Letter to the Washington Post:
Am I the only person offended by new Metro Chairman Robert Smith's comments comparing his hesitant support for new metrorail and light rail expansions to "loving disneyland as much as anyone"? Can he have been any more insulting to the hundreds-of-thousands of commuters who depend on Metro to get to work, school and doctor appointments?
The reason why the Metro system is so much better, and busier, than the usual junk that stands for public transit in most US cities is because its' original planners were visionaries. While I support efforts to safeguard the current system, we can't be shortsighted. How is the region going to even attempt to address sprawl, congestion and air pollution without having public transit keep up with the region's growth?
Everybody agrees that public services should be run more like businesses. But why must we run public transit like a mom-and-pop grocery? Cutting waste and pinching pennies is necessary, but businesses that are not interested in looking at the big picture and increasing market share become dinosaurs.
I am particularly baffled by the reluctance of people like Chairman Smith to seriously consider light rail transit. We have streets, avenues, boulevards, country roads, highways and parkways for cars, but where transit riders are concerned, we got buses that move slower than traffic on cul-de-sacs and heavy-rail lines that each carry more people than a freeway. Why can't we have something in between that can be built at a moderate cost?
Today, the nation and the region is easily twice as wealthy than when the Metrorail system was first proposed, and transit has proven to be an excellent investment in the region's economy. Why must we pretend otherwise?