Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx hopes Trump administration will continue to push changes for Metro
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Version 0 of 1. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Thursday that he hopes the incoming Trump administration will continue to push for improvements to the Metro system, particularly in forcing Maryland, Virginia and the District to take a stronger hand in overseeing the transit agency. Foxx touched on Metro’s woes in an 11-page exit memo that recounts his tenure at the Department of Transportation and points to the challenges that will face Elaine Chao, who has been nominated to succeed him as secretary. [Metro sank into crisis despite decades of warnings] “For 40 years, the Washington, D.C. subway system, known as Metro, put their revenue needs ahead of safety and maintenance, which created a significant safety risk to the traveling public,” Foxx wrote, recounting the safety audit by his department that led him to take the unprecedented step of placing safety oversight of the subway with the Federal Transit Administration. [Foxx, saying ‘no more excuses’, replaces 3 Metro board members] But the oversight was supposed to be temporary, and Foxx has repeatedly criticized the three jurisdictions for failing to move more quickly in creating a new oversight agency. He has even threatened to withhold millions in federal funding should they fail to do so by a February deadline — a timetable the three have already said they will not meet. [Md. and Va.won’t meet deadline for new Metro safety body. What happens now?] “The next administration should continue to push the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia to do a better job overseeing the safety of the transit agency,” Foxx wrote. The reference to Metro was but one paragraph in the lengthy memo that highlighted the advances he and his predecessor, Ray LaHood, made during the Obama administration. LaHood helped the post-recession revival and championed the need to tackle distracted driving, while Foxx provided a 30-year vision of the transportation needs of the nation, underscoring the vitality of providing roads and transit to connect neighborhoods that became isolated as urban planners in the 1960s and 1970s crisscrossed cities with expressways. [A crusade to defeat the legacy of highways rammed through poor neighborhoods] Both men worked to develop plans for looming technology, including autonomous vehicles, connected cars and revamping the country’s air system, all while struggling to find funding to repair and replace aging roads, bridges and transit systems. “The next administration is entering a period of advanced automated technologies in transportation, and infrastructure system that continues to work for some and against others in society, dramatic demographic shifts, and increase in extreme weather events in a changing climate, and a backlog of projects needed across the country with not enough resources to address it,” Foxx wrote. [This government competition could completely change the American city] “I believe we are at a crossroads with our nation’s transportation system. We are a different country than we were when the department [of transportation] opened its doors 50 years ago — more diverse, urban and populated,” he wrote. “I wish the next Secretary of Transportation every success, and hope the work we did in this administration will help empower the next administration to build an even stronger transportation system that serves the American public.” [Elaine Chao will face many challenges as Trump’s transportation secretary, including Metro] |