Moore Fumbles Transportation Pick
Wes Moore is showing a serious lack in judgment by appointing failed Transit Administrator Paul Wiedefeld as Transportation Secretary
Yesterday Governor Wes Moore nominated Paul Wiedefeld to be Maryland’s Secretary of Transportation.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore Tuesday tapped Paul Wiedefeld to lead the state’s transportation department, calling him “the transportation leader we need in this moment.”
Wiedefeld emerged as a leading contender for the job last week. The Baltimore native and Towson resident is not unfamiliar with the state or its transportation agency. The governor portrayed his new appointee as an agent of change.
“It is increasingly clear that we need real change if our transportation system is going to live up to its true potential,” said Moore. “When we talk about real changes it means we are actually going to prioritize getting things done on time and on budget. It means projects that are going to focus on the things we’ve been speaking about for over a year, projects that are going to center in on equity both for who is building it and who can benefit from it.”
Moore called Wiedfeld “the transportation leader we need in this moment.” But with Wiedefeld’s record, why would Moore think this?
Paul Wiedefeld has a lengthy record of experience in transportation issues for sure. And he does have experience running transit systems, having run both the Baltimore and Washington Transit agencies.
But having experience is of little use when it comes with the record of incompetence that Wiedfeld has in a fifteen-years of transit management.
Let us take you back to 2007, when on Wiedefeld’s watch there was a plague of violence on MTA properties that Wiedefeld could not or would not stop:
In the latest of a series of violent incidents on Maryland Transit Administration property, a 14-year-old boy was shot and wounded on board a bus in West Baltimore this morning, according to city police.
Agent Donny Moses, a department spokesman, said the incident occurred about 12:45 a.m. on the No. 15 bus in the 1100 block of Poplar Grove St. He said the youth got into an argument with another male, who stepped off the bus at a stop, then leaned back in and fired a shot, hitting the boy in the leg.
In the latest of a series of violent incidents on Maryland Transit Administration property, a 14-year-old boy was shot and wounded on board a bus in West Baltimore this morning, according to city police.
Agent Donny Moses, a department spokesman, said the incident occurred about 12:45 a.m. on the No. 15 bus in the 1100 block of Poplar Grove St. He said the youth got into an argument with another male, who stepped off the bus at a stop, then leaned back in and fired a shot, hitting the boy in the leg.
How seriously did Wiedefeld’s MTA take safety?
We always ride the front car, thinking that it is the safest. Much to our surprise, this time we were the only female riders and were confronted by nine men using crude terms in front of us. All of the terms were sexual in nature, and they were announced in a loud and abusive in tone of voice.
After two stops, I went to the back of the car and called 911. The 911 operator attempted to transfer me to the Maryland Transit Administration police, only to give me a nonworking number. I called 911 again and explained that I felt threatened by these riders.
It took the 911 operator some time to identify whether we were in the city or county. By that time, we had arrived at the Mount Washington stop and an MTA employee boarded the train. At that time, the abusive riders bolted off the train....
....Over the last six months, I have seen fewer police at the stations, particularly at night and more riders jumping off the train at their first sight of an MTA employee.
On Wiedefeld’s watch, on-time performance dropped considerably:
The head of the Maryland Transit Administration offered beleaguered MARC train commuters an apology and a series of explanations Wednesday for what he called six weeks of service "far below what customers expect or deserve."
In an e-mail to MARC riders, MTA Administrator Paul J. Wiedefeld disclosed that on-time performance during June had fallen to 63 percent on the Camden and Brunswick lines, and 81 percent on the Penn Line.
"Although some service disruptions are unavoidable, there were instances where we could have taken actions to reduce the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that you and your family, friends and colleagues experienced," Wiedefeld wrote.
That was partially because under Wiedefeld the MTA, and I am not making this up, couldn’t adequately prepare for the seasons to change:
Thousands of Baltimore-area commuters were forced to abandon trains and board buses yesterday, the first workday disrupted by a light rail shutdown that closed the northern half of the system. State officials were unable to say how long service would be curtailed by a problem caused in part by the fall of autumn leaves.
