The Politics Hour: Metro GM Randy Clarke talks ridership records, RFK stadium transit plans, and red line shutdowns

From WAMU 885 at American University in Washington, welcome to The Politics Hour starring Alex Goma. I'm Kojo-Nandi. Tom Sherwood is on vacation, supposedly. Anyway, later in the broadcast, we'll be talking with Metro General Manager and CEO Randy Clark. First up is Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, and he's been using his crystal ball to prognosticate elections for the last 25 years. By the way, welcome, Alex. Oh, thanks. And welcome to you, Larry Sabato. Welcome to you as well, into my home. If you have questions or comments for Larry Sabato, give us a call now at 800-433-8850. Send email to code you at WAMU.org. You can also send us questions on Instagram by commenting on our post or responding to our stories. Before we get to Virginia, Alex Homer, let's talk a little bit about what's happening well. both in Maryland and in Virginia having to do with data centers. Prince George's County has approved a two-year data center moratorium, and Prince William County supervisors are planning to kill a massive 2,000-acre data center campus. What's going on? It really shows you the breadth from Prince William to Prince George's to very different communities that have similar feelings about data centers. I actually covered Prince William County, one of my first jobs in journalism, about 10 years ago. And back then, you know, this was, data centers were seen as like a great new investment. They were eager to get data centers away from Loudoun County, which has long been the dominant player in the region. In the world. Yeah, in the world. And now you see, you know, stiff resistance to it and coming on the heels of the big digital gateway projects successfully challenged in court in Prince William as well. Prince George is now wrestling with this. And in fact, over the opposition of the industry, even the Chamber of Commerce saying, let's take a... pause on this for two years is really showing you how this has been sucked up into national politics filtering down into local where all of a sudden people are just asking really tough questions about what does this mean for my community? What kind of transmission lines do you have to put up? And how loud will these things be? And they're just powering chat GPT to make, you know, silly memes. So no matter where you are in the D.C. region, people are not super happy to have a data center around these days. Sabato care to weigh in on this issue? What I know about data centers, you could put in a thimble and have room left for your thumb. So I'm not going to get involved in that except to say, you know, we have a very vigorous grassroots democracy. And in the end, the people rule. And if they're unhappy about aspects of this, the elected officials will hear from them loudly, and then they'll have to act. And I think that's what's happening. Yes, the vibrancy of several local communities is displaying itself over the issue of data centers. But on to voting in Virginia. Larry Sabato, Virginia voters passed a redistricting referendum in the spring only for the courts to halt the effort a month later. What does that mean for this year's elections? Well, it means we just go back to the same map that we had before, and that means that probably at most.

You would have a couple of seats being transferred from Republicans to Democrats, assuming there's a blue wave, and we're still a long way from the voting beginning in Virginia in late September, and you really don't have much voting until you get to mid-October, and it accelerates throughout later October into November until November 3rd, which is the final election day. He said at most a couple of seats. Larry, thanks for being with us, Alex Coma here. You know, as you say, it really kind of removes a lot of a drama from the races that we're watching here in northern Virginia. But I did want to at least ask about the 7th District, which covers part of the aforementioned Prince William County, Eugene Vindman, the incumbent there. I think in a lot of election cycles would be viewed as one of the most endangered incumbents, a real target for, you know, Republicans to try and pick up a seat here. defend their majority. Yet you'll have to tell me, I'm completely unfamiliar with the three Republicans who are running to challenge him. It doesn't seem like any of them of a terrible amount of money. I mean, do any of them, in your view, have a shot at making this race as competitive as it was a couple years ago? Is there a chance that the seventh district seat could flip? Well, not in that direction. I think it would stay Democratic in all probability. Look, I think Republicans' chances of winning that district. faded maybe into obscurity when State Senator Terran Duran decided not to run. She would have had the party backing and a lot of money. And it could have been competitive, though this was not the year to run. She was smart not to run this year. The underlying trend, particularly in places like Northern Virginia and Southern Maryland, will be pro-democratic because Trump is so unpopular in regions like that, like Northern Virginia. So I, you know, look, I'm always prepared to be surprised. I refuse to rule, you know, Snoopy out after Donald Trump won. So they're on the ballot. One of them will win. You're right. They're minor candidates. They've raised almost nothing. It's embarrassing, really. And it just tells me the party is not really enthusiastic about them and is not investing in anybody they think can win. How about the 8th District with incumbent longtime Congressman Don Byer? What's happening in that district? It covers large portions of Fairfax, Arlington, and Alexandria. Early voting is now underway. Yes, well, Don has been in there for a long time. He was Lieutenant Governor for eight years, too, and was the gubernatorial nominee back in 1997 of the Democrats. He has a lot of seniority. This is a race, really, between the progressive wing. And I don't know what you called Don. I've always thought him as a liberal Democrat, but I guess the progressives think perhaps he's too old, which I greatly resent being in my mid-70s. I don't think that is a nice thing to say. No comment. Go ahead. Okay. Anyway, he's got four challengers in the primary.

