The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Brilliance Of DC’s Metro Cannot Be Grasped By Reason

Posted on | April 14, 2012 | 12 Comments

by Smitty

Jobs, man: jobs. As the video states, DC’s Metro is a magnet for escalator mechanics. The Metro is working hard, trying to maximize the number of people taking home a paycheck, and these unreasonable Reasoners are. . .throwing a wrench in the gears.

The other interesting point about Metro is one that you can’t observe without a ten yard penalty for Political Incorrectness: the stunning lack of diversity in the employees:

Ninety-seven percent of the bus and train operators at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority are black, with only six white women out of more than 3,000 drivers, according to Metro documents — a lack of diversity at one of the region’s largest employers that has led to an acknowledgment of failure in affirmative-action documents and spawned a series of lawsuits.

Part two of the Washington Times series on WMATA deals with escalator mechanics:

The mechanics tasked with maintaining the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s chronically broken escalators start at $81,000 a year. Bus driver pay goes as high as $114,000 for anyone with a driver’s license and a GED.
Yet despite an economy that has left people from all walks of life looking for work, Metro says it can’t find qualified job applicants.
The transit system’s failure to meet its personnel needs was largely responsible for the $88 million in overtime it paid in 2010. The overtime paid to some station managers exceeded their base salaries, and maintenance workers made as much as $100,000 in overtime alone, according to an analysis of the most recent records officials would provide.

Hmmm, that sounds enticing. . .
Thankfully, there is a union to keep the troops whipped into shape:

But Metro “has a policy in place that does not allow employees to speak to the media about safety, fraud, mismanagement or bad management,” Anthony Garland, the chief safety officer of Metro’s largest union, said in 2010, according to the union. “An employee’s federally protected right to speak to the media or any entity investigating safety, an accident, fraud, etc., must be respected.”

We’re really got to elect Mitt Romney, so that Brian Williams can again sustain outrage at this sort of story.

via Breitbart

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Comments

12 Responses to “The Brilliance Of DC’s Metro Cannot Be Grasped By Reason”

  1. richard mcenroe
    April 14th, 2012 @ 7:07 pm

    Everybody who lives in DC should be forced to craw up and down those motionless, dangling escalators, coming and going, because sure as God made Ronald Reagan they’re all in on the con.

  2. richard mcenroe
    April 14th, 2012 @ 7:10 pm

    Escalators are a century-old, proven technology.  This is like screwing up a lightbulb… oh, right, sorry…

  3. Adobe_Walls
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:13 pm

    Escalators are extremely complicated both to install and maintain, not to mention a pain in the ass to frame and pour the pits for them. There are thousands of union elevator and escalator installers and service techs in this country. Most are installers but training them to do sevice should be pretty easy. Since commercial construction is in the tank just about anywhere and most union scales not on the coasts are lower it should be easy to get other locals to convince someone to take these jobs.

    Smitty: How many times has Rosslyn station hurt somebody. It has (or had) one the longest escalators in the country at the time of it’s construction.

  4. smitty
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:15 pm

    It’s lengthy, and I don’t know. But you get a great workout walking DC’s stopped escalators, I can say from experience.

  5. Adobe_Walls
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:20 pm

    Rosslyn VA metro escalator.

  6. smitty
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:22 pm

    When it no worky-worky, you’re screwed. This is the hidden meaning of ‘Metro-sexual’.

  7. Adobe_Walls
    April 14th, 2012 @ 8:52 pm

    Yeah I’ve hiked up the one in Rosslyn a few times. If I remember correctly it’s something like 120′. Wouldn’t want to stumble at the top of it. It would be against building code to construct a stairway that long with no landings.

  8. justaconservativegirl
    April 14th, 2012 @ 9:05 pm

    I can’t drive anymore (health reasons) and I take the bus often.  I have befriended a conservative driver.  They do exist!!!  I asked about this when the story was first reported by the Examiner.  He told me that they try to hire white drivers.  The problem is the policy that all new drivers start in DC working later evening shifts.  Which means they are in some of the higher crime rate areas.  They can’t transfer out for at least 90 days, and only if other shifts become available.  So the majority of the white drivers say no and go work for Fairfax Connector or Cue, which pays less, but has safer routes.  Fairfax Connector has many women and many non blacks driving.  I don’t take Cue, so I don’t know.  

    They originally wanted to put something over the entrance ways to the escalators, but someone in Congress said no.  The result is that the rain and snow get on them and mess up the works.  

  9. Dave C
    April 15th, 2012 @ 1:21 am

    I was in DC last Tuesday, taking the family to the Zoo..

    Lucked out that all the escalators were working for us when we took the Metro in.. 

  10. SDN
    April 15th, 2012 @ 9:06 am

     But…But… Derbyshire was being a racist when he said that “people of pallor” should be careful about which neighborhoods they go to….

  11. Steve White
    April 15th, 2012 @ 9:59 am

    I was in Bethesda on business earlier this year and had the pleasure of hiking up the stopped escalator at the Bethesda Metro station one evening. I bicycle some and thought that I was, for a 56 year old man, in pretty decent shape. But I got a lifetime cardio workout humping up those treads with suitcase and briefcase in hand. Ten more treads and I would have needed CPR.

    Adobe_Walls is right, too: if a private business wanted to put in an escalator that tall without landings they’d be shut down.

  12. justaconservativegirl
    April 15th, 2012 @ 1:46 pm

    Staying out of high crime rate areas is common sense.  Assuming that people are violent and stupid simply because they are black is racist.  Believe it or not, there are some high crime rate areas that are not predominately black.  There are predominately black areas that are not high crime rate areas.