too familiar when examining the
challenges currently facing rail transit.
Nearly a decade has passed since NTSB investigated the 2006
derailment of a Chicago Transit Authority train. NTSB's work
produced a comprehensive of recommendations for CTA and FTA.
According to the accident report, and I quote, ``This accident
offers many lessons to both CTA and to rail transit systems
around the country that we have made a number of
recommendations to address those issues.'' For example, they
recommended that FTA inform all rail transit agencies of the
CTA derailment and, among other things, make sure that all rail
transit systems have the capability to communicate with
passengers during an emergency and the ability to remove smoke
from tunnels, and this was 10 years ago.
NTSB also found that FTA oversight of the regional
transportation authority was, quote, ``inadequate and failed to
prompt actions needed to correct track safety deficiencies.''
Despite NTSB's clear findings and recommendations produced
in 2006, it became tragically clear on January 12 of 2015 that
neither FTA nor WMATA implemented reforms to Metro's
procedures, policies, or training to prevent similar incidents
a whole decade later. Metro could not communicate with
passengers during the emergency. Worst of all, Metro's
inability to remove smoke from the tunnel had deadly
consequences. My constituents wonder why we even spend taxpayer
dollars on NTSB investigations if the lessons are never
learned, let alone acted on, to prevent future accidents.
Moving forward, there seems to be bipartisan recognition
that FTA was set up to fail, and I'm pleased that MAP-21
strengthened FTA's authority to enforce critical safety rules.
And I thank the chairman for his leadership with MAP-21.
However, we cannot relax. We must examine what further
enhancements must be made to FTA's statutory authorities and
explore key issues, such as whether FRA would be a more
effective safety regulator for Metro. Clearly, there are many
lessons FTA can learn, and FRA and FAA can teach those lessons.
This committee should play an important role in helping
reform spread across agencies in all levels of government. We
must also never forget the bottom line. At the end of the day,
the millions of Americans that rely on mass transit care very
little about which Federal agency is overseeing which State
entity. Passengers simply want peace of mind that their local
mass transit system will transport them safely to work and back
home to their families. I look forward to hearing from our
witnesses about how we can achieve this goal.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mica. I thank the gentlelady.
Let me recognize the chair of the Government Operations
Subcommittee, the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your
leadership on requesting this hearing.
And thank each of you, many of you for coming back another
time to address an issue that is important.
Obviously, the D.C. Metro system transports nearly 200
million riders annually. These are not just only the hard-
working citizens and Federal employees of the District, but
people from all across the country who come here to visit and
look at and enjoy America's treasures and the monuments that
are here.
The Washington Metro was once the gold standard of public
transit, but in recent years it's become synonymous with
several other words: poor service, delays, and rampant safety
concerns. And in many ways this just adds to the unfortunate
situation that WMATA riders find themselves today. This hearing
focuses on the efforts that WMATA has sought to address some of
the issues surrounding the safety and delays in general service
and to work towards making sure that our D.C. Metro system will
once again deserve the moniker that it is indeed the best
transit system in the country.
The Metrorail system recently celebrated its 40th
anniversary. And while any system that has been in service for
that length of time is bound to experience its fair share of
maintenance problems, the WMATA Metrorail system seems to be
plagued by dangerous and systemic problems. In the past few
years WMATA has experienced a large number of significant
accidents and passenger safety events. And certainly we can all
remember not too long ago, in 2015, when one passenger was
killed due to the electrical cable fire that sparked an arcing
incident. That obviously is still under investigation and still
being dealt with. It resulted in a large amount of smoke-filled
rail cars.
I was surprised to find that that event was just not
unique, it was unique in that we had a tragic loss of life. But
in talking to some of my staff, I found that we've had smoke-
filled cars and other potential problems even more between that
event and the one that obviously has brought us here to this
additional hearing today.
Following the July--I mean the 2015 incident, NTSB
undertook an investigation and issued an urgent safety
recommendation that WMATA needed to address the related
electrical cables to prevent further fire hazards. Just last
month an electrical cable at the McPherson Square Metro Station
experienced the same type of arcing incident that we had
previously identified. The fact is that this same type of fire
hazard is continuing to result and a major fire-related
incidence raises questions as to the effectiveness of WMATA's
safety efforts and the agency's oversight of WMATA.
In response, WMATA and the general manager--the new general
manager, as my colleague pointed out--closed the Metrorail
system for 29 hours to conduct an emergency safety inspection.
And this emphasis on safety certainly is a step in the right
direction for WMATA and to get back on track the Nation's
premier public transit system. It created unbelievable chaos
within the city on that particular day. I think many people
experienced unbelievable hours of traffic jams that they would
not normally have experienced just because of that shutdown.
Safety does come first, but it also shows the importance of
this rail system to this city and the way that we do work. And
so it is a must that we have to address this.
Beyond the safety-related issues, WMATA seems to be
besieged by miscommunication and backbiting sometimes between
the operational controls represented by the general manager's
office and the policy controls represented by the WMATA Board.
This issue was particularly visible in the aftermath of this
McPherson incident where there seemed to be a public
disagreement between the Board and the general manager as it
relates to the action necessary to get WMATA back in a state of
good repair.
So I look forward to each one of your testimonies today,
working with the witnesses to not only address the safety
concerns that have really affected WMATA, but also to create a
unified face for a system that we need to help restore the
confidence and trust for those that use the system each and
every day.
So I'd like to thank our witnesses for attending today's
hearing, for taking to the time to work with this committee to
ensure that when WMATA celebrates its 50th anniversary it can
do so and that we can celebrate it as being the best transit
system in America.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Mica. I thank the gentleman.
Let me first now recognize the ranking member of the
Government Operations Subcommittee, the gentleman from
Virginia, Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. If I can do a unanimous consent before my
time starts, Mr. Chairman, I have a statement to be entered in
the record, I ask unanimous consent, on behalf of our
colleague, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who has been a
longtime supporter--and sometime critic--of Metro and been a
great partner.
Mr. Mica. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Connolly. I thank the chair.
Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to revisit the
safety and service challenges faced by the Washington Metro
system. I've spent 21 years of my life working on Metro-related
issues, first as a member of the Fairfax County Board of
Supervisors, then as chairman, and now as a Member of this
body. No one is more disheartened than I with the current
unacceptable state of affairs.
In the wake of January 2015 tragedy at L'Enfant Plaza, we
held two hearings in which I said Metro was facing multiple
crises, a crisis in leadership, a crisis in safety, a crisis in
commuter and stakeholder confidence, and a crisis in funding.
Let me start with the most significant improvement, which
is the November hiring of General Manager Paul Wiedefeld. His
hiring was long overdue as Metro went 10 solid months without a
permanent general manager. I think most observers agree he is
proving to be the right leader at the right time to help get
Metro back on the right track.
I rode the Orange Line with Mr. Wiedefeld through northern
Virginia in January so he could hear firsthand from riders
about their safety and reliability concerns. And because the
gods were on our side that day, we encountered two cracked
rails in the process, leading to many delays.
Mr. Wiedefeld recently issued a customer accountability
report in which he lays out the hard truths about safety,
reliability, and basic customer service, coupled with more than
50 actions he and the agency will begin to take to address
those. Of course, that's in addition to the urgent safety
recommendations made by the NTSB as part of its ongoing
investigation into the L'Enfant Plaza tragedy.
In addition, the FTA, which conducted its own safety
management inspection, now has assumed safety oversight for
Metro, has 91 of its own corrective actions.
I know the new general manager agrees that safety ought to
be priority number one. Since our last hearing, two additional
incidents have rattled riders and further eroded confidence.
First, a train derailed in the early morning hours of August 6
on the Orange, Blue, Silver Lines between Federal Triangle and
Smithsonian. The train, which was not carrying passengers yet,
derailed due to a defect in the rail line, a wide gap,
previously detected, but misreported and unfixed.
Then Metro suffered a gut punch on March 14 with another
electrical arcing incident, this time on the Orange, Blue,
Silver Lines at McPherson Square. Thankfully, the incident also
occurred before the system opened, but was a disturbing safety
shortfall that should have been identified and fixed
immediately following the tragedy at L'Enfant Plaza.
It would seem Mr. Wiedefeld shared that assessment,
prompting him to take the extraordinary and unprecedented step
of closing the entire Metro system for 24 hours in order to
allow for emergency inspection of all such cables. Though it
created a significant challenge for the region's commuters and
the Federal Government, which encouraged employees to use
unscheduled leave and telework for the day, I support the
general manager's decision on that one-day closure, although I
caution against prolonged closures in the future. It served as
an overdue shot across the bow to the entire workforce at Metro
that a culture of mediocrity is no longer acceptable.
What has been particularly frustrating with each of the
safety investigations is the revelation that Metro does, in
fact, appear to have good policies and procedures in place,
they are just not followed, they are not implemented, something
I know Mr. Wiedefeld aims to rectify.
In addition, shuttering the system serves as a welcome
message to riders, if you can call it that, welcome that is,
that somebody is finally taking their safety and reliability
concerns seriously and demanding accountability within the
system.
As part of his internal assessment of Metro, I have
encouraged Mr. Wiedefeld to make significant personnel changes,
and I'm pleased by yesterday's announcement about the hiring of
a new chief safety officer. Further, those responsible for
allowing these issues to languish should step down or be
removed.
Given all of this, it should be no surprise that Metro
ridership has declined by 6 percent and 12 percent on weekends.
In response, Metro hired a consultant to conduct a top-to-
bottom review of its operation. The McKinsey & Company report
offers a blueprint for both strategic short-term fixes that
could be applied immediately along with more long-term
recommendations.
My time is running out, Mr. Chairman, in this opening
statement, but I know we will discuss financing as part of this
hearing, and I will hold off on that part of my statement until
we get to that round. Thank you.
Mr. Mica. I thank the gentleman.
And members will have 5 legislative day for anyone who
wishes to submit a written statement. In agreement with the
minority, that is so ordered.
Mr. Mica. We are now pleased to turn to our panel of
witnesses. And again I want to welcome you.
Let me first introduce the Honorable Jack Evans, chairman
of the Board of Washington Metro Transit Authority.
Mr. Evans.
We have Mr. Paul Wiedefeld. He is the new general manager
of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.
Welcome, sir.
We've got the Honorable Chris Hart. He's chairman of NTSB,
National Transportation Safety Board.
And we have Ms. Carolyn Flowers, senior advisor at the
Federal Transit Administration. And I guess you're new to that
position, but we also have accompanying you Mr. Matthew--is it
Welbes? And he is executive director of Federal Transit
Administration.
And we may call on you because of your expertise.
So I'd like to welcome all of our witnesses.
The order of business is such that we allow you about 5
minutes. Some of you have been here before, some of you
haven't. We'd like you to summarize your testimony, hopefully
in that time. If you'd like additional information or
statements or data to be submitted, just ask through the chair
or a member and we'll be glad to do that.
Now, this is an investigations and oversight committee of
Congress, so we do swear in all of our witnesses. So I'd like
you to stand if you would, please. Raise your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are
about to give before this committee of Congress is the whole
truth and nothing but the truth?