Now, if the Republican vote is depressed enough, she could win. And I think the first would be, I'm going to confuse you, the first would be second on the list of districts likely to change with the second being first. I'm not confused. You know, well, it's out of the Bible, so look it up. Let's say Virginia Democrats get their best case scenario and flip. three seats. Could the Commonwealth be the deciding factor in giving Democrats control of the U.S. House of Representatives? Well, considering the Republican margin right now is four. I think three might do it. We don't know. The Democrats did very poorly, as it turned out, in the redistricting wars, the Republicans clearly won it nationally. And they have gained net at least Six or seven seats. And that's on top of the four they've got. They've got an edge of four already. So Democrats already have a tougher job to take over the House. They are currently favored, at least by all the rating agencies like mine, the crystal ball, as being somewhat likely to take control of the House. By what margin? Again, well, let's see what develops. Let's see what other controversies Donald Trump brings to these shores. between now and the beginning of the voting. So redistricting makes it tougher, no question about it for the Democrats. But Trump is so unpopular. The war in Iraq is so unpopular. Now it's heating up again. It was supposedly over. I think I heard President Trump say about 4,700 times that the war was over. Well, it's clearly not over. And of course, the affordability issue, which really is inflation plus costs dramatically rising. Not as much for gas prices, though they're on the increase now, too, was this resumption of semi-war with Iran. If you put all those issues together, it would be a miracle if the Republicans kept the House. Having said that, Trump pulled off two miracles in 2016 and 2024. He didn't do well at all in the midterm in 2018. Democrats won 40 seats net. I don't think it'll be anything close to that number simply because we have bled all the competition out of our House elections. Larry Sabato is the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. As you have heard, he's been using his crystal ball to prognosticate elections for the last 25 years. Larry Sabato, thank you for joining us. I was delighted to be with you, and I wish you luck with the questions. Thank you very much. Joining us in studio is Randy Clark, Metro's general manager and CEO. Randy Clark, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Kojo, appreciate it. Good seeing, Alex. Before we get to all of the metro issues, Alex Como, let's talk a little bit about what's going on in the state of Maryland because it looks as if the Maryland General Assembly is set for a special session for redistricting. How did that come about?

Yeah, this is key because, you know, it could sort of get wrapped up with the other redistricting conversation we were having in Virginia, where they were trying to change lines for this election. There was a lot of pressure. Maryland Governor Wes Moore very much was interested in doing the same for this current batch of midterms coming up. That's not quite what's happening here, but there has been, in part because of Democrats' loss in Virginia, pressure amping up on Maryland to eliminate their sole Republican. looking increasingly likely that they may do so, that it would not be this year. This would be for 2028. And so this special session would sort of tee up the possibility of that happening. As I understand right now, it's not set to touch the state's lines. So Andy Harris, you're safe for now, but it's very much looking likely now that state Senate president Bill Ferguson has said that he's warming up to this idea that they could redistrict in the near future. It's something we'll be looking at more closely in the coming weeks. Now on to the District of Columbia and the Rock Creek. Tennis Center. It's set to be overhauled, and D.C. is budgeting more money to overhaul it, but there seems to be questions as exactly who's going to manage this. Yeah, so this is the month for the Mubadala, D.C. open, the annual tennis tournament held at the center. And so this has really kind of been on lawmakers' minds. Mark I. The guy who runs that tennis tournament, he is very much in line to take over management of the center. and make these improvements that I think a lot of people, anyone who's been there probably can see, you know, it's not in the best shape. But it counts on a federal process. This is federal land. They still haven't handed control over to him. And yet at the same moment, the D.C. government is getting ready to spend all this money to have somebody, theoretically, Markine, fix up the center. And this has, there are some neighbors in the area who have big concerns about it, even Ward 4 Councilmember Janice. Louis George in line to become the city's next mayor who represents the areas around the center. Even she's asking questions saying, what will this money be used for? How can we put more guardrails in some form of community engagement to make sure people have a say in all of this? It's been a lot of drama about a very little noticed line item in the budget, and it's not even close to being resolved. Full disclosure here, I am involved with the Rock Creek Conservancy. So there. On to Randy Clark, Metro's general manager and CEO, and questions or comments you may have about Metro. You can call us at 800433-8850. Send us e-mail to cojo at w-amu.org. You can also send us questions on Instagram by commenting on our post or responding to our stories. I'll start with a question from one Tom, vacationing in Florida. who describes himself as a proud D.C. resident. This guy doesn't know how to take a vacation. Question. Have Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. each pass legislation to start contributing a total of an extra $460 million a year to Metro help fund capital construction and repair projects? If not, what still needs to be done? The extra funds were Randy Clark's number one ask.

