Metro GM meets with 650 agency managers, urges them to put ‘safety first'

Metro General Manager Paul Wiedefeld met with 650 agency managers during a closed meeting at the Strathmore on Tuesday to discuss a solution to fix safety issues with the transit system.

During the meeting, Wiedefeld urged hundreds of mid-level and senior-level Metro managers to put safety first. The slogan for the meeting was "Safety Trumps Service," and a flyer was handed out to each of the Metro managers as they walked out of Tuesday's safety meeting. Certain phrases are now banned from Metro vocabulary, including "They didn't tell me" and "That's not the way we do it."

The flyer included three top priorities that Wiedefeld expects from his employees:

- Nothing comes before safety
- Managers are accountable
- When it comes to safety, there is no excuse

After the meeting, Wiedefeld told FOX 5 that the conversation of performance firings came up during the meeting.

As the meeting was in session on Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said he seriously considered ordering a shutdown of the entire Washington Metro subway system last week and may still do that if local officials don't follow Transportation Department safety directives. It is clear to DOT officials who watched a video of one recent incident that there is too much electrical power flowing through the subway system, Foxx said.