Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Totally Explained

Everything about Wmata totally explained

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) is a tri-jurisdictional government agency authorized by Congress, that operates transit service in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, including the Metrorail and Metrobus. WMATA is jointly funded by the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Maryland.

Services

WMATA operates rapid transit service under the Metrorail brand, as well as fixed-route bus service under the Metrobus brand. WMATA is also part of the public-private partnership that operates the DC Circulator bus system. WMATA also has its own police agency, the Metro Transit Police.
Colloquially, Metrorail is known as "The Metro" and riders refer to WMATA's Metrobus as simply "the bus", unless they need to distinguish Metrobus from another local bus system such as Alexandria's DASH, or Montgomery County's Ride On. WMATA as a whole is often informally referred to as "Metro".

History

WMATA was created on February 20, 1967, after the compact was approved by the Maryland General Assembly in 1965, and passed through the Virginia General Assembly and Congress in 1966. WMATA broke ground for its train system in 1969. WMATA's bus system is a successor to four privately owned bus companies (DC Transit, the Washington, Virginia and Maryland Coach Company, the AB&W Transit Company, and the WMA Transit Company), which were sold to WMATA in 1973.

Future of Metro

Currently, the Metrorail is being extended to provide service to the Tysons Corner area of Virginia, with further extension to Dulles Airport. Phase I to Tysons Corner is expected to be completed in 2011. Phase II to Dulles is expected to be completed in 2015. No stations will be opened until the completion of each phase. This will add another color to the Metrorail system, silver. Drilling began in mid-2006. There are other rumors of a Georgetown Metrorail connector, an extension of the Green Line northward to BWI Airport, another line along I-395 or Columbia Pike in Virginia, and the Purple Line, which is a circular line to go along the Capital Beltway, particularly the portion between Bethesda and New Carrollton. An extension from Franconia/Springfield to Ft. Belvoir is also a possibility due to the BRAC realignment which will place thousands of new jobs at Ft. Belvoir by 2012. While there has been much discussion about all of them, none is in any official planning stage. The Silver Line alone took more than ten years to start construction.

Organization

Board of directors

WMATA was set up with a board of directors, with twelve members. Of those, six are voting members, and six are alternates. Virginia, Maryland, and the District each appoint two voting members and two alternate members. The position of board chairman rotates between the three jurisdictions. Most board members have other jobs as well serving on, for example, the D.C. city council; the board appoints a CEO and general manager to supervise the day-to-day operation of the agency.

Leadership

At the outset, WMATA was led by general manager, Jackson Graham, a retired general in the Army Corps of Engineers, who supervised the planning and initial construction of the Metrorail system. He retired in 1976, and was replaced by Theodore C. Lutz. Richard S. Page, head of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration, took over as general manager of WMATA in 1979. Page resigned in 1983, amid increasing financial difficulties for WMATA. and was replaced by Carmen E. Turner, who served for seven years. Former New York City Transit Authority chief, David L. Gunn, took over as head of WMATA in 1991, followed by Lawrence G. Reuter in 1994, and Richard A. White in 1996. White would serve as general manager for the next ten years. Dan Tangherlini replaced White as Interim General Manager in February 2006, and Jack Requa, WMATA's current Chief Operating Officer for Bus Service, assumed Tangherlini's duties as Acting General Manager on November 6, 2006. John B. Catoe, Jr., who was previously the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, became the agency's eighth permanent General Manager in January 2007.

Current leadership

General manager

On January 11, 2006, the Board of Directors announced the resignation of general manager, Richard A. White. He was replaced by board member Dan Tangherlini, as Interim General Manager, effective February 16, 2006. White had three more years in his contract to work for Metro, but had come under fire for mismanagement; however, he was also "widely credited with saving the Metrobus system from collapse and with keeping Metro running during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001." John B. Catoe, Jr. was sworn in as the General Manager of Metro on January 25, 2007, replacing Jack Requa, who had served as the Acting General Manager since November 6, 2006. Requa reassumed his duties as COO for Metrobus.

Board members

District of Columbia:

Jim Graham, second vice chairman and principal member
Emeka C. Moneme, principal member
Marion Barry, alternate
Anthony R. Giancola, P.E., alternate

Maryland:

Elizabeth M. Hewlett, chairman and principal member

Peter Benjamin, principal member

Marcell Solomon, alternate

Gordon Linton, alternate Virginia:

Christopher Zimmerman, first vice chairman and principal member

Dana Kauffman, principal member

William D. Euille, alternate

Catherine Hudgins, alternate

Funding

In 2004, the Brookings Institution released a report entitled "Deficits by Design" that found the agency's serious budgetary challenges owe in large part to its problematic revenue base. Most notably, Brookings found that WMATA's extraordinary lack of dedicated funding sources has necessitated an over-reliance on annually appropriated support that makes the agency vulnerable to perennial financial crises. As a result, the region's political and business leaders created a committee to look at new ways to fund the system, including some type of dedicated tax.
In 2005, Rep. Tom Davis introduced the National Capital Transportation Amendments Act that would provide a one-time cash infusion of $1.5 billion if the governments in the Washington area can come up with a dedicated revenue source for the agency. The bill passed in the House and was referred to a Senate committee.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Wmata'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://washington_metropolitan_area_transit_authority.totallyexplained.com">Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.