Yes, well, thank you, Tom, in Florida. I got a feeling I might know who that is. I can't take a day off. They'll probably text you later about the answer. So, yeah, so a very important topic. Funding in Metro, the criticality of funding is not just the dollar amount, it's the predictability of funding so Metro doesn't go like a roller coaster. So we formed a DMV move or group, Clark Friedrich Merz from COG, really thankful for COG's leadership in this. Councilmember Allen, former. chair of what we want to board, Paul Smedberg, chaired this kind of commission that we put together. And the region recommended $460 million that grew by 3% a year, so basically some type of peg to inflation. And then Metro could have longstanding good capital money. So really thankful for the work that they did in Virginia during the budget cycle. Virginia did in their budget arrangement put the requirement to meet that. And it's not for a couple more years, but we needed that predictability. So Virginia now has a legal mechanism to contribute to Metro for their portion. In Maryland, I really appreciate you mentioned Senator President Ferguson. He and the speaker both sent a letter to myself and the Metro Board saying that next year they will be addressing their contribution, acknowledging it must happen, the criticality of it and the value of Metro. saying in their next session, they plan to do a very significant look of all over transportation funding because I think they have some highway stuff and Baltimore stuff and other things. So we look at that as trying to get resolved in the next session. We appreciate their effort. And then there's obviously ongoing conversations in D.C. It did not get done this session. But there's overwhelming, I think. consensus that it has to get done. Chair Mendelsohn and I've spent a lot of time talking about it. I really appreciate his leadership on it. You know, Councilmember Allen is the chair of the Transportation Committee. He's working on it very closely. I didn't see it, but I'm told that, you know, Councilmember George, who, you know, presumably be the next mayor, all things I've seen are she's very transit supportive and of Metro. So I really look forward to work with her, the rest of the council, trying to get D.C.'s. peace resolved next year. And if we do all that, then we have that predictability and, you know, really can stop talking about this ongoing kind of debate. It's the thing that people have talked about for 50 years. We can finally resolve it and then put a lot of accountability on Metro to run the place consistently. You mentioned Cork, for those who don't know, that's the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. A record number of people use metro, rail, and bus on July 4th, according to your agency. What's your assessment of how your team handled the masses? What went well and what could improve? Yeah, thank you. I... I'll tell you, I'm still, to be honest, I'm still a little tired. I get home at three in the morning. So I love going out and loading trains with the team. It's kind of our yearly Super Bowl. And we had 866,000 people on Metro on July 4th, of which 600,000 almost 700,000 on rail. And what's unique about the July 4th event, people kind of circulate through the system throughout the day, kind of gradual waves, some bigger or smaller. But everyone wants to leave at the same time. So we moved to 100.

120,000 people just after midnight. So we stayed open very, very late. Obviously, the event went very, very late. And we moved a lot of people, people from this region, but people all over the country and people obviously from around the world. So I can't really say enough about the team. I'm so thankful for the work they did. We almost ran almost a flawless evening, quite frankly, and we're really got everyone home safely. And it was great to see that America's metro system, when we can perform well, we can really make a big difference for the region in the country. Let's hurry up and get these congratulations over with. Here's David in University Park, Maryland. David, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. Yeah, I just wanted to comment on the Fourth of July. I've been riding Metro quite a bit last year to and from ball games and all, and I'm really glad that it's really back up. Metro Rail. I've been riding it for 50 years. And I really wanted to go to fireworks on Fourth of July, and I live in Prince George's, and there had been a problem at College Park that day. One of the cars derailed, so I knew that, you know, it takes some time. But short story, I mean, I left here at night. I had a good place to watch them. After they were done, got right on Metro. I was home within an hour, even with the changing of the trains and the single tracking. And all the people who worked there, it was like kudos. You did a fantastic job. Okay, enough. Thank you, David. I'll pass that on the whole team. That really means so much for the staff that works so hard to hear that stuff. So thank you very much. David, thank you for your call. Keep it going, Kojo. I get a lot of tweets that aren't nice, so keep it going positive. 80433-850, whether you have questions or comments or opinions about Metro, 8004338850. Alex, see what he's doing? He's being the tom. Well, I'll make it a little harder. Among the people who were riding Metro on July 4th was the white supremacist group, the Patriot Front, to march through downtown D.C. And I think anyone listening has probably seen the photos of distraught passengers alongside them on those trains. This, for me, and I think for a lot of people, brought back memories of 2018 when there was the night the right rally in downtown. Metro came under a lot of fire for working directly with Jason Kessler and a lot of the other people involved in those rallies. to try and keep those demonstrators separate from most other people, you know, in train cars. You kind of saw the flip side of that where they were on the cars with everybody else. So I guess I'm curious, did you all know that they were coming? Did you have any communication with them? And how do you feel your staff managed, what I imagine was a tense situation? Yeah, I think, first all, I think everyone has to remember Metro is a public transportation system, regardless of whatever people's views are. And whether I personally... find behavior of certain people repugnant or not, is a public transportation system covered by people's civil rights to provide public transit as long as everyone is law-abiding. So we did not have any advance coordinating with this group. What happened, basically my understanding, talking to our acting chief, is they got to New Carrollton.

