[House Hearing, 106 Congress] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] EXAMINING METRO'S TRACK RECORD: AN OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FACING THE WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY ======================================================================= HEARING before the SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA of the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION __________ OCTOBER 6, 2000 __________ Serial No. 106-275 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house http://www.house.gov/reform U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 75-013 WASHINGTON : 2001 _______________________________________________________________________ For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York STEPHEN HORN, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania JOHN L. MICA, Florida PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington, MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio Carolina ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois BOB BARR, Georgia DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois DAN MILLER, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas JIM TURNER, Texas LEE TERRY, Nebraska THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee GREG WALDEN, Oregon JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois DOUG OSE, California ------ PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho (Independent) DAVID VITTER, Louisiana Kevin Binger, Staff Director Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director ------ Subcommittee on the District of Columbia THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington, STEPHEN HORN, California DC JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York Ex Officio DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director Howie Denis, Professional Staff Member Victoria Proctor, Professional Staff Member Jenny Mayer, Clerk Jon Bouker, Minority Counsel C O N T E N T S ---------- Page Hearing held on October 6, 2000.................................. 1 Statement of: Fernandez, Nuria, Acting Administrator, Federal Transit Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation; Gladys W. Mack, chairman, board of directors, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority; Decatur Trotter, vice chairman, board of directors, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority; Christopher Zimmerman, second vice chairman, board of directors, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority; Richard White, general manager and chief executive officer, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority; Ron Tober, chairman, American Public Transportation Association; Dorothy Dugger, deputy general manager, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit [BART]; Kathy Porter, transportation planning board, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments; and Michael Carvalho, Transportation and Environment Committee, Greater Washington Board of Trade.................................. 12 Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by: Carvalho, Michael, Transportation and Environment Committee, Greater Washington Board of Trade, prepared statement of... 149 Davis, Hon. Thomas M., a Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, prepared statement of................... 4 Dugger, Dorothy, deputy general manager, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit [BART], prepared statement of........... 120 Fernandez, Nuria, Acting Administrator, Federal Transit Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, prepared statement of............................................... 15 Mack, Gladys W., chairman, board of directors, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, prepared statement of. 43 Morella, Hon. Constance A., a Representative in Congress from the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 170 Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, a Delegate in Congress from the District of Columbia, prepared statement of................ 10 Porter, Kathy, transportation planning board, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, prepared statement of... 140 Tober, Ron, chairman, American Public Transportation Association, prepared statement of......................... 29 White, Richard, general manager and chief executive officer, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, prepared statement of............................................... 66 EXAMINING METRO'S TRACK RECORD: AN OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FACING THE WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY ---------- FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2000 House of Representatives, Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, Committee on Government Reform, Washington, DC. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in room 2203, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Thomas M. Davis (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Davis and Norton. Staff present: Howie Denis and Victoria Proctor, professional staff members; David Marin, communications director/counsel; Melissa Wojciak, staff director; Jenny Mayer, clerk; Jon Bouker, minority counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk. Mr. Davis. Good afternoon. Apologize for the cramped quarters. But we would not have the other hearing room available for probably another half hour to an hour. We wanted to get this moving in a timely manner. We may have a vote in the middle of this. I will have to go over and vote. Ms. Norton will be taking the Chair at that point. She has committed to me she'll not in my absence, running the committee, she won't bring up D.C. statehood. So with that understanding--usually unprecedented to do, but we have a very good relationship on this. We want to get all the testimony in and get to the questions and try to make this an informative hearing for all concerned. Today's oversight hearing will focus on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. Over the past 25 years WMATA has built a sterling mass transit system with an international reputation for efficiency and safety that has proven to be a model for the rest of the country. As chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and now as a Congressman it's been a great pleasure to work with Metro. I know from my experience that Metro officials work hard to provide reliable service to meet the needs of its riders. Let me just add I had a conversation with Carlton Sickles, who is here in the audience, one of the architects of the Metro system early on and one of its first board members. And Mr. Sickles, thank you for being with us in attendance today as well. Recently it's been tough to avoid the media reports about the various problems plaguing the safety and reliability of WMATA's transit services. This summer alone has seen a flurry of incidents which have inconvenienced passengers and in some cases even frightened them. There has been slow progress repairing escalators, persistent overcrowding on buses and trains, and fires in Metro tunnels. And then in July we heard about the fiasco which ensued during morning rush hour when a train stopped for 15 minutes just outside the Farragut North station with a brake problem. Four cars were still in the tunnel and the passengers remained in the cramped cars without air conditioning. There was no communication with the passengers to let them know the reason for the delay and the train operator was unreachable through the intercom. The mishandling of the July tunnel incident could have resulted in a serious injury to passengers. So the subcommittee is interested in examining the mechanisms that WMATA is implementing in order to create or augment training for Metrorail operators and increase communication with passengers when emergencies like this occur. Passengers who were on the train contacted us to describe their experiences and made clear that incidents like this shatter the public confidence in the transit system. Now, there is no question that Metro has enacted several significant measures to address these problems. In particular, it has begun a $233 million capital improvement program for fiscal 2000 aimed at preserving the system and upgrading various facilities. Additionally it recently announced planned improvements within 60 days to provide better training to employees on more effectively communicating with the customers about transit outages, and it announced a revised schedule for accelerated repairs of the Metro escalators. Metro's board has also approved the opening of the Green Line extension to Branch Avenue on January 13th, 2 months ahead of schedule. Today WMATA's rail service alone is among the Nation's largest systems in terms of its annual passenger trips, second only to New York City's subway system. Its Metrobus service ranks sixth nationally. As we all know, the economy in the Washington area is booming. High tech companies in particular are attracted to this area. With this kind of rapid economic development and population increase, the Washington area's reliance on Metro will only continue to grow in the coming years. In fact, Metro's ridership is expected to increase by as much as 50 percent over the next 20 years. Therefore, renovation and expansion of the system are critical to Metro's future and its ability to accommodate customer demand. While many problems may be the result of growing pains, others highlight the need for improved communication and infrastructure. The positive steps that WMATA has taken so far has increased customer loyalty and better serve the region. However, the subcommittee remains concerned that WMATA faces persistent systematic problems that will hinder its expansion and progress, and therefore we want to examine these issues a little further. We are going to hear from representatives of WMATA to discuss the challenges it faces in providing adequate, safe, secure, reliable and customer friendly transportation services to citizens in the region. We'll also hear from representatives of BART in San Francisco and the Miami-Dade transit system to help us gauge how WMATA's organization and business practices compare with other large transit agencies nationwide. The subcommittee also expects to hear from the witnesses about the extent to which WMATA faces unique challenges because of its relationship to the Federal, two States and the local governments that influence its operation and decisionmaking authority, how WMATA funds its operations in capital investments and how WMATA measures its performance in key areas and how it develops its performance standards and how WMATA gauges customer satisfaction. Unfortunately Mr. Danny Alvarez, the Director of the Miami- Dade transit is unavailable to testify before the subcommittee today. A state of emergency has been declared in Miami-Dade County because of the heavy flooding that resulted from severe storms in southern Florida this week. Mr. Alvarez is part of the county's emergency response team. He's responsible for coordinating all emergency logistical transportation operations. Mr. Alvarez sent me a letter to that effect. I will enter it into the record. I think I can speak on behalf of all the subcommittee members when I extend my support to Mr. Alvarez as he works to successfully manage the crisis facing the county. [The prepared statement of Hon. Thomas M. Davis follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.004 Mr. Davis. I will now yield to our ranking member, Ms. Norton, for any opening comments she has before we allow our witnesses to testify and go to questions. Ms. Norton. I thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate your leadership in calling this hearing today. This region of the country is increasingly dependent, and I use that word in the best sense, on rapid transit, both bus and subway. And I would like to see us even more dependent on WMATA than we are today. It seems to me not only the preferred methods of travel in this region and in this country, it is fast becoming in this congested region the only method of travel with any hope for getting people home in the same day in which they started. The Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority's excellent reputation has been tarnished by recent events related to public safety. The most serious are fire related, especially in Metro tunnels. Nearly 600,000 D.C. and regional residents and tourists use Metro each day, second in passenger trips only to New York City. Thus, failures in the system not only endanger riders but the regional economy as well. In 25 years of operation Metro's record of safety and reliability has not generally been a cause of concern. However, an apparent trend of increases in reports of fires began in November 1999 when four, or twice the usual number of one or two of the preceding months were reported, rising again to February 6th to three times that number, and culminating in a high of 13 in June. We now see a more hopeful downward trend. Beginning in July, there were five incidents, in August three and in September two. I cannot imagine anything more frightening than to be caught in a stalled and crowded subway, particularly if there is smoke, with no communication. That sounds like a plot for an urban horror movie. There have been some indications that the spike in stops and reported fires may have constituted an overreaction to bad press and public concern rather than to danger from fire and smoke. Even if so, that would raise questions about the quality of management response to change and crisis within the organization. There are undoubtedly many causes. Training and communication both internally and with the public are clearly deeply implicated. I do not accept that capital improvements and upgrading of facilities may be a cause. A public carrier has to provide public safety under all circumstances or ``res ipsa loquitor,'' as we say in the law. The reported incidents do a disservice to a long record of reliability. Metro deserves credit for how it has raised ridership on buses and subways within innovations that break through the conventional wisdom. This is no time to countermand hopeful management improvements in ridership with discouraging management deficiencies and safety and reliability. This hearing should be regarded as an important part of Metro's own effort to regain the full confidence of the public it has traditionally enjoyed. Only with a thorough airing of the current problems and the proposed solutions can the public be reassured. We offer that opportunity to today's witnesses and look forward to hearing from each of them. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Davis. Thank you, Ms. Norton. [The prepared statement of Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.006 Mr. Davis. I now call our witnesses and supporting witnesses to testify: Ms. Nuria Fernandez, the Acting Administrator, Federal Transit Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation; Ms. Gladys Mack, the chairman of the Board of Directors of WMATA; Mr. Richard White, the general manager and chief executive officer of WMATA; Mr. Ron Tober, chairman of the American Public Transportation Association; Ms. Dorothy Dugger, deputy general manager, San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit [BART], the Honorable Kathy Porter, Transportation Planning Board, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments; Mr. Michael Carvalho, the Transportation Environmental Committee, Greater Washington Board of Trade; the Honorable Decatur Trotter, vice chairman, Board of Directors, WMATA; and the Honorable Chris Zimmerman, the second vice chairman, Board of Directors, WMATA. As you know, it's the policy of this committee that all witnesses and supporting witnesses be sworn before they testify. If you would rise with me and raise your right hands. [Witnesses sworn.] Mr. Davis. We're going to start, Ms. Fernandez, with you and then I understand, Mr. Tober, you have to catch a plane. We'll proceed to you and then go down the line back to Ms. Mack. STATEMENTS OF NURIA FERNANDEZ, ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; GLADYS W. MACK, CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY; DECATUR TROTTER, VICE CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY; CHRISTOPHER ZIMMERMAN, SECOND VICE CHAIRMAN, BOARD OF DIRECTORS, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY; RICHARD WHITE, GENERAL MANAGER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY; RON TOBER, CHAIRMAN, AMERICAN PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION ASSOCIATION; DOROTHY DUGGER, DEPUTY GENERAL MANAGER, SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT [BART]; KATHY PORTER, TRANSPORTATION PLANNING BOARD, METROPOLITAN WASHINGTON COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS; AND MICHAEL CARVALHO, TRANSPORTATION AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE, GREATER WASHINGTON BOARD OF TRADE Ms. Fernandez. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. It is with great pleasure that I come before you today to discuss the challenges facing the Nation's transit providers as they strive to deliver a safe, reliable and efficient service to their customers. This is a significant moment in the history of the Federal mass transit assistance program. Over the past several years the Congress has provided transit industry with unprecedented levels of Federal assistance. Last year alone for the first time since the beginning of the Federal transit assistance program under President Kennedy transit ridership in the United States exceeded 9 billion trips, and based on recent reports, transit patronage is up by 4.3 percent compared to the same period last year. These ridership gains are the result of a strong national economy that has put a greater demand on transportation in general and transit in particular. These gains are also due to the very hard work by transit managers and employees and by the investment of substantial financial resources from local and State governments with considerable Federal assistance. As good as all this is, however, more needs to be done around the Nation as well as here in Washington. The greatest challenge facing transit industries all across the country is securing the resources to meet the increasing demands for transit services for their communities and to assure that the current transit infrastructure is able to accept the added stress on its assets. Our recent report to Congress on the conditions and performance of the Nation's surface transportation systems noted that record levels of highway and transit investments have greatly improved transportation safety and enhanced system conditions. Still further progress is necessary for this new century to keep up with the rehabilitation and replacement of existing transit infrastructure to maintain its state of good repair. All across the Nation, communities have closed the gap between their needs and availability of funds by taking full advantage of the flexibility that was in ISTEA and now provided in TEA-21 in using other surface transportation funds for locally determined priorities. I am pleased to note, Mr. Chairman, that nationally over $1.6 billion was flexed in fiscal year 2000 with over $6 billion flexed since start of ISTEA from the Federal Highway Congestion Mitigation Air Quality and Surface Transportation programs to transit systems across the Nation. In fact, WMATA has received about $13 million in flex funding in fiscal year 2000. Similarly, Congress has provided a range of innovative financing tools which several of our Nation's transit providers are taking advantage of in order to meet their needs for infrastructure financing. Earlier this year WMATA was the first agency to receive a loan guarantee of $600 million for the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act [TIFIA]. This loan guarantee is intended to assist and expedite WMATA's rehabilitation program. As important as the Federal assistance is, it is at the local level where the key decisions concerning how to develop and fund local transit operations are made. The most important thing for transit agencies to accomplish in order to meet these challenges is to assure stable and reliable State and local sources of funding for capital and operating needs. The best agencies start with a firm idea of their goals and future plans. They make realistic estimates of the costs to meet these needs and develop an aggressive multifaceted approach with local and State decisionmakers and the business community to generate the necessary resources. Based on data that was reported by all mass transit systems, the larger transit agencies typically have dedicated revenue sources of funds for their capital and operating needs. For example, Los Angeles County Metro and the Chicago Transit Authority have a dedicated sales tax, Atlanta has a dedicated income tax, and Portland has a dedicated payroll tax. These dedicated sources give a great degree of predictability to their ability to implement their programs and satisfy their infrastructure needs. The committee has also demonstrated an interest in FTA's oversight of transit agencies. In my written statement I go into a great level of detail on our activities, including the recent procurement systems review of Washington Metro. As the GAO testified before Congress, FTA has improved the quality of its Federal oversight programs since 1992, when the program was placed on GAO's high risk list. FTA came off the list in February 1995, and we have issued guidance for transit financial compliance based on their recommendations. Coming back to WMATA, WMATA is experiencing the very same challenge faced by all of our grantees serving major metropolitan areas, such as increased demand for transit due to a strong economy, the need to keep pace with their infrastructure, maintenance and rehabilitation programs, and striking a balance in the allocation of local resources to fund the construction of new corridors without affecting the ability to deliver current service. I want to thank the subcommittee again for the opportunity to be here today to discuss the state of transit nationally and how Washington Metro fits into this picture. We know that this committee and Congress have shown an interest in ensuring that the public dollars used to finance mass transportation systems result in a cleaner, safer, reliable and timely service to all of its customers, and I look forward to working with this committee to ensure that the Federal resources provided achieve the intended benefits. Thank you. [The prepared statement of Ms. Fernandez follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.010 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.011 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.012 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.013 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.014 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.015 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.016 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.017 Ms. Norton [presiding]. Thank you, Ms. Fernandez. Mr. Tober. Mr. Tober. Thank you, Madam Congresswoman. Good afternoon, Madam chairman and the members of the subcommittee. The American Public Transportation Association appreciates the opportunity to testify on the challenges facing the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and other public transportation systems. My name is Ron Tober. I am chair and chief executive officer of the Charlotte Area Transit System, and I have worked for a number of other transit agencies during my 31-year career. The detailed written statement has been submitted by APTA for the record and I will briefly cover its main points for you here today. Before discussing WMATA, let me talk about transit generally and the major challenges that we face. Quite simply, more and more people are choosing to use public transportation. We closed the millennium by breaking the 9 billion passenger mark for the first time in 40 years. Over the last 4 years transit ridership in the United States has grown by 15 percent, and public transportation generates a real return on the Federal, State and local investment. In addition to the 300,000 people employed directly by the $26 billion a year public transportation industry, thousands of others are employed in the business sector that depend upon transit investment for their livelihood. Transit removes vehicles from traffic, saving time for both transit and highway users. This helps increase productivity and stimulates the economy. Traffic congestion has reached epidemic proportions, but as bad as it is, imagine what it would be like without public transportation. Regions like Washington, DC, would require nearly 300,000 more cars on their roadways if transit was not in operation in this area. Transportation experts, however, agree that our capital investments have not kept pace with the annual $16 billion in transit capital needs that are present in this country. In order to provide alternatives to traffic congestion, it is critical to invest in all forms of surface transportation, including public transportation. Let me now turn to WMATA, which is an active APTA member organization. The challenges faced by WMATA are common to those faced by transit agencies in most large metropolitan areas. Like every transit agency, WMATA must raise State and locality funding to match Federal capital funds and pay for operating costs that far exceed annual capital costs. All transit agencies struggle to balance the need to fund capital costs, including both capacity expansion and asset maintenance, against the need to fund operating costs that cannot be deferred or avoided. Another set of challenges involve the changing demographics and the need to provide service to employment centers that are more centrally located. Urban sprawl requires more route miles of public transportation service and the relocation of businesses and suburban communities has spawned suburb to suburb commuting patterns that are harder for transit to serve. This--I'm repeating myself, aren't I? I beg your pardon, Madam Chairman, I've lost my place. Ms. Norton. It's all right. Mr. Tober. Regarding the challenges that are unique to the Washington area, WMATA operates a combined bus and rail system in a multi-State region which requires the agency to seek State and local funding from multiple jurisdictions. In terms of revenue raised at the State and local level, which is the principal funding source for transit operating costs, WMATA is unusual in that it derives very little of its funding from dedicated revenue sources. Of the 14 transit systems in major metropolitan areas that operate heavy rail services, WMATA is second to last in dedicated funding, with only Boston's transit system receiving less. WMATA receives less than 5 percent of its State and local operating aid from dedicated sources. In contrast, New York City Transit derives 80 percent of its State and local funding from dedicated sources. In Cleveland nearly 97 percent of State and local funding, or $148 million, is from dedicated sources. WMATA compares favorably to transit agencies nationally in revenue that it derives from fares. While the national average is 41.6 percent of operating costs paid by fares, WMATA's fare box recovery ratio is 51.4 percent, nearly 10 percent higher than the national average. WMATA is responding to the challenges that it has with a wide range of innovative practices, including operating later night service, innovative labor contracting, making Metrobus more competitive, and a fare simplification initiative, improving integration of its bus and rail systems with other regional systems. Transit agencies are subject to a host of performance and oversight measures. The FTA, as you may know, conducts tri- annual reviews of every large transit agency to measure compliance with Federal requirements. It requires transit operators to report a wide variety of information to the national transit data base, and it enforces numerous procurement standards. APTA has a number of programs to assist its members, including rail and bus safety management programs, a peer review service and a host of technical services. Finally, every agency must compete for customers and measures itself by the ability to attract and retain riders. Success in doing this is greatly affected by the quality of the service provided, including reliability, cleanliness, security, convenience and other factors. Public transportation providers are working to address a variety of emerging trends that affect how they serve their customers. Traffic congestion, the cost of motor fuels, clean air mandates are all contributing to increasing demand for public transportation service. At the same time the demand is rising, transit infrastructure is aging. Despite major increases in TEA-21 for rail modernization funding, aging rail systems struggle to add modern safety features and maintain their systems in a good state of repair. There is not enough Federal investment for urban communities who want to build new rail systems or for rural systems who want public transit service for the first time. Requests in the appropriations process for bus and rail investment far outstrip available funding. Madam chairman, before I conclude I'd like to make one additional comment. As you can see from my background, I have worked at several transit agencies that have struggled to maintain aging rail systems. WMATA finds itself very much in that same situation now, and I see what happens when you have a situation like that if you do not maintain those systems properly. We've made enormous progress in this country and spent a lot of money, a very good amount of money on public transit. While it's not an inexpensive proposition, I would be remiss if I didn't urge the members of this committee to support efforts to address the public's demand for more transit service and proper maintenance of our existing systems. Again, thank you for this opportunity to testify before the subcommittee, and thank you and the other witnesses for allowing me to go out of order. [The prepared statement of Mr. Tober follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.018 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.019 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.020 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.021 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.022 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.023 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.024 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.025 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.026 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.027 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.028 Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Tober. We appreciate you being here. Ms. Mack. Ms. Mack. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Norton. With me today are the Honorable Decatur Trotter, Prince Georges County, MD, the first vice chairman of the Board, and the Honorable Christopher Zimmerman of Arlington, VA, the second vice chairman. They have already been introduced to you. On behalf of the Board I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee today to talk about our transit system. The unique Federal-regional partnership which created and supports the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has endured for nearly half a century, and together we have created the finest transit system in the Nation, providing quality transit service for the National Capital Region, Federal employees, tourists and visitors from all over the country and the world. The WMATA compact enabling legislation specifies how Board members are appointed, how the Authority is financed, and how we procure goods and services. WMATA's 12 Board members represent those jurisdictions that finally participate in funding Metro. The compact also mandates consensus in that all actions of the Board require an affirmative vote from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, the compact signatories. Jurisdictions covered under the WMATA compact are the District of Columbia, Montgomery and Prince Georges County, MD, Fairfax County, Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax City, Falls Church and Loudoun County, VA. Our efforts are a case study in making regionalism work. In January 2001 the last segment of the original 103-mile rail system will open from Anacostia to Branch Avenue. In March we will observe the 25th anniversary of Metrorail. It is a time for celebration by those in the Congress, the Federal Government and the region who have worked so hard to bring us to this point. Transit ridership is at an all time high and customer demand continues to grow. Each weekday 18 percent of total work trips are made on transit and 40 percent of total work trips to the inner core are made on transit. With over 340,000 Federal employees located in this area, 36 percent of our rail customers are Federal workers. In addition, Metro serves many of the region's 21 million visitors each year and large numbers of people attending special events in the Nation's capital. No other transit system in the country is called upon to regularly handle such events. In meeting the challenges of increasing ridership and a maturing system, the Board and staff are doing everything within our power to ensure that our riders have a safe, efficient and affordable transit system. Over the years the Board has engaged in active oversight of the Authority. In addition to our policymaking role, the Board conducts detailed performance reviews, monitors financial statements, ridership trends, operations reliability, and customer feedback, and we direct changes where indicated. We have also emphasized fiscal prudence and have implemented programs to assure that budget growth is reasonably contained. The Board's Budget Committee annually conducts detailed budget proceedings, which include the establishment of budget guidance for the general manager, review and comment by participating jurisdictions and the chief administrative officers of the region. Before the budget is approved by the Board it must be concurred in by all member jurisdictions. These authorities are also subject to oversight by a number of outside agencies, including the Federal Transit Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Tri-State Oversight Committee. I would just like to take a few minutes to focus on some of our funding challenges. Chart 1 shows that approximately 54 percent of WMATA's 2001 operating budget will be covered by fares paid from our customers. This reflects a 69 percent cost recovery on the rail system, the second best in the country. In some months rail recovery is in the high 70's and for the month of July this year it was 81 percent, a record for WMATA. These recovery rates have steadily increased despite the fact that we have not had a fare increase in 5 years. We can also say that we will not have a fare increase in 2002. Approximately 40 percent of the 2001 budget will be paid for by $366 million in subsidies from the District and the Maryland and Virginia participating jurisdictions. Chart 2 shows that of the $9.4 billion cost of the 103-mile Metrorail system, approximately 67 percent was funded by Federal appropriations and the remainder was funded by State and local jurisdictions. We are proud that the last 13\1/2\ miles of the construction program were completed ahead of schedule and under budget. The last chart, chart 3 shows our 2001 infrastructure renewal program, or capital improvements program, of $170 million, which is needed to purchase and rehabilitate rail cars and buses and to refurbish facilities. Approximately 76 percent of WMATA's infrastructure funding comes from TEA-21, with the remainder from State and local sources. Annual funding levels of $445 million are required to maintain adequate rolling stock and to refurbish our physical plant. Of this amount, $180 million is currently unfunded. TEA-21 expires in fiscal year 2003, and we hope that Federal funding will increase when the bill is reauthorized. Adequate Federal funding is needed to help sustain the Metro system. At the same time it is imperative that the region step up to the task and continue to contribute its share of Metro's infrastructure renewal cost. Finally, the Federal Government and the region have created the finest transit system in the Nation. But we find ourselves at the crossroads that other older systems have experienced. We must now garner the support needed to protect our enormous investment. We cannot stand by and allow our system to decline to a point where it cannot meet the demands placed upon it, as has happened in cities such as New York, Philadelphia and Boston. As we look to the future, we must be prepared for the dynamic changes that are occurring in our region. In 1999, the Board adopted an ambitious 25-year service expansion plan with a goal of doubling transit ridership. We are now working with the region and the Federal Government on our first expansion beyond the 103-mile system, including a new station at New York Avenue in the District and extension along the Dulles Corridor and to Largo Town Center. We must all work together to look for ways to meet the funding challenges presented by our need to preserve and protect the magnificent system and to expand both the rail and the bus systems to serve the demands of this growing region. On behalf of the WMATA Board, I commit to you that we will continue the close partnership with the region and the Federal Government to operate a transit system worthy of the Nation's capital. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Ms. Mack follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.029 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.030 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.031 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.032 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.033 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.034 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.035 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.036 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.037 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.038 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.039 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.040 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.041 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.042 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.043 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.044 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.045 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.046 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.047 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.048 Mr. Davis [presiding]. Thank you very much. Mr. White. Mr. White. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. My name is Richard White, and I have been the general manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority since August 1996. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss with you the current state of the Metro system, our many successes and some of our most significant challenges. I am submitting, Mr. Chairman, my testimony for the record and would like to use my time to try and work off of---- Mr. Davis. Your whole testimony and all of yours is in the record. So thank you. Mr. White. First, just to give you some information on the size of our operation, the metropolitan area that we serve is 4\1/2\ million and it's about the seventh largest area in the United States. Metrorail system carries 163 million trips. That's the second largest, as we've already heard. Our bus system carries 138 million trips per year. That's the sixth largest. And our total system carries 301 million trips per year. That's the fourth largest in the United States. The size of our work force is over 9,300 positions, about the third largest. Our operating budget is $728.5 million, the sixth largest. The percent of people who use our services to the urban core on a daily basis for commute purposes is 40 percent and those who use it for regional trips during the work period is 18 percent. That makes us the second largest. The message, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, is the transit utilization is disproportionately greater in this region than in most other areas of the country. Chart No. 2 tells you about the age of the Metrorail system. Many people still think of the system as a young system. Its visual condition literally belies its true age. This chart shows you the various segments of our system and the age. Those in red are between 17 and 25 years of age. As you can see, that's 45 percent of our system. In blue that's between 9 and 16 years, and that's 33 percent of our system. And less than 8 years is 22 miles, or only 22 percent of our system. Next year, specifically March 29, 2001, we celebrate the 25th year of the Metrorail operation and we are now beginning to experience the effects of an aging rail system. On chart 3, the Metrobus system was established in 1973 as a result of WMATA's purchase of four private bus companies who were failing in the region. Some of the facilities used today were literally built in the early 1900's and were actually used as streetcar barns. The average age of our fleet is 7.8 years, which is an accomplishment for us in that it was over 10 years just 2 to 3 years ago because of the ages of many of our facilities, which go back as early as 1906. Recently our ridership, just to give you an indication of what the ridership growth has been on Metrobus and Metrorail for the last decade, in 1990 the system was carrying 301 million trips per year. The local bus and commuter rail system carried another 18 million trips, meaning there were 319 million trips per year carried on transit services in 1990. 10 years later, interestingly enough, the Metro system is carrying about the same number, 301 million. As you can see, there's been considerable differences with large growth on the rail side and decreasing growth, or actually a steep decline on the bus side. On top of the 301 million trips are 44 million trips carried by county-based bus systems and the commuter rail system. So the region is carrying 345 million trips per year. On the bus system, the changes have been related to, I would say, four issues. One is as we open rail services our bus system literally is converted to a feeder bus system. Also, some of the counties have been establishing their own local bus services to substitute for some of the Metro services. In the mid-1990's we had a devastating effect of fare increases and service cuts, which led to a 20 percent reduction on the bus system. The news for the last 3 years is up 14 percent, the bus system is even up higher, 16 percent. So today we are literally carrying 128,000 trips per day more than we did just 3 years ago. Chart 5 tells you what the effect of this public investment in the Metrorail system has been. Each of these arrows represents what would be a need for an additional five to six lines of high capacity to move the same number of people that Metro moves during the peak period. You could see that capacity would need to come literally in the 14th Street Bridge Corridor, Roosevelt Bridge Corridor, Wisconsin Connecticut Avenue Corridor, Georgia Avenue Corridor, New York Avenue Corridor, and Pennsylvania Avenue Corridor. Each peak period we carry 200,000 people both in the morning and afternoon rush hours; 85,000 of them are carried in the peak 1 hour. Like a utility, we are very peak oriented. We run 480 trains during the peak period, literally two trains per minute. Chart 6 shows our service reliability from the period of time January 1999 through August 2000. This is an index that measures two things: The percent of our trips that are completed within 4 minutes of the scheduled time as well as the effect as to whether anybody is off-loaded off of a train and is inconvenienced because of a mechanical malfunction. As you can see, our performance has generally been within the 97, 98 percent range, sometimes approaching 99 percent, which means that on a daily basis we're carrying approximately 600,000 people and we are successfully delivering 580,000 to 590,000 of them to their destination. However, for the 10,000 to 20,000 who are delayed, we do recognize that is a serious inconvenience to them and we are focused on trying to make those numbers even better. On chart 7, this speaks to the infrastructure renewal program issues that we have, our capital refinancing issues. These numbers in our program were developed on a very comprehensive needs assessment that we had conducted a couple of years ago. I would say that we really did our homework on trying to understand what our funding needs were for capital reinvestment, and over 25 years this shows a need to invest $9.8 billion just to repair and replace our assets. It has nothing to do with providing service improvements or growth issues. This is necessary to protect what has been a $10 billion public investment in our regional rail system, which if we were building it today would cost $22 billion to construct. Presently this is approximately 88 percent funded, as you may hear in testimony later, in the regional planning process. That is a large issue that we are dealing with. As you can see, we are today in the $170, $190 million range of annual funding. We are growing to $265 million but need to grow to $445 million, and the green space of the chart shows you that $180 million per year funding level that we are seeing ourselves being short on. Two other arrows to point for you on this. One is the expiration of funding agreements with our local funding partners for which that is the only actual funding commitments that we have in place for 2003, and also pretty much around the same timeframe the expiration of the TEA-21 transportation reauthorization bill, the importance of that, that reauthorization bill to perhaps help us address some of our issues. If I could finish with the last chart, Mr. Chairman, to kind of just succinctly describe what we consider to be our key management challenges. These are explained in considerable detail in my testimony. The first challenge of course is to provide our basic mission of providing safe and reliable service, which is growing more challenging in the face of growing pains where we're serving record demand, operating at near capacity and aging pains where we're contending with an aging infrastructure. We have clearly had two or three wakeup calls that have been well chronicled: In April 1999 during the Cherry Blossom Festival, April 20th, of our fire incident and the July 19th Red Line incident that I'm prepared to talk to you about a little bit later and is included in my testimony. Second challenge is the one that we've been talking about in terms of securing sufficient funding to adequately rehabilitate and replace WMATA's system infrastructure. I think, as has been said, we are literally now at the crossroads