Commuters attempting to take light rail between North Avenue and Hunt Valley were diverted to shuttle buses, which passengers said added as much as 90 minutes to the trip.
Light rail typically serves 30,000 riders a day - about half of whom use the northern stations….……Problems with light rail go back to the original design and route of the system, which opened in 1992 under pressure from then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer to get it running in time for the debut of Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The northern section of the line follows a narrow, old railroad right of way along the Jones Falls Expressway through forested parkland before emerging from the woods north of Ruxton.
The problem, Porcari said yesterday, is that trains run over fallen leaves and can grind the wet plant matter into what he described as a "gelatinous substance."
Even better, Wiedefeld couldn’t make sure that the MTA did have it’s fares stolen, among other problems:
The Maryland Transit Administration has referred a case to criminal investigators at the Attorney General's Office involving an employee who used keys to bus fare boxes to gain access to the collected money, according to a legislative audit released today....
.... Among its findings:
—During an 18-month period in 2006 and 2007, the MTA failed to perform maintenance inspections as frequently as required by federal rules on 66 percent of its bus fleet.
—As of January, the MTA had not performed a complete physical inventory of its equipment since July 1998.
—Of its 140 state-owned, non-transit vehicles, 39 were not driven the minimum of 10,000 miles of use on state business in 2007 needed to justify keeping them in the MTA's fleet.
The only finding to result in a criminal referral was the matter involving access to fare box keys.
According to the audit, the MTA did not maintain a proper inventory of which of the 34 employees responsible for collecting revenues had access to which specific keys. Nor did it record which supervisors issued which keys to each worker.
So, to recap, on Wiedefeld’s watch:
MTA could not keep it's system operating;
MTA could not perform basic maintenance on its trains and buses;
MTA could not keep it's passengers safe; and.
MTA could not adequately retain its fares
Wiedefeld was so bad at running MTA that he was shipped back to run BWI again. He was fired by Governor Larry Hogan in 2015.
Despite all of that, Wiedefeld went on to be appointed Director of the Washington Metro. The Washington Metro’s failures are so ubiquitous that everybody across the country is familiar with the system’s tendency to catch on fire. Things got so bad that there is a Twitter account and a website dedicated to the singular question “Is Metro On Fire?”
Even the Metro headquarters caught on fire during Wiedefeld’s watch.
The Metro training lapse that preceded Wiedefeld’s departure prompted the transit agency to pull train operators out of service for recertification, which created a shortage that led to longer train waits. The disruption added frustration for riders, regional businesses and elected leaders amid a rail car shortage that began in October 2021 after Metro’s 7000-series cars were ordered out of service for a wheel defect.
A federal investigation showed Metro was aware of unsafe wheel movements in the cars for years but had not fully addressed the problem or adequately alerted Metrorail’s regulatory commission. The problems, including other safety violations, led D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) to publicly question Metro’s management.
Wiedefeld announced his resignation on the same day Bowser made her comments.
Now, Wiedefeld is running the entire state Transportation apparatus. He will be tasked with Moore’s insistence on expanding public transit in Maryland despite a lack of market need for public transit in Maryland. After eight successful years of the Hogan Administration trying to actually fix traffic problems, we are going to return to the bad old days of the O’Malley Administration where well over half of the gas tax revenue went to fund public transit despite only eight percent of Marylanders actually using it.
Instead of fixing the real transportation problems we have, Wes Moore wants to focus on added options nobody is asking for.
But regardless of your support for or against Moore’s thoughts on transit expansion, that doesn’t answer why Moore would appoint a failed Transit Administrator like Wiedefeld as his “signature appointment.” What would possess somebody to take a look a Wiedefeld’s track record running transit agencies and think “this is the guy that should by my champion for transit.”
On top of it, why is Moore dipping into the world of Martin O’Malley retreads to serve in such an important cabinet post? The O’Malley Administration’s record on transportation policy was flawed, and their execution was worse. So as Maryland moves into the future, why would Moore bring back someone from the past whose record over the last fifteen years has been of constant failure?
The Wiedefeld appointment shows a serious lack of judgment by Wes Moore and tells us that he and is Administration just don’t appear ready for prime time.