Threats to cut post-midnight hours of D.C Metro by bureaucrats, eager to win budget battle, only antagonizes their bosses more -taxpayers!

Washington Post video of 2011-02-14: Metro after midnight
Local Metro riders voice their opposition to the proposal to scale back the late night weekend hours of operation.

Story at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2011/02/14/VI2011021401373.html

More related photos and anecdotes at the WaPo blog, Story Lab -the sort of thing the Herald and Sun-Sentinel should already have but don't: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/story-lab/2011/02/metro_after_midnight_if_they_c.html

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The Washington Post
Metro's proposal to end late-night weekend trains rankles Washington's party crowd

Sunday, February 13, 2011; 10:12 PM

After Metro transit officials proposed last week to trim their budget by ending late-night rail service on weekends, Washington Post staff writers J. Freedom DuLac, Brigid Schulte, Annys Shin and Theresa Vargas spent the wee hours of Saturday and Sunday mornings riding the trains to gauge reaction.

It's 1:15 a.m. on Sunday, and George Dizelos is at the Dupont Circle Metro station, waiting with two friends for the Red Line to Bethesda. It's late, but it's early.

"I've missed that last train before," he says of the 3 a.m. bar-hoppers' express. "Like, you go to Big Slice or whatever to get some pizza, and then you have to take a cab home. And it costs $20." That's the equivalent of four Yuenglings at the Big Hunt, the bar where they've spent part of the night.

Read the rest of the article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/13/AR2011021303061.html


The story above is proof positive that there's nothing quite like a bunch of government bureaucrats so eager to get their way in a budget battle, that they'll threaten to ruin a good thing and openly antagonize their clients and bosses -citizen taxpayers.

This emerging story in Washington over cuts to post-midnight hours on weekends is the transportation version of a fight between a municipality and govt. employees over a new proposed budget, where you can absolutely count on the Police and Firefighters to instantly vocalize worst-case scenarios where someone's grandma and her cat will soon go up in flames because overtime costs need to be trimmed.

By the way, as some of you may well recall, I was living up in the D.C. area when they FINALLY expanded the Metro hours past Midnight in the first place.

That long-overdue move caused an instant jump in enthusiasm for the system AND an instant jump in businesses all over the region within a mile or so of most Metro stops.

In particular, it was a godsend for many of the small but popular Arlington County restaurants I regularly patronized along Wilson Blvd., esp. near the Clarendon Metro, that could suddenly serve people who lived much farther away, and usually couldn't get there earlier due to trasnportation or time constraints.