Apparently very orderly. I guess they get these plastic bags with tons of metro cards, so they all paid their fare. They all went through our station manager or another employee notified police. Police then were just, you know, it's a large group. They then got monitored. Police met them around Eastern Market, I think is where they got off, give or take. I think MPD was monitoring them on the street as well. And then we monitored them as they took their journey back to New Carrollton and they exit to the system. So no arrests, no fare evasion. You know, again, whether people find their behavior repugnant or not. And again, I'm not trying to get a pint of mind here. It's a public system. They follow up the rules. We have no advance coordination. When I got here, I wasn't here during 18, but I saw that story. I made it very clear the police. They are not to get their own car. No one is getting their own car here. They're going to be other. members of the public, and everyone has to be orderly and follow the rules. And anybody that doesn't do that, remove them from the system. Despite record-breaking numbers, Metro face challenges during the very hot holiday weekend, the Metro rail car derailed near College Park, entering at least one person. What caused that derailment? Yeah, heat. So unfortunately, we had a piece of track where we call a heat kink. That area gets just pounded. There's no cover out there at all. And unfortunately, we had train. you know, part of a train wheel come off and we had to get it re-railed. We left it actually for a period of time because we didn't want to disrupt the July 4 traffic. And it's kind of at the end of the line almost. So we were able to keep very good service quality going the whole time. So when we get about 135 degree temperature reading on rail, we immediately run a reduced speed to reduce the likelihood of a derailment. And we actually implemented that about two minutes after the rail. It just happened to be that. So we apologize for people's inconvenience. but I think the team handled it really well this whole heat wave to keep people safe. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Randy Clark, Metro's general manager and CEO. A conversation you can join by sending us an email to Kojo at WAMU.org giving us a call at 800-4338850 or send us questions on Instagram by commenting on our post or responding to stories. I'm Kojo Namdi.

Welcome back. We're talking with Randy Clark, Metro's general manager and CEO. And our analyst today is Alex Coma, WMU's DC Senior Politics Reporter. We're taking your calls at 800433-8850. Send email to cojo at WAMU.org. You can also send us questions on Instagram by commenting on our post or responding to our stories. Randy Koch, last week's extreme heat led to some air conditioning issues on trains according to social media posts. What is Metro doing to fix those problems? before the next heat wave. Yeah, well, thanks, Gojo. Well, I think most people know I ride every single day, a lot of trips. And while we had a few, we had very little air conditioning issues during the big heat wave. I think our max one time we had about 14 or 16 cars where we call hot cars and isolate. It doesn't mean we take the train-out service. Sometimes we just isolate the cars. If you were here back in the teens, you might remember there was days where it could be 100 plus hot cars. So to run a fleet of 1,200. plus rail cars basically non-stop during that heat wave day after day after day and only have a small amount. And almost every one of them, Cojo, happen to be our old train cars. So 3Ks are almost, you know, they're 40 plus years old. And it's desperately why we're trying to get our 8K fleet that's going to be manufactured up in Maryland and Hagerstown online. So teamwork really hard and, you know, let's just hope that's the only heat wave we have this summer. You mentioned the AKs. You were showing them off at the Great American State Fair. People could go take a look. So when will we see them out on the rails? Yeah, no, it's cool. I think we've had about 10,000 people visit the Metro exhibit and the state fair. I think today's the last day, I believe. It might be something like that. And we got our original 1K fleet. that was 50 years old, plus our new 8K. Right now, Hitachi's supposed to deliver what we call our first quad, so the first four cars, and these are open gangways that are a little different in December 27, and then the second quad would be, you know, early winter after that. Then they'll start getting into integration testing. That could take a full year, so we're probably revenue service into 29, but on property, very late 27 into 28, and then we're going to start testing from there. A two-month shutdown of three Montgomery County Red Line stations started this week. Why is this shutdown necessary? Yeah, well, first, I want to really say thanks to our customers, patience, and understanding. And overwhelmingly, people are really understanding. And no one wants these shutdowns. We do them all over the region, usually in part of summer and sometimes in late winter during the holiday period. We try to get it with the least amount of people on the system. That doesn't mean there's not a lot of people in the system. This shuttle bus, in the last four days, we did 100,000 people. might be one of the largest shuttle buses we ever do. We have about 120, I think, buses on the line. It's a really big operation. Why are they closed? Yeah, it's to do two things. One, to integrate the Purple Line that is, by the way, not a metro project. That is a Maryland Transportation Department project, but we're working really close with our partner. And they're building a second entrance integrating into the Bethesda Station. And that is a very deep, complicated project. And the second piece is we're doing very significant track and platform maintenance through Medical Center and Grovesner up in that area. And it's just good state of repair work that we must do to make sure that we run really good safe, reliable service all the time. So we do these all over the system, and we really try to make it so it's the least amount of impact customers, but we must get this maintenance done to be safe. What does this have to do with the benches and the station? Because we got a note from Lee and Rockville who says, closing the red line subway stations is a textbook example of the cure being worse than the disease. There is nothing wrong with the benches and other structures at the Grovener Station or any other station.

