[PRCo] Re: METRORAIL DISASTER

[Schneider Fred]

I don't know where you spent your working life Philip.   I spent mine  
in government.

Government worries about one thing ... getting reelected.   To do so  
there is a concept called widows and orphans first.

My boss was once told to fire me because I was follow regulations and  
it offended the teamsters union in Pittsburgh.   The elected official  
who tried to get me in response to the Pittsburgh unions didn't  
succeed ... I found a hole to crawl into.   He didn't.   I managed to  
stay and retire.   Do not tell me I don't understand how government  
works.

You may be a transit manager who wishes to have the money to overhaul  
stations, or to rebuild rolling stock but if the politicians in your  
city feel they can be reelected by diverting that money to some  
project that they can put their names on (a new bridge, a home for  
orphans) or simply giving money to some screaming lady who doesn't  
want to work, you're not going to fix the brakes on that transit car  
or the tracks or the ATC / ATO computer system.   Then after accident  
you will be blamed for not fixing it, not the politician who short  
changed you.

Our friend John Swindler always had a expression that the only real  
money was local money.   If I can translate that, he meant the only  
money a politician worries about spending is local money.   That's  
why they have always endeavored to shift transit costs onto federal  
dollars.   They never have local money for maintenance.   Instead of  
maintaining equipment, maintenance is deferred until it becomes  
necessary to put the car through a "midlife overhaul" or buy a new  
vehicle because the old one is now a piece of junk.   Now you can 60  
cent or 70 cent or 80 cent federal dollars.   The local share is now  
reduced to 20 or 30 or 40 percent.

It isn't that the politician doesn't care ... it is more fundamental  
that he doesn't see beyond the next election.   Howard White, who  
edited Headlights magazine with me, had a great expression, "A  
politician fears only hunger and the next election."    That elected  
official sees who is giving him the marching orders.   Like the union  
members who told the the secretary of labor in Pennsylvania to have  
me fired (the law didn't allow for what he wanted to do so we just  
get rid of the guy who is following the law).   That sort of thing  
isn't unusually, even before I was hired in 1968 I ran into it.   My  
first job was supposed to have been with PennDOT.   I was told when  
to start working.   Then I received a phone call telling me that I  
was being sent a waiver and that I was sign it and send it back  
telling them that I was refusing the job ... they had already filled  
it with a political friend with a lower civil service test score and  
they couldn't pay him until I told them I didn't want the job.

I hope you don't mind me being a cynic but I spent 36 years working  
in the public arena.   John has been there just about as long.

In the case of Washington's Metro.   I doubt that anyone in 1976  
envisioned that it would ever evolve into the second busiest subway  
system in the United States (Chicago is now third).   It is a victim  
of its own success.   WMATA now moves almost a million fares a day.    
Why?   Because of the very nature of business in Washington.    
Government needs to keep its people together so that they can hold  
meetings.   I used to make jokes that my boss used to hold meetings  
to try to figure out what her job was.   Truthfully that is typical  
of al government executives.   The President need to be next to the  
Senate and the House of Representatives.   But that is only the  
start.   Remember that, like the governors in each state are the head  
of all the state agencies, , the President of the United States heads  
the Executive Branch, which includes Transportation, Revenue,  
Commerce, Education ... every cabinet level agency.   His cabinet  
officers have to be around him.   Then their staffs have to be (or  
should be) around them.   They cannot all be ... you cannot have all  
the National Park Service people in Washington but you can have 80%  
or 70% of all the federal workers in D. C.   And then you have all  
those lobbyists trying to tell us how to live.   I once found a  
directory of lobbyists in the stacks in the state library in  
Pennsylvania . it was as big as the Centre County phone book.   By  
extrapolation that would mean that a similar directory in Washington  
would be as big as the Manhattan phone directory.   Oh and remember  
that the President is, by definition, Commander in Chief of the Armed  
Forces so the Pentagon is right across the river from his home.

