My Frustration With Metro

First of all, I want to commend Metro for trying to run a good public transportation system. I know it's not easy, and you can't please everyone. There are always going to be glitches, because nothing is perfect.

That being said, here are my beefs:

1. The bus service from the Metro to where I live, College Park, MD,  needs to be improved. Also, the timing from the Metro Rail to the Metro Bus needs to be adjusted. It is frustrating when you come out of the station and you see your bus heading out of the parking lot. Then you have to wait a half hour for another one. This happens 9 out of 10 times, unless the bus is running late. In addition, it makes no sense to have the Metro Rail run until 3 AM on weekends, and have the last bus leave on Saturday at 9 PM and 5:40 PM on Sunday. During the week, the last bus from the College Park Metro heading north is just after 10:30 PM. We are forced to drive to the station and pay $5.10 per day to park. That makes riding public transportation less cost effective than driving. If you want to increase ridership, you need to increase convenience and cost effectiveness.

2. Safety. There are times, and not just late at night when riding the Metro Rail is just not safe. It's also not just in certain neighborhoods. You have roving gangs of teenagers who board the trains around Tenleytown in the upper middle class section of Washington, DC, and there are frequent roving gangs hanging out on the platform at Gallery Place, who seem to think that it is their right to terrorize passengers.

There are assaults and robberies that occur on a regular basis. I seen things happen, and I've also seen those fine products of our social engineering industry jump over and squeeze through fare gates without paying, right in front of a station manager, who does nothing. Metro needs to deploy more uniformed transit police at the problem areas, and start using more undercover plain clothes officers to deal with these teenagers. Also once there are apprehended when committing these crimes, they should not be dealt with as juveniles. 16 year olds and over are adults, no matter what the law says. They should be tried as adults, and there should be enhanced penalties for committing violent crimes on public transportation systems. Sending a 16 year old "up the river" for 20 to 30 years serves two purposes. First of all, it takes that miscreant off the street for a long time. While they are in prison, they can not commit any more crimes, unless it is a crime against another prisoner. Secondly, it sends a message to their peers. Taking this one step further, make their friends attend the sentencing hearing, as the judge makes an example out of them.

Besides the schedules and the crime, my other main beef is the cleanliness of the Metro Rail cars. When I first moved to DC in 1979, Metro was spotless. The police vigorously enforced the no eating, no drinking, no smoking and no littering laws. Today the cars are full of trash, people sit and eat sandwiches, drink drinks, and then throw the bottles either on the floor, or in the case of the teenagers who cause the problems, at passengers. Start enforcing the law with the small things, and there will be less to deal with with the big things. It worked in New York with "Stop and Frisk" and "Broken Windows." We need some of that here in DC.