If your purpose was to inconvenience the riding public, you have succeeded big time. Yeah, I'm not sure about the benches specifically, but Grovesner, we're rebuilding the entire platform before it collapses. So many people remember outdoor platforms in Metro. I remember some of these are pretty old. We did a big platform replacement project, and there's a couple left, and that's one of them. And so the underpinnings of that platform are structurally deficient, and the team is going in to ensure long-term, you know, that we have a Grovesner station 20 years. from now, not one that just works really well for the next little bit. I mean, the Monday where all this started, you were seeing the really big lines. I mean, by all accounts, it seems like we had a reporter out there, you know, more recently. It seems like it's getting better. I mean, so what happened Monday? Was it just purely a case of people weren't quite aware until it's right in front of them? How's it going now? So, like, day one of every one of these shuttles is always the worst day. It's just no way around it. We'd love you to normally start these on a Sunday because of July 4th. We had to start on a Monday, so not perfect. You've got to get the light cycles down. You've got to get the bus queuing down. There are some people that, you know, despite massive notifications over five, six, eight months, will say, what happened? I didn't know about this. So it takes a while. We, you know, so there's stuff we have to improve. I'll tell you. Montgomery County, DOT, Chris and his team have been fantastic. Will Pines, the administrator of State Highway and the Maryland DOT team, fantastic. Everyone's working really well together. And you really... see day after day and went from a Reddit of this is going to be the worst summer ever to, hey, Metro's working really hard and that wasn't that bad. Obviously, the further you go, the longer the trip is. But overall, we're feeling pretty good after day four of the adaptability that the team has shown. DC recently released a draft master plan of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stadium site, and it calls for expanding the existing stadium armory station to help move the tens of thousands of fans expected to come to games. The DC Council recently approved $300 million for the project. What would an expanded station look like? Yeah, so two things on that. We are, one, very excited to work with our DC partners and the commanders, been a lot of great collaboration on that. So two things about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that we've got to get right. One, it's going to be a much bigger stadium than anything that's ever been there. Two, it's going to be a big expansion of a residential and commercial neighborhood, you know, i.e., like Navy Yard kind of deal. So that station is really good, and especially from the point of view of service that we push through there. We put three subway lines through there, so we run a lot of trains. Our issue is we don't have really good infrastructure that moves people from what we call top side of the street through the station to get on trains. So what is lacking at the current State of Memory Station is one, there's only one elevator, and it's on the other end. That's a problem. We need multiple elevators. And to get elevators to that platform is about 100 feet. So they're very expensive, a lot of complicated way to do that. Number two, we need a kind of a, I won't call a third entrance, but a different way to access that entrance to spread people out. Then what we want is to spread a mezzanine. So if you ever been to a good station example, it might be foggy bottom. I use a lot. If you go downstairs, you can go quickly down to the platform where you can go further, then go down. We need to extend the mezzanine at Stadium Armoury. So we can use a full 600 feet of our platform to distribute the crowd. And then a train come in, we swallow them up. Next train come in, swallow them up. So that has to be done. But to do that, you also do code stuff, you got ventilation, all that kind of stuff. The second piece that is, we think, is very important is...

