Metro Service No Tea Party for Some Protesters



Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.)The Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire reported last night that Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) has fired off a letter to WMATA General Manager John Catoe complaining that the transit agency did not adequately prepare for last Saturday's 9/12 Tea Party protests, in some cases leaving participants stranded. The Post also has the story.

"These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” he wrote. “These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.”

Tweeting from the protest, Brady wrote, "Heard from veterans in wheel chairs, elderly that subway system inadequate." In his letter, he referred to a specific example of an 80-year-old woman and her 60-year-old daughter who were unable to get on a train due to overcrowding and were forced to pay for a cab.

In a response to a related complaint about poor service on Saturday, Metro officials pointed out both that scheduled track work was taking place and that the protest organizers had only predicted roughly 5,000 people would be at Freedom Plaza, with another 10,000 to 20,000 in front of the U.S. Capitol. According to the Metro officials, "The estimated numbers do not constitute 'heavy ridership' or warrant additional rail service." They added, "In the future, the event organizers can coordinate well in advance with Metro and arrange to pay for early openings of stations to accommodate their event, as the organizers of the Marine Corps Marathon, for example, do."

While we're all sympathetic to the plight of any nice old ladies who can't catch a train, Metro can't flood the system with trains if it doesn't know ahead of time that the demand will be there for it.

In case anyone is curious, Rep. Brady (R-Tex.) voted AGAINST increased federal funding for Metro.

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