Let the record reflect that all of the witnesses answered
in the affirmative.
Again, I want to welcome our chair of WMATA, Mr. Evans, and
we'll recognize you first.
WITNESS STATEMENTS
STATEMENT OF JACK EVANS
Mr. Evans. Thank you. Well, good afternoon. My name is Jack
Evans, and I'm chairman of the Board of the Washington
Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, better known as Metro. And
I also for the last 25 years have represented Ward 2 on the
Council of the District of Columbia. And I want to thank you,
and appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today on
what is the most critical issue facing our region.
And, first, Chairman Mica, I want to acknowledge your
enormous commitment and leadership in the transportation field
throughout this country.
And, Chairman Meadows, on behalf of the residents of the
District of Columbia, I want to thank you for coming to the
State of the Union speech by our Mayor, State of the District
speech, And we appreciate your support of the District.
And our Ranking Member Duckworth, as a graduate of the
Elliott School of International Affairs at The George
Washington University, we know you're very familiar with the
District of Columbia.
And certainly last, Ranking Member Connolly, I want to
thank you for your constant support and advocacy for Metro.
I want to thank all of you. And certainly I want to
recognize and thank my Congresswoman, Eleanor Holmes Norton,
who has done a fabulous job representing our region here.
I want to give you a little background so you know where
I'm coming from here. I moved to Washington, D.C., as a summer
internal in 1976. I had an opportunity to ride Metro when it
first opened. And you've heard my comment before, it was a
shining new Metro system reminding us all of ``The Jetsons,''
remember the TV show, George Jetson, and there it was.
I moved here in 1978 permanently, rode Metro throughout the
1980s and 1990s. In 1993 joined the Board of Metro and served
on the Board from 1993 to 1999, twice as chair of the Board.
When I left Metro in 1999, the end of 1999, it was a
shining example of regional cooperation and, as has been
mentioned, was the envy of transit systems throughout the
country. I rejoined the Board in January of last year and I was
outraged--and I want you to know this--at what I had found.
Fifteen years after I left the system the finances were in
chaos and the operations were just behind it.
What happened? How did we get here?
First, we have to realize something, I want everybody to
recognize this. Metro is all of us. It's not just Paul and I.
Metro is everyone in this room. And we have to take
responsibility for this system and get it fixed. Because we
talked about who rides Metro, with 200 million people ride
Metro a year, District, Virginia, Maryland residents. Twenty-
two million people visit this region every year. And 35 percent
of our riders are Federal workers. Fifty percent of the Federal
workforce rides Metro. That's all of you, that's all of us, and
it's an important thing to remember for later in my comments.
So what are we dealing here? We're dealing with operation,
and Paul is going to talk about that. He's going to talk about
how we got to where we are and what we're going to do to fix
it. But I can say one thing. We have years of neglected
maintenance, and the idea of fixing this by working 3 hours at
night and on the weekends is not working. We need a better
plan.
Now, the finances. Even if this system were operating like
a clock, it will never survive under the financial structure
that we have in place right now. Quickly, we get our money from
two areas, $1.8 billion budget, $90 million from the farebox,
$900 million from the region. Okay?
Right now what I'm dealing with, I have a $2.5 billion--let
me repeat that--$2.5 billion unfunded pension liability
problem. Next year's budget, starting out of the box we're $100
million short because we balanced this year's budget with $100
million of one-time money. Add on to that increasing costs,
we're $150 million dollars short right out of the box.
And I have an $18 billion deferred capital maintenance
problem. This is the maintenance that Paul is going to talk
about that needs to be done. It is the new cars that we have to
buy. And it's systematic problems like the Roslyn bottleneck
that prevents us from getting trains across the river and into
the District. All has to be fixed.
So what are our solutions here? Number one, we need the
Federal contribution on the operating side. We need $300
million from the Federal Government. How do I get that number?
$900 million divided by 3, $300 million, each jurisdiction is
giving that. The Federal Government needs to do that as well.
Remember, you paid for two-thirds of the system. You put $6.9
billion into the system. You have to help us, otherwise we
can't survive.
Secondly, we need a regional funding source--and bear with
me as I run out of time--we need a regional funding source.
We've been talking about it since 1993 when I first joined the
Board. This committee had a hearing, here it is, 2005. You
spent your whole time talking about a regional funding source
and nothing ever happened. I need a billion dollars a year from
the region. And if the region won't do it, let me just float
this idea with you all, the Tennessee Valley Authority, a
Federal agency set up by all of you in order to collect money.
So let me conclude with this. I've been the finance chair
in the District of Columbia for 17 years, okay? We were here in
1995 with a city that was bankrupt. Without Federal
assistance--and Eleanor Holmes Norton was the leader on this,
and you remember this--without Federal assistance, we would not
have made it. The Federal Government assumed a $10 billion
unfunded pension liability that the District of Columbia had
and paid for our prisons and our judicial system, giving us the
breathing room we needed as a city to survive and become what I
would say is one of the most dynamic cities in America today
who has the best financial picture.
So that's what I'm asking you for today. We are in this
together. We need your help. So thank you for the opportunity
to testify.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Evans follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Mica. I thank the gentleman.
Let me now recognize the general manager of WMATA, Mr.
Wiedefeld.
Welcome, and you're recognized.
STATEMENT OF PAUL WIEDEFELD
Mr. Wiedefeld. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for
having me today. I'll be very brief.
But since I've come on board 4 months ago a big part of my
time has been spent reaching out to the stakeholders, the
customers, the employees, particularly the frontline employees,
elected officials, and business community, and I've gotten a
firsthand experience from using the system, obviously from
listening to them, and then basically walking the tunnels,
walking the bus garages, and maintenance facilities. I've
learned a lot, I've learned a number of the issues that we
have, and I've learned about a number of opportunities we've
had.
Unfortunately, during this time I've also had to make some
very difficult decisions, the first one dealing with the
blizzard that we had that hit the region and second one is the
cable fire at McPherson Square. Both of those decisions were
driven by my commitment to safety for our customers and our
employees, and that's why I made those decisions.
In the near term my priorities remain to be safety, service
reliability, and getting our fiscal house in order, as the
chairman just mentioned. Last month, as was also mentioned, I
put out a report, a customer accountability report, which
basically outlines a number of actions, just based on my short
time here, of things that I want to do and things I've heard
and what we learned from McKinsey and other sources.
The purpose of that report is to be transparent, but more
important is to be accountable to the public and for the
managers to be accountable, and it's basically setting that
bar, and that's exactly why that was done, and it will continue
to grow.
And although the actions I've taken I think reflected a
different management approach and the start of a change of
culture here, there is still quite a long way to go, and this
is where I need the stakeholders in this region to basically
support me to get there.
I think we need to step back and look at what we've been
doing in terms of particularly the maintenance of the system.
We've gone from crisis to crisis. We tend to deal with things
one off and that just cannot go on. We have created a program
to try to do the improvements which basically were not getting
done. It is inefficient. We are impacting our customers day to
day, on weekends, and we're suffering from that.
So I will be coming out in the very near future with a new
program to get at these issues and get the system up to the
state it should be, and then we'll continue to maintain it from
there. The solutions won't be easy, and so I'm not going to
sugarcoat it, that is for sure, but I think there are things
that we have to do to get to where we want to be.
Let me close by saying last month we celebrated the 40th
anniversary of the system and it is something to celebrate for
sure. Over the last 40 years Metro has played a central role in
transforming this region into one of the most dynamic regions
in the world for sure. It's shaped the land use, it's become
the backbone of our economic development, it's played a central
role in meeting the mobility needs of residents and visitors
alike, moving 1.2 million passengers a day, and it is
supportive of our metagoals, particularly in the air quality
arena.
In short, Metro has been and will remain the critical
economic growth and quality of life in this region, will
support it. But it is therefore time for us to be realistic to
address the challenges we are facing as a region to make the
Metro system great again, challenges that, in my opinion, must
be met given Metro's vital importance to the region today and
tomorrow.
Thank you for your attention. I do want to take a moment,
though, to thank our regional congressional delegation for
their support. I also want to thank the chairman, Chairman
Mica, Congressman Connolly, and Congresswoman Comstock, for the
help in supporting the efforts to reach the agreement on the
cellular phone installation. So I really do appreciate that.
I'll be glad to answer your questions later.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Wiedefeld follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Mica. Thank you. And we'll hold questions until we've
heard from all the witnesses.
Mr. Hart is the chairman of the NTSB.
Welcome back, and you're recognized, sir.
STATEMENT OF CHRISTOPHER HART
Mr. Hart. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Mica,
Chairman Meadows, Ranking Member Duckworth, and Ranking Member
Connolly, members of the subcommittees, and others who are
present here today. Thank you for inviting me today to testify
on behalf of the NTSB.
The NTSB has completed its investigation into the January
12, 2015, electrical arcing and smoke incident near WMATA's
L'Enfant Plaza Station that has been referred to several times
today. The board is expected to approve the final report at its
public meeting on May 3. As I reported to you last year, our
investigation revealed that some electrical connections
associated with power to the third rail were improperly
constructed and installed without sealing sleeves. The absence
of sealing sleeves can create the potential for electrical
short-circuiting, which results in fire and smoke events in the
system.
Nearly a month after the L'Enfant Plaza accident we
examined electrical components from a smoky vent in the tunnel
near Courthouse Station and found that those cable connections
were also missing sealing sleeves.
Most recently, we were informed by WMATA last month of an
arcing event at the McPherson Square Station and we were
invited to view some of the damaged electrical components. We
observed that the damage to the traction power electrical
components were similar to that of the L'Enfant Plaza Station
accident. One cable connector assembly and portions of the
cables had been vaporized by the intense heat, as was a portion
of the third rail cover board similar to the L'Enfant Plaza
Station accident.
In June 2015, we recommended that WMATA inspect the cable
connector assemblies and ensure that they are constructed and
installed in accordance with WMATA's specifications, which
includes sealing sleeves. It is clear that the cable connector
assemblies at the McPherson Square Station had not been
modified as a result of our June 2015 recommendations.
What is unclear is whether these connectors had been
inspected, and if so, how that inspection was conducted and
recorded. We are anxiously awaiting WMATA's report on its
progress in implementing this recommendation.
Since 1982, the NTSB has investigated 13 accidents
involving WMATA. More than half of those investigations have
occurred since 2006. Or L'Enfant Plaza investigation has
illustrated once again that rail transit accidents continue to
cause injuries and deaths and that more effective oversight of
rail transit is necessary. That is why we included improved
rail transit safety oversight in our 2016 most wanted list of
transportation safety improvements.
Inadequate transit safety oversight can result in many
types of safety hazards that are allowed to develop and persist
and as such constitute systemic hazards. The physical hazard
that led to the L'Enfant Plaza Station accident is present
systemwide. That is why the NTSB issued urgent safety
recommendations to the Secretary of Transportation in September
2015 urging that DOT seek authority from Congress to designate
WMATA as a commuter authority so that the Federal Railroad
Administration can exercise direct safety oversight.