Outside of New York City, the presence of the federal government has  
made Washington the city with the busiest urban core or downtown in  
the United States today.   Nothing else matches it.   I've seen  
hundreds of e-mails about the accident trying to place blame.   But  
the point remains that you cannot pull 300 subway cars out of service  
that are not worn out and put 100,000 more automobiles on the  
highways around Washington DC in the rush hour or you will have total  
collapse.   The starting and quitting times  of federal agencies have  
been carefully regulated for years over a three hour period to  
control traffic.   Without that stretched out window, there is  
absolute chaos.   In the 1960s during the riots when the Blacks burnt  
a lot of 7th Street on the north side of Washington, in a panic all  
the federal offices were simultaneously closed.   The result was that  
many government workers didn't get home until six or seven hours  
later.  The highways simply could not handle the sudden onslaught of  
traffic.   And it has only gotten worse since then because of a huge  
shift in residences from the city of Washington to suburban Maryland  
and Virginia ... now instead of taking WMATA buses, many more are now  
on Metro trains, commuter trains or the interstate highways coming  
into the District.   (By the way, I regard Metro as simply a long  
distance subway system ... the stations are simply spread farther  
apart but it actually extends to the Beltway in the northeast and  
south and beyond the Beltway on the Vienna, Virginia and Shady Grove,  
Maryland sides ... it is really, like BART, a suburban commuter  
railroad and a subway merged into one.)

How bad is the traffic in the highway traffic in the District.    
Well, guys, back in the 1960s I was a member of the Tractioneers,  
which evolved out of a division of the ERA.   In my last year I was  
also their treasurer.   It was a rather informal group ... great  
guys.   I rather lost interest because they were deeply interested in  
only Washington and I had broad interests, and at the same time (38  
years ago) I got married to Marie and had better things to do one  
Friday a month than drive to Washington.   But the point was, I could  
leave Lancaster at 3 PM and be sitting in a Hot Shoppe in Friendship  
Heights having dinner with a gang of friends at 5:00  PM.   At that  
time there were no expressways except the beltways around Baltimore  
and Washington.   Short cutting through southern Lancaster County on  
back rounds was faster than using route 30 to York and I-83.    Route  
29 was 4 lanes with traffic lights. Still, I was able to knock off  
almost 100 miles in 120 minutes.

Three years ago my wife wanted to set up a tour to Colonial  
Williamsburg for the Pennsylvania members of the Daughters of the  
American Revolution.  Lancaster was going to be the pick up point.    
The bus company would not route the trip through Washington ... that  
was the red highway route ... the express highway route ... the one  
that included I-83 and I-95 and I-64 ... no traffic lights.   They  
would also not go down route 301 to the east of Washington because  
the Washington suburbs have now totally spilled into that area of  
Prince Georges County, Maryland (in the 1950 that used to be the  
short route south on vacations ... it is actually the shortest in  
mileage and longest in time).   They would also no longer use route  
15 south from Gettysburg and around the back side of Dulles  
Airport .. 25 miles west of Washington DC was now also way too  
congested ... we loose too much time with a bus.   The route the bus  
company selected was northwest from Lancaster to Harrisburg,  then  
down I-81 passing no closer than 76 miles to the west of Washington  
DC at Winchester VA, to I-64 and then back east to Williamsburg.     
The route the bus company selected was more than 100 miles out of the  
way but it was faster than the route through Washington.

Today Washington isn't a place you just go to for dinner because its  
100 miles away.   It's a journey.   It takes effort.   You no longer  
measure it in miles, you measure it in hours.   It isn't like living  
in Idaho or Montana or west Texas or Kansas where 100 miles is 90  
minutes.   It the east where we measure distance in hours and  
minutes.   (Same as in Houston or Dallas or Phoenix or Los Angeles or  
Seattle or Chicago or the Bay Area.    But the Baltimore - Washington  
- Fredericksburg area is about as bad as it gets and there isn't  
anywhere in this country I haven't driven in the last five years.    
It's right up there with New York City.)

For many years I dreaded vacations in New England because I had to  
drive through Manhahattan the Bronx to get there.   Well guys, going  
to Florida, and the Atlantic Coast is just as bad now because you  
have to go through Washington DC.

Metro is trying to cope.   Give them credit for attempting to do so  
in an environment where even the locals no voting power (Virginia and  
Maryland citizens can vote, D. C. citizens are disenfranchised).




