It only Cost $1 million a foot in the 1970s to build. A bargain after Boston's Big Dig and Big Re-dig. m/rThe Great Society Subway Slowly Grinds to a Halt | The Antiplanner
June 11, 2013
Some called it the Great Society Subway, and like a metaphor for the failure of Lyndon Johnson’s grandiose plans, the Washington Metro Rail system is slowly breaking down. No less than the Washington Post calls it “a slow-rolling embarrassment whose creeping obsolescence is so pervasive, and so corrosive, that Washingtonians are increasingly abandoning it.” System ridership is down by 5 percent from a year ago even though other transit agencies in the region have seen growth.
“Last Monday morning, all five Metrorail lines were beset by mishaps, the second such one-day calamity in three weeks,” the Post editorial continued. “The comatose escalators; the crumbling ceiling at Farragut North, year after year after year; the funereal lighting; the frequent signal problems; the routine single-tracking that makes weekend Metro use torturous–all of this takes a toll on riders that Metro officials too blithely dismiss.”
Metro’s general manager gets paid $350,000 a year to watch the trains and rails rust away, and as if that isn’t enough next year Metro’s board is giving him a raise to $366,000.
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