The Secretary's response to our recommendation acknowledged
that the Tri-State Oversight Committee, or TOC, lacked
sufficient resources, technical capacity, and enforcement
authority to provide the level of oversight needed to ensure
safety at WMATA. However, he disagreed with our recommendation
to transfer safety oversight of WMATA to the FRA and instead
determined that the FTA, the Federal Transit Administration,
would begin increased oversight and would directly enforce and
investigate the safety oversight of WMATA.
While we can all agree that the current oversight of WMATA
by the TOC is insufficient, we are concerned that the FTA's
safety oversight for this rail transit property is not
equivalent to that provided for other similar properties or
heavy commuter rail. FTA has very limited ability to oversee
WMATA effectively.
Our concerns are substantiated by the fact that the FTA has
no prior experience in direct safety oversight or as a State
safety oversight agency, has limited staff to carry out the
function, and does not have the authority to levy civil or
individual penalties in response to safety deficiencies.
Every day millions of people use rail transit to go to or
from work, home, or other destinations. In the case of WMATA
Metrorail, ridership is critical to the effective operation of
all branches of the Federal Government, as evidenced by the
recent unprecedented shutdown of the system for 1 day. That is
why it is so important for WMATA and rail transit systems
nationwide to be subject to competent oversight bodies that
have standards and rules along with the power to enforce those
rules. Although each system has unique equipment, operating
environments, and challenges, all need strong safety oversight
to continue safe operations.
Thank you for providing the opportunity to testify before
you today. I look forward to responding to your questions.
[Prepared statement of Mr. Hart follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Hart.
And I'll recognize Ms. Flowers with FTA at this point.
You're recognized.
STATEMENT OF CAROLYN FLOWERS
Ms. Flowers. Chairmen Mica and Meadows, Ranking Members
Duckworth and Connolly, and members of the Committee, thank you
for inviting me to discuss the Washington Metrorail system.
At the FTA, the safety of public transportation passengers
and workers is our single highest priority. Transit is among
the safest ways to travel in communities throughout this
country. However, here in Washington, D.C., serious incidents,
crashes, and safety lapses have highlighted the need for change
and improvement.
In 2012, with the passage of MAP-21, Congress granted FTA
the authority to oversee the safety of public transportation
through the existing State safety oversight agency structure.
Since then, FTA has reorganized and significantly strengthened
safety staffing and oversight functions that take on the new
Federal oversight role.
Each transit agency is still responsible for inspecting its
own infrastructure and conducting the necessary training to
keep their services safe. FTA oversees the State Safety
Oversight Agencies, or SSOAs, which in turn provide day-to-day
oversight of real transit safety. That leaves FTA with the
ability to shape nationwide safety standards, to issue
directives, and to step in where those SSOAs are not able to do
so.
After the tragic January 2015 L'Enfant Plaza smoke
incident, FTA exercised our safety authority by conducting a
safety management inspection of Metrorail and Metrobus, which
resulted in 54 safety findings. Our inspection report
identified numerous deficiencies and operational concerns.
In October 2015, Secretary Foxx instructed FTA to
temporarily assume the responsibilities of the local SSOA, the
Tri-State Oversight Committee, or TOC, which has lacked
adequate enforcement authority.
Since last fall, FTA's been on the site at Metro providing
direct safety oversight of Metrorail. Our safety team is
comprised of subject matter experts from across the Department.
This team has transit industry knowledge and expertise,
technical ability, and enforcement power to improve Metrorail
safety.
Over the past several months, on a daily basis, we have
conducted inspections and investigations and verified
corrective actions. As of last week, FTA had conducted 107
inspections that covered track, Rail Operations Control Center,
vehicle and systems maintenance, automatic train control, and
traction power. During these inspections we identified 229
defects, requiring 66 remedial actions by Metro. In addition,
we are directing 140 open investigations.
In late March, FTA initiated a three-part safety blitz,
which is an intensive, targeted series of inspections that
focused on three areas: red signal overruns, track integrity,
and rail vehicle security.
The FTA role is temporary. FTA's role in direct safety
oversight is temporary. It is critical that Maryland, Virginia,
and the District of Columbia join together to create an SSOA
with adequate authorities and resources. Secretary Foxx urges
in actions and words that the three jurisdictions come together
with all haste to create the Metro safety commission that the
local jurisdictions first outlined 6 years ago.
In closing, as the former CEO of the Charlotte Area Transit
System and the COO of the Los Angeles Metro system, I know that
it is a challenge to balance safety and service demands, but
keeping people safe is not a choice. For our part, FTA took
action to focus on Metrorail safety condition as both an urgent
and critical problem requiring immediate and decisive action.
FTA's oversight activities focus on Metrorail's serious safety
needs for the short term, and we continue our work with the
local jurisdictions to establish a new and effective SSOA for
the long term.
Thank you for calling this hearing. And together with FTA's
executive director, Matt Welbes, I look forward to answering
your questions.
[Prepared statement of Ms. Flowers follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Mica. I thank all of our witnesses for their testimony.
I'm going to dive right into questions. I want to separate
my questions into two part. First, I want to talk about the
incident of January 12, our subsequent hearing on February 13.
Then I want to look at the overall picture of Mr. Evans said
the crisis and chaos in Metro.
So, first of all, after the incident we held a hearing. Mr.
Hart and I went down personally, inspected the cable, we
identified what we thought was the problem. You've identified
it again here today. Then you told me you gave recommendations
to WMATA by June. Is that true?
Mr. Hart. Correct.
Mr. Mica. Okay. And I just heard you, Ms. Flowers, you've
given a number, you've verified deficits, safety deficits. When
did you first give them? Did you go in--do you recall when you
went in after the January death?
Ms. Flowers. So we went in June of last year.
Mr. Mica. You gave them to them in June last year. Okay,
we've got two nodding heads here.
I have a problem because the current WMATA director,
administrator, manager is not there then. But the first thing
you would have done--and I'm not the sharpest electrical
engineer on the block--is go in and change out those cables
that we saw were shorted that didn't have proper seals and that
were arcing. Can you tell us what was done, Mr. Acting General
Manager or Mr. Evans?
Mr. Wiedefeld. I can tell you, 65 percent of them are done.
Mr. Mica. Were they done after June, and to what date?
Mr. Wiedefeld. That's to date.
Mr. Mica. To date, okay. But they're still not done?
Mr. Wiedefeld. That's correct.
Mr. Mica. And we think the arcing was also the problem of
the smoke and why you shut it down March 16, right?
Mr. Wiedefeld. Right. I'm not sure yet----
Mr. Mica. So there's about 35 percent undone of the cables.
Okay.
Mr. Wiedefeld. Yes.
Mr. Mica. I got involved in this after that because we
found out what we asked you to do years ago and promised you
$150 million, $1.5 billion to get the communications and some
other things, that's our contribution to capital improvements,
was only done at the station. That's why we probably lost that
life, because they couldn't communicate.
You've been there now a short time. Is the communications,
wireless communications agreement finalized to finish it?
Mr. Wiedefeld. Yes, it is.
Mr. Mica. It is, okay, and that's underway. When do you
anticipate that that would be done?
Mr. Wiedefeld. What we're doing is we're doing a 1-mile
section in a tunnel as a pilot.
Mr. Mica. When is the finish date?
Mr. Wiedefeld. What we are going to do is after we see how
we are trying to do that, then we are going to come out with
the schedule based on that, because we don't----
Mr. Mica. You think it will take a year. You don't know.
You're going to see what it takes to do a mile at a time.
Mr. Evans. No, I'm going to do--we're going to do a mile as
a pilot.
Mr. Mica. With 118 miles that we have.
Mr. Evans. No, we're going to do a mile as a pilot, and
then we're going to come out with a schedule based on what we
learn from doing it for that mile.
Mr. Mica. We need to restore public confidence. They can
get-- people can get on that and have no rescue means. At least
they have their personal communication device that doesn't work
within the tunnels. It may work in the stations, as we saw, but
somebody died.
Okay, so that needs attention, that's part of what I wanted
resolve and threatened to withhold money if we didn't get
something done.
This money game is mind-boggling. I asked what's WMATA's
unliquidated balance in open grants and money coming from the
Federal Government as of the 18th of March. It's $783 million.
It's not like they don't have the money. Last year, in 2015,
they had $485 million available. They had the money available,
what they have is incompetence, not to get the job done.
Now, you're new kid on the block and we're counting on you.
But I want people fired, I want something done. Now, we got--
you got the communication system underway. We've got to resolve
the arcing. The arcing causes smoke and people die and the
thing is in chaos. You closed it down for 29 hours. You have
falling ridership and you have increasing operational costs, I
see here.
Okay, let me--this burns me.
Now, this caused me to go deeper into your finances. I
heard you, Mr. Evans, and you gave a nice presentation. I was
here in 1995 when we put the control board in, we disbanded the
District government. You were running three-quarters of a
billion dollars in debt--three-quarters of a billion dollars in
debt. You add all kinds of unfunded liabilities, pensions,
everything. It was the most screwed-up mess I've ever seen in
business or government.
What's your current surplus in the District? What are you
running, half a billion, $500 million?
Mr. Evans. Right now we have $2.17 billion in our reserve
funds and we run about----
Mr. Mica. Okay, well, let's step up to the plate. You're
dealing with people who are broke. I'm telling you I am not
going to bail you out. I am not going to support bailing out
the District of Columbia.
Mr. Evans. You're not bailing us out.
Mr. Mica. It is bailing out. Look at the operational. I
compared Chicago, 75 percent of the capital funds come from
local and State money. In SEPTA, Pennsylvania, 61 percent,
WMATA 44 percent. Nobody gives more money for capital
improvements, nobody has more money available than you all have
available. So, again, please don't come here. There's lots of
money available. What we don't have--we have money available,
we don't have leadership, we don't have management.
And these people need to step up to the plate. Virginia
needs to step up to the plate, Maryland needs to step up to the
plate, and the District with that huge surplus now needs to
step up to the plate. You sure as heck ain't going to get it
out of my folks. And the improvements can be made.
So no other system in the country has the kind of resources
into it. And if you to divide, don't divide by three, let's
divide by four and have everybody step up to pay for it.
So I'm not making--I'm not here to make up for bad
management. I'm not here to make up for a poor safety record.
I'm not here to make up for a lack of action. And you, who was
it, was it the new general manager, when I saw the liability,
you mentioned the liability for pension and unfunded benefits
in a multibillion area. Isn't that true?
Mr. Evans. $2.5 billion.
Mr. Mica. Yeah, that's huge, that's huge. That also needs
to be addressed and it doesn't need to be bailed out by the
Federal taxpayer.
So I've spoken my piece. If you know me, I do that, and
then I act, and I will act to make certain that we get this in
order.
I wish you well, Mr. General Manager. We'll work with you,
we'll give you all the tools. You have money available. You
need to get in there, fire people, I think you're doing some of
that, and get that place in order.
With that, I yield to the ranking member.