as to whether we're going to allow ourselves to fall further behind in disrepair or meet the challenges that we need to keep our infrastructure in the kind of condition that people are accustomed to. Our third challenge is maintaining the reliability of our elevators and escalators. We have the most and deepest in the world, and they are suffering the effects of exposure to weather. And my testimony explains a number of things that we're doing in that arena. Our fourth challenge is to ensure that we do have the sufficient rolling stock system and facility capacity to support our goal of doubling ridership in the next 25 years, and that indeed is a serious challenge. Our fifth challenge is to meet the growing demands of a changing population employment center in this metropolitan area. Much of our growth is now occurring in the outer suburbs. It is estimated by the year 2025 two-thirds of the trips will be suburb-to-suburb trips, and that clearly brings some new challenges for us. Finally, Mr. Chairman, the last key challenge that I would point to is the need that we would have the capacity inside of our organization to enhance and ensure that we have that capacity to continue to do the job that we do and to meet the challenges ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to comment. [The prepared statement of Mr. White follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.049 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.050 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.051 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.052 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.053 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.054 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.055 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.056 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.057 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.058 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.059 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.060 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.061 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.062 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.063 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.064 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.065 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.066 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.067 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.068 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.069 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.070 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.071 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.072 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.073 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.074 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.075 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.076 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.077 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.078 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.079 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.080 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.081 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.082 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.083 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.084 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.085 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.086 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.087 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.088 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.089 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.090 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.091 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.092 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.093 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.094 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.095 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.096 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.097 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.098 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.099 Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. Ms. Dugger. Ms. Dugger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congresswoman Norton. I'm Dorothy Dugger, deputy general manager of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District [BART]. I'm pleased to participate in today's hearings. I hope in exploring some of the issues faced by WMATA and the other systems you've invited here today, the subcommittee will hear some of the common issues confronting rail transit properties such as ours and that those concerns can be further examined in the context of the upcoming reauthorization of TEA-21. BART operates a 95-mile, 39-station rapid rail transit system that serves four counties and 16 cities on both sides of San Francisco Bay. The nine-member board of elected directors governs the agency and we employ a work force of just under 3,500 people. In recent years we've undergone tremendous growth and change. We've just completed the first expansion of the original system, adding 24 miles of rail and five stations. Construction of an 8.7-mile, four-station extension to serve San Francisco International Airport is almost 70 percent complete and will add 70,000 trips to our system. We very much appreciate our partnership with Congress, which has yielded a multi-year new starts funding commitment that will cover about half of the cost of that extension. Since service to the public began in 1972, BART has been a vital part of the Bay Area's transportation network and never more so than today. Our region is experiencing a booming economy. Record low unemployment and tight housing markets have exacerbated the jobs and housing imbalance, resulting in longer commutes and ever growing congestion. Transportation consistently ranks as a top priority in Bay Area public opinion polls, and the newspapers and airwaves are filled with reports of growing congestion. Against this backdrop more people are riding BART than ever before. Average weekday ridership is up to 330,000 trips per day, a full 12 percent higher than a year ago, and is growing every month. Indeed, we are about 4 years ahead of our ridership forecast at this point. In addition, special events such as this week's division playoffs in the Bay Area swell our ridership on regular occasions. We've just set a new record yesterday of 374,900 trips, which exceeded our prior 1-day record of 357,000, which occurred notably after the Loma Prieta earthquake disabled the Bay Bridge and BART was operating 24- hour service at that time and was the only link across the Bay. To put this ridership in perspective, BART carries about 50 percent of the peak period, peak direction trans-Bay commute. In other words, without BART the Bay Bridge would need an additional deck to accommodate the morning commute. This extraordinary increase in ridership is very welcome and contributes to our continued financial health, but it is straining our core system capacity, presenting significant challenges for our aging system and placing a premium on the reliability and quality of the transportation service we deliver. In the early 70's we were the first of the new generation heavily automated rail systems to be built in the United States in about 60 years. Now we are no longer young. We are in our 28th year of revenue service. Signs of age have begun to show on virtually every aspect of our system, affecting reliability, maintainability and appearance. In order to sustain the reliable and quality service that our customers demand and support the growing numbers of riders, it is imperative that there be regular ongoing reinvestment in our existing physical infrastructure. To ensure that we are able to do that, we embarked on an initial 10-year, $1.1 billion renovation program in 1995 under our General Manager's, Dick White, at the time, leadership. The cornerstone and largest element of that renovation program is the renovation of our original fleet of 439 railcars. It will add about 20 years to the useful life of that equipment at about half the cost of buying new cars. We're also replacing or overhauling escalators, elevators, fare gates, ticket vending machines, and upgrading train control and computer systems and traction power systems. These improvements will help us maintain our schedule, mean fewer train delays, more reliable service and more comfortable facilities for our customers. This is not, however, a one-time 10-year program. This will be an ongoing requirement as our system continues to age if we are to avoid the experience that Ms. Mack referred to earlier that several older properties have faced before us; namely, underinvestment, service deterioration, loss of ridership, loss of revenue, leading to further service deterioration, and so the cycle continues. As we are aging, we are also growing, and investment to increase the capacity of our core system to support increased ridership is also required. To understand these needs we are conducting a 30-year system capacity enhancement study to identify, quantify and establish priorities for these core system improvements. We are looking at systems such as vertical circulation in our stations, access parking and other modes, maintenance shop capacity, track flexibility, rolling stock, and so on. Strategic system expansions to serve new corridors in our growing region are another critical component of BART's program of capital priorities. And, finally, in our area seismic safety is a major concern. We are looking at the retrofit requirements of our system. In addition to investment, however, maintaining service quality and reliability on an aging system requires an ever greater emphasis on adequate and effective maintenance resources and programs, a keen focus on customer service, as well as operating recovery strategies to quickly mitigate service disruptions when they inevitably do occur. Given the density of service, closer headways and more crowded trains, when we do have service disruptions, there is less recovery time. More trains and thus more people are unfortunately ultimately affected. To summarize, we face a number of key challenges in implementing our program of capital priorities to enable us to continue to deliver high quality, reliable, convenient and efficient rapid transit service to the growing San Francisco Bay Area. System renovation, expanded core system capacity, strategic expansions and seismic retrofit are all critical capital needs that must be addressed in order to support growing levels of service. We recognize that achieving our goals requires regular ongoing investments. One of the key messages I want to emphasize today is the need for a stable, predictable, adequate fund source for rail properties that are being squeezed by high service levels, increased demand for service and an aging physical plant that can't be ignored. We are extremely fortunate to receive 75 percent of a one- half cent sales tax that is permanently dedicated to fund our operations. That revenue stream combined with a double A bond rating has enabled us to issue bonds to help support the capital reinvestment program. However, our needs, as you heard, exceed available resources and we welcome the opportunity to work in partnership with our colleagues in the industry, with our local, regional and State funding agencies and with Congress to explore potential funding opportunities to meet these needs. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Ms. Dugger follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.100 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.101 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.102 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.103 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.104 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.105 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.106 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.107 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.108 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.109 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.110 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.111 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.112 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.113 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.114 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.115 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.116 Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. Ms. Porter. Ms. Porter. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Ms. Norton. My name is Kathy Porter. I'm the mayor of Takoma Park and the chair of the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board [TPB], at the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. The TPB is the officially designated metropolitan planning organization for the Washington metropolitan region and is charged with implementing Federal requirements for metropolitan transportation planning. The members of the TPB include local effected officials, the transportation agencies of D.C., Maryland, and Virginia and WMATA. As a long-range planning organization, the TPB is especially concerned about the challenges facing Metro, which has played a critical role in our regional transportation and development plan since the 1960's. As has been noted, the Metrorail system today has the second highest ridership levels of all metropolitan rail transit systems in the country. Over the next 25 years we are relying on the Metrorail corridors to absorb an even larger number of trips and to act as the backbone of our regional development framework. The Metro system plays a crucial role in regional land use policy and economic development, issues that extend far beyond the needs of riders who depend upon the system every day. In the Washington Metropolitan Area we are currently facing funding challenges that directly affect the future of the Metro system. The TPB has become acutely aware of these issues in the course of carrying out one of its most important planning functions, the development of the region's long-range transportation plan. One key Federal requirement of this long- range plan is that it can only include projects and programs for which funding is, quote, reasonably expected to be available. This means that no matter how important a new transportation project is, it can only be included in the long- range plan if funding for the project can be identified. I should reiterate, as has been mentioned before, that this region has no dedicated regional source of transportation funding. The revenues for the region's long-range plan come from Federal, State and local governments and from transit fares. The long-range plan is based on the revenues identified by the agencies responsible for these funding sources over the 25 years of the plan. We are currently in the middle of our 3-year update of what we call the constrained long-range plan. This update has received considerable attention because the funding identified is not sufficient to include many of the programs and facilities needed to address our growing mobility needs. The needs of WMATA have received particular attention during this update of the long-range plan. We project that $76.8 billion will be available for the projects and programs of all modes in the plan over the next 25 years. This is in constant year 2000 dollars. According to current estimates, 52 percent, or $40 billion, of the total revenues for the plan will be designated for public