what we call the gold line, and that is to connect Union Station in phase one to the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campus and eventually further east across the river and then west from Union Station. And that gold line is really important to get people that are coming in on the red line or from Marker V or E trains not to get on blue horns and silver. take gold and reduce the congestion in the system, and then less lines to get people on and off trains there. And let me tell you why it's called the gold line. Why is that? In the 1990s, there was a nightclub on Bladensburg Road Northeast called Jimmy McPhail's Gold Room. Really? Jimmy McPhail was a jazz singer who used to rent... a chartered bus every week to go to the football team's games. I happen to ride that bus every week, and Jimmy McPhail's of the Gold Room always sang to us when we were riding to the games and writing from the games, which is why I think that the bus line is appropriately named the Gold Line, because it will help people to remember Jimmy McPhail. I love that. For now one, if someone says to me... Well, there's people that think there's other reasons why I got named the Gold Line, and from now on, the company line is... It's named after Jimmy McPhail's Jazz Club. I'm sure you had some fun nights there. The Gold Room. As a matter of fact, there was a documentary made about it, and I showed some of the producers today that they were. Jimmy called me out at the Gold Room a few times when I was there, which I should have objected to, but didn't. Let me ask you more about Stadium Armoury, because that's a lot of work. So is this going to, I mean. I have to imagine there will be some closure of the station at some point. How do you manage that? Because I've got to imagine it's still pretty busy even without the stadium. It's going to be very challenging. And so, you know, there's a lot of people in the public, and they don't have to know all the details, obviously, of everything. But they go, well, what's the big deal? We have to figure out how to do a massive construction project while keeping the station open as much as possible. There is no question. There's going to be shutdowns. We're not sure what those are yet. There's going to be single tracking. There could be weekend outages. There could be multi-week outages. If we do that, we're going to combine it with other things. But there is going to be impact here. It's why we're working so closely with our D.C. partners. We're trying to wrap up this memory of understanding to get the devils and the details down. We have one more board meeting this month. It's on the 20. The goal here is to have our MOU signed approved by our board this month so then we can really, in earnest, start working on this project. We've done some work, but we really need to finalize the details so we can really go hard. And we're committed, though. If this happens, we're going to do what it takes to make sure in summer of 2030, Metro is not an impediment to people's great experience. Instead, Metro is one of the value ads to make this world-class stadium a world-class area to visit. And you can tell why July 4th, like Smithsonian Station, or if you go, I'm probably going on that scheme tonight, when we do it well, we're kind of just a matter-of-fact thing, and that's what we want to be. Someone that doesn't even think about how they get to a commanders or a concert, they know that metro's there for them. I mean, you talk about the gold line, not just where you hope it to be in the near term, but what you envision is the future. I mean, that was the plan for the street car. And we know what happened to that. It is no more. And so I guess what I'm curious about is,

Why do you believe that this sort of project, which will necessarily involve some pain along H Street, removing parking, you know, these things that were an impediment to the streetcar succeeding, why can you succeed with buses where, you know, D.C. couldn't with streetcar. Yeah, part of it's not whether the conveyance, if you will, the bus versus the train. It's the space allocated for the vehicle. We need dedicated lanes, and we want them in the center of the road. That's what the streetcar should have been. It wasn't. And what that meant is somebody in a car doing food delivery could literally stop and block the entire streetcar line. And I think everyone acknowledges that system design failure. We don't want to do that failure again. For us, we're not really interested in that because that's the current bus service that is on that street today, which is very robust. We move a lot of people. We know if we have dedicated lanes, it can be safer. We can grow ridership massively. We can help really the economy of 8th Street corridor. We can connect Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. We can connect Union Station. And then we can move it and solve K Street once and for all, which has been kicked around here for a couple decades as well. M Street in Georgetown has obviously been this never-ending... traffic clog. I'm not trying to say we need to solve that today, but we got to start building true bus priority in this region and treat the people that take the bus, which is, you know, most days 400,000 people with the respect they deserve as well, not just people that take the trains. Glad you got the buses because we have a lot of callers and other people who contacted us by email and Instagram about buses. But let me start with this. Metro recently asked bus drivers to quote fares to riders when they got on as a way to crack. down on Ferry Vision. However, the transit worker union says this puts drivers in danger of angry riders assaulting them and wants you to rescind the new policy. How do you respond to those concerns? Yeah, a couple things. One, listen, we like working with our union partners. We try never to be disagreeable, but sometimes there's disagreements. What we're trying to do is we've asked our operators, who are almost universally in a full-enclosed shelter, Some are fully enclosed. Some are about 85% and we're upgrading the ones from 85 to be 100%. And I think we've allocated $15, 17 million to do that. All we're looking for people to do is someone comes on a bus. Let's say it's the morning. Good morning, fairs 225. Good evening, fairs 225. We would call that basic customer service of engaging a customer. At no point does any bus operator do fair enforcement. They're doing fair awareness. If someone refuses to pay, if someone gives them lip, they're not supposed to engage, they're supposed to hit a button or radio, and if it's bad, they can call for police. There's nothing we care more about at Metro, especially as the CEO and the senior team, than the safety of our employees, period. And any suggestion otherwise is just false. Further, I just want to, I think this is super important, Koja. Assaults are down 20% on employees year over year. We had the lowest crime rate in the history of Metro last year, and we have lower employee assaults than lower than average of all of our peers across the country. One assault is too many. Those people need to be held accountable. I've been very vocal. If you hurt one of our employees, same as a customer, but if you hurt one of our employees, there's one of my family, I want you held accountable. I want prosecutors to go after those people, and I want to put them in jail.

