How the Washington D.C. Metro got so bad
Living in the DC metro area I see two big issues with Metro service: 1- there are four different jurisdictions (VA, MD, DC, and the Feds) all trying to agree on every little thing and all trying to get their piece of the pie, and 2- people <i>have to</i> use Metro. Traffic on I-66&#x2F;495&#x2F;395 is so ungodly bad that even when Metro is single-track for repairs it&#x27;s still on par or even slightly faster than traffic. And that&#x27;s on a <i>good</i> traffic day; it&#x27;s worse when it&#x27;s raining. Not to mention the standard issue with finding and paying out the nose for parking once you&#x27;ve driven into DC. Metro doesn&#x27;t have a huge incentive to provide better service because even with ridership being down 5% it&#x27;s probably not going to dip much further since Metro riders have no alternative.<p>I think DC is also semi-unique in the makeup of its commuters since inside the beltway is such a hub for employers and a large number of employees are happy to have an hour+ commute each way. The cost of real estate is so ridiculously high around here that you don&#x27;t start seeing 3+ BR townhomes becoming accessible on anything other than a VP+ salary until about 15 miles out from downtown DC. If you want a freestanding home over 1000sft the affordability distance becomes 20+ miles.<p>From what I&#x27;ve seen a vast majority of people will do whatever contortions they need to in their personal lives to get and keep a government&#x2F; government contractor job because those jobs have incredible stability (contractor not as much as working directly for the government, however that depends on what contractor you work for). Once you&#x27;ve got the coveted federal job you&#x27;re happy to live in a basement 20 miles from the city on your entry-level pay tier because if you can just grin and bear it long enough you&#x27;ll be almost guaranteed employment for life. Those employees can, do, and will continue to use Metro despite every problem it has because sitting in their car on I66 for an hour is not a viable alternative.