transit, including local buses as well as WMATA. Of this $40 billion, $27.8 billion, or 36 percent, of total plan revenues would be used for WMATA operations and preservation. On the revenue side this is partially offset by the $11.5 billion, or 15 percent, that comes from WMATA fares. Nevertheless, the funding allocated in the long-range plan update for rehabilitation and preservation of the Metrorail and Metrobus system is less than is requested by the WMATA Board of Directors. Further, the funding agencies could not identify the resources requested by WMATA to accommodate ridership growth over the next 25 years, funding that is needed to purchase rolling stock and to improve stations and other facilities. In carrying out the financial analysis that we are required to do under this planning process, we determined that the available funding is not sufficient to meet these WMATA requests without seriously undermining the region's ability to maintain and upgrade other critical elements of the transportation system. In addition to developing a long-range transportation plan, the TPB is also responsible for certifying that the plan meets air quality requirements. In doing our analysis, we had to consider how WMATA's unfunded needs would affect air quality, assuming that a significant number of additional riders who would otherwise be using the system would not be accommodated after the year 2005 because of the lack of funding for system improvements. Using this assumption, we found that more than 100,000 additional daily trips would have to be absorbed by the highway system in the year 2025, causing an increase in emissions. Work trips on transit would be particularly affected by this constraint. If Metro ridership growth were constrained because of funding issues, transit work trips would increase by 20 percent by 2025, compared to a 37 percent increase if full funding to accommodate ridership growth were available. Furthermore, our analysis assumed that fares on Metro would rise with the Consumer Price Index after 2002. If fare increases were held below the CPI, ridership could be expected to increase even more substantially, which would create even greater unfunded needs. The funding shortfalls identified in the long-range planning process have been sobering for members of the TPB who are deeply concerned about growing traffic congestion and its effects on our regional economy and quality of life. Only 2 years ago the TPB adopted a bold policy framework, the transportation vision, that was intended to guide our transportation investments into the next century. One of the goals of the vision is ``adequate maintenance, preservation, rehabilitation, and replacement of existing infrastructure.'' The inadequacy of funding in the long-range plan, which applies to highway maintenance as well as transit, undermines our ability to meet the goals of this vision. At our October 18th meeting, the TPB will consider final approval of the long-range plan update along with a resolution expressing the TPB's serious concerns regarding the region's inability to meet the goals of our vision due to the shortfall in funding. In addition, in order to begin to address this funding shortfall the TPB is planning a series of intensive meetings and briefings with key stakeholders. Staff from the TPB and COG have already begun meeting with State transportation agencies and WMATA to discuss the transit agency's funding needs. On November 30, we will host a structured briefing and discussion for key State level officials on regional transportation needs for transit, highways and other travel modes, with the goal of building consensus on actions needed to address these needs. I have no illusions that the funding challenges we face can be resolved quickly or easily, but we must begin to take steps now to protect the investments we have made in our transportation system, and particularly in Metro. I believe our intensive effort this fall working with the key officials from the State funding agencies and WMATA will ultimately pay off in a renewed effort to address the challenges we all face. In closing, I also want to mention that the TPB's vision contained another ambitious goal that is very germane to our discussion today. In the vision, the TPB called for ``an enhanced funding mechanism for regional and local transportation system priorities that cannot be implemented with current and forecasted Federal, State and local funding.'' The important point here is that a mechanism or mechanisms need to be established to create a fiscally sustainable transportation system so that we are not simply moving from this year's funding challenge to a new one next year. Throughout the coming months I hope that we can engage in an open discussion with citizens and with our elected leaders, including Members of Congress, that will help us move toward a more permanent funding solution. Thank you for this opportunity to testify. [The prepared statement of Ms. Porter follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.117 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.118 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.119 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.120 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.121 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.122 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.123 Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. Mr. Carvalho. Mr. Carvalho. Chairman Davis and members of the subcommittee, my name is Michael Carvalho, and I both work and live in the District of Columbia. I'm also a member of the Greater Washington Board of Trade and serve on the Board's Transportation and Environment Committee. I'd like to preface my remarks today by taking this opportunity to thank Chairman Davis for his outstanding leadership in resolving the budget issues associated with the new Wilson Bridge project, which will go a long way in reducing congestion in our region. Founded in 1889, the Board has a long history of working to improve the quality of life in this area. We have a longstanding support for transit and in 1912 first contemplated the idea of a transit system for the District of Columbia. This led to a series of steps in advocating for transit, with a critical milestone being our 1966 testimony here on Capitol Hill supporting the creation of WMATA. Throughout Metro's two and a half decades of providing quality public transportation to the citizens of our region, the Board of Trade has been a tireless advocate in promoting Metro's benefits as part of a balanced transportation system. We have helped fight for additional funding and for funding targeted expansion of service. We remain a strong advocate of transit-oriented development, both because it improves system efficiency and leverages Metro's role as a catalyst for job growth and economic development. The most recent example of this is the New York Avenue Corridor in the District of Columbia that will soon benefit from a new Metro station. In addition, Metro is a key ingredient in our working to revitalize the District of Columbia and in putting brownfield sites back into productive use. Today, less than 6 months shy of Metro's 25th anniversary, it is still the best system in the world. Our region has the second highest transit ridership nationally and Metro has enjoyed double digit ridership increases on both its bus and rail systems. It has set a number of ridership records this year alone, carrying in excess of 600,000 passengers on a weekday on Metrorail numerous times. Indeed, I personally rely on Metro for my commuting needs on a daily basis, having sold my car 2 years ago. As you and I know, however, Metro service has recently encountered some challenges. The system has suffered through a spate of delays brought on by malfunctions, smoke and fire. Metro mechanics tried, but could not keep pace with escalator and elevator repairs. In short, while we have an outstanding system, it's a system that is showing its age. Therefore, the first institutional focus of Metro, as referenced in the 1997 Board of Trade transportation study, must be on maintaining the existing system. ``Fix it first'' must be the mantra of WMATA. Failure to do so threatens an already stressed transportation network and compromises the region's high quality of life. To maintain what we have, Metro will need funds over the next 25 years to service the buses, railcars, systems and structures that are in place today. While most of these resources are identified, there remains a funding gap that the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, along with the Federal Government, must find ways to close. Last, while investment in the Metro system is necessary to serve future riders, new construction must be balanced and made within a broader framework of other regional transportation needs, including new bridges and roads. Our region still lacks the new Potomac River bridges and parkways required to link suburban activity centers and to address today's predominant suburb-to-suburb trips as well as the daily trips that Metro cannot carry. Additionally, these new corridors will serve future suburb-to-suburb Metrorail or Metrobus service. In summary, we must maintain our existing system at its highest possible level of service. Future expenditures on transit roads and bridges as our limited funding allows must balance every new investment decision through filters of cost effectiveness, the ability to connect high density activity areas and its impact on the greatest number of the region's residents. Metro is a shining star of our region, but it needs a serious infusion of investment for the challenges ahead. I respectfully urge to you support Metro's maintenance funding request so it can continue to remain the world class system we are so proud to call our own. Thank you for this opportunity to comment. [The prepared statement of Mr. Carvalho follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.124 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.125 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.126 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T5013.127 Mr. Davis. Well, thank you very much. Mr. Davis. We're going to proceed to questions. I think I'm going to start. Let me start by asking Mr. White. You are probably best equipped to answer this. What's accounted for the increase in bus service, the number of bus ridership in Metro? For a while it was going down as more and more local jurisdictions assumed bus service for various reasons. Now I see it's going back up fairly significantly. Mr. White. I would say the most significant factor was a rather bold action our Board took not too long ago to approve a fare simplification and integration strategy, which essentially we had one of the most complex bus fare systems in the United States, multiple zones. You really had to know an awful lot to know what the right fare was to pay. We basically simplified that down to one standard fare, for all intents and purposes. We used to charge to transfer, which is a great disincentive. We used to charge a full fare to transfer from bus and rail and we reduced that. So we provided some very significant financial incentives for people to use the bus system and for it to be easy for people to use the bus system, No. 1. No. 2, we've replaced an awful lot of old buses. We had one of the oldest bus fleets in the Nation. We've been spending a lot of money replacing our bus fleet and of course people are going to find that more attractive. Recently we've been funding that. We have been having enough operating money to start growing our services. One of the things you need to do is to be able to provide enough service and a service frequency for it be convenient for people. So, Mr. Chairman, I would say that those are possibly three factors that have contributed to that. Mr. Davis. Are local governments continuing--the local governments are not continuing to go out and run their own systems then in increasing numbers? That's stopped at this point and stabilized? Mr. White. Yes, that trend had been quite acute for a period of time. In 1975 Metrobus ran about 95 percent of the service in the region and recently it's been about 75 percent. Indeed, I think that I had been a reflection of where people saw our service quality as being quite good. They were critical of the cost of delivering that service and made steps accordingly. Recently, in our last labor contract we made significant improvements in our cost structure. We've actually competed in bids for service even against the private sector and have won several of those to provide service as a contract provider. So I think that has begun to have people look at us with a little bit different eye and with the knowledge that we are more cost competitive than we were in the past. Mr. Davis. You dominate the bus service in the District? How does it rate the District, Maryland and Virginia? Mr. White. In the District, we provide all of the bus service. The District does not run any service itself except of course for special education. We're actually the school bus system for the District of Columbia as well. Fairfax, VA, has its own fairly large bus system. Arlington has just recently started one. Alexandria has one. Fairfax City has one. They are all fairly small. In Montgomery County, the largest operator in the region is the Ride-on service in Montgomery County, and Prince Georges County has a service called the Bus. Mr. Davis. But even in those jurisdictions, it's a combination of both the local and the Metro service? Mr. White. Yes. All of the jurisdictions utilize the Metro for some large piece of their service, yes. Mr. Davis. I want to briefly address the addition of new stations to the Metrorail system. That must place increased pressure on the capacity of the station, such as Metro Center, which is not only used for making Metrorail connections, but it also serves as the final destination for commuters who work downtown. How does WMATA plan to alleviate that pressure? It's a tough enough financial pressure getting new stakes without the other priorities you have for repairing the Metro Center. What is it going to do to that? Mr. White. Mr. Chairman, that's an excellent question and one we are just now beginning to try and find the answer to. We are engaged in a very comprehensive review called the core capacity review. It's probably one of the most ambitious ones in the country, which is to examine very much the issue that you speak of. If our goal is to double ridership in the next 25 years, and if we know that goal is largely going to come 60 percent through a normal service growth and 40 percent from capacity expansion, that means that there's going to be enormous pressure put on the core of our system to support that ridership growth. One-third of our rail customers transfer when they take their trips, so a number of people are moving from one line to the other. Our core capacity study is going to examine the answer to the question, what happens to that core system when the ridership doubles? What happens to our ability to have power distribution systems that can move our trains, signaling systems, vertical movement of people in and out of stations, and all the myriad of things? So I can't answer your question as I sit here today. Twelve months from now, next September, is the schedule when we have all the answers to these questions. We've assembled a very impressive group of people who have tremendous knowledge and experience around the country and the world dealing with these issues. And I think in about a year from now, we'll know the kinds of things we need to do to our system to have the ability to support that kind of ridership growth. Mr. Davis. Great. Thanks. Anybody