ms. comstock: i really appreciate it. we present really good thoughts that the general manager has already put into this. maybe focus on those things first and bring the cost down. we can have a similar discussion on that when we eventually solve some of these other problems. i appreciate your taking that approach. thank you. the chairman: let me follow up on what my friend mr. connolly was saying with regard to jurisdiction. i don't know if you are necessarily the best group. i care a lot about secretary fox, i consider him a personal friend. i don't know if it was the right decision. here is my whole point on this. we have got to get the system in not at ahere you are hearing talking about the safety of this system. while it may be germane today i'm hopeful that in the very near future it will not be a discussion that even comes up. we talked about uber a little bit. i have staff members who are taking uber and other forms of transportation to get to work, who used to take the metro, just because they can't rely on metr

ms. comstock. >> thank you, mr. chairman, thank you for yielding and i would like to thank him for the hearing and allowing us to join. this is a vitally important issue to my district and to our entire region and i appreciate our new manager and i'd like to emphasize for everyone in the audience, that mr. wiedefeld is the new general manager of metro and we appreciate his work with us. i know when he first game and met with all of the washington area, my colleagues, we all emphasized a cultural change and i appreciate how much you are taking that to heart and really facing a lot of what you have called to heart, truths of the system. we were together at an event yesterday in lowden county and i will want to say how much people did appreciate, again, you're talking about the many hard truths we have on how we're going to have to deal with the long road ahead to regain public trust given we've had a drop-off in metro ridership because of the lack of reliability and the increased concerns for safety. so i do appreciat

ms. comstock. >> thank you, mr.hairman, thank you for yielding and i would like to thank him for the hearing and allowing us to join. this is a vitally important issue to my district and to our entire region and i appreciate our new manager and i'd like to emphasize for everyone in the audience, that mr. wiedefeld is the new general manager of metro and we appreciate his work with us. i know when he first game and -- he first came and met with all of the washington area, my colleagues, we all emphasized a cultural change and i appreciate how much you are taking that to heart and really facing a lot of what you have called the hard truths of the system. we were together at an event yesterday in lowden county and i want to say how much people did appreciate, again, you're talking about the many hard truths we have on how we're going to have to deal with the long road ahead to regain public trust given we've had a drop-off in metro ridership because of the lack of reliability and the increased concerns for safety. so i

ms. comstock and we will proceed in that order. so today i would like to begin by making some remarks, some opening statements, and i'm pleased again to welcome everyone. this is not a new kids on the block hearing. this is actually a continuum of hearings that we've held. i've had the opportunity to chair the transportation committee and we looked at the problems with ramada and washington metro during that tenure. on the 12th of january, 2015, last year, we had a horrible incident and accident in which an individual lost their life in the metro system. i called a hearing february 13th of 2015, that was our first ogr hearing to review what had taken place. we personally visited ntsb, we looked at -- we looked at the problem that was identified, we tried to find out what was going wrong at that point, what occurred that -- what made that incident occur and then seek remediation. we did a second hearing, i might remind members, the july 21st, 2015, and i'm very concerned that after talking with mr. hartwell we will hear from in a wh

ms. comstock and go to mr. connolly. >> mr. chairman, i didn't know it was that easy to exhaust the republicans. >> i'm still here, jerry. >> you got this one even with all my italian emergency. go ahead. >> thank you, mr. chairman. after seeing a little bit of the back and forth here, one of the things i'd like to recommend to all of my colleagues here is to focus on our new general manager here who has really set out some good things that we all can agree on. so there will be time later for some the food fights and some of the things we have seen here but i think where we need to focus right now is on what mr. wiedefeld has focused on, and i think a lot of our colleagues on a bipartisan basis agree on that. so i would encourage everybody as we go forward on this, let's work on all the things we agree on first before we start any of these of these fights. in that effort, i wanted to ask mr. -- i appreciate what mr. evans said about you. it's capable of anyone who has ever been here. you certainly have demonstrated that from th

ms. comstock: john cavanaugh attended georgetown university, where he received a bachelor of science in language and linguistics. he began his teaching career at georgetown preparatory in 1973 and shortly transfer moved to the congressional schools of virginia in 1976. he's shown an exemplary commitment to teaching over what has now become a 40-year career. over the years, mr. cavanaugh has taught spanish, latin, german, italian, english as a second language, geography, world history, american history, and government to thousands of students. currently concentrating on latin and history, she's shown the same dedication to his students since the first day he walked into the classroom 40 years ago. his knowledge of american history is legendary and he instills in his students a strong desire to learn while also encouraging them to explore their own talent. his hard work and passion for education has led him to -- led to his peers nominating him for "the washington post" teacher of the year award. he's been described as an icon and shepherd by colleagues and students alike. his unwearing commitment

ms. comstock. >> thank you, representative. i would like to introduce the new general manager of metro. we appreciate his work and i know when he first came in the washington area colleagues we all emphasized a cultural change and i appreciate you taking that to heart and facing the hard truths of the system. we were together yesterday in and i want to say how many people appreciate you talking about the many hard truths we have and the long road ahead to regain the prtrust of the publi. i appreciate the march report where you called on the metro to accept these hard truths. you noted that safety and culture at metro is not integrated with operation and not well rooted at all levels. yesterday you talked about eliminating a lot of the silos because of what was happening with the direct reports to you when something went wrong everyone looked at someone else so you highlighted those problems well and acknowledged, you know, the metro is actually at this time doing less with more to quote your statement. and in ten years there have been no significant reduction in workforce resulting in r

. >> the chair recognizes the gentle woman from verirginia, ms comstock, for five minutes. >> thank you. as a former member of the virginia state legislature, we are only there january through february or march sometimes. that had some impact this year also as we were trying to take some action. thank you. and i also wanted to mention my predecessor was up here today. i mentioned we were having a metro hearing and he raid raised the same issue about the board. appreciate the honesty in terms of looking at the expertise there and obviously there are challenges there to look at. good management ideas i think our new general manager is focused on, just to get them on the record here. yesterday, you had talked about things like looking at paratransit. i don't know if maintenance might be an area that can be outsourced. could you maybe detail for the record, so we have some of these good, positive ideas that things will probably all share and have in common and can improve? >> parking, obviously, feeds our system. 60,000 parking spaces. that's not the core thing we wake up every morning worr

mas acceso a medicamentos que contrarrestan la sobredosis y ms recursos para ayudar a las vctimas, que muchas veces son niÑos. s/ barbara comstockue llegan al porqueal actos a laerona su madre la consume es impresionante, seÑal esta congresista. de acuerdo a cifras del gobierno ms de 28,000 personas murieron por una sobredosis en 2014. unas 3,500 de ellas eran hispanas. s/randy serrano, @randytelemundo los activistas que están impulsando esta legiaón aseguran que solamente el % de las millones personas que necesitan ayua con adicc la proyectos de ley como estos despierteun sentidde urgencia en el país sobre laepi cesar --- los ecuatorianos continan pidiendo ayuda ante la grave situacin que viven despues del terremoto... ---a muchos les sigue faltando necesidades bsicas... ---cristian benavides est en portoviejo con lo mas reciente, adelante cristian --- take pkg :01 :12 :19 :52 1:09 1:25 :34 1:55 llegando a portoejo mientrala d necesidades bsicas por aire y por tierra llega una lluvia de donativos a portoviejo para los damnificados - pero no es suficiente- orlando crdova damnificado "necesitamos agua comida pquesoo la gente todo