Why D.C. Must Abandon Private-Sector Control of Public Transit
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FOOL DC TWICE WHY D.C. MUST ABANDON PRIVATE-SECTOR CONTROL OF PUBLIC TRANSIT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In recent years, local elected officials in the District of Columbia have launched efforts to create a publicly-funded, privately operated, multi-modal transit system. This has included the creation of the D.C. Circulator and D.C. Streetcar. Since their inception, both projects have been plagued by a multitude of problems: labor law abuses, safety standard violations, and repeated failures to meet promised ridership and service goals. This report: • details the history of these projects; • analyzes their performance to date; • traces their relationship to the regional transit system, and; • recommends basic principles that should guide further efforts to expand transit options in the District. In particular, Fool D.C. Twice explores: • how local business interests drove the creation of the highly-subsidized D.C. Circulator to primarily serve a “premium” ridership; • repeated failures by the D.C. Circulator’s operating contractor, First Transit, to maintain basic urban transit safety and labor standards while avoiding government oversight; • the hundreds of millions of transit dollars wasted on poor planning and poorer construction of the D.C. Streetcar and fruitless efforts by its operating contractor to prevent unionization, and; • how D.C. government leaders undermined regional transit development by attempting to assume control of and privatize all transit service within the District. We encourage elected officials and appointees at public transportation agencies in the District of Columbia and across the country to prioritize the public good before embracing the elusive solutions promised by public-private partnerships. Specifically, we recommend that public officials commit to three basic principles: 1. Transit expansion should focus on improving service for all communities, not providing specialized service to “premium” clientele. 2. Transit spending should be directed toward the mobility needs of residents, especially those who lack transit access, rather than the demands of regional developers. 3. Public transit should be publicly maintained and operated, not subject to profitability for contractors. We are confident that the experiences of de-regionalization and privatization in Washington, D.C. are not unique to the District. Instead, we believe they offer important lessons to be learned for transit agencies across the country. Amalgamated Transit Union 1 Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame confidence in mass transit, contributing to an historic on me. This old proverb finds new meaning in the ridership decline.2 District of Columbia, where well-intentioned local elected officials have twice been persuaded that private D.C., like its neighbors in Virginia and Maryland, contractors could establish and operate local public has contributed to the neglect of WMATA, which still transit systems without lowering passenger safety or serves as the region’s central nervous system. Instead labor standards. But why did public-private partnerships of championing a new era of regionalism and public become so hip in the District, and how should D.C. transit policy, the District has focused on developing leaders proceed now that these experiments have failed? a parallel, locally-controlled, privately-operated transit In this report, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) system that benefits its newer and wealthier residents seeks to answer those critical questions. and the businesses and institutions that employ and serve them. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of transit workers and hundreds of thousands of riders who do not fit the preferred profile are seeing their livelihoods INTRODUCTION and lifelines erode. D.C. is in the midst of an economic boom. Employment is up, and property values are skyrocketing as The problems posed by privatization of transit were laid redevelopment rapidly transforms wide swaths of the bare in recent years by the now infamous DC Streetcar. city. There has been an influx of But long before the streetcar tracks young urban professionals seeking were laid, the District had already good jobs and the sort of services Workers and…riders started to pursue a form of stealth and cultural amenities that only privatization of its bus system. Led major metropolitan areas provide. who do not fit the by the presidents of two politically To safeguard the perceived gains influential business improvement of this demographic shift, the preferred profile are districts with aid from the District District has sought to seize more Department of Transportation local control of one of its new seeing their