I know I'm about to piss a whole bunch of people off, but please at least try to understand. Unfortunately, so many people have a horrible knowledge and understanding of statistics.
Statistically, you are far more likely to die commuting by any other form of transportation other than rail (unless you count flying). So thus forcing people to commute by other forms of transportation does not increase safety.
Many employees had no choice but to go to work during Wednesday's metro shut down. The worst affected in many cases are the working poor who do jobs that require a physical presence, whom can't afford to miss work, and whom can't risk losing their job because they could not get to work. Even harder, many of these people have less options, not to mention less safe options to get to work.
Even worse metro rail did not run buses along the train routes and gave extremely limited notice. If they had waited a few days for the weekend my guess is they could have run buses along the train routes. Keep in mind some train stations see zero bus service during most hours including DCA.
So basically, by forcing people of rail, metro might be decreasing their liability, but not increasing safety. Sure you can say someone could have died in a fire. But someone is far more likely to die because of a jay driver hitting them, a reckless driver, etc. And if someone dies because of a jay driver or other reckless driver or poor road design (just to name a few things) metro isn't liable.
Which begs the question why is zero considered the standard on metro rail, but not when it comes to any other form of commuting?
Worse though while politicians come down on metro, where is the concern about the ever increasing number of pedestrians and cyclists being killed? Why aren't they attacking the car companies for all these deaths? Oh wait that's right the car companies give them money and are in their pockets.
In fact, if I could propose 5 ways to seriously decrease deaths and serious injuries they would be the following. Now when have you ever heard a politician suggesting these?
1. Once a pedestrian or cyclist is injured or killed at a crossing by a turning vehicle, do not allow vehicles to make turns at that crossing until the intersection is fixed.
2. Enforce jay driving laws. I've never seen one driver ticketed for jay driving ever.
3. Enforce no parking in bike lanes. I really should not even have to say this. But it amazes me counties invest all this money in bike lanes and then don't bother to ticket those parked or standing in them-which is a revenue maker.
4. Restrict who can drive an SUV as the death rates to pedestrians from SUVs are much higher.
5. And for goodness sake, make sure there is always a safe place for pedestrians to walk when there is construction. It's ridiculous what I've seen over and over. Multiple lanes for cars without a single one taken away and zero sidewalk.