Ms. Duckworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I, again, want
to thank you for holding this very important hearing. I'd like
to yield the remainder of my questioning time to the gentleman
from Virginia, Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. I thank my friend. And I thank Mr. Mica for
his passion. But as that passion cools he has asserted Virginia
has to step up to the plate. And I would remind my friend he
doesn't want a burden on his people, he said. Well, I don't
want a burden on mine. And in Virginia we pay the subsidy, my
local taxpayers. So when you say a bailout, my constituents
hear something quite different. And I hope you will keep that
in mind. As you care about your people, Mr. Beyer, Mrs.
Comstock, and I care about ours, because we foot the bills in
Virginia, not the State. And we're quite sensitive to the fact
that we already pay high subsidies and we already have one of
the highest farebox recovery rates in the country because we
don't have a dedicated source of revenue and the Federal
Government does not provide operating subsidies.
Mr. Evans. Not a penny.
Mr. Connolly. Not one penny. It is the only compact member
that doesn't provide a penny.
Do you want me to yield, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Mica. Just two things. I'll put in the percentage that
is paid for capital. And then I think----
Mr. Connolly. Capital is different than operating.
Mr. Mica. Well, most of their problems are capital.
Mr. Connolly. No, clearly their problems are operational,
Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mica. Yeah. And, again, you can see what is put in.
Operational, there is about 2 percent from the District. And I
will give you the fact that some other jurisdictions we found
have as much as 6 percent, but they take certain money and put
it into operations that we've allowed. And we've done that also
in times of financial distress.
Mr. Connolly. Reclaiming my time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would just say, you know, where you stand is where you
sit. Where my constituents stand is that the Federal Government
gets a free ride every day on Metro, because it doesn't pay
operating subsidies. And as Mr. Evans indicated, that costs our
jurisdictions in Virginia about $300 million a year. And You
can make all the hay you want out of the fact that the Federal
Government provides 150 million in operating capital, and that
did not come without strings. That had to be matched dollar for
dollar by the three jurisdictions over and above their
operating subsidies and we had to give up voting seats on the
governing board of Metro.
And by the way, the Federal representatives are not limited
to only capital issues when they vote. They get a free vote on
the operating side of the house and they don't pay for it. So
it's a matter of perspective.
Having said that, I certainly associate myself with the
remarks, your remarks, Mr. Chairman, about past management and
about operating difficulties and holding people accountable.
And I am deeply concerned that given the depth of the problems,
that people, frankly, examples are going to have to be made out
of some people, and I don't just mean the senior management.
And I think the chairman and I share that view. It's gotten to
that point that if we're going to reassure public confidence we
have to hold people accountable at every layer of the
organization, because that is one of the crises we face, public
confidence, for good reason.
Mr. Hart, in your recommendations inter alia, you
recommended that the safety oversight be done by the FRA, not
the FTA. Is that correct?
Mr. Hart. That's correct.
Mr. Connolly. Why did you arrive at that conclusion?
Mr. Hart. We were looking for an immediate solution. The
FTA can eventually do the kinds of things the FRA does now. For
example, the FRA has rules to have people to inspect to see
whether the rules are being met, and they have people to
enforce if the rules are not being met. The FTA can have that
eventually but doesn't have it today. That's what we're looking
for as an immediate solution, an immediate interim solution to
respond to the reality.
Mr. Connolly. Ms. Flowers, you're not the director of the
FTA, you're a senior advisor?
Ms. Flowers. I'm currently the lead at FTA.
Mr. Connolly. The lead.
Ms. Flowers. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. And you came with Secretary Foxx from
Charlotte?
Ms. Flowers. I came after Secretary Foxx.
Mr. Connolly. After. So do you have the capability that the
NTSB recommended?
Ms. Flowers. We feel that we do have the capability. We
agree with NTSB that action was needed to improve oversight of
WMATA and that----
Mr. Connolly. Ms. Flowers, I'm running out of time. So
forgive me. I'm not trying to be rude. But we had deaths. We
had accidents. We had people injured. Mr. Hart's NTSB said,
Look, no fooling around. Safety is number one. We need the FRA
and its resources and capabilities because the FTA doesn't have
it right now.
Ms. Flowers. You gave us statutory authority and oversight
of public transportation. And you also, in the FAST Act,
strengthen our authority----
Mr. Connolly. Ms. Flowers, I'm very well aware of what we
did in the statute. I'm talking about capability today. And
that's what the NTSB--that's what it took cognizance of which
is why it didn't recommend that your agency have safety
oversight. And yet, the Secretary decided to overrule or ignore
that recommendation.
Ms. Flowers. Sir, we have, on our staff, regulatory
experience from FRA and FAA. Our head of----
Mr. Connolly. Regulatory?
Ms. Flowers. Yes. From regulatory agencies who have safety
experience at FAA and FRA.
Mr. Connolly. What's that got to do with whether you've got
the ability to hone in on, you know, cable covers that could
arc? Who cares about regulatory authority?
Ms. Flowers. We have just completed a safety blitz of our
track inspection on WMATA, and we've done verification----
Mr. Connolly. Oh, you did?
Ms. Flowers. Yes.
Mr. Connolly. So on the day, Mr. Wiedefeld, what was the
day we shut down for the whole 29 hours?
Ms. Flowers. March 16.
Mr. Wiedefeld. March 16.
Mr. Connolly. March 16. The day before the holy day. So--
St. Patrick's Day. Did you have people in Metro inspecting the
cables along with Metro?
Ms. Flowers. When we did our safety management inspection,
we did identify issues with----
Mr. Connolly. No, ma'am. My question--that's not my
question. On the 16th of March, for that 29-hour period, since
you've got the responsibility, God knoweth why, since it should
have been to FRA, but Secretary Foxx decided to ignore or
overrule that recommendation, were you in the tunnels
inspecting these cables that could arc, smoke and cause deaths
and injury?
Ms. Flowers. We were not in----
Mr. Connolly. You were not in the----
Ms. Flowers. But----
Mr. Connolly. So one of the most important safety issues
we're facing in an unprecedented move, shutting down the whole
system, hard to find in any other transit system in America,
the FTA, which claimed authority, overruling the NTSB by the
Secretary of Transportation, you were not there?
Ms. Flowers. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Connolly. And we're supposed to have confidence in your
ability, while you're lecturing Maryland, D.C., and Virginia to
get their act together in the talk, you're nowhere to be seen
on the day in question when we're trying to deal with a major,
imminent, potentially life-threatening safety issue?
Ms. Flowers. Would you like to know what we did?
Mr. Connolly. Well, I'd like to know where you were on the
16th before you tell me what you did.
Ms. Flowers. Okay. On March 16, we were working with WMATA
over the telephone, talking to them about what they were doing.
We did oversight of their inspection the night before, we
talked to them. And we used the information to verify what they
were doing. And we also are now conducting our own blitz of the
system, of their tracks.
Mr. Connolly. I'm sure it gave great comfort to Metro that
you were verifying over the phone what they were doing.
My time has expired. Thank you for your indulgence, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Mica. Thank you. Mr. Meadows yields me 15 seconds just
to say that, Mr. Connolly, they had between a half a billion
and three-quarters of a billion dollars sitting in the bank to
make the repairs that Ms. Flowers or FTA and Mr. Hart said were
necessary last year after somebody died and we told them to do
something about it and held a hearing. So it's not a question
of money. It's a question of management and somebody doing
something. And let me yield back to Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank each of you.
We've got two different issues here. One is a safety and a
deferred maintenance issue. The other is a management issue.
And so I want to try to address both of those. Mr. Hart, I
think we have some pictures here that maybe we can put up. If
you can explain to the committee the pictures, I guess, of that
particular picture with--I guess they're jumper cables. Is this
where the issue is? Now, I need the picture of the jumper
cables, please, sir. Right there on the--right there in front
of you. That one.
Mr. Hart. Yes. These are the cables that provide propulsion
power to the third rail. So this is--we are talking about
serious electricity here. What we saw was that there is a
fiberglass sleeve around there that needs a sealing sleeve on
the fiberglass boot. Let me call it a boot. The fiberglass boot
needs a sealing sleeve to keep stuff from coming inside where
the connection is.
Mr. Meadows. So basically, an insulator to keep it from
arcing?
Mr. Hart. Well, it's an insulator to keep contamination
from getting into the connection so that--because the
contamination can form an arcing path to cause short circuits.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So is this the only place where you
can have an electrical problem that would create smoke in the
tunnel?
Mr. Hart. There are probably a number of other places. The
insulators, for example, if they get contamination down in the
insulators, then the electricity can arc from the third rail
down to the ground. So there are several places where it can
happen. What we saw in L'Enfant Plaza was specifically from the
cables.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So if we're going to inspect this
and if we're really looking--and I see the general manager is
wanting to step in. Go ahead.
Mr. Wiedefeld. Just to clarify, that is one potential
source of arcing. The cables also, if they are in the wrong
direction, if they are laying on the ground, that is a--it's
built on a floating slab, the rail is, which means it can move.
And if that cable is laying on concrete and over time that
rubs, basically it can fray it and open it that way. So there's
a series of things that can happen.
Mr. Meadows. Well, I guess, here's my concern is from what
I'm coming to understand, that the jumper cables are not the
only source of potential problem. And yet it appears that when
we had the inspection, it was a jumper cable-only checklist.
Who made that decision?
Mr. Wiedefeld. We made that decision because the issue was
at McPherson, it was a jumper cable issue. And that's where you
do get the arcing from. You're going to get it from, in effect,
some sort of cable situation where, in effect, you have a third
rail that's steel----
Mr. Meadows. So, Mr. Hart, would you agree that that is
adequate enough that if we put in we're only looking for jumper
cables that that's satisfactory from a safety standpoint?
Mr. Hart. Our recommendation addressed all cables. Jumper
cables, power cables. All cables, not just jumper cables.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So why would we only look at jumper
cables?
Mr. Wiedefeld. I think it's a terminology.
Mr. Meadows. Because that's--well, no, it says right here,
and, Mr. Chairman, I ask that we submit this for the record.
Mr. Mica. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Meadows. Because it says ``Only jumper cables shall be
inspected,'' exclamation point. So, like, don't look at
anything else other than jumper cables. And if you're saying
that there are other sources, why would we only look at the
jumper cables?
Mr. Wiedefeld. Because I think, again, I think it's a
terminology issue. Those what you see there with the big orange
boots are what people generally are calling jumper cables. But
if you recall, when we came out the next day and we showed the
one cable that was frayed, that wouldn't have been termed a
jumper cable. That's where you have two pieces of steel that
there's a space of an inch, in effect, so that you can--so with
temperature changes it can move. And that is a much smaller
cable that goes back. Didn't have the big orange boots. So we
weren't just looking at the orange boot cables. We were looking
at any cable----
Mr. Meadows. So what you're saying is the language on here
only looking at jumper cables really didn't mean to only look
at jumper cables. It meant to look at anything electrical. So
your sworn testimony here today is they looked at all
electrical----
Mr. Wiedefeld. They looked at electrical cables that closed
any gap between third rail.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So let me go on a little bit
further.
Mr. Evans, your solution, and I've read a few of the
articles, and I hear your testimony today. So let me make sure
I understand. You need another $1.2 billion in operating
revenue. Is that correct? Is that your testimony?
Mr. Evans. We need----
Mr. Meadows. 300,000 times 4, $1.2 billion.
