Washington D.C.'s metro system: Some speculations

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Enjoy your ride on D.C.'s super-modern metro system!  It offers the following services:

--Constantly non-functioning, poorly lighted escalators; the lack of bright yellow paint markings on the tip of escalators' steps, an accident waiting to happen, especially when an elderly person struggles to go down Metro's often non-moving "modern" people-moving mechanism on foot. (BTW, and ironically enough, there is a metro station -- the Smithsonian -- that is near the Air and Space Museum, an ode to America's transportation successes beyond planet Earth).

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--Having initially built escalators exposed to the weather -- rain, snow -- the Metro system began building "weather covers" (my perhaps inadequate term) for the escalators. But if you walk, along a narrow sidewalk, near the outside edge of these slick-looking glass and steel constructions when it's raining, you will be soaked by the water dropping from their edges (an umbrella might not always help).

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--Metro elevators all too often are out of order. This does not help when its escalators are also out of order.

--Red-colored paving inside the Metro which is dangerously slippery when wet (due to rainy conditions outside);

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--Incomprehensible announcements over the metro's stations public address system (no matter what language, English or Spanish);

--The sinister, and I mean sinister, darkness of its cement-"colorless" stations, a kind of commuter circle of hell without light;

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--The lack of clear, clean signs indicating which particular station a train is reaching (not helped by the usual mumbling of the train operator over its train public address system about "the next stop is");

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--The challenge of attempting to speak to a Metro station "manager," supposedly there to help the commuter; you must deal with trying to engage in a conversation with that civil servant "protected" from the public by a booth designed to make face-to-face oral interaction all but impossible; in order for your voice to reach the "manager," you have to bend down to a minuscule rectangular opening (it looks like the opening of a mail box) facing the "manager's" lower body parts, hoping that your words will be heard by the master inside; a somewhat pornographic situation, perhaps reflecting our over-sexed, speechless society.

--Incidents/accidents/crimes on the Metro, too many to be cited here. As I suspect many other commuters feel, when I get on the Metro I keep my fingers crossed that I'll reach my destination safely and on time.

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I try to understand  (justify) the dysfunctional Washington area Metro from the nature/peculiarities of American society:

--Americans have little historical experience in public transportation;

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--In a "democracy," there is no "one voice," so varying lobbies/interests/political entities (not to speak of the states in the Washington D.C. area [Maryland, Virginia; to foreign readers -- as you know, the "District of Columbia, where Washington is located, is not a state] -- recurrently disagree about the goal/purpose of public transportation and -- most importantly -- on how to fund (find?) it.

From a more day-to-day Metro-user perspective, I come to the following (sad) conclusions:

--Nobody's really in charge of the "Metro system" as a whole, especially in the all-important matter of details. Anyone who endures the system (i.e., actually uses it) cannot help but be struck by how some Metro stations -- to cite one simple example -- have clearer signs/better working escalators than another. Why? Who sets the fixes/priorities?

--Metro employees/contractors (the gals/guys who supposedly fix the escalators/elevators) are overpaid and are protected by various laws/regulations that "protect" them from commuter complaints/criticisms. In my worst moods I think that the non-functioning of these mobile movement mechanisms (MMM -- pardon my acronym) are a management/labor conspiracy, conspired by the MMM incompetents themselves, to keep them -- the incompetents -- employed (on all levels of the Metro bureaucracy). Here I fully stand to be corrected: am not a politician or lawyer, just a commuter reacting, perhaps too viscerally, to unsatisfactory service.

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--Need I mention, as a rider of the Red Line, the near-presence of a sad-looking, presumably beggar lady, holding a child in her hands, silently asking for money. Poor lady, although I have doubts about how desperate she is in the Land of the Free/Opportunity. [Added on 12/9/2015: She has been professionally "begging" for months, with her baby showing no signs of growth].

MORE IMPORTANTLY, ON THE  POSITIVE SIDE:

--"Checking in" the metro is a technological wonder -- just "flash" your prepaid card and you're in -- quickly.

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--The metro system is kept remarkably clean and relatively quiet. That is quite an accomplishment in a country where trash/incessant noise is part of the American Dream. When I see a Metro employee actually cleaning the system by making sure it's not infested by litter, I express my silent thanks deeply, very deeply in my American heart. We all know that when public spaces become spaces to dump trash, they disappear as public spaces and become garbage, graffiti-infested dumps.

--Station managers, despite the challenge to commuters of communicating with them (due to the design of their work stations) are on the whole helpful, especially when access to the station is complicated due to metro card problems and other difficulties due to commuter ignorance.

--Clearer signs indicating stations are being gradually -- but oh so gradually -- installed.

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Most important!

--Washington, D.C. is not really a large city. If you live in the District and are blessed with being physically mobile, you can walk/bike to your destination expeditiously without using public transportation (or your car). Ecologically-concerned millenarians, of which I am not a generational part due to my age: Just take a few minutes off your gym workout and simply use your feet to get wherever you want to. Or, even better, stay at home, after a good walk, and read a good book and tell the boss (by email) to take a hike. (But of course you must have a trust fund to do so; a privilege which I never had -- thankfully).

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God bless America and its capital!