Wrath at endemic Metro euphemism
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
A Summary of Metro Alerts After the Crash - Get There - Washington Post
“7:01 p.m.: WMATA Alert: (ID 55699) Disruption at Fort Totten. Trains are turning back at Rhode Island Ave & Silver Spring due to a train experiencing mechanical difficulties outside of Ft. Totten. Shuttle service has been established.”
Pathetic, lying, non-human sacks of excrement — from management to the person who actually typed these messages. Two hours after a collision with confirmed deaths and they were still calling it “mechanical difficulties!”
Coincidentally, I posted a joke on twitter yesterday morning about the absurd linguistic constructions that pervade the Metro system — unlike London’s Tube, by the way. Truly, the entire Metro system is awash in euphemism.
I do not think it is a stretch to wonder if WMATA management felt better with their decision to forego that train’s brake job and not implement NTSB safety recommendations thanks to some soft, euphemistic bullshit bingo perpetrated in some management meeting. Did the habit of routinely LYING to riders about train delay TRIVIALITIES permeate the agency, to the point where it killed? At the least, it delayed first responders from ringing the 3-alarm bell for a few minutes.
Yesterday, while all this was going on, I sat calmly waiting in a stopped train at Union Station, still hoping to make it to a softball doubleheader. Our train operator made intercom announcements that there was a delay ahead on the line. A few minutes later, she said it was likely trains would be turned around. She repeatedly said she would give us more information as soon as she had it, and I believed her. However, I felt I could hear in her voice that something serious had occurred. My guess is her inflection of worry came from her own suspicion about the information central Metro control was broadcasting — from her own parsing of the euphemism within the environment of limited communication in which she works daily.
Metro has legitimate funding problems. I will save for later the details of my fuck you very much for those ideologues who think that “starving” every publicly funded resource in this country is a wonderful idea.
However, it costs relatively little to maintain effective communication and contingency plans. And the truth — in this case, honest alerts to riders and the general public that there was a “major accident” or better yet “train collision” — is free.