TheAgitator.com
Heckuva Job, John Catoe!
Friday, October 23rd, 2009Last month, I put up a post about D.C.’s beleaguered Metro system and how, despite an atrocious safety record over the last few years (including last June’s train crash that killed nine people), Metro’s board of directors still rewarded director John Catoe, Jr. with a new three-year contract.
It hasn’t gotten much better for Catoe or Metro since then. Earlier this month, another pedestrian was struck and killed by a Metro bus. And this week, local radio station WTOP concluded a whopping investigation into complaints against Metro bus and train operators. What they found:
Since 2004, Metro bus drivers and train operators have been cited more than 4,000 times for endangering the lives of their passengers. The incidents of dangerous and sometimes illegal behavior include speeding in residential neighborhoods at more than twice the posted speed, running red lights and collisions with pedestrians, bicycles and even a wheelchair.
In addition to the daily occurrences of unsafe behavior by the operators, records obtained by WTOP through a public records request show there have been hundreds of cases of unprofessional behavior, ranging from physical altercations with passengers to bus drivers urinating into random containers on their buses.
Here’s a categorized spreadsheet of the complaints. The report also found that despite the thousands of complaints over the last four years, just 18 Metro operators have been fired in that time.
And people say that littering is just a minor problem.
;)
Dog bites man.
Eighteen operators have been fired in the last four years? While that might seem like a small number compared to their performance record, I think the only way you could fire that many unionized workers is if they murdered someone and then bragged on the local news about planning to do it again.
Hey, if DC Metro riders don’t like it, they can go somewhere else.
Oh, wait. Silly me. That only works in a capitalist system. Since mass transit is an example of socialism, they’re the only game in town.
On the bright side, stories like this turn everyone against socialism and they can’t wait to throw their legislative representatives out on the street and replace them with free market advocates who will guaranty competition and alternative suppliers who wouldn’t (couldn’t!) tolerate that kind of behavior from it’s employees.
Haha! Just kidding about that last part.
“bus drivers urinating into random containers on their buses.”
what
So don’t let your coffee cup out of your sight while travelling on a bus in D.C.
What about their finances or overall efficiency? Rider satisfaction?
Just playing devil’s advocate here, but maybe the decision to rehire this guy is not totally baseless and stupid. maybe. Let’s face it, bureaucrats AND share-holders care more about reputation and bottom line than they do about even a huge number of cases where people are put at risk, or people behave dangerously.
A bus driver was fired recently after hitting and almost killing a pedestrian who was crossing with the light. It turned out that the driver had citations for driving on an expired license earlier in 2009, and several serious accidents both on and off the job including one where she forgot to put the parking brake on, and the bus destroyed several cars, and another where she drove her own car into a store.
The union is complaining that she was unfairly terminated.
“Numerous cases of Metrobus drivers caught urinating inside the bus – including one case where a driver urinated into a Doritos bag.”
Nice nice nice… wonder if it was the big bag or one of those little single-serving bags. Also, was it Cool Ranch, Nacho Cheese, or one of the collision flavors? But, as the Metro guy noted, these are all isolated incidents that don’t indicate any failings whatsoever in Metro’s business practices. Just like with police departments, the government, etc. Yeesh.
WMATA might be a relatively unsafe mass transit system, but only relative to other mass transit systems. But relative to our socialized systems of roads, I’d say it’s much safer. People can twist statistics and use per passenger miles, but to be intellectualy honest you have to use per passenger miles normalized for population density (someone in the middle of nowhere having one accident per 25,000 miles is no safer than a mass transit commuter with one accident per 10,000 miles, if his commute is 10 miles a day as opposed to the driver’s 100 miles).
I have a strange spreadsheet fetish. Ever since my intro to engineering class 7 years ago, I have absolutely loved spreadsheets, and such data makes me all giddy.
My strangeness aside, if nothing else, at least most of those instances are on their way down. I quickly graphed them over time (with original data and logarithmically) to see the trends and things overall are definitely going down. Of course, if this was a private industry, I’m pretty sure that we would have seen, if nothing else, at least a lot more people fired and hopefully they would have dropped down much quicker or never have started up in the first place.
Hey, if DC Metro riders don’t like it, they can go somewhere else.
Oh, wait. Silly me. That only works in a capitalist system. Since mass transit is an example of socialism, they’re the only game in town.
Can anyone explain how there would be competing subway systems in a city?
Seems ridiculous.
Maybe there could be private bus lines, though.
And anyone can get their ass in a car and drive somewhere and then pay $20 to park.
Or grab a taxi.
(I hate DC.)
“Can anyone explain how there would be competing subway systems in a city?”
Not sure of the history of the NYC subway system, but there might be an answer there.
The real answer, however, is that if the free market cannot provide a service, then the service has no economic justification for existing.
