D.C. Metro's Mea Culpa: Bad Service Responsible for Declining Ridership

"Metro, in an unusual acknowledgment, says breakdowns and other service failures appear to be contributing to a steady, years-long decline in ridership that is causing financial stress for the transit agency and could lead to fare increases," reports Paul Duggan.

The mea culpa, of sorts, comes from a revenue briefing provided by staff to Metro's governing board this week. In addition to high profile incidents that shut down service, such as smoke from an electrical line in a Yellow Line tunnel in January, supplement a track record of poor on-time performance. Interestingly, on-time performance has worsened since the Silver Line opened for service in July 2014.

According to Duggan, "Metrorail foul-ups are a daily norm. On Tuesday, for example, in addition to rush-hour slowdowns that are expected to last into next year on the Silver, Orange and Blue lines, there was a large-scale service disruption on the Blue and Yellow lines during the evening rush hour because of a problem on tracks shared by the lines between the National Airport and Braddock Road stations."

Any action to correct the performance of Metro will have to come under the watchful eye of the federal government. Keith Laing recently reported that the Federal Transit Administration approved a "correction action plan" for Metro in the wake of passenger safety incidents.