Mr. Evans. Right now we have $900 million. We need another
$300 million from the Federal Government for $1.2 billion in
operating on the one side. And----
Mr. Meadows. So you're only saying an increase of $300
million----
Mr. Evans. Correct.
Mr. Meadows. --but you want the Federal Government to pay
the $300 million?
Mr. Evans. Yes.
Mr. Meadows. So why, if you're dividing the others by three
or four, why would it only come from the Federal Government? Is
that budget autonomy?
Mr. Evans. Right now, each jurisdiction pays approximately
$300 million.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Mr. Evans. The Federal Government is a full partner. A
fourth partner that pays zero.
Mr. Meadows. Well, according to your testimony, we
actually, I guess, when we originally put in this system, we
were more than a full partner. We paid two-thirds of the
capital improvements originally. Is that correct?
Mr. Evans. Yes, you did. That's right. The Federal
Government paid two-thirds of the cost to build this system. On
the operating side, though, they do not contribute and had
never contributed.
Mr. Meadows. All right. And so you're saying it needs
another $18 billion, with a B, in terms of----
Mr. Evans. $18 billion, yes. Capital money.
Mr. Meadows. So let me make sure I understand this. Your
plan to fix this system is to give WMATA $18 billion and close
down the system for 6 months in order to have a good system. Is
that the best----
Mr. Evans. No. That's not my plan.
Mr. Meadows. Well, I mean, it's $18 billion. And I guess
you were quoted as saying: Close it down for 6 months, which
when I heard that, I could think of traffic jams for 6 months,
and it didn't sit well with me.
Mr. Evans. Congressman, let me just say this: If you want
me to come up here and give you good news, I'll be glad to do
that. But if you want to hear what we really need to do, that's
the only reason I'm here. And if you give me 30 seconds, I'll
just tell you why I'm here.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. Where's the $18 billion going to be--you
know, if you want to get testy about it, Mr. Evans, let me just
say, I've got the numbers. And if you're looking at increasing
the operating revenue the way that you're talking about, you
become the most expensive operating system, more expensive than
Chicago, more expensive than New York, more expensive than
Pennsylvania. So why would you have the highest operating cost
out there? I mean, what would justify that? So if you want to
look at numbers, let's look at them.
Mr. Evans. We're the second largest transit system in
America. So that justifies----
Mr. Meadows. Well, New York is higher. Chicago is higher.
Mr. Evans. And if you have the opportunity to travel the
world as I have, you go to Beijing, Shanghai, Paris, London,
Moscow, and see a world-class system. This system has become an
embarrassment in the Nation's capital. And we are all in this
together, and----
Mr. Meadows. Those are all Communist countries, Mr. Evans.
Mr. Evans. Paris, London, Communist countries?
Mr. Meadows. You said Beijing, Shanghai, and Moscow.
Mr. Evans. I said Beijing, Shanghai, Moscow, Paris, and
London. They are capital cities. And if we want a world-class
system like they have, the federal governments in those
countries pay for all of the system. All I'm asking from you is
$300 million, which is your fair share, given the fact that we
transport 50 percent of your workforce every day. Do you want
them to be safe? Do you want this to be reliable? Or do you
just want to leave here like we did in 2005 and do nothing? And
if we do that, next time something happens, I'm blaming it on
you guys. Because we need your help.
Mr. Meadows. Sir, you're the one that's been on the board.
So how can you blame us? You're the ones making the decisions.
Mr. Evans. I've been on the board a year. When I left this
place 15 years ago----
Mr. Meadows. Since this has all happened.
Mr. Evans. It is not operating well now. And we need the
resources in addition to the wherewithal.
Mr. Meadows. When can you get this committee a full
breakdown of how that money will be spent?
I yield back.
Mr. Evans. Within a week. But you will never--let me just
say this: You're never going to have a better chance. You have
a chairman and myself who has done this for years. You have a
general manager who is as capable as anybody has ever been. If
we leave here today and do nothing, and, Mr. Chairman, when
you're saying you're not going to give us a dime, really? Is
that what you're saying? We need resources for this system.
This is your system. This is my system. You're going to put
your kids, your parents, on this system that is a system like
it is today? Really? Give me a break. We really have to step
up. I have reports here from 2010, 2011, 2005, 2005, where we
have done nothing. We cannot leave here and do nothing again.
Mr. Mica. I thank the gentleman and I will put in the
record the balances that have been unexpended which have been
verified by you all that are available. It was a half a billion
almost last year. 485,783 as of 2 weeks ago. So the money is
there. The management's lacking.
Mr. Connolly, you're recognized.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you. I'm going to yield to my good
friend, Eleanor Holmes Norton, while reserving my 5 minutes.
Thank you.
Ms. Norton. I thank my friend. As to who needs Metro and
who ought to pony up, just let me say that when Metro shuts
down, the Federal Government shuts down. And we've had evidence
of that through the gazoo recently. So just try getting along
without Metro, I'll say to my colleagues, if you want a Federal
Government at all.
I just want to clarify what Mr. Evans says, because it was
perfectly true. The pension liability was pre-home rule
liability. So it wasn't the District of Columbia's liability at
all. It's liability because of the Federal Government didn't
give us control over our own local jurisdiction, and,
therefore, it was due then and they had to pay it. As for--the
Federal Government gave D.C. not one thin dime. It does--did
agree to pay for State functions, because the District is the
only city that has any responsibility for State functions. So
just clarifying, I agree with what Mr. Evans has said.
Now, look, I want to focus on the fact that for the first
time in its history, as I understand it, this system, Metro, is
doing short-term borrowing in order to get operating funds.
Isn't that true, Mr. Wiedefeld?
Mr. Wiedefeld. Yes, it is.
Ms. Norton. And you have a rollover of this borrowing of
about a half a billion dollars at this point. Isn't that true?
Mr. Wiedefeld. In that range, yes.
Ms. Norton. So I want everybody to understand what this
means. You're borrowing just to keep the system running. And
we've got to face this fast. Now, on top of that, Ms. Flowers,
WMATA was put under handwritten drawdown restrictions. That is
to say, to get any of the Federal money due you, you've got to
turn in by hand the voucher, in effect. Now, look, I don't have
any problems with that because of what FTA found in terms of
controls. And so, I understand it, in the beginning, when I've
been having written correspondence with FTA because it looks
like we are through this process until we get to validation.
So it looks like you have done your due diligence. But in
the process, and this is why I'm talking about going forward,
in the process, you have so delayed WMATA getting funds due it
that it has had to go and do short-term borrowing, from bad to
worse. That is why I have asked for another form of monitoring.
I don't care what it is, just so it is streamlined and doesn't
leave WMATA waiting 10 or more days to get money that the
Congress has already allocated to it.
Have we got a monitoring system that will allow them to do
some form of technical drawdown, rather than the hand drawdown
given the fact that you've gotten through all of the controls,
except waiting for it to be validated? I'm not asking for no
monitoring. Do you understand? I'm just asking that you not
throw this system deeper into debt than they already are,
because if they're borrowing just to keep the operation going,
that looks like what we usually see when somebody's about to go
out of business.
Mr. Wiedefeld. If I could just clarify, it's on the capital
side, not the operating side. It's on capital funds is what
we're talking about.
Ms. Norton. My understanding was that for the first time
you had borrowed--I mean, you're always borrowing--I'm talking
about short-term funding, Mr. Wiedefeld.
Mr. Wiedefeld. No, it is. It's short-term funding, but it's
for the capital program, because we don't have the electronic--
what's called ECHO, the electronic ability to bring down the
dollars.
Ms. Norton. But you've not done short-term borrowing
before?
Mr. Wiedefeld. Not that I'm----
Ms. Norton. As far as I'm told, never in the history. So
whatever it goes to, they're rolling it over. They can't pay
it. So I'm trying, for short term, a way to get to partial
solution, short term, here's the money the Federal Government
says we owe you. How close are we getting to a streamlined
approach, Ms. Flowers?
Ms. Flowers. We've been working close with Mr. Wiedefeld to
go through a validation process. And I think we are getting
closer.
Ms. Norton. When do you think--I understand this is costing
them money, interest. So I think it's a perfectly valid
question to say give us a date since, they've done everything
you said do except have it validated when the--when they can
get their money in the old fashion--or the new fashion way.
Excuse me. You know, when will that be, Ms. Flowers? And when
can you get me a date on that?
Ms. Flowers. I'm going to defer to Mr. Welbes, who's been
working with WMATA and our region to work on this restricted
drawdown process.
Mr. Welbes. Congresswoman Norton, over the last 2 years, we
paid $845 million to Metro. And Metro brings us their request
for payment. As long as they have----
Ms. Norton. Sir, I asked you a very specific question. My
time is running out. What--when will they get off of this
short-term--I'm sorry, this--these restrictions that are
putting it more heavily into debt?
Mr. Welbes. So we're doing testing and validation. We just
agreed in the last month to the testing and validation plan.
And in the coming months, we'll make sure that Metro's engaged,
doing the financial activities that we requested in our
oversight review. But during 2016, it is possible, if Metro
fulfills the requirements, that they could move off of
restricted drawdown, but it will be up to Metro.
Ms. Norton. I'm going to ask you to submit to the chairman
within 30 days a date where you--proposed date when you think
that WMATA will no longer be put on these kinds of restrictions
that keeps it from getting money owed it.
I want only to say to my good friend, Mr. Evans, this
notion about, which I would certainly agree with, to create a
dedicated funding source, it's become a mantra. I'm asking you,
Metro, somebody, put a proposal on the table. Nobody is going
to do anything about dedicated funding until somebody just puts
something on the table for others to react to. I think that
would move the ball along.
And I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Mica. I thank the gentlelady. We've exhausted the
Republicans on our side. So I'll yield to Ms. Comstock, and
then we'll go to Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. Mr. Chairman, I didn't know it was that easy
to exhaust the Republicans.
Mrs. Comstock. I'm still here, Jerry.
Mr. Mica. You got this one, even with all my Italian
energy. Go ahead.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. After seeing a
little bit of the back and forth here, one of the things I'd
like to recommend to all of my colleagues here is to focus on
our new general manager here, who has really set out some good
things that we all can agree on. So we can--there'll be time
later for some of the food fights and some of the things we've
seen here. But I think where we need to focus right now is on
what Mr. Wiedefeld has focused on. And I think a lot of our
colleagues, on a bipartisan basis, agree on that. So I would
encourage everybody as we go forward on this, let's work on all
the things we agree on first before we start any of these
fights.
And in that effort, I wanted to ask Mr. Wiedefeld on--and I
appreciate what Mr. Evans said about you as capable as anyone
who has ever been here. And you certainly demonstrated that
from the beginning as we have been talking about this. You
cited that over 10 years, there have been no significant
reductions in force, resulting in redundant positions among
back office staff that should be abolished. What can we do to
immediately abolish some of those? Because some of those huge
costs that we're going to have on pensions are going to be
coming from some of these redundant positions that are
unnecessary.
