Monday, June 29, 2009
Editorial: Keeping the trains running safely
The Metro disaster is tragic evidence of the gap between the growing demand for mass transit and the will to pay for it.
From the RoundTable blog
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Investigators still have a long way to go to understand all that went wrong in last week's fatal rail transit wreck in Washington. Already, though, officials know that the train that ran into the back of another, killing nine people, was old and deficient.
Federal safety officials had warned years ago that many of the cars needed to be replaced or reinforced. The transit system simply didn't have the money to do so.
Washington's Metro is not alone in its funding woes. This spring, the New York Times reported last week, the Federal Transit Administration rated "more than a third of the equipment in the nation's seven largest rail transit agencies" in either marginal or poor condition.
As the nation plays catch-up with much of the rest of the developed world in developing mass transit systems, it is caught in a jam between pressures to expand and the need to modernize aging systems and keep them safe.
The FTA estimated the cost of replacing worn-out equipment and modernizing stations just for the country's seven largest transit systems at $50 billion. The Obama administration's stimulus includes $8.4 billion for transit capital improvements nationwide -- a sobering gap.
As the nation grapples with trying to close the distance, the public should be wary of free-lunch solutions that promise gain without pain.
One such solution ended up tying the Washington Metro transit authority's hands when it was called on to deal with the car safety issue.
To raise money for capital improvements, the authority had sold assets like train cars to private entities, then leased them back, an arrangement that generated cash for the transit system and depreciation tax breaks for the buyers.
However, the authority could not take the cars out of service until 2014 without triggering financial penalties.
The Washington Post reports that the type of cars involved in last week's crash "are Metro's oldest and have a tendency to fold into themselves, like a telescope, during a crash."
That does not implicate them as a cause of the wreck, but as a likely factor in its lethality.
It also should serve as a signal to supporters of mass transit of the daunting task ahead.
