So the big news today in DC is that the General Manager of the Metro System, John Catoe, has announced his resignation — his last day is April 2nd.

Catoe has long been the face of a troubled transit agency, and has taken considerable amount of flak from bloggers and Twitterers. But as someone who rides the Metro daily, and who tries to stay abreast of news regarding WMATA, I have to admit I don’t know that I’m reassured by his resignation.

By which I mean I don’t think Metro’s failings are Catoe’s and Catoe’s alone, as opposed to some people who no doubt are certain that on April 3rd, Metro will order five thousand new subway cars and dump all of their rolling stock that’s over five years old. I don’t think money grows freely in subway tunnels, and while I’d love to see the escalators at Woodley Park and Bethesda completely fixed and up-again*, I don’t know that a thirty-year system can be maintenance or inconvenience free.

There are things I believe: it’s easier to break something than to fix it. Assuming Metro was broken before Catoe, was three years enough time to fix the system? Let’s be honest: was it? Assuming Catoe broke the system, how long will it take his replacