This is the premiere episode of The FixWMATA Podcast and is a great background for what WMATA is and who Chris Barnes (FixWMATA) is. It was recorded in late 2017.

 

 

 
Link to Ian Sutherland's Music:
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/ian_sutherland
Link to an article about my day on Metro in a wheelchair:
https://www.americaninno.com/dc/metro-writer-discover-accessibility-issues-firsthand/

Text of this episode:
Hello I’m Chris Barnes and this is the FixWMATA podcast.

Since this is the very first episode I’d like to cover some basics – namely what is WMATA, who I am and what are you getting yourself into here.

First things first:

WMATA, spelled w-m-a-t-a, is an abbreviation for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority or as it’s more commonly known here in the DC area: Metro.

WMATA has 3 primary services: Metro Rail, Metro Bus, and MetroAccess.

While this podcast will focus on all 3 of these services there will be a heavy focus on Metro Rail because metro rail needs fixing... badly.

There is a wealth of detailed information about how WMATA came to be and what there was in DC before WMATA on Wikipedia and a must-read for any urbanite in DC is “The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro” by Zachary Schrag but the bottom line is this: WMATA was officially formed in 1967 via an interstate compact approved by congress.

At the time getting Virginia, DC, Maryland, and the federal government to agree on how to form and later operate a mass transit agency was a big undertaking... an undertaking that’s clearly still being forged today.

So in 1967 we got WMATA and in 1969 WMATA broke ground on the very first segment of rail – the Red Line. Just a few years later in 1971 WMATA took over the region’s bus network and finally in 1976 WMATA opened it’s first Red Line segment which operated from Farragut North to Rhode Island Avenue.

From there the rail system has grown to 91 stations spread over 6 lines: red, blue, orange, yellow, green, and silver which stretch 117 miles – a distance some consider commuter rail. Metro tracks are at grade – which means street level, in tunnels, and on elevated stretches. Metro boasts a daily ridership of over 700 thousand. This puts Metro Rail in the list of busiest transit agencies in America – but those ridership numbers have begun to decline.

2 other “sister” transit systems were built and opened around the same time as WMATA: Atlanta’s MARTA and San Francisco’s BART. You’ll often see comparisons among these 3 systems as they’ve faced similar finance, growth, political, and stigma issues.

WMATA, like any other transit agency, has had few accidents in it’s history and some have resulted in death.

By far the most shocking accident in recent history occurred on June 22nd, 2009 when a Red Line train outside Fort Totten station stopped. Track circuits failed to tell another Red Line train approaching from the rear that the first train had stopped and the rear train slammed into the front train from behind. The accident killed 8 riders and the train operator of the rear train and injured about 80 others.

The 2009 Red Line accident was a wake up call for WMATA and for the region. How could something like this happen and what needed to be done to prevent it from happening again?

A very thorough investigation by the NTSB and others showed that WMATA had been cutting corners and delaying or falsifying track work for a long time.