Change Needed At Wmata

Floor Speech

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Mrs. COMSTOCK. Mr. Speaker, yesterday afternoon the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, our Metro system, informed us that they would be suspending operations all day today and into tonight.

While I appreciate that the new general manager had to make this decision to keep our riders safe, what this does is highlight many more widespread problems throughout the system that have been present for years that we need to address. We know a culture change in management needs to happen.

When our delegation met with the new manager at the end of last year, we told him we needed to have a management change and that we needed to see some action taken quickly. I am appreciative the Transportation chairman is going to have hearings on this.

I want to read to you an example of why we need changes here. A trainee at Metro talked about the incompetence there. He said:

I'll be honest with you. I studied harder for fast-food jobs and waiter jobs when I was in college than I did for their training program at Metro. Their testing program is a joke.

This is from a Washingtonian article in December of last year.

WMATA and Metro lifers who haven't left for years need to start leaving so that we can have a new management culture there.

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