So I appreciate that you're trying to, you know, minimize
the problem here. What do you need from us, if anything from
us, that we can help you immediately remove those redundant
positions, put people where they need to be, and fire the
people, and I appreciate my colleague, Mr. Connolly, talked
about firing. When you fire somebody for direct wrongdoing, you
know, there's some savings in our pension costs right there.
Because I think the taxpayers thinking that those people who
caused all these problems and for 10 years didn't do anything,
and have ignored all of these things over and over, those
people need to be fired and we need to be taking the action
that helps you, you know, change this system, the cultural
change, I think you are very committed to, that we see in your
positive action here.
And I would very much like to work with you and my
colleagues on that type of positive action as quickly as
possible if you can identify some of those ways to make it
quicker.
Mr. Wiedefeld. I have already done--you know, started
moving that direction. I have done some personnel changes. I've
reorganized the agency. And I've made it very clear to
everyone, particularly the all at-will employees that basically
this is the way we operate. And if you don't understand that,
then it is not a good fit for either one of us. So that is
progressing. I'm not going to get into individual personnel
issues here. But that is progressing.
Mrs. Comstock. And I would mention, I know in the audit,
the HR department seemed to be one of the departments that
isn't working very well. And then, again, basic things like the
maintenance department, and I quote from the report, they
didn't have simple things like repair kits with necessary parts
for common repairs, like things that you have--the maintenance
office, whoever's been running the maintenance office that
didn't go and put those repair kits, that they have to be told
build repair kits with necessary parts for common repairs, you
know, any auto body shop knows that, and that the person who is
running this----
So let's--I think it's very helpful if we see people like
that moving on and putting capable people to do those kind of
basic repairs, HR people who understand how to move these
people along and get them--because the audit really shows the
problem is execution. We all have identified the problems, and
now you've been brought in to execute. And you set out some
really good ideas on executing. But if you're not able to move
the deadwood out, then that execution is going to be a real
problem.
So let us help you move that deadwood along. I think you've
seen today, bipartisan agreement on the faster you can get that
deadwood out, we're going to be able to help you a lot more.
And--but if you have a little--anything more.
Mr. Wiedefeld. No, I totally agree. What I'm telling you is
I'm moving in that same direction right now.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you. And since I have a little bit of
time left, then, on the HR front, have there been any changes
at this time in the human resources department?
Mr. Wiedefeld. Actually, yes, in terms of, one of the
issues that I had is a lot of these different parts of the
agency were buried under operations, for instance. So I've
pulled that all apart and I have created a--basically an
internal support group that has auditing, procurement, which is
the other issue tied to the maintenance issue, HR, and labor,
and have that under a separate group that basically is under a
new leadership right now. And they're digging into all those
issues, both on what we learned from the consultant and what we
bring to the table.
Mrs. Comstock. Okay. Because I know we had asked some
questions, and I don't want to--you know, I appreciate some of
the people we've been waiting to get responses from, I think,
are in the HR area. We've been asked, you know, basic
information like absentee reports, because some of the concern
that we heard were a lot of absentee, and as a result, then
people get a lot of overtime. That overtime is added to their
pension. So if you have this whole little system that can all
work, Hey, I'll take off today. You can take off next week. We
both get overtime and we both get a bigger pension and get to
retire earlier, that's not a good game that we need to be
playing. And I think a lot of those problems can be worked out
there if we have a really good HR department. And I--since I
haven't gotten the answers on that, I'm assuming that's a--
continues to be a problem. So thank you for addressing that.
Mr. Meadows. [Presiding.] I thank the gentlewoman for her
insightful questions, and certainly for the answers. The chair
recognizes the gentleman from Virginia, the ranking member of
the Subcommittee on Government Operations, Mr. Connolly.
Mr. Connolly. I thank the chair. Mr. Evans, Chairman Mica
talked about $783 million as if you've just--you're sitting
around watching soap operas and eating bon bons, and allowing
$783 million to just accumulate. And you got plenty of money.
Isn't there a difference between, say, obligated funds and
expended funds?
Mr. Evans. Yes, there is, Congressman. And what the
chairman was referring to, I don't know if he knew that, was
obligated funds. They're already obligated. They're not
anything new that we can use for other things.
Mr. Connolly. How much of the 783, either you or Mr.
Wiedefeld, is, for example, for the purchase and delivery and
ultimate expenditure for new 7000 Series cars from Kawasaki?
Mr. Wiedefeld. I don't have those dollar figures off the
top of my head. But the point that you're making is a lot of
those are tied to very big purchases, whether it's bus
purchase, 7,000 series. And some of the issues that we've had
with the cash flow of that is when the tsunami hit Japan, that
impacted Kawasaki, who was the provider of that. And that
slowed that up.
In a major bus purchase that we had there was--a company
went out of business. So that slowed those dollars up. So
that--and I think FTA can attest to that. That is--I think
we're in the range of what other transit----
Mr. Connolly. I just would urge you quickly to help dispel
this myth of you're sitting on a lot of capital you don't know
what to do with. It is actually good and prudent management not
to pay your bills until the product or service has been
delivered, and has met your specifications with respect to
quality, especially given the fact that the reason we're
purchasing new rail cars is, among other reasons, safety. The
new cars aren't going to pancake like Series 1000 cars, which
affected lives in the first fatal accident. And so I just--I
think we have to really get the data out there, you know, so
that we dispel this myth that you're sitting on a mountain of
capital. Why should we give you more?
Mr. Evans. Mr. Connolly, that's so important too. Because
this is obligated money. We need new capital money. I mentioned
the Rosslyn bottleneck. Right now we can run 23--20 trains in
an hour through the Rosslyn bottleneck. The capacity is going
to have to be 40 trains an hour if we're going to make this a
reliable system. We are going to have to build a new tunnel.
And it's going to cost billions of dollars to do it. Otherwise,
we are going to have a system that is not reliable and it's
going to take forever to get anywhere. This is just one example
of many that we need these capital dollars for.
Mr. Connolly. Okay. And by the way, another thing, Mr.
Wiedefeld, when you're getting back to us on explaining the
783, it would also be useful to know how we compare to other
transit systems that receive Federal grants in terms of spend-
down rate. Because I think we're in the same ballpark. I don't
think we're particularly different. And that might come as news
obviously to some of my colleagues.
At this point, I'm going to yield to my friend, Mr. Delaney
from Maryland, the balance of my time.
Mr. Delaney. Thank you. So the scale of this failure at
Metro is almost unimaginable. And it's become a national
embarrassment. And I agree with my colleagues that it's a
management problem. And I agree with Mr. Evans that the
system's been underinvested in and it continues to be
underinvested in. But what we haven't talked at all about is
the board and the governing system. Because you can only blame
management for so long. Ultimately a board, a fiduciary board,
is responsible. And this enterprise has had a fiduciary board
for a long time. If this was any other enterprise other than
Metro, the board would have been dismissed, discharged
completely and new boards would have been appointed.
Mr. Evans, do you believe that the board of Metro, if you
had to certify, like public companies have to do with, for
example, their audit committee chair, that the board members
have deep experience in operations and financial management of
sophisticated transit systems, or have tremendous experience in
creating systems of accountability and metrics for their
management teams? Do you feel like you could certify that the
individuals who sit on this board, and I look at some of the
board committees, they have a safety committee. Obviously, they
completely failed. There's a finance committee. Complete
failure. Customer service committee. Complete failure. There's
a real estate committee. Maybe they did their job. I can't
really speak to that.
But it just seems to me that, at some point, we have to ask
hard questions about who's actually on the board of this
organization? What is their experience? Are they just people
who, you know, get these positions because of political
paybacks and they know nothing about transit or transportation
or operations? I mean, why aren't we getting the absolute best-
proven executives in the Washington region, people who run some
of the most successful enterprises. You know, not small little
enterprises, but big enterprises.
Do we have a governance problem that goes to the board? Do
the people on the board know what they're supposed to do?
And are they the kind of people where you would put up
their resumes and say, There's no better person in the country
for, you know, who's chairing my finance committee. There's no
better person in the country chairing my customer service
committee. There's no better person in the country chairing my
safety committee. Is that the kind of board that is governing
this? Or is that really the problem?
Mr. Evans. No, that is not the type of board that is
governing this. So let me address this quickly. We have a 16-
member board which is way too big. Organization should have 16
members like the Kennedy Center. People raise money, but they
don't run an organization. When I was on last time we had 12,
it was too big. And then they added four Federal
representatives couple years ago. It is unwieldy, to say the
least.
Mr. Delaney. But your average corporate board is probably a
dozen board members?
Mr. Evans. That's just too many. And secondly, Congressman,
your point is well taken. No. People don't come there with
enormous experience. Some do. We have one or two people who
have worked in the transit industry for a while. But most
people don't. And they're there for a whole variety of reasons.
Sometimes they're there because nobody else would come, believe
it or not. And so that's what you have as a board.
Secondly, it's never been clear what the board does. In the
past, this committee has criticized the board for being too
involved in the general manager's business. Then there was an
opportunity the board was not at all involved in----
Mr. Delaney. But that's--sorry to interrupt, but that's why
you need a good board.
Mr. Evans. Correct.
Mr. Delaney. Right? Because a good board knows what their
job is. Right? They look at the CEO, or the manager of the
enterprise. And they say, These are your goals. If you don't
reach them, we're going to make a change. Right? And they have
committees that ask the right questions and make sure things
are happening. I mean, it seems to me as part of whatever has
to be done to fix this system, which will involve more capital,
there has to be a serious conversation about completely
reconstituting this board and making sure these are not just
political appointees who may have very good community
relations, and I'm not trying to underestimate that. But
actually getting some people sitting around the table who know
what they're doing. Right? Because we can't be sitting here
looking at pictures of jumper cables, right, in Oversight. I
mean, there has to be a management structure and a governing
structure that works. And this is--you know, we talk about
management, we talk about underinvestment, but, I mean, one of
the biggest embarrassments, in my opinion, you could have in
this town is to have been on this board of this thing for the
last 10 years because you've utterly failed.
Mr. Evans. And let me just point out to you, I have with me
one of my many reports. January 7, 2011, Transforming
Governance of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit
Authority. This is a report on how we should completely redo
the board, 2011, 5 years ago, and nothing happened. And so your
point is absolutely well-taken. But the problem is you have
four jurisdictions. Nobody's willing to give up anything. And
so anytime we bring up this idea of changing the board,
everybody backs away from it. So you're right. We need to do
something here. Because this is----
Mr. Delaney. So whatever this Congress does to address some
of these problems, I think we should be putting on the table
ensuring that real board members, who--again, under Sarbanes-
Oxley, if you run a public company, and you're the chair of the
audit committee, the board has to certify that the person is an
expert at audit committee-related matters for whatever that
company does. And we need that kind of certification for these
board members so we can get real governance of this----
Mr. Evans. Mr. Congressman, I'll say this: Can anybody up
here name the four Federal board members?
Mr. Delaney. Well, I just looked them up. So I--and I
looked at their backgrounds. And admirable people who have done
good things in the community, but I would not--if I to certify,
the question I asked you, I could not certify that any of these
people are experts, being a steward and a fiduciary of the
Federal Government's money, the State of Virginia's money, the
State of Maryland's money and the money of the District of
Columbia.
Mr. Connolly. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, which has
long ago expired, the gentleman from Maryland makes a very good
point. But I would caution my colleagues that Federal law
cannot dictate who is on the board of Metro, nor can Federal
law tell the paying jurisdictions who they get to appoint to
Metro. If Federal law wants to do that, Federal law has to pay
the bills. And that was the point I made earlier. We are AWOL.
We don't pay an operating subsidy. And, therefore, we must
tread lightly in telling Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. who and
what will serve on the board. And that is something we're going
to have to grapple with. Because this is not a Federal entity.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Meadows. I thank the gentleman. And the chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer, for 5
minutes.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Wiedefeld, there's
a recent story in the Post summarizing how the Blue Line riders
have felt for years about the way they've been treated compared
to riders in the rest of the system. And obviously, my friend,
Chairman Evans' comments about closing the Blue Line for 6
months perhaps got even people more excited and upset. But they
do have legitimate complaints. And a lot of it has to do with
the capacity of the Rosslyn tunnel, a major choke point. But
what can we do now before we get all this additional
infrastructure money to help those Blue Line riders?
Mr. Wiedefeld. I am taking a look at that to see if there's
other ways we could provide that service, you know, and how
we're managing the three lines there. So it's a technical
exercise, because anytime you do that--so I will be coming out
in the near future with that.
Mr. Beyer. All right. Thank you. Chairman Evans, you made a
very strong case for a Federal operating subsidy, the $300
million, to match what Maryland, D.C., and Virginia put in
right now. But you also mentioned the search for a regional
funding source, $1 billion a year. What did you have in mind?
Or do you have any models out there?
Mr. Evans. Yes. What we need to do is in the region, and
other States have dedicating funding sources for their
transportation systems. They use a sales tax. Some use a gas
tax, a combination of the two, a property tax. But no other
transit system is operating in a multi-jurisdictional area.
That, therein, is the problem. So Virginia, Maryland, and D.C.
have to agree on what kind of a funding source, tax, fee,
whatever you want to call it. And is it gas? Is it sales? Is it
income? Is it property? Or a combination of those? And we have
just not been able to do it, which is why suggested, I was just
reading history, the Tennessee Valley Authority, where in the
Roosevelt era, the Federal Government superimposed on
Tennessee, Arkansas, and everybody this taxing district used to
build the dams for the Tennessee River. I haven't done anything
beyond that. But I'm frustrated with the local jurisdictions'
inability to deal with this. And so I go back to the Federal
Government. Maybe they can help us out. My whole point is this:
We need help at Metro. And if we don't get it, if we don't get
it, we are going to be in serious trouble beyond where we are
now.
Mr. Beyer. Thanks. General Manager Wiedefeld, The
Washingtonian ran this amazing story back in December about,
quote, ``The Infuriating History of How Metro Got So Bad.'' And
a lot of the story focused on WMATA's real operations control
center. And basically, air traffic control system for the whole
system. And they talked about an environment where training
materials were out of date, factually incorrect. Place that was
hostile to new hires. Place where control center workers
routinely worked 12-hour days in order to get the overtime. And
the NTSB preliminary report was very critical of the way the
control center responded at that smoke incident back in January
2015. So all these things wrap around culture. What can you
tell us to give us some hope that you're making changes within
the control center, and a culture that's responsive and
performs well, executes well?
Mr. Wiedefeld. Right. There's two aspects to it. One is, I
mentioned I did a reorganization. So I changed how that
reporting relationship goes so that I can get more focus on
that part of the operation. As Ms. Flowers mentions, the FTA's
there on a regular basis making sure that they're playing by
all the rules and, you know, following all the procedures
they're supposed to do. The larger issue that you talk about,
it's not confined just to the rail operation center, which is
this cultural issue that was brought up in The Washingtonian
Magazine. What I have found is a strong disconnect between
management and the frontline employees that has, you know,
evolved over years where people feel, in effect,
disenfranchised. They don't feel a part of the business. They
don't feel the pride in the business. They don't feel the
commitment in it.
And, so, that's what I am focusing on to get the frontline
people and the managers to understand that if they do not tap
into that resource, you know, their job is to bring that
resource up, not push it down. And if they can't do that, then
they--it gets back to Congresswoman Comstock's issue. If they
cannot do that, then they cannot work here. Because that is
what we need to get this organization in the direction we need
to get it in.
Mr. Beyer. Great. Thank you. Thank you and good luck.
Ms. Flowers, in Mr. Hart's NTSB report, you know, we--
obviously, NTSB had recommended the railways take over the
safety aspect. Secretary Foxx gave it back to FTA. I'm quoting.
He says, the FTA--this is from NTSB. ``The FTA has very limited
ability to oversee the WMATA effectively. It has no prior
experience in direct safety, oversight, or as an SSOA. Has
limited staff to carry out the functions. Doesn't have the
authority to levy civil or individual penalties,'' et cetera.
How do you respond to all these, sort of documented criticisms
of why you're not the right agency to do these safety
oversights?
Ms. Flowers. Well, first of all, we're on the job and doing
the job. And, you know, we do have enforcement power. Most
importantly, we have the ability to direct WMATA to take
action, corrective action, when there are safety infractions.
We also have the ability now to withhold funds, as much as 5
percent to 25 percent of the funds, to compel them to take
corrective action.
On the experience side, we feel we have the technical
competence. We have put together an organization that has
experience from FAA and FRA. And we have the resources.
Secretary Foxx took a one DOT approach. He leveraged resources
from across the Department to augment the oversight effort. We
have people working with us from FRA, NHTSA, Motor Carriers,
and the Office of the Secretary.
I know that NTSB is concerned about whether we can sustain
this. But we do have additional budgetary authority to augment
our safety operations. And we think that the response was the
appropriate risk. We needed to act quickly. FTA had the
statutory authority, and FRA did not have the statutory
authority at this time to oversee commuter rail. I mean, FRA
had the statutory authority for commuter rail but not for urban
public transit.
Mr. Beyer. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Meadows. I thank the gentleman. The chair recognizes
the ranking member for a followup question.
Mr. Connolly. I'm just going to ask one question and then
yield to Mrs. Comstock.
Ms. Flowers, you just told my colleague, Mr. Beyer, that
you have the statutory authority to even withhold funds, 5 to
15 percent. And, in fact, you have threatened to do that if the
three jurisdictions do not form this oversight committee in a
certain course of time. Is that correct?
Ms. Flowers. That's correct. One year. February of next
year.
Mr. Connolly. All right. Have you taken cognizance of the
legislative schedules of the two respective states, Maryland
and Virginia?
Ms. Flowers. Yes, we have. And what we would like to see
as--and we're continuing to provide technical assistance and
work with the three jurisdictions, what we'd like to see is
this move forward rather than actually take action to withhold
funds.
Mr. Connolly. Okay. I support what you're trying to do, and
I support the pressure you're putting on them. But one little
word of caution. Be aware of the difference in the legislative
schedules so that we're not asking them to do something they
can't possibly do within their legislative calendar.
Ms. Flowers. And I just want to say we could rather than
would.
Mr. Connolly. Okay. Thank you very much. And thank you for
yielding.
Mr. Meadows. The chair recognizes the gentlewoman from
Virginia, Mrs. Comstock, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you. And I thank the ranking member
for--as a former member of the Virginia State Legislature, we
are only there January through February or March sometimes. So
that had some impact this year also, as we were trying to take
some action. So thank you. And I also wanted to mention that
Congressman Wolf had been up here, my predecessor, today, and
this board--he--I mentioned we were having a Metro hearing. And
he raised the same issue that Mr. Delaney raised on the board.
So appreciate the honesty, Mr. Evans, in terms of looking at
the expertise there, and obviously, there'll be challenges
there to look at that, but I do agree with Mr. Delaney that
that needs to be looked at more thoroughly.
I wanted to, again, return to some of the good management
ideas I think our new general manager is focused on, just to
get them on the record here. Because yesterday, you had talked
about things like looking at Paratransit and how we can save
money there. And I don't know if maintenance might be an area
too that can be outsourced. But could you maybe detail, for the
record, so we have some of these I think good positive ideas
that again things that we'll probably all share and have in
common and can improve?
Mr. Wiedefeld. Sure. Yes. There are a number of things that
I think that we could do more efficiently by getting out of
them, to some degree, because it's not core to our mission. So,
for instance, parking, obviously it does feed our system. We
have 60,000 parking spaces. But, you know, that's not the core
thing that we wake up every morning worried about. And I think
that's an opportunity for private sector to do that, for
instance. The Paratransit, again, we have a model that, you
know, has--it's been around for years. But I think in today's
technology, that there's opportunities to do that to make sure
that we don't take anything away from any of our customers, but
actually give them alternatives that, for us, will be cheaper
and for----
Mrs. Comstock. And I think yesterday you had cited that the
average cost for Paratransit is $50----
Mr. Wiedefeld. Close to $50.
Mrs. Comstock. And so you were already identifying other
ways, particularly on short trips where we could save money
with sort of the on-demand economy and probably be more
efficient for some of the users.
Mr. Wiedefeld. More efficient. And right now, you have to
give a 24-hour notice for your trip. A lot of times you have
travel with other people. There's other alternatives. You can
just call up and it can happen very quickly and with just you.
Mrs. Comstock. We can welcome the Uber economy to Metro.
Mr. Wiedefeld. Not one vendor.
Mrs. Comstock. On demand.
Mr. Wiedefeld. Right. The headquarters building is another
opportunity, I believe, just in terms of the number of people
we have there, and do we need that many people in a prime
location. You know, I--basically I'm looking at that as well.
On the maintenance side, on the fare collection side, I think,
again, there's opportunities to--where it makes more sense to
have other resources applied there, that's what we should do.
So I'll continue to do that.
Mrs. Comstock. Thank you. And I really appreciate it and
just wanted to highlight some of those things. Because I think
there's been some really good thought that the general manager
has already put into this where I think we will find a lot of
common ground, and maybe we can focus on those things first,
bring the cost down and minimize some of the other problems and
costs that we're dealing with so we can have a more civil
discussion on that when we have actually solved a lot of these
problems, have a very functioning system, and I appreciate your
taking that approach as you proceed through, so thank you.
Mr. Meadows. I thank the gentlewoman. Let me follow up a
little bit on what my good friend, Mr. Connolly, was saying
with regards to jurisdiction.
Ms. Flowers, I don't know that you were necessarily the
best group, and I really care a lot about Secretary Foxx. In
fact, I consider him a personal friend. I don't know that it
was necessarily the right decision. But here is my whole point
on this. Mr. Hart and Ms. Flowers, we've got to get this system
in a place where you're not at a hearing talking about the
safety of this system. You know, so while it may be germane
today, I'm hopeful that in the very near future it will not be
a discussion that even comes up. You know, we talk about Uber a
little bit. You know, I've got staff members now taking Uber
and other forms of transportation to get to work who used to
take the Metro, just because they can't count on it anymore.
We've got to stop that. I mean, just pure and simple, we have
to stop that.