So any suggestion that we don't care about our employees is ridiculous. It's the number one. I'm on the system every day. I talk to my employees every day. I have big town halls. We are doing everything we can to keep people safe in our system. And we have a call from William in Kensington, Maryland, who self-identifies as a metro bus operator. Okay. William, you're on the air. Go ahead, please. Hey, William, Metro bus operator in Montgomery Division. First, I want to say, I want to thank Mr. Clark for the wonderful job he's been doing in the four years. He's been here. He has really helped revitalize it from before that time. And he's done a great job for us. I know a lot of people give him a hard way to go because he's a lightning ride. He's the GM. But he's very knowledgeable and a great guy to work with. I had a pleasure to meet him a couple times. And that's really all I wanted to say, although you just hit on the foot in the fair thing, which I personally don't plan on doing. It's like throwing gas on fire, but that's not really the issue I'm calling about. I just wanted to thank Mr. Clark for a great job, and he's a pleasure to work with. William, never call here again. Yeah. I think Randy lined up this call. I definitely did not. Listen, William, just I think I take the opportunity. Listen, we have 13,000 colleagues. I have an enormous amount of colleagues. I have an enormous amount of respect. I have an enormous amount of colleagues. I don't know how many years they got a job. People don't get. They're split shifts. They work long days. They work holidays when everyone else is off. Winter weather. A huge amount of respect for people that do these jobs. So thanks for the call, William. And feel free to send me a note if there's anything we can improve. Thank you for your call. William. You're on the air. Go ahead, please. Hi, thank you, Kojo. Hi, Randy. My question is about the... the bus stops in the DuPont Circle area that are out of service due to the construction on Connecticut Avenue and just the communication about where the stops are on the app and just overall like what is the plan to get that area back up and running for bus service okay thank Bonnie thanks I go to DuPont very regularly I'll get some eyes on that here the next couple days get the team on as well I'm not I've taken the bus at DuPont from Time Time, so I'm not familiar with one, but I know where the, don't get me wrong, that construction, D.DOT's doing their best. It's a very disruptive project through there, but I'll get a check with the team and where we are, and if there's a problem with the communication or the apps, we'll get on that. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. And Paul in Washington, D.C., who has been waiting the longest, Paul, thank you for waiting. You're on the air. Go ahead, please. Congratulations, Mr. General Manager, for being the favorite guest on the show by a long way. We're going to bring an end to that. Go ahead. This is the best Friday I've had in a long time, so. Tom won't like that, but go ahead. Yeah, it's been almost exactly a year since you undertook the sweeping route rationalization on the metro bus system.

So I have two questions. Well, number one, I think there's been a lot of feedback about customer inconvenience. I personally have to take three buses where I should take one. But maybe some others have benefited from it. So I have two questions about what could determine the success. Okay, make them brief, please. Go ahead. Yeah, and one is what has been the overall customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Number two, how much has the corporation saved by this closure of roots and root rationalization? Yeah, hey, Paul, thanks for the question. It'll be very quick because I don't want Kojo giving me the time clock here. Let's start at the last first, which is we haven't saved any money. This was not a cost-saving exercise. We were cost-neutral. Every other place that's done in Bus Network Redesign actually add resources. We didn't have the money to do that. So unfortunately, it sounds like your particular experience has not been as great. We definitely hear from people that have been much, much better. What we tried to do was make the service more frequent and more reliable for especially people that needed more service. Now, there is more transfers in the system overall, but there's also, it creates much more frequency around the system. We're also trying to make sure that on a Monday you can get good service the same as on a Saturday. same as a night during the day. Metro used to be very heavy on rush hour kind of only. And what we're trying to build is an all day of the week, all hours of the day network. So all types of people can get good, reliable service. We do want to run a lot more service. We have a vision plan. That vision plan needs to be funded by the three jurisdictions. We're doing a little this year. DC got some new service starting in... just last week, and we got some more in D.C. starting in late December. Virginia, we added a little bit last week, and in Maryland, unfortunately, we were not able to add anymore because of some funding. But we at Metro, if the money is available, are definitely committed to wanting to run more bus service. We know that this region needs to run more bus. I'm glad that this caller asked about this because Greater Greater Washington just wrote about this and basically found maybe ridership dropped slightly on bus after the redesign, but it did lead to overall service improvements. But their number one sticking point was that the one thing you can't change is the speed of the buses. And that even if you change the routes, that is the number one hang up and probably the number one thing stopping someone from riding the bus. So I guess your answer to changing that is... What, the gold line and dedicated routes? Like, how do you get around that problem? Two days ago, the mayor of New York, the governor of New York, and the head of the New York MTA, got together and launched the most ambitious bus plan I've ever seen in my entire life, especially in transit business, where it's all labeled buses are going to be faster and better. And they're doing tons of bus priority lanes all over the five boroughs, transit signal priority, everything from bus bulbs, traffic queuing. tons of basically to say

