[PRCo] Re: METRORAIL DISASTER

[John Swindler]

There was a recent comment that Washington is a major city without any industry.  No steel mills, no manufacturing plants, no banking, no harbor - yet a substantial part of everyone's income flows there.  What was that expression:  how much government can we afford???  Or was it "we have the best politicians that money can buy". 

 

In other words, there is nothing produced there that the average person can buy - at least willingly.  There's no Sparrows Point, no River Rouge, no Newport Ship Yard, etc.  Except politicians.

 

Rt. 301 use to be a nice way to travel to Ft. A.P. Hill in the 70s, and to Ft. Eustis and Norfolk in the 80s.   Likewise 15 and 17 thru Culpeper to I-95 for Ft. Picket and Wilmington NC.  But as Fred observed, not anymore.  Unless you want to be on the road in Lancaster around 4 in the morning. 

 

It's almost amusing watching the games being played in Harrisburg as the budget process unfolds.  I think the number was 49% for the increase in state government spending over past six years, but that gets lost in all the political whining about alleged "budget cuts"  (which means we are not going to increase the appropriation as much as we want).  There are some sacred cows to be fed, such as the Philly teachers union, at least from this viewpoint.

 

The trouble is that politicians are running out of taxpayers to pay for their games.

 

Cheers

John

 

 
> From: fwschneider at comcast.net
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: METRORAIL DISASTER
> Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 10:28:59 -0400
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> 
> 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
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> 
> 

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