WF Relies on Metro -- But How Safe?

Last week from February 23 – 25, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) held hearings on the June 22, 2009 metro accident that occurred at the Fort Totten Metro Stop in Washington, D.C. A number of documents were also released by the NTSB, to be found here. They make for fascinating reading, BTW. A synopsis of the hearings and some video can be found here.

While the White Flint Sector Plan is predicated on additional train cars and, as Planning Board Chair Royce Hanson has stated repeatedly, 2-½-minute headways, the reality is quite different. How will the non-auto driver mode share, or NADMS, be achieved? NADMS refers to any other type of travel, carpool, bicycling, walking, or public transit, anything other than driving your car alone. To meet the stated goal the White Flint Sector Plan must meet an ambitious mode share – 51% for residents; and 50% for employees. Good luck with that.  Read about it in the latest staff report, here.

When will that happen? How will it happen? Will it happen? Let’s take off the rose-colored glasses and look at reality. As a first step, let’s compare our 30-year old system to the 100+ year system in New York City. The website http://www.nycsubway.org/ has posted all the accidents on this system, starting with an accident that took place on October 3, 1918. In that accident, according to the report in The New York Times the next day, two people were killed, including the motorman, and 28 people sustained injuries.

Our own metro system has been in place for almost 34 years, starting on March 27, 1976. The Washington Post has provided a list of all the fatalities in that time. In that time there were 14 fatalities. Four of these deaths, 29%, occurred in one year, 2009. In that same time 12 people died in New York subway system accidents, including in 1986, one motorman who suffered a heart attack and died. It is worth remembering the difference in the number of cars, trips, and miles between the two systems. According to Wikipedia, our Metro system has 86 stations, 5 lines, and 106.3 miles of track. In 2008, there were 218.5 million trips, and 727,684 trips each weekday. According to Wikipedia, the New York system has 468 stations and covers 229 miles of routes, or as the Wikipedia article states, “229 miles (369 km) of routes, translating into 656 miles (1,056 km) of revenue track; and a total of 842 miles (1,355 km) including non-revenue trackage;” and in 2008, delivered over 5 million rides each weekday. That year, it delivered approximately 1.623 billion rides. While I am not about to do the math, it strikes me that if we use the data from a 100+ year-old system that is almost seven times the size of our own metro (based on weekday trips) with fewer fatalities in the same time span, and compare those data with the data from metro, including of course the qualitative knowledge that our own metro is now under investigation by the NTSB, this could mean that the official county government expectations for the public transit capacity of the White Flint Sector Plan may be somewhat wide of the mark. We shall see.

Paula Bienenfeld