All these individuals that take the bus matter to our society, and it can't just be people by themselves in a car. We need more boldness in our region to move that forward, and it's not just the gold line. It's Georgia, like just in the district, Georgia Ave. And we're working on some of these. Florida Ave is a mess. M Street is a, you know, and D.C. has done a lot, by the way. Listen, the mayor, she's been an awesome partner, the council, Sharon and her team at D.D. But we need more. We need more in Virginia. The Route 7 process has to. work so we can connect Tyson's to King Street, much better. There's some stuff in Prince George's in Montgomery County we'd like to do. We need as a group of people in this region say, are we willing to have 30, 40 people in a bus, have a little bit better experience so everyone in a car doesn't get the same. And I'm not saying that's easy, but if we were going to make bus better, the buses have to be able to move. And there's times a day, Alex, where we have buses moving four to five miles an hour. It's just, that's a ridiculous thing in the richest, one of the richest places I'm playing. Earth. We need to make the transit system more efficient. And when we do that, by the way, Metro's budget is more efficient because our only solution is to throw more buses at it, which costs a lot of money. You recently complimented the Trump administration's push to help make Metro clean and safe. What is Metro's relationship with the federal government right now? I'm not sure the specific quote you're getting at there. So listen, we are an apolitical organization. Are you complimented? Transportation Secretary Dean Sean Duffy's push to make metro clean and sure yeah listen I was with the secretary last week Great meeting. He's been very supportive of Metro. You know, we have really good relations on the Hill, bipartisan. We have an incredible delegation here that I just super appreciate. Our Senate and House delegation are amazing. But we're also building great relationships with people around the country that so impact transit as an industry. So I'll give you a good example. Congressman Womack runs... part of appropriations. He's out of Arkansas. He helped with partners in OMB have $30 million for Metro for special event and security funding in operations. We've never had that. We've been trying to get that for decades. We have a big project that we want to do with the FTA, Federal Transit Administration, to modernize the red line. We're looking for $6,700 million. Of course, we're going to go and work with them. They have the grant funding. We want to work with them. They want to work with us, and we want to make transit better. So we're going to work with anybody that wants to make... Metro work best. Only got a couple of minutes left. Metro is apparently experiencing a real surge in popularity in recent years. In the last week, you've had hundreds of Metro fans lining up around the block to get their hands on Metro merch. How did your public transit agency become one of the regions most sought after brands? It's crazy, Cojo. Actually, the post-hist story on it today, 51st did one this week. We've had 10,000 people. Apparently, the number is hit our Metro pop-up store over the last two weeks. And the thing that I love about it, the morale shot for our employees. So a guy like William who called in, seeing people all over in the wild wearing our gear, there's not a lot of places where you can work where you can impact a million people a day and people wear your stuff. It's a cool experience. Now, I will tell you, that's fun.

But the fun only happens if we run good, safe service. And that's what we're really focused on. Only about a minute left. Do you have any Metro merch gear? I do. I do. But, I mean, is that impartial for me to say when I'm covering Randy Clark? Maybe you should edit this out. Take it back. We didn't give you any discount. That's for sure. No, that's true. It is pricey. If it was Tom, he would have, like, did a ceremony of burning a shirt or something. I'm going to make sure I get Tom some Metro March. And, by the way, Tom Sherwood will be back with us next week. That's all. the time we have. Randy Clark is Metro's general manager. Thank you so much for joining. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. If you missed any of the show this week, you can catch a re-airing of the politics hour tonight at 10 p.m. Next week on the politics hour, D.C.'s likely next mayor, Janice Lewis George, will be joining us. And you can be part of that important conversation by emailing us your questions to cojo at wamu.org commenting on our Instagram post or calling in doing the show next week. Alex, what are you most interested in hearing from Jenny? Louis George in 10 seconds less. How she's going to accomplish everything in a first year, and I'm sure she'll tell you under your strict questioning. Thank you all for listening and stay safe. Sherwood will be back next week. I'm Kojo Namdi.

The Politics Hour Kojo Namdi is produced by Matt Blitz. Our supervising producer is Kayla Hewitt. Our engineering team this week is Kellyn Quigley and Adrian Danhauser. Our phone screener is Ruse Secular. For past shows, visit thepoliticshour.org.