else want to add anything to that? All right. I know that there has been a significant delay in scheduling the numerous escalator repairs. What kind of plan have you proposed for eliminating the backlog of escalator repairs? When will this be implemented? Also, are there preventative measures that WMATA can take now to alleviate the necessity for a high volume number of repairs in the future? Mr. White. We have 205 elevators and 557 escalators. It's the largest number of any transit property in North America and perhaps in the world. To give you an example, the one who is second to us is Los Angeles, 307 versus our combined 762. Another factor is that the vast majority of all of our escalators are exposed to the weather; 119 are unprotected. And the second one in the country is Miami with 76. And places like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and others have zero. So in addition to the numbers that we have, they are the deepest in the world also. Our system, as magnificent as it is, was built quite deep because of geological considerations and other considerations, and that has presented us with some challenges because of the depth of the escalators. What we are doing about it, Mr. Chairman, is we have a multi-faceted program. We're under contract now to spend over the next 6 years at least $120 million. We're going to rehabilitate one-third of our worst performing escalators, 170 of those escalators. Now it will take us 6 years to complete that task. What we recently did at the Board's urging was to come up with a plan to shorten that to the maximum extent possible, and we found an opportunity for some number of those escalators to reduce what normally takes 16 weeks to rehabilitate a single escalator and move that down to 12 weeks. So that was an improvement there. The second thing we're doing is going to be putting canopies over our exposed escalators to protect them from the debilitating effects of the weather, particularly water runoff. And in addition, we've been increasing both our own internal capabilities to maintain the escalators by doing things such as creating our own apprenticeship programs to make sure we have people to do this work, but in the interim we are contracting out more of that work. We're right now using two firms who are maintaining those 170 escalators that they are rehabilitating, so we get more resources out there, more maintenance resources than we have today. So that's essentially the full range of things that we're doing to try to address this problem. Mr. Davis. Thanks. On August 10th you instituted the 60-day action plan that was going to improve rail services and communication with rail customers. What were the specific goals for improving service within that 60-day period? To what extent did you achieve those goals? And what else do have you to do? Mr. White. Mr. Chairman, this was a program that was designed, in its most basic way, to greatly improve our ability to communicate with our customers. And in your opening statement, you of course referred to a couple of incidents that we had significant difficulty, most especially that July incident on the Red Line. And we have found that we have not been able to perform the way we would like, and our focus has not been where it should be on making sure that our customers are fully informed when we do have these kinds of service delays. So we are now in the process of retraining all of our train operators, more than 500 of them, and that program will be completed by November, with a really new sense of commitment to communications, particularly when we are experiencing some passenger delays. We've literally adopted a policy called ``we stop, we tell,'' where the customer, if they're on the train, they're going to hear something from a train operator if they're caught in a delay. Also, our central control office who controls all of our movement centrally, train movements centrally, is also more focused on making passenger announcements to stations and also to remind the operator have you communicated with the customer if they're experiencing a delay? So those are the major things that we're doing. There are a number of things that are part of our call-to-action program. We are reporting to our operations committee of our board next Thursday, as a matter of fact, with our assessment of how we've done in that 60-day period. We've also conducted some focus group sessions with some of our customers to get their own input. We're going to be reporting back on that to our operations committee next week. I think, by and large, my own personal experience using the system and knowing what I know about the customer, the focus feedback, I think, a good number of our customers are seeing that we're doing a better job with our communications. Mr. Davis. I wanted to ask, Ms. Dugger, BART uses a nine- member board of elected directors. Are they elected directly? Do you like run for chairman of BART, for the BART board? Ms. Dugger. They're directly elected by the public from specific districts in the three counties. Mr. Davis. So San Mateo could get a district or the city or however it works? Ms. Dugger. San Mateo isn't a member of our BART district. But that is the idea. There are three counties that form the BART district, and some of those are, in some cases, multi- county seats. Mr. Davis. Alameda whatever. Ms. Dugger. OK. Mr. Davis. My last question, right for this round, I address it to you again, Mr. White, and if anyone else has any thoughts, as you know we passed our transportation conference report today, and aside from the Wilson Bridge, we had $217 million contingent commitment authority that allows WMATA to move ahead with construction of the Dulles line. How will that affect WMATA's ability to apply for Federal grant money? Mr. White. As you may know, right now we're conducting an environmental assessment of this project going through the NEPA process. So obviously, we're not in a legal position to do anything until such time as we get a record of decision. We're expecting that to occur by the spring of 2002. About all those appropriate qualifiers this program in this corridor, a very, very important corridor to be served, is expected to be served with transit investments that phase initially with the bus rapid transit system growing to an extension of the rail system, the Metrorail system, first through Tysons Corner as the second segment, and then finally to Dulles Airport and to Loudoun County as a third segment. So that's how the project is currently envisioned. Thus far, the Congress has appropriated, assuming that this year's appropriation is approved by the President, which I'm sure we are all confident that it will be, $86 million will have been appropriated by the Federal Government plus the contingent commitment that you refer to will put that Federal commitment to over $300 million. Right now, the Commonwealth of Virginia, who is the sponsor of this project, is projecting that its request will be a 50 percent Federal share for the project. So if we assume that to be the case, that would then generate somewhere around $600 million for this project at this particular point in time. The bus rapid transit piece of that is expected to cost in the vicinity, if you accept just general references, approximately $250 to $275 million. So clearly, this would be enough to get the bus rapid transit system built and enough to perhaps begin getting us to Tysons Corner. We would need to have additional funds in the next reauthorization bill to complete that rail segment, but this certainly moves the project along, and the bus rapid transit phase, and begins to get to a critical mass on the rail, first phase of the rail extension. Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. Ms. Norton. Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. White, pleased to see the improved statistics. They may be hard for the public to translate. That's why, for example, your explanation to the chairman about, ``we stop, we tell,'' was very reassuring, since the lack of communication may be worse than what may have occurred in a given tunnel or at any given time. But I'd like to ask a question about the first few weeks when there seemed to be a stop and a delay every time we were told someone thought there was a little bit of smoke, that--and we are told in here, I'd like to hear your rendition here as to whether or not this is true, that in response to the fire, that there was an overreaction, or a sense if there is a little bit of smoke, then the whole works stops, that of course, leads to questions about whether or not management is prepared to make adjustments and changes as needed as opposed to taking a system like this and putting it on hold until you calibrate to the point where you know what you want to do. So let me ask a question, suppose there's a little bit of smoke today when some of these folks go home, how would the system handle a little bit of smoke in a tunnel today? Mr. White. If I could answer that question, Ms. Norton, by taking you through what has admittedly been some changes in our procedures as we responded to the April 20th tunnel fire, and clearly they have, particularly during the month of June, they had an acute effect on some of our service reliability issues. Let me also preface it by saying that as we have moved in this district, what we have been seeking to accomplish is to find the optimum medium between safety considerations and service reliability considerations. I would say that in June when we made our first procedural change, it was actually June 5th where there was a sense that we didn't have procedures that were sound enough that would govern how we would respond to a set of questions when there were fire and smoke detected. We moved to a procedure that was a very, very conservative procedure, seeking the high ground on the safety side. And that procedure said that whenever there is any sign of any kind of fire and smoke detected, and I would also say that there is literally almost any number of things that can cause that kind of event. And the vast majority of those are just extremely minor in nature, such as some debris blowing into the tunnel and coming in contact with the third rail, which immediately extinguishes itself, brakes that go on and causing malfunction, and it's really the vehicle that emits a little bit of smoke and sometimes there's a sense that perhaps that's a more serious condition. So our procedures that any time we saw any fire and smoke, we would stop the train. We would notify the appropriate local fire department. They would be dispatched and they would then clear the scene. Well, when that happened we saw a remarkable series of serious delays that occurred for 2 weeks and the vast majority of those were really related to very minor events. We then saw at that point in time that we were probably not where we wanted to be with our procedure. We modified it a second time on June 17, and I would also say that each time we made these changes we did it in consultation with the local fire chief to make sure we were in proper coordination with them. The second procedure recognized that we probably should be capable of diagnosing smoke conditions unless it was obvious that there was a severe, heavy smoke. The fire department said it was OK for us to proceed and to take action on those conditions that were smoke related, and those that were fire related we would yield to the fire department. In all instances we always notified the fire department, even when we're handling the situation, so in case it gets out of control and we've misdiagnosed it, they're there on the scene and they will not be delayed in getting there. That second procedural change came close to right-sizing us, if we examine the statistics that you were looking at, Ms. Norton. That occurred in the middle of the month of June and we found that was in the beginning to put us in the direction that we needed to go. The third change we made, which is where we are today, recognizes yet another condition, and that was imposed in July of this year, which indicates that--and also for purposes of education when people hear about a fire in a tunnel we're a system that's basically concrete and steel. There's literally nothing to burn in our system. Most of these conditions are power-related conditions and arcing-related conditions that are classified as a fire condition. We have 50,000 of what are called insulators that work with our power distribution systems and sometimes those, when they're subjected to water conditions and if there's any kind of debris near it, get into a condition called arcing where they're kind of glowing. And under that condition the fire department has recognized that's a power issue. They don't want to deal with that themselves. But they allowed us to start to deal with those conditions on our own and we have found since that month of June that our situations are now literally on the average of only three to four per month, which has been about the average that we had experienced in the year before. So I think we are now exactly where we need to be as compared to a year ago and we are still working with the fire department to determine whether there are any other circumstances that we can be qualified to handle. Ms. Norton. That certainly is reassuring. The notion though that in order to decide what to do, obviously if you didn't know what to do you did the right thing. You're a public carrier and so you're responsible. I mean, the negligence is yours no matter what you do. The notion of shutting it down and finding out what to do is understandable but only because obviously there was not a worst case scenario that in advance would have told you what to do. I think that WMATA lost the part of its reputation that was tarnished, not so much from the fire but from the successive shutdowns thereafter, which said to people, my god, this is chronic. They haven't fixed it. So here you were shutting down for precautionary reasons for the most part but the message sent to the public said these guys are burning up now. We expect fires to come time and time again. That, it seems to me, speaks to the failure of management in advance to have foreseen that such matters could arise and to have had in place already a way to deal with them. What I take it--I understand you all are having--what do you call it? Not raids but---- Mr. White. Surprise audit reviews. Ms. Norton. Yes. Does that kind of thing--I call it worst case scenarios, so that people are already trained, so that this could never happen. But suppose it does, this is what we do if the impossible happens so that people immediately go into that. I mean if you're in the military that's how you would have to behave. And I guess when you are a public carrier you either behave that way or you're right, you shut the business down and do worse by yourself than if something had actually happened. Mr. White. Yes, Mrs. Norton, we do regular emergency disaster testing drills that put us to the test with all of the local fire departments. We actually did one recently that was quite unprecedented. We did it involving Amtrak and the commuter rail services as well to test a worst case event in a common corridor where Metrorail shares the same type of track or adjacent track with passenger and freight railroads. The other thing we have done recently that in my opinion has proven to be one of the most successful things that we have done is we, each month now, have on a regular basis a set of after-action meetings where we bring in all the fire chiefs from all of the departments and sit down and review what happened that month for after-action reviews and lessons learned. And it used to be that didn't happen very regularly and when it did it only happened