Mr. Evans, you started out your testimony by talking and
acknowledging the service that many of us have provided,
whether it's attending the State of the District meeting as you
mentioned with me. I want to acknowledge your service, I guess
it's to Ward 2 and your service there, and certainly say thank
you. There's no tougher job than local politics. And so I want
to acknowledge that.
I guess the fundamental question is how many more hearings
are we going to have before we fix the problem. You know, this
now makes my fourth, either hearing or round table or meeting,
that we've had on a mass transit system that I don't ride, you
know, that the vast majority of people use here in the Federal
Government. And whether it's 50 percent or 60 percent. You
know, even if it's higher than that, we've got to get it right.
And by getting it right, I need to figure out who's in charge.
Because is it a 16- or 14-member board? You know, is it the new
general manager? Is it the coalition of people that put forth
the people who actually sit on the board? Who's in charge? Who
owns it?
You know, Mr. Evans, I think in your written testimony it
says that you want to make it clear that you don't own the
Metro and that Paul doesn't own the Metro. But somebody has to
own the responsibility. And, I guess, that's what I'm getting
to. Who is it? Who do we hold accountable for a system that has
deferred maintenance and is not safe? Who is that?
Mr. Evans. It's myself and Paul. We are the two people who
are in charge of Metro today.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. You can't have two leaders. So
ultimately where does the buck stop?
Mr. Evans. Paul is in charge.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. So if Paul makes a decision that the
board doesn't agree with, what happens to Paul?
Mr. Evans. We haven't faced that yet.
Mr. Meadows. But you will. I mean, listen, this is a big
problem. It's taken 40 years to get here. Deferred maintenance.
You've been on the board three times? Is this your third tour
of duty?
Mr. Evans. Twice. Second tour of duty, yeah.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So as we look at this, it's going
to happen where the board thinks one thing and Paul, as the
expert, thinks something else. So if Paul does that, does he
get fired?
Mr. Evans. No. That would be my position as chairman of the
board, but I am only one board member. But in that situation, I
would defer to the general manager, who I believe has the
expertise that the rest of us on the board do not have.
And so, the close-down is a good example. We discussed it,
and then I turned to Paul and said, What do you want to do? And
he said, Close it down. And everybody got on board. And I
believe that that's how this will operate. Keep in mind, we
have nine out of 16 new board members. This isn't the board of
a year ago. And I believe it's a better board than we've had in
a long time. And we support the general manager. And what he's
doing he is assessing the system--just to answer your longer
question. He's going to come back in 6 weeks with a plan to fix
this. And then we, as a region, are going to have to decide how
to implement the plan.
The question you haven't asked me today is about the 6
months and Blue Line. And so I'll address that. What we have to
do is come up with a plan to fix this. It's like a bridge going
into Georgetown that I have to fix. All right? It's about to
fall down. If we close it entirely, I can do it in 6 months for
$5 million. If we do half, it's going to take me 18 months and
$12 million. If I do it a lane at a time, it's even worse. It's
convenience versus safety versus time versus money. And we as a
region have to decide that. Closing something for 6 months is a
bad idea.
Mr. Meadows. Well, yeah. Let me just jump in here. And so
let me--if I haven't been clear before, let me be clear.
Closing the Blue Line for 6 months is not an option.
Mr. Evans. Not an option.
Mr. Meadows. Do you understand that?
Mr. Evans. No, I understand that.
Mr. Meadows. And you'll take that to the board, that it's
not an option.
Mr. Evans. Absolutely. But what we're doing now is also not
working, which is the other extreme. Three hours at night, and
on the weekends single tracking. So somewhere between those two
extremes we have to come up with----
Mr. Meadows. You know, I'm a numbers guy, and I agree with
you, because I went through and looked at the traffic and how
people--and actually had the staff, and they looked at all
those numbers. And actually, we could close down the Metro on
the Blue Line maybe at 10 o'clock at night, work all through
the night, and have it back up by 5 a.m. The next morning. Have
a normal work period. Do more work on Saturdays and Sundays. I
mean, I've looked at it. And the number of people that you
affect is infinitesimal compared to the 200 million that
travel. So when we make those kinds of statements, I can tell
you that Jerry and I--and it really affects him. Because I can
tell you, I'm not going to be getting calls in North Carolina
about the Metro in D.C. being down. Jerry will. Barbara will.
And so when that happens is you got to understand that, you
know, what we endured for 26 hours will be multiplied times 6
months, it's just not an option. And so, but you made a
statement, Jack, that you said ``we.'' All right? So is it him
or is it we? Who's in charge? Because ultimately, what I've got
to get to is, I want the next person that's sitting here to be
able not only to certify that it's safe, but they made all the
instructions. And if they're asking for money that we have
given them, the additional resources that they need to do that,
and so you're saying that he can make the tough decisions, and
if he does, the board's not going to fire him. Or at least you
as the chairman are not going to recommend that?
Mr. Evans. That's correct.
Mr. Meadows. All right. Thank you. All right. So let me go
to you, Mr. General Manager. As you've looked at this system,
how much deferred maintenance should have been done that wasn't
done?
Mr. Wiedefeld. I don't have a numeric, but I think--again,
I think the approach is part of the issue, the way we've been
trying to it, what you just talked about. You know, I just ran
the numbers. We----
Mr. Meadows. So how many jumper cables were replaced
between the death that we had in 2015 and literally, the other
day when you closed the system down? How many jumper cables
were replaced?
Mr. Wiedefeld. The number of the sleeves were 65 percent.
But, again, that's part of the issue that I've had is we tend
to do things around a particular issue and not look at this
thing together. So, for instance, going out and replacing all
the sleeves on the boots, that was dealing with one issue. That
was not dealing with the issue of a cable that's lying on the
ground. That's not dealing with a cable that's lying in
moisture. That's not dealing with drains that aren't working
which creates those issues. And that's where we got to come at
this thing and not just the boot.
Mr. Meadows. So why would you say that those assessments
haven't been done? Because when we had an unbelievable horrific
tragedy that happened, I mean, everybody came. You know, we all
came to a meeting. I mean, we were determined to get this fixed
right away and get it done. And yet, what I heard from your
testimony earlier was that we're going to wait to do another
mile of tests to figure out--okay. I'm seeing a shaking head
no. So I must have misheard that.
Mr. Wiedefeld. That was the cell phone issue. That was a
cell phone issue.
Mr. Meadows. Oh, okay. All right.
Mr. Wiedefeld. That's a totally different issue. No. What
I'm doing right now, based on what happened 3 weeks ago, is I'm
looking from L'Enfant Plaza to 3 weeks ago. What did we do? Who
did what? So I'm going to get to that issue, like what was done
there? People had to do certain things. And did they do it--did
they do it--did we do it poorly? What did we learn and then
what did we put in place and did that occur on the day of--at
McPherson Square. Then--and so there's three things going on.
It's what happened in that 14 months? What happened on this
incident? And then what are we going to do going forward? So,
for instance, we've already initiated a new team that goes out
every day basically and looks at the cables. So we weren't
doing that before. Now we do it, in effect--they do the entire
system--it takes them a month to do the entire system. So in
effect, we're doing that every day. We're going out and
checking that. We weren't doing that before. So I already put
those things in place. But even that, I'm not sure that's all
we can do. You know? And that's why it's got to be part of this
overall plan where we come out and we say, All right. We're
going to fix the track. We're going to fix the cable. The power
cables. We're going to fix the drainage system. We're going to
fix those things as we go out there rather than keep coming
back and forth and dealing--running off and doing this, running
off and doing that.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So how do you respond to the
criticism that there is a culture within the WMATA family that
does not really emphasize safety or service? Is there a
culture? Is that an accurate statement?
Mr. Wiedefeld. It is.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. Well, part of fixing a problem is
recognizing that you have one. And so I would just say thank
you for your candor and your honesty. Mr. Evans, thank you for
your leadership on the board. I have a request of the two of
you, and I'd like you to answer it verbally, if you would. If
you find that there are board members that are trying to exert
their influence over the general manager, Mr. Evans, are you
committed to at least letting either me or the ranking member
know that that is happening?
Mr. Evans. Yes, I am. And if I do find that, I will act
myself, but I will also----
Mr. Meadows. I believe that. I believe that. And to you as
a general manager, if you find that there is impediments to you
getting this restored and up to speed from a safety and service
standpoint, and that you're getting undue political influence
from the board, and I use the word ``political'' because there
will be differences of opinions, are you committed to let the
ranking member and I and this committee know?
Mr. Wiedefeld. I will let you know, but it will be after
the fact, because I won't be here any longer.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. Well, enough said. Well, I want to thank
each of you for your testimony. I want to recognize the ranking
member for a brief closing statement.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for
your support and collaboration. I know it's there, even though
you represent North Carolina, not the National Capital. But all
of us, as Mr. Evans indicated, must take ownership for the
National Capital Transit System. You know, you were asking what
happened, and my legislative director and I came up with a way
of putting it, which is we have witnessed a maddeningly decade-
long descent into mediocrity, where it's imbued the entire
workforce. I only work 8 or 9 hours, and if it doesn't get done
in that timeframe, that's somebody else's problem. Customer is
unhappy? So what. Answering a question? Not my job. And just as
Mr. Evans indicated, it's everybody's concern. Within the
workforce, everything is everybody's job, I mean, at a certain
level, especially when it comes to public safety. And what
worries me about this deterioration are the implications of it.
This is Washington, D.C. This is the capital of the superpower
elect. It is always going to be a target, tragically, for bad
people wanting to do bad things. And we cannot allow the
deterioration of our Metro system to become the soft underbelly
of any target in the future.
Tens of thousands of lives every day depend on that safety
and that reliability in some fashion. And so the stakes are
even higher, frankly. After tragic attacks in Europe, what more
do we need by way of warning that this isn't just a nice thing
to do? This isn't just us being anal retentive because we want
a cleaner Metro system. It's about the security and welfare of
our country. And Metro is a very important part of that
calculus. So it behooves all of us to find swift and
efficacious solutions to the problems we've identified today.
And, again, I thank my good friend from North Carolina for his
indulgence and for his support.
Mr. Meadows. I thank the gentleman.
I want to thank each of you. We have a task ahead of us,
and that task is monumental in ways.
Mr. Evans, you talked about the fact when it was originally
put in place it was the modern era of ``The Jetsons.'' I'm old
enough to remember ``The Jetsons.'' So as we look at that,
we've gone from ``The Jetsons'' to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
It's time to bring it back to a point of honor and a
standard of which not only your constituents, but Mrs.
Comstock's constituents, Mr. Connolly's, and all of those that
are around can be proud of it. I'm committed to work in a
bipartisan manner to do that.
I'm afraid the general manager, it's going to end in your
portfolio to fix. And so what I would like is within the next
90 days is an update on what has been done, what is going to
happen in the next 90 days. I think it would be prudent if you
have a 90-day update as we look at this. And before we make any
long-term decisions on what is closed or not closed, I'd ask
that we really get some input from those who benefit from this
system each and every day.
Mr. Meadows. Thank each of you.
If there is no further business before the committee, the
committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:33 p.m., the subcommittees were
adjourned.]
[all]