Reflections: Transforming America’s Transit System

RANDY CLARKE
Chief Executive Officer and General Manager
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority

Reflecting on the past is being able to acknowledge growth while still assessing what requires your attention in this moment. While there is no crystal ball, our experiences provide guidance that gives us a sense of purpose for tomorrow’s opportunities and challenges.

As chief executive officer and general manager of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro), my first two years have flown by. Even as I say two years, it feels much longer.

One of my first meetings was with our senior management team. I asked them what they desired most, and the resounding response was to restore the public’s trust in Metro—our service delivery and reliability as America’s transit system. We agreed as a team we would work as hard as possible to change the narrative that was often negative, hampering our good work, and decimating team morale.

Metro, like other public transit agencies in the country, was battling low ridership, starving budgets, and the loss of revenue at the fare box. But unlike other agencies, just as ridership was rebounding, Metro was faced with a derailment that sidelined 64 percent of its fleet.

Most people don’t think about the devastation that would cause, but recently, being sidelined with a major ski injury that rendered both of my knees in need of surgery, I was able to reflect on how much limited use of anything you depend on affects your abilities. Metro had become a shell of itself, and every team member was working triple time to provide reliable service to a region that had lost confidence in its system.

Fast forward two years, and the 180-degree changes we’ve accomplished as a team are astonishing. This year alone, under the leadership of our Board of Directors, we avoided draconian service cuts that would have devastated our region again. By far, this has been our most challenging budget to date, but we got it done. No one got everything they wanted, but it’s a budget that ultimately best serves the needs of our customers and the region. Our board remained steadfast and never wavered on ensuring our customers were at the forefront of every decision.

We’ve restored our 7000-series fleet to service, allowing us to retire our 2000-series trains. These were the 40-year-old work horses of our operation. We’ve increased service frequency, so customers no longer worry about long wait times between trains or being late for work. We’ve used ingenuity to redesign fare gates, deterring fare evasion by 70 percent, which was the top complaint from customers when I arrived. We’ve increased our use of video and police presence, adding crisis intervention specialists and special police officers, which has decreased crime by 30 percent year-over-year. We’ve opened a new integrated command and communications center to create better collaboration within our operations, which has led to reliability, a better customer experience, and the highest customer satisfaction scores (77 percent) in over a decade, as recently published by a Washington Post survey.

We staffed up bus operations, eliminating vacancies that often made it impossible to deliver on-time service for customers who depended on it the most. Not only is on-time performance at its peak, but we’ve also worked with the District of Columbia to provide 24/7 bus service on 14 routes.

We’re reimagining our bus network for the first time in 50 years and collaborating with bus providers within our network to better understand how bus service can be more expansive for the entire region. We’ve also added programs like Metro Lift, which are designed to supplement fare costs for those who need it.

We have a capital program that highlights our priorities around the safety and maintenance of our assets, which ensures execution of our 98 percent of our $2.5 billion in the Capital Program. And to top it all off, our former board chair, Paul C. Smedberg, received the highest honor possible from his peers, APTA’s 2023 Outstanding Public Transportation Board Member Award.

The last two years have been the most challenging and rewarding of my career, but we’ve gotten the region excited about Metro, bringing joy to customers during the holidays with special train and bus wraps; community events that provide resources to families; and a once in a generation expo on the National Mall, were we welcomed more than 46,000 visitors, highlighting the future of our rail and bus fleet and showcasing how we are an integral part of the national capital region.

We have restored customers’ confidence in our service, and our ridership numbers prove it with 40 consecutive months of growth—a 21 percent increase over 2023.

I am a hard charging advocate for substantive changes to make transit more equitable and accessible for our community. For two years, there hasn’t been a moment to rest, to slow down, or ease up. We’ve been driving toward service excellence to get to exactly where we are today.

So, at the two-year mark, I’m raising my head to look around and take inventory of all we have accomplished together. I’m proud of the work, and I’m excited about Metro’s future.

There is still much to be done, but we have the support of other regional leaders who want to see a comprehensive vision for transit. Out of that clarion call for action was born DMVMoves, an initiative led by the Metropolitan Washington Councils of Government Board of Directors and WMATA’s Board of Directors. This effort is exactly the leadership we need to move our region toward a transit model that has a sustainable and dedicated funding plan. The work of this group will also uniquely define the next several decades of our commitment to expanding transit in a growing region.

While I can’t say what the next two years will bring, I can confidently say we accomplished what we set out to do as a team. We restored this region’s trust in America’s Transit System, and we are only getting started. When you visit, please ride Metro, and know we are working hard to represent the entire transit industry in our nation’s capital.