When such a situation is deemed “unacceptable” by the State, then the guns come out and money is stolen from citizens to build the “necessary” service.
In short, if in order to achieve something force is necessary, it is a prima facie crime, the most familiar examples being USPS and Amtrak, but of course DoD and the whole rotten system.
Re: NYC subways. The first subway lines were indeed privately owned by the Interboro Co. and Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit. The city’s response, of course, was to build their own competing system, then impose onerous fare ceilings and regulations on the other two companies in order to force a buy-out by the city.
Not that NYC’s system is poorly run by any means (their safety record, at least, is far better than Metro’s), but still an illustration of big government run amok.
Wait – a RADIO STATION did this? That’s impossible! Only newspapers do this sort of investigative journalism, that’s why it’s so critical that they be subsidized. /sarcasm.
Buses are certainly one alternative. Usually, in the cities I’ve been to anyway, all the ground based mass transit in the city is thoroughly controlled by the government, so the bus system doesn’t compete against the subway.
Or if subway operation were contracted out, being faced with an occasional contract renewal might give them some incentive not to shit on their customers.
In any case, the free market is incredibly innovative, so the fact that we can’t conjure up ways for the free market to provide mass ground transportation, doesn’t make it impossible.
But, I was primarily just using this to illustrate that making government your sole source for anything is likely to result in a poor supply of that thing simply because a captive market has little power to punish the provider. It was a poke at socialism in general (and probably a bit lame).
How about some context?
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=3836
Driving is far far far more dangerous that using public transport. Although focusing on the dangers of driving I guess is “socialism”.
Pointing out that things could be worse isn’t a particularly convincing justification for a system that tolerates such remarkably poor performance. By that rationale, making passengers sit in a plane on the tarmac for ten hours is ok, because driving would have taken much longer.
Gotta love the title of that link you posted: “How many non-bus drivers roll through stop signs?” Most ordinary drivers aren’t hired and paid specifically to follow the rules because they are carrying passengers thereby putting many more people at risk. I almost can’t believe that article would even make that argument.
It’s enough to have cops thinking they don’t need to obey the same laws as everyone else without expanding the special treatment to mass transit workers.
I don’t have to know a single thing about any other form of transportation or any other city to believe that there is plenty of room for improvement in DC based strictly on the data collected.
Oops. The above post is in reply to #17 Oh lease.
#11 Danny: I did the same thing that you did and thought that the WTOP “investigation” was sensationalistic crap. Yes there are some alarming incidents, but as you mentioned, the incidents are going down and some of them are going down in a hurry. Now maybe they aren’t going down fast enough, and Catoe should have been fired for that, but it sure seems to me like WTOP decided to just keep going back in time until they could find enough incidents to be alarmist over.
Another thing I would like to see is if these incidents are fairly evenly distributed or if they relate to a small subset of drivers. Are there a few more rotten apples that need to be fired or are the issues running across the entire fleet.
The union is looking out for its members. The public be dammed.
If the “free market” is the solution to all of our woeful problems with non-personal-car transport, where is the competitive service? If the “free market” is so much better, then I would presume they could offer an alternative to these hideous bus drivers which are endangering so many people.
This is a ridiculous rant. Public transportation is much more safer than thousands of irresponsible people behind 2-ton personal vehicles. Thousands of people die every year from car accidents. Yet I see no “investigative reporting” about this serious danger. Instead, nuts grab on to 1 report about irresponsible bus driving, and pretend it is the greatest threat to all of us. Please.
“The real answer, however, is that if the free market cannot provide a service, then the service has no economic justification for existing.”
Hah. You people are absolutely nuts.
It seems to me that if the DC Metro system is having such wide, systemic problems, then the problem lies with the system, not the drivers. So, one might ask questions like: is the system properly funded? Is it properly regulated, is there enough oversight? Are there enough buses serving each route? Are schedules so tight that drivers feel pressured to speed or take other dangerous shortcuts? Are drivers given sufficient opportunities to take breaks?
Getting answers to those and other questions, and then fixing the problems they reveal would go a lot further than knee-jerk accusations and broad-brush smear jobs against civil employees.
“The real answer, however, is that if the free market cannot provide a service, then the service has no economic justification for existing.”
So, I suppose we should sell all public roads to private interests then. You can pay a toll to drive to the grocery store. If the company doesn’t maintain your street, then you can take another street and pay that company for the privilege.
Get a grip.
I agree completely. “The system” should have fired the fucking problem drivers. It’s amazing how performance improves when there’s actual consequences for ineptitude.
Yeah, I agree here, too. We shouldn’t be badmouthing government workers, knowing what a fine reputation they’ve established nationwide for integrity and job enthusiasm. What we really need is an internal investigation. Those are real effective. I’m sure the union will be real interested in joining in to improve the performance, reputation, and safety record of their members. I mean, that’s what unions are all about, right?