On Jun 26, 2009, at 4:15 PM, Phillip Clark Campbell wrote:

>> From: Schneider Fred <fwschneider at comcast.net>
>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>> Sent: Thursday, June 25, 2009 8:12:24 AM
>> Subject: [PRCo] Fwd: METRORAIL DISASTER
>> You don't just cough up a billion dollars you don't
>> have to remove 300 cars from service, or simply
>> remove them and put 100,000 more automobiles
>> on the highways.  That's insanity.   The gentleman from
>> Idaho needs to see the roads around Washington
>> before even suggesting that.
>
>
> Mr.Schneider;
>
>
> This is a resend containing new information.
>
> No one on this list suggested anything like this did they.  You  
> have a tendency to rewrite information to suit your whims don't  
> you  (as I have often mentioned, reading through the archives is  
> very revealing.)  This specific item wasn't an issue until now was  
> it;  the discussion centered around the definition of  'disaster.'   
> 'Safety,'  the prime concern of transit agencies, is often on one  
> of those double sided coins with an extremely thin edge in the  
> middle;  'apathy'  is quite often on the other side of that coin.   
> A  'problem'  is often recognized and ignored until a disaster  
> happens, ignored because of $$$.  Then it is too late isn't it.
>
> --- --- ---
>
> "If"  the report on the wmata website is  'true,'  then what you  
> call  'insanity'  was already in progress when you wrote the above,  
> wasn't it  --  the replacement of the  '1000-series  [Rohr]  rail  
> cars'  (note especially the last 3-paragraphs:)
> http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/news/PressReleaseDetail.cfm? 
> ReleaseID=2630
>
> What you call  'insanity'  was information provided in the press  
> releases;  no one on this PRC list made that assertion.   
> Incidentally,  that  'gentleman from Idaho'  is actually  'from'   
> the Pittsburgh area, isn't he.
>
> ----------------
> ----------------
>
> Observations on safety in transportation:
>
> ----------------
> ----------------
>
> Do you remember the Air Alaska disaster where a faulty jackscrew in  
> the tail caused an inflight plane (from Mexico to N.California non- 
> stop) to crash into the Pacific west of Los Angeles?
>
> Above I wrote:
> ""If"  the report on the wmata website is  'true,'..."
> I wrote this purposely.  Reading  'a'  summary of the Air-Alaska  
> disaster one sees Labor blaming management:
>
> "Sixty-four mechanics at Alaska Airline's Seattle maintenance base
> assert in a letter to John Kelly that they had been pressured,
> threatened, and intimidated' into cutting corners on safety."
>
> ........while management retorts that Labor is upset about overtime:
>
> "Three of the six incidents cited in the mechanics' letter involved  
> John
> Falla, the manager of base maintenance in Seattle, who was placed on
> administrative leave. Falla's attorney would later tell The Seattle
> Times that the allegations were spurred by mechanics' anger over
> "reductions in overtime.""
>
> What  'is'  the truth?  Do we or shall we ever  'really'  know the  
> truth.  Nevertheless,  evidence strongly  'suggests'  that corners  
> were cut on safety.       This is a very imperfect world;  such bad  
> decisions or purposely negligent actions happen in all industry,  
> private and public.
>
> Now consider this quote  --  as I wrote above,  'apathy'  might be  
> substituted for  'complacency:'
>
> ----------------
>
> "During the doomed aircraft's last heavy maintenance check in Oakland,
> mechanics initially found those parts at their maximum allowable wear
> tolerance and planned to replace them. But five more checks of wear
> found the results within tolerance, so the parts weren't replaced.  
> That
> decision is now being cited in lawsuits filed against Alaska--and has
> become a key factor in the controversy surrounding the airline's
> maintenance practices.
>
> "Why squeeze every last service hour
> out of a part when the consequences of failure are so catastrophic?"
> demands Wagstaff, a private pilot with 34 years' flying experience.
> "You can almost understand this flawed service philosophy from an  
> underfunded, marginal bush operator, but certainly not from a major  
> carrier.
>
> As Wagstaff sees it, Alaska Air got cocky.
> "Alaska beat the competition in its local Alaska market and then moved
> South," he asserts. "Complacency is a real danger in aviation. Combine
> complacency with a 'We're No. 1!' attitude and add what appears to  
> be a
> lack of a true safety culture and there then exists a formula for
> disaster."
>
> http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Diary+of+a+Disaster-a066811888
> ----------------
>
> Then we have the recent Air France crash in the Atlantic.  External  
> body sensors used to measure speed were known to freeze and cause  
> false data results;  since the crash these sensors have been / are  
> being replaced even though the actual  'cause'  of the accident is  
> unknown.  It  'is'  credible to ask why this wasn't done before the  
> accident isn't it.  What price safety?
>
>
>
> Phil
> Without  a   'coast'   but  not  a   'cause.'
> --  --
> "If thou wouldst rule well, thou must rule for God,
> and to do that, thou must be ruled by Him ...
> Those who will not be governed by God...
> ........will be ruled by Tyrants."
> William  Penn,  founder  of  Pennsylvania
>
>
>
>
>