Steve Burns
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON – (WMAL) The nascent WMATA Riders Union announced new Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld has agreed to meet with union members next month, in what is promised to be a “free-flowing, unstructured” discussion by the union’s spokesperson.
“We’re really pleased that he accepted our invitation to come do a forum with us,” Graham Jenkins, the union’s spokesman, told WMAL. “I think we’ve been really impressed with his willingness to engage pretty much everyone across the spectrum.”
Jenkins called Wiedefeld’s decision to meet with the union “tremendous. It takes guts,” he said. The union has already amassed more than 1,600 members.
“I would encourage us all to give (Wiedefeld) the benefit of the doubt right now. The one thing that’s safe to say is nothing that’s happening is his fault,” Jenkins said. “Even by the time we have the forum, he’ll have been on the job for two weeks, so it’s hard to imagine that anything will have changed by then, although hopefully we’ll have made steps in that direction.”
Jenkis said he’s hoping for not only comments and criticisms, but “suggestions on what WMATA can do to make itself better.”
The union has also put out a list of “quick fixes” it said Metro can implement now that would represent “tokens of good will,” according to Jenkins. First on the list is eliminating the fare charge for riders who enter and exit the same station when they see the station platforms jammed and trains running infrequently. “It’s a small, simple thing, but it means a lot and it’s one of the more directly frustrating aspects.”
The meeting is set for December 14.
Copyright 2015 by WMAL.com. All Rights Reserved. (PHOTO:WMATA Riders’ Union)
