Why Does Metro Need a Strategic Plan?

June 17th, 2013

Bus-Farragut-North-061312-71Strategic planning is the process of determining what an organization does, where it wants to be and how it plans to get there. Organizations with well-defined strategic plans have the distinct advantage of clarity of common direction. It offers discipline, focus, and results-orientation, enabling the entire enterprise to focus its talents and energies and to measure achievements against expectations and potential constraints. At Metro, it also provides leaders clear direction for prioritizing decisions around improvements, investments, expansion, operations, and maintenance.

Metro needs a strategic plan for all of the above reasons and more. The organization is implementing hundreds of improvements to rehabilitate the system via MetroForward and instilling management discipline to the organization through the General Manager/CEO’s business plan. These efforts will have positive effects in the near term, but will be insufficient to prepare the system and organization for the challenges to come.

Decisions are already needed for actions beyond the business plans for the following reasons:

  • Though MetroForward and the current six year Capital Improvement Program (CIP) may be completed by FY 2017, system maintenance needs will not disappear and in fact will increase as the system expands. Metro must prepare structurally and financially to ensure that the backlog does not increase once the current CIP is complete.
  • Meanwhile, the region is expected to continue to grow, bringing additional transit demand for existing and potential future locations and exacerbating crowding on buses, station platforms and trains, and system maintenance issues.
  • The region is preparing for $7 billion in regional transit investments, including projects such as the Purple Line (MD), the Silver Line (VA), and portions of DC’s streetcar plan. Additional investments in Metro’s capacity, including right-sizing Metro’s core is critical to successfully accommodating the expected increases in ridership that will come from these long-planned regional transit expansions.
  • Finally, resource scarcity regionally and nationally will continue to make planning, budgeting, and funding ongoing repair and rehabilitation needs difficult.

For more information:

Download both the full Momentum plan and the Executive Summary.

Regional support is important to making Momentum a reality! A number of regional stakeholders have already endorsed Momentum. Please sign on and add your name to endorse Momentum and send the message that public transit is vital to the National Capital Region.

 

 

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