with the jurisdiction in which the event took place. Now everybody would like to know what happened there, if it happens in my part of the service territory, did I learn something about how Montgomery handled that that could be a benefit to the District. So that has worked quite well and I think is also another reason why our events have now normalized. I would agree with you the month of June was about as bad as it could get. It was a very difficult month for us and there were a lot of lessons learned. Ms. Norton. The chairman and I want to explore these funding problems. The chairman and I were looking at this graph that showed how much you were unfunded. Of course everyone says what everyone always says. We look to the Federal Government to fund us. Well, you know, good luck. Look what it has taken with the London Bridge falling down with the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to get what it should have gotten from the Federal Government for a Federal bridge. I want to explore this dedicated source notion that Ms. Fernandez talked about, that Ms. Dugger talked about, first of all, somebody testified, I think it's Ms. Fernandez, I don't know if this is said with pride or blame, but that WMATA gets more funds from the box than other systems. Should I applaud or is that part of the problem? Mr. White. No, that's a good statement. Mr. Davis. It depends on your philosophy, I guess. Mr. White. That's true. It is a reflection of how much we charge our customers. Ms. Norton. Let me go to my next question. Lately--the chairman wants to soak the poor. I am trying to find out how to--I am a Democrat. I am trying to increase ridership. Mr. Davis. She wants to soak the middle class. Ms. Norton. I am trying to figure out how to increase ridership. And some of what you've done in recent years has amounted to saying we're going to give up money in order to get more people; for example, your hours that have been lengthened, which costs you more money, but then you get an increase in ridership. Which leads me to why should I applaud that more people, including more poor people in the District of Columbia you know are paying through, are paying through the box and that cost is not being shared more equitably throughout the region, which has one of the highest incomes in the United States. Why should I applaud that people who make minimum wage jobs in the District of Columbia pay a greater amount of the cost of WMATA, are paying through the fare box then, that somehow this cost is spread around the region. So far you have not gotten at least one hand clapping here in the District of Columbia but perhaps you can enlighten me. Mr. White. Let me try to answer this in one of two ways. The first is that the fair recovery ratio is the product of two factors. One is an expense factor and the second is a revenue factor. So it is the two working in harmony. And a great deal of our improvement is as much related to expense containment as it is to ridership growth and the customer paying a particular share. Ms. Norton. You haven't raised fares since what? Mr. White. 1995. Ms. Norton. Any fare increases in the offing? Mr. White. We have made pledges as an institution to go to at least 2002 before we even consider it, and I would say a good number of the members of our board would like to be able to stretch that commitment much longer than that. So I think from that point of view it is commendable in that it is as much a factor of expense as it is revenue. The second one, Ms. Norton, is that factor is a combination of two issues. The bus fare recovery ratio is about 35 percent and 45 percent of our riders are district riders on the bus system. So that is subsidized two-thirds in recognition that it's a more labor intensive situation to run a bus situation. The rail recovery ratio is in the vicinity of 75 percent and again most of the District riders are one zone riders. So the rail system being as efficient as it is because of the volume of people it carries and the densities does bring in 75 percent. And again that's a combination of expense and revenue. But you put those two factors together then you get our system percent, but those who use our services who are most in need, and that in many instances is our bus customer, does much better if you will. And beyond that things that we did in recognition of that is until the last fare simplification we used to charge a customer every time they transferred from one bus to another. And about 40 percent of our people on the bus system transfer, and even though it was 10 cents that's a major inconvenience. Throwing the cost of that transfer out, which we did, is a major benefit to the people, particularly in the District of Columbia. Ms. Norton. That's exactly what I meant. Mr. White. Maybe I can get one hand, if not two. Ms. Norton. Because it paid not to take more money in order to get more riders. I want to know about dedicated sources of income since that is talked about over and over again. First of all, is there any other jurisdiction in the United States that has a Metrorail system that does not have a dedicated source of income or are we unique or fairly unusual in that regard? Mr. White. The couple who are at the bottom of the list are ourselves, Boston and Miami, I think are the ones who are lowest down on the list on the major urban systems. Ms. Norton. Lowest on the list in what way? Mr. Lynch. Meaning least amount of dedicated resources that come their way. A number of systems are in the nineties and eighties and those are typically the California systems that Ms. Dugger had referenced, their access to a half cent sales tax and a property tax. Ms. Norton. Let me ask Ms. Dugger something. Mr. Davis. Would you yield to me? Is one of the problems you have to go through Virginia, Maryland and the District to try to get it and if you had one jurisdiction---- Mr. White. It greatly complicates the fact that every year we must go through multiple jurisdictions. Ms. Norton. I was sure that was going to be a great part of the answer, but Ms. Dugger, is the system which deals across jurisdictional lines in California funded by the State or does each of those counties have to somehow come together to decide something with respect to funding? Ms. Dugger. There are two pieces of the funding puzzle, if I may. On the operating side we do have access to a portion of a half cent local sales tax that was established by the State legislature with the advocacy and consent of the parties in the region. That contributes to our operating budget where we too have a strong fare box recovery ratio. This year about 68 percent of our operating cost coming from our fares which in turn allows us to use a portion of that half cent sales tax revenue as a revenue stream against which we bond to generate some predictable long term, multi-year funding to support our ongoing capital programs. Typically these projects require up front contractual commitments of a relatively large nature, many of them well exceeding what we might get in an annual appropriation process be it at the local, regional or State or Federal level. So the ability to have that ongoing permanent revenue stream which we can go to the market and say this is reliable and we can issue bonds against it has helped us in managing our capital investment program. On the capital side we are in a very competitive environment in a nine county Bay Area region with over two dozen transit operators providing service in that environment. So even the formula funds which flow to our region, whether it be from the Federal or State level, go through a fairly competitive process. I am not familiar, I am not intimately familiar with the details of WMATA but where we too have to get consensus within our region of multiple players, multiple decisionmakers in that funding environment. Ms. Norton. Mr. White, what difference would it make, perhaps it doesn't make as much difference as we think, what difference would it make if you had a dedicated source of revenue for WMATA? Mr. White. I think it's an important point to clarify that there is this notion of dedicated, which says there is a singular form of taxing revenue that comes directly your way, and that's one way some systems go. A way other systems go is access to what I'll call adequate, stable and reliable source of funding, which doesn't necessarily mean it's one singular source. I think---- Ms. Norton. I'm sorry. You have to give me an example of what you mean by that. Mr. White. I think the State of Maryland, for example, would say we provide you with a dedicated source of revenue because we have a bunch of taxing revenues that go into our transportation trust fund and then they go out and they make decisions what goes to roads, what goes to transit, what goes to aviation, and although we can't count on the knowledge that we're going to get so much every year it's a source of revenue that is managed through their trust fund. And they might contend that it is some sort of adequate, stable and reliable funding. Ms. Norton. A trust fund, just to make sure, a trust fund at the discretion of the local jurisdiction to decide how much money you get is a reliable source of revenue for you? Mr. White. At the discretion of the State, yes. This is all managed at the State level. But to my way of thinking, Ms. Norton, I think the issue really is how can we with some degree of certainty have a knowledge that there is a predictable amount of funding that is going to come and we know generally what that level is and we know that it's good every year so we can do some long-term planning. And we are hampered a bit in not being able to do long-term planning, working off of hopes and expectations. Now, for example, we do have a funding agreement with our local funding partners to handle this rehabilitation thing through the year 2003 and that is reassuring in that our local funding partners have said we're good for this, this amount of money, during this period of time, but after that we would have to wait and see what happened. So to my way of thinking, what it is is to have some degree of knowledge no matter how the fund sources are applied that it's adequate, stable and reliable. Ms. Norton. I don't know what we can do for you because the political leadership in this region as well as it works together is completely bollixed up, I must say, ideologically on this score about how to do it. And perhaps the jurisdictions themselves need to get together if they're serious about things like roads, where the most serious problem exists, and to straighten it out. I recognize that mass transit is doing the best it can. But you are going to reach a problem and I can tell you that Congress is not going to just come up with money to make up for that gap. Finally, let me say to you, Mr. White, we in the District are pleased that WMATA has appropriated or agreed to buy some natural gas buses instead of all diesel buses. And as you know, I have been trying ever since that decision was made to get some Federal funds to make up for the loss that you would encounter because those buses apparently cost you more. Now that came late. And the money from transportation, the bill that just went through was earmarked up the gazoo and we have not been able to get money from the Federal Government. I would like to know if at least some natural gas buses nevertheless can be purchased in light of the fact that you are frankly choking to death little children in the District of Columbia. Our asthma rates are some of the highest in the country and your buses have a lot to do with that. We may be able if we keep up, because I think it's $5 million or more involved, to get some money. But we would hate to see given the emergency nature of the health crisis affecting children in particular with asthma in the District--we don't live in the wide open spaces of Fairfax County. We would particularly want you to spend some of that money on diesel buses and I ask you are you prepared to do that? I mean natural gas. Mr. White. Ms. Norton, our board has directed me to find out how to finance 100 compressed natural gas buses. Ms. Norton. You say what? Mr. White. The board has by its own policy resolution indicated that we're going to buy 100 compressed natural gas buses as our next purchase and they have directed me to come back to them in the month of November with an assessment of how we're going to finance that. So my job as directed by the board is to figure out how to do it, not whether we're going to do it. And we'll be reporting back in November with what our best hopes are as to how we're going to do that and we'll figure out a way to do it. There may be some financing involved. There may be some additional issues if we're not able to find a singular pot of money, but we're going to find a way to buy 100 compressed natural gas buses. Ms. Norton. Oh, my goodness. That's the very best news to come out of this hearing for me, and I very much appreciate what you've just said. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Davis. Thank you. Let me piggyback on that question. Natural gas buses cost more obviously to buy because of supply and demand. They're not that much in demand. How about the operations? Mr. White. Mr. Chairman, our board asked panel of experts from around the country to come and testify in their experiences so that they would have a full benefit of what's going on in the industry. And the answer to that question is that it's largely driven by what the environmental conditions are of each particular area, what the cost of natural gas is, which fluctuates quite dramatically. Depending on where you are in the United States, the price fluctuates. Generally, most people say that it's either fairly equivalent or the differential is not so significant as to warrant a decision on that basis alone. So that's the information we're going with. Mr. Davis. OK. Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, could I piggyback on that as well? We understand that Washington Gas built for Montgomery county a facility for fueling this, but then we heard, we said, well, perhaps we can get that, and we thought that was done, and probably in order, to show that this can work. And then we found out, or at least we were told, and here I am asking for information here that, in effect, Montgomery County was going to end up paying the entire cost at premium rates for it, and therefore, this was not much of a savings one way or the other; is that the case? Mr. White. Well, maybe. My mother certainly told me that nothing in life is for free, and if it sounds like too good of a deal, it probably is. In some instances what happens, and we did meet with the official of Washington Gas, so that we had the benefit of their perspective on this issue, and there are others who, on a commercial basis, provide a service which says that we'll build, operate and maintain your facility for you. We'll take care of it. You won't have to pay for it. It is clear they need to recoup their investment. They are not in the business of being so generous. So clearly, these arrangements are such that they are repaid in some form or fashion, and that may be in what the cost of the gas is that you purchase. Mr. Davis. Thank you. Let me ask a question, unlike the BART system in San Francisco, if I can draw a parallel, I understand Metrorail doesn't run the full-length, eight-car trains during rush hour; is that correct? Mr. White. Yes, sir. Our system has the physical capability to physically accommodate eight cars in a station, and that would take us literally from almost every square inch of one end of the station to the other. By the way, BART operates 10- car trains and was set up to operate 10-car trains, and also has an added advantage of something called programmed stop in its automatic train operations, which allows the train to be stopped with more precision than ours can. We know that there is probably only two fundamental ways that we're going to be able to expand our capacity in our core system, and it's going to come from some combination of these two factors, if not one or the other. We are going to have to figure out how to run eight-car trains in order to carry more people through the system and figure out what kinds of things we need to do to support being able to run eight car trains. Or we need to reduce our headways or the intervals between trains by coming up with--accessing some new train technology. And there are those around the country, particularly in New York who are leading the industry right now in evaluating wireless train control technology, which has great benefits in allowing you to run more trains through the rush hour. So those two things are being studied. Those are two key questions, Mr. Chairman, that are being reviewed in our core capacity study that I referred to you that the answers to those questions would be ready by next year. And it is our staff's preliminary belief that that's where we got to go, in one of those two directions. Mr. Davis. How often do you have however many trains-- what's your usual train load? Mr. White. Most of our trains are six-car trains, some of them we still run four-car trains. And it's only because we don't have enough rail cars to make them---- Mr. Davis. So it's not market-determined? Mr. White. Right now it's driven by the rail fleet at the moment, yes. Mr. Davis. Let me ask, if I can, Ms. Fernandez. Mr. White testified that the FTA recently completed a procurement review system at WMATA and it performed under a contract by Harris Consulting. The Harris report concluded that only 9 of 51 elements were deficient, and 42 elements were not deficient. However, there's a concern that the negative findings might have been downplayed, for example, 23 of the elements found not deficient had at least one deficiency associated with them more over several of the elements; 19, 43 and 48 were determined to be not deficient, even though 25 percent of the files reviewed contained a deficiency of some sort. I wonder if you could explain to us just the criteria Harris used to conclude that elements were deficient or not deficient, and then give us your overall feel and try to make us feel comfortable with the findings. Ms. Fernandez. Yes, I'll be glad to do so, Mr. Chairman and Ms. Norton. I will say that these reports that were issued by our financial auditor, in fact, was a technical report, and that report was then interpreted to reflect information inaccurately. So I just wanted to make that statement. The procurement systems review is a system review that we conduct of all transit systems across the country. We do them in increments of 20 properties per year and the intent, the purpose is to ensure that the third party contracting requirements of our statute are, in fact, being followed through sound practices as it relates to the hiring of consulting services, the procurement of goods for these transit systems. In its executive summary, our consultant indicated that, in fact, of the 51 elements, 9 of those elements exceeded 25 percent, which is a threshold that the industry has identified as an average, as a threshold. So 9 of the 51 exceeded 25 percent, and that's what was attempted to be conveyed in the executive summary, and that's what you've been reading in the local media. Mr. Davis. In September 1997 the FTA completed a safety review of WMATA's Metrorail operations that cited serious weakness in the transit agency's safety procedures and practices, have you performed any followup of WMATA's safety operations since then and if so what have you found. Ms. Fernandez. Well, we have several oversight programs that are in place right now. One of them is our management oversight program of WMATA's capital program, which includes the construction of the light rail system, which is in addition to any projects within the CIP program for the bus services. That oversight is done on a priority basis. The safety oversight that you referred to earlier was one that did, in fact, identify a number of incidences where there were issues with the way that data was being collected and audits were being performed, particularly on the drug and alcohol program. But once we identified those deficiencies to WMATA, they took great strides in completing a corrective action plan. And we are very satisfied with what they have in place, their commitments include everything from training of personnel to hiring additional resources to ensure that these difficulties that were encountered earlier would not be repeated. Mr. Davis. OK. Thank you very much. Let me ask Ms. Dugger a question. Has your reinvestment program at BART led to some of the same public frustration that Metro has experienced. Ms. Dugger. One of the biggest challenges I think of delivering a reinvestment program on an operating system, especially when we're carrying record numbers of riders, is that you're taking equipment out of service to repair or overhaul or replace it just at a time when demand for the equipment and the service it provides is at its greatest. So maintaining customer loyalty, keeping focused on communicating with our customers to explain what is occurring is, of course, a critical requirement. I think the other realities of a renovation and reinvestment program as opposed to new construction is that it is somewhat less predictable. We are in the midst of rehabbing about 120 of our escalators on our system and inevitably, despite the best assessment going in, when you open up the kind of mechanical system, you find different rates of wear and different problems than you anticipated and the work itself can take longer than was estimated, longer than was advised--than the customers were advised of. So yes, it is a challenge. I think we are asking for our customers' patience and in so doing, trying very hard to articulate the long-term benefit and reliability and service improvement that this short-term inconvenience is causing. Mr. Davis. Thank you. Let me ask Ms. Porter a question. What are the difficulties you have--I used to serve on that panel that you're chairman of. What are the difficulties you have encountered in working with WMATA's board in key State and local stakeholders to identify funding, and what's the relationship between your board and the other stakeholders? I guess you come out of the same government, and you do the planning, but how does that relate to the funding? Ms. Porter. The transportation planning board is, as its name suggests, a planning organization. We don't control any of the funding sources that go for the transportation projects in the long-range plan. WMATA, as well as the local elected governments, are all part of the transportation planning board. We serve an overall regional function in bringing together sources of funding that are identified by these various funding sources and allocated to projects that they have set their priority on. As I said in my testimony, the problem that we've identified is not that WMATA is getting too small a share of the pie. The problem is the pie is too small. There is, as Mrs. Norton correctly identified, a problem in getting sufficient funding for all transportation projects in this region. WMATA is not the only agency that has a problem with funding. We also have difficulties funding, as you mentioned, road repair and improvement projects, also. So the problem as we have identified it is that there is a lack of adequate dedicated funding for transportation in the entire region. Mr. Davis. OK. Thank you very much. Mr. Carvalho, let me ask you a question. Does the board of trade have an official position or do you have a position on the impact of the Metrorail projects such as Largo and the Dulles lines, which address the need created by expansion in the suburbs, and how do you rank them with the priorities for repair and maintenance of the existing system? Mr. Carvalho. The expansion is clearly an important component of the overall transportation system. I think our focus here in what we're trying to convey is a fix-it-first mantra where funds, as they become available, go into maintaining a safe and reliable transportation system. Mr. Davis. Ms. Norton. Ms. Norton. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I have only two more questions. One has to do with the later hours, Mr. White. I'd like some notion of what the number, or even better, increased percentage of riders has been relative to what you expected it to be and whether or not you are considering making the hours even later. Mr. White. Our board has made permanent the extension of our hours from midnight to 1 a.m., so that's now on a permanent basis, and in this fiscal year, we are now operating on a demonstration basis until 2 a.m. So we've extended it that second hour. We're supposed to report back to our board in the spring of next year with an evaluation of how we're doing. I would say right now thus far that the experience has been largely close to what we had predicted it to be in terms of the number of people who use the system during that 2 hour period. It's generally, if I am recalling correctly, approximately 10,000 additional trips each weekend that occurs because of the extra 2 hours of service. So I think that we've attempted also to try--these things require a little bit of extra time to see where the market is, to be able to experience periods of time when there's good weather and things like that. So I think we will have a very good data base by April of next year to report back to the board, and then it will be their policy decision as to whether we should keep the 2 a.m. in effect on a permanent basis. Ms. Norton. It's very important to do it over a space of time so you have a reliable sense that these numbers will reoccur. Do you have any sense of whether the increases in suburbs or city are relative to what you expected? Mr. White. It tracks largely where you would probably intuitively think where there is the most night life and reasons why people might be attracted to the system from a restaurant point of view and others, but one of the interesting things that we are seeing in a marketplace that is emerging as being an important marketplace are those who are using it to go to work. Those people who are working later hours in service industries and things of that nature find that it is to their benefit now to be able to actually literally work their work shift, which might be the non-traditional work shift, and to be able to get home at night on a late-night shift. And that's becoming a marketplace that we had not anticipated at the level that we're seeing it. So but generally, to answer your question, it's largely in the District of Columbia, in the Bethesda area, and also in a sections of Arlington is generally where most of this utilization is. Ms. Norton. Well, that's where the action is in this city, Mr. White? Mr. White. Right. Ms. Norton. Ms. Dugger, what are the hours of BART? Here we're talking about weekend hours here up to 1 a.m. It doesn't sound like much of a night town, I know. Ms. Dugger. We go to bed early in the Bay area too, so we can get up early and meet the east coast financial market opening. Our hours of service on weekdays are 4 a.m. until 12 p.m. The last train gets back to its home yard, 1 or thereafter, so if you're in the system anywhere by 12 p.m., we say you can get home. On weekends we start a little later, 6 a.m. on Saturdays and 8 a.m. on Sundays. The early weekday shift, or shift to earlier weekday openings to 4 a.m. was frankly a move we made after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 when we were running 24-hour service for a period of months at that point because the Bay Bridge was out of service. What we found at that time--I wasn't at the organization at that time--but what was found at that time was a new market which was the early morning financial commute market; people going into downtown, as I say, to be there for the East Coast start of the financial market. We've continued that early morning service. Frankly, one of the challenges, we too are getting increasing requests for staying open later at night, in part to support the service industry. The pressure that starts to create for transit systems like ours, and I believe to a somewhat lesser extent WMATA, but with a very inflexible infrastructure, basically with tracks--only one track in each direction, we have a very small maintenance window when revenue service is not operating now. It's really from 1:30 a.m. until 4. So we have about 3, 3\1/2\ hours every day during the week to get the wayside maintenance, the track maintenance, work done that we need to do. So that is one of the balances as we look at extended hours of service. Ms. Norton. They learned to do it in New York with a much longer system. Ms. Dugger. New York has much greater flexibility in terms of express tracks and being able to isolate one track for work while still operating service. In our case we don't have that flexibility to pass or to shift from one track to another. Ms. Norton. Did you say what you all do on weekends? Ms. Dugger. We begin revenue service at 6 a.m. on Saturdays and 8 a.m. on Sundays, and we end at the same midnight closing. Ms. Norton. I see. Finally, I am intrigued, Mr. White, in your testimony by the increasing indications that you come in under budget in construction. How are you able to do that? Mr. White. Well, of course, it's good management, Mrs. Norton. Mr. Davis. You have to stop right there. Mr. White. The last 13\1/2\ miles of our fast track segment was a $2.1 billion budget, and at this stage we are $250 million under budget for that construction program. It's been applied to things we wouldn't otherwise be able to do, such as purchasing rail cars and building a rail maintenance facility. I would say it is attributed to a few factors. One is the fact that some of our price estimates or our cost estimates were built upon our previous experiences, and we did suffer through some very high inflation years, particularly in the 80's where that was extraordinarily high inflation. So we've been able to take advantage of lower inflation rates recently. We always try to promote the maximum amount of competition. And of course, as we all know, the more competition, the better the pricing. And we've been quite successful at attracting competition. And the other things we do as well is we take very seriously doing value engineering, which takes a critical look at all the elements that go into your system, and do you need all of those elements? You, of course, never want to sacrifice something that you really need, but if there are things that are not quite necessary, or if there's cheaper ways to do them, we take advantage of value engineering. And finally, we use the most advanced tunneling techniques that are available in the world to try to minimize the cost. Ms. Norton. I recognize some of this may be the good economy, but it's very nice to hear about underbudget other than cost overruns for a change. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. Anything anyone wants to add on the panel before we adjourn? I want to thank all of you for participating today. I want to enter into the record the briefing memo distributed to the subcommittee members. We will hold the record open for 2 weeks from this date for those who may want to forward submissions for possible inclusion, and these proceedings are closed. [Whereupon, at 3:25 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] [The prepared statement of Hon. Constance A. 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