livelihoods (DDOT), a carefully branded and populations’ most sought-after and lifelines erode. subsidized bus system, the DC urban benefits: a robust public Circulator, was created to compete transportation system. with the District’s already existing Metrobus system. Alongside suburban Virginia and Maryland, D.C. has been served by the regional Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) since 1967. As the THE DC CIRCULATOR IS CREATED entire region’s population shifted in the last two decades, however, cooperation gave way to competition, with While the WMATA-provided MetroAccess paratransit each WMATA jurisdiction seeking to free itself from service has been privately operated since its origin in the the burden of negotiating local transit services with one early 1990s, the first District-led reprivatization of transit another. The result? Years of underinvestment in the regional system have led to a devastating maintenance SafeTrack Leaves Riders Wondering: Where Did $5B For Metro Forward Go? June backlog, cascading service failures, limited service 13, 2016. WAMU. Online at: http://wamu.org/news/16/06/13/safetrack_ leaves_riders_wondering_where_did_5b_for_metro_forward_go (Accessed expansion, and several high-profile fatalities of transit September 16, 2016); Di Caro, Martin. Playing The Metro Blame Game? Start riders and workers.1 This backslide has sapped public With Decisions In Decades Past. March 18, 2016. WAMU. Online at: http:// wamu.org/news/16/03/18/playing_the_metro_blame_game_start_with_ decisions_in_decades_past (Accessed September 16, 2016). 1 Di Caro, Martin. Fort Totten Crash Still Weighs Heavily On Discussions 2 Di Caro, Martin. Metro Ridership Is Down, With WMATA Pointing To About Metro Safety. June 22, 2016. WAMU. Online at: http://wamu.org/ External Forces For Drop. June 27, 2016. WAMU. Online at: http://wamu. news/16/06/22/fort_totten_crash_still_weighs_heavily_on_discussion_ org/news/16/06/27/metro_ridership_is_down_with_wmata_pointing_to_ about_metro_safety (Accessed September 16, 2016); Di Caro, Martin. external_forces_for_drop (Accessed September 16, 2016). 2 Fool DC Twice: Why D.C. Must Abandon Private-Sector Control of Public Transit dates back to 1997, when the National Capital Planning Convention Center to the southwest waterfront— Commission (NCPC) issued a long‐range vision for beginning in 2005 with a fare of 50 cents per trip. The the city that included plans for “a supplementary District provided funds to pay for the buses (distinctive transit system called a ‘circulator’ to carry tourists and models to be purchased from the Belgian company Van commuters around the Core.”3 The DC Circulator, as it Hool NV) and for annual operating costs not covered by is now known, was envisioned to deliver routes between the BIDs.7 major national monuments, Arlington National Cemetery, the Mall, Georgetown, Union Station, the By the time that service began in July 2005, the fare U.S. Capitol, and Anacostia. had been set at $1. It became public knowledge that operation of the Circulator had been contracted out to In 1998, the Downtown DC Business Improvement First Transit, with funding streams provided through District (Downtown BID) assembled a planning group to DDOT.8 WMATA was to oversee the operating contract, advance the Circulator idea along with NCPC, DDOT, and marketing was to be handled by DC Surface and WMATA. The following year, the Downtown Transit Inc.9 BID released a report, commissioned from Parsons Transportation Group, on the feasibility of a Downtown Circulator with two routes, one through downtown and one through the Monumental Core.4 Soon after the Downtown BID released its report, the Georgetown Partnership (the predecessor to the Georgetown BID) created its own low‐cost private bus service. Known as the Blue Bus, the service was created to serve local commuters, especially those travelling outside rush hours. The Georgetown BID’s two routes, which were operated under contract by Yellow Transportation, were a big hit.5 The service was later replaced by the DC Circulator with the support of the Georgetown BID. Who Does the Circulator Serve? In July 2003, the Downtown BID, NCPC, DDOT From the beginning, the Circulator project was and WMATA released a Circulator implementation conceived of as a premium service. Attempts were made plan. It proposed four low‐fare routes with projected early on to differentiate it from WMATA’s Metrobus annual operating costs of $17 million, about 45 percent service by a distinct color scheme and eye-grabbing of which would come from fare box revenue paid by a visuals. Importantly, there was a desire to maneuver projected 45,000 riders on an average weekday (16.3 around WMATA’s unionized workforce, which 6 million annually). Circulator boosters saw as a cause of poor customer service at Metrobus.10 D.C. and WMATA officials approved the