DEBORAH SIMMONS: Metro plan: What we know, what we need to know

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Seems we can move to the penultimate questions regarding the D.C. region’s mass transit system: What did they know and when did they know it?

At first blush, the people who oversee the 13,000 employees at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority appear to be making smart moves.

There’s a plan in hand to ensure safety comes first on Metrorail, there’s a plan on which rail lines and stations will be closed during repair work, and there’s a plan to ensure Metrobus service does not breach the gaps. Smart.

Before the plan, called SafeTrack, was released Friday, federal authorities had begun issuing recommendations, changing liaisons on and to the Metro Board of Directors, and the board had named a new general manager, Paul Wiedefeld, who is responsible for all day-to-day Metro affairs, and a new chairman, D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans, who knows Wall Street and fiscal affairs like the lines on the palm of his hands. Smart.

Metro overseers also were smart enough on Friday to concede publicly that private contractors will be used to implement SafeTrack over the course of the next year or so — a truly smart move, considering that it’s been documented that Metro’s own employees saw and heard, but spoke no evil, about safety issues.

Even during a current spate of smoke and fire problems, no one is asking, “Why now?” An easy answer is, of course, sabotage.

What we do not know, however, is whether we have quality rail equipment or lousy industry rejects, and whether Metrobus and paratransit drivers and schedules will be ready to meet the upticks in ground service or perhaps thumb their noses at the overseers’ new demands. Also, we do not have any idea how much the plan will cost or should cost, and we do not know who among Metro’s pool of 13,000 employees will remain on the job now that we know what’s broken.

Mr. Wiedefeld said Monday that firing employees is “always an option,” and he said so two days after the Federal Transit Authority threatened to defund and shut down Metro if it fails to get ahead of the safety crisis. Mr. Wiedefeld also said Friday: “We need to do something different and dramatically different.”

Public unions love to latch onto such warlike declarative statements. Oh well.

At least we know about the closures, which begin the first week of June, and, according to the draft plan released to the media, commuters and tourists won’t be jolted on the Fourth of July, when the masses trek to the National Mall for the annual star-spangled Independence Day celebration.

We may have the answers to penultimate questions — what did they know and when did they know it? — before summer’s end, and whenever we do, the more important financial questions will come into play: When and how much will fare increases be to cover the costs now that everyone seems to agree that Metro has outgrown its 40-year-old britches?

• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.