(The Washington Post published the following story by Lyndsey Layton on its website on July 13.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Metro headquarters pulsed with big plans. P. Takis Salpeas, the head of construction, was swimming in fresh designs: rail to Tysons and Dulles, a Purple Line that would circle the city, a rail line over the new Woodrow Wilson Bridge, a new subway line through downtown that would finally bring Metro to Georgetown and release the railroad’s choke points.
That was two years ago. Today, those plans have largely evaporated, victims of a soured economy and fractured local politics. Metro is not building the next generation of transit — it is barely able to run its existing system. As construction money dwindles from the current fiscal year through fiscal 2009, Metro’s stable of well-regarded architects, engineers and construction managers will be cut from 237 to 23.
“We’re just a couple of years away from dismantling this capability,” Chief Executive Richard A. White said, referring to Metro’s technical capacity to build rail lines, stations and parking facilities and manage multibillion-dollar construction contracts. The jobs to be slashed include systems, civil and structural engineers; architects; contract administrators; and project managers.
Metro has two projects underway — the New York Avenue station in Northeast on the Red Line and the extension of the Blue Line past the Capital Beltway to Largo — but without an infusion of construction money, Metro soon will be out of the business of building.
“The fact of the matter is, we can’t keep people on if we don’t have new projects,” said Arlington County Board member Chris Zimmerman (D), who represents Arlington on the Metro board. The dim prospects have spurred some Metro managers and engineers to retire early in what White is terming a “brain drain.”
Metro’s reversal of fortune can be traced to several factors. The completion of the original 103-mile system in 2001 ended the steady flow of federal money for construction projects. The softening economy has been draining cash from local governments, making them unable or unwilling to shoulder hefty tabs for new projects.
In Maryland, a pro-transit governor was succeeded by a leader whose top transportation priority is a highway, not a transit system, and whose state struggles in economic distress. And in Virginia, taxpayers rejected a sales tax proposal last year that would have raised billions for transit, including a critical chunk of money for the Dulles International Airport rail project.
“It’s the perfect storm,” White said, describing the swirl of conditions that have wiped away Metro’s expansion plans.
In 1967, the federal government led the District, Maryland and Virginia to develop a vision for a regional transit system. Today, the Washington area lacks a similar political leadership to support the massive investment transit requires.
The federal government paid two-thirds of the $10 billion cost to build “America’s subway” but has made no commitments beyond that. “Metro has no political champions,” Salpeas said. “Who owns us? Who do we work for?”
Part of what’s happening at Metro is a natural progression — years of construction until the original plans were realized, followed by a transition to operation and maintenance. Other subways built after World War II — Atlanta’s MARTA and San Francisco’s BART — have followed a similar cycle. “Once the project is over, then you scale back to what you need,” said Anthony M. Kouneski of the American Public Transportation Association.
But those systems are significantly smaller than Metro’s and the dismantling of their construction departments was less traumatic, said Peter Benjamin, a former official at the Federal Transit Administration, who is Metro’s assistant general manager of finance. “There isn’t anything quite equivalent to building a 103-mile system and stopping,” he said. Of the nation’s subways, only New York’s system carries more daily passengers.
What’s more, the public expects Metro to keep growing, White said. “People around here want to believe there’ll be Metro everywhere,” he said, noting that Metro scores high in opinion polls, that Virginia wants to build rail to Tysons Corner and Dulles and that communities from Georgetown to Oxon Hill want Metro service. “It’s really a question of whether there’s the political will to do it.”
For the time being, Virginia is studying whether to stretch the subway to Tysons Corner, but it is unclear how it would pay for that or an even more expensive extension to Dulles. Maryland is hunting for cheaper alternatives to rail for a Purple Line between Silver Spring and Bethesda and investigating whether buses could do the job.
Although the new Wilson Bridge is being constructed with room to carry a rail line, Maryland is no longer promoting the idea. And the proposal to add a subway line through the heart of the District met its demise as the city and its suburbs clashed over who would benefit and how it would be funded.
If Metro’s engineers and construction managers leave, they’ll take decades of experience and talent with them, White and others said. The agency has grown proficient at managing multibillion-dollar contracts, and the last segment of the 103-mile system was finished $160 million under budget and a year ahead of schedule. “We’ve developed this ability to do it faster and better, and now we’re going to lose that capability,” said Jack Donahue, who oversaw that last segment and is among those retiring early.
The transit system could rebuild its engineering and construction workforce if it were to get construction money at a later date, but that would take time and likely delay projects, industry experts said. “A good engineering staff is very hard to come by,” Kouneski said. “When you have a stable workforce, especially in a highly technical area, trying to get that back is costly.”
Metro could hire consultants to step in quickly and manage construction projects, but that’s not in the best interest of the public, said David Gunn, the Amtrak president who has run Metro and subway systems in Philadelphia, New York and Toronto.
“Consultants have a model — time is money,” Gunn said. “The more time, the more money. Once you get in the hands of the consultants, you’re at their mercy. . . . It’s really important to have people on your staff who work for the authority, who are pursuing your goals and who drive the project. You want to keep a nucleus of key engineering folks. You need to keep institutional memory.”
These days, the bulletin boards in the hallways at Metro are papered with fliers about retirement luncheons. Metro offered an early retirement package for nonunion employees last month. Of the 219 people eligible for the buyout, 112 took it. That’s three times the number of retirements in a typical year, Metro officials said.
“I’ve been here and been a manager long enough that I can read the handwriting on the wall,” said Tom Rampe, 58, a senior project manager who opted for early retirement after 15 years. “Within two to three years, they won’t have enough work coming down to justify people of my paygrade. If new work doesn’t come quickly, I’m not going to be needed.”
Donahue also decided to retire early even though, at 55, he barely qualified. “It’s very depressing,” he said, describing the mood among the men and women who build things at Metro.
Tom Dorrier, an attorney, is leaving Metro after 25 years of handling construction litigation. “There’s generally a sense of anxiety,” said Dorrier, 60, who is retiring two years earlier than he’d planned. “If I were sending my kids to college, I’d be out looking hard for another job.”
Salpeas has tried to postpone layoffs by lending about 40 employees to the D.C. government for short-term city construction projects, but that work is finished. In the next two years, Metro will build eight parking garages in the suburbs and hopes to construct a light rail demonstration project in the District.
White talks of finding new sources of funding, looking for construction money from the private sector and lobbying Congress and the White House for a renewed federal commitment to Metro, which carries hundreds of thousands of federal workers to jobs each day.
But from Salpeas’s office, the outlook is bleak. He sits at a polished wood conference table that once belonged to Roy T. Dodge, an Army general who was the first construction manager at Metro.
Resting against one wall are ceremonial shovels used to break ground on the New York Avenue station and the Blue Line extension. The shovels and the table seem like artifacts from a golden age.
“It’s a matter of months before we close the shop,” Salpeas said. “And who’s the loser? The public, because eventually, they’ll need to build.
“This area continues to expand and grow. They’re going to need Metrorail.”