WMAL Interview - LEIF DORMSJO - 10.20.16

INTERVIEW — LEIF DORMSJO– (LAY-FF) –  Director of the District Department of Transportation (DDOT)

On Thursday, WMATA is holding a hearing to eliminate late night service, which creates a hardship for residents and businesses around the city.
D.C. Mayor Bowser to Metro: ‘No articulation of a need’ for late-night service cuts. Thursday’s blockbuster public hearing on Metro’s plan to end late-night train service is bound to be filled with fireworks, but D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser has already delivered an opening shot. In a letter to Metro General Manager Paul J. Wiedefeld sent Wednesday, Bowser said the transit agency has failed to demonstrate the need for extra track time in the middle of the night and called Wiedefeld’s proposal an “outsized” idea. “There has been no articulation of a need, a plan, or how the plan is designed to solve the problem,” Bowser wrote in her letter. “Why close the entire system when you can only work on discrete segments at any one time? Why would the service cuts be permanent?” Bowser drew comparisons with SafeTrack, arguing that the thought and strategy that occurred in advance of Metro’s year-long period of intense, round-the-clock maintenance work has not been apparent in the plan to add eight extra hours of maintenance time late at night or early in the morning. “The region supported the ongoing SafeTrack maintenance plan because you clearly demonstrated a need and set a firm end date,” Bowser wrote in her letter. “That plan also took a phased approach to maintenance, which left much of the Metro system open for business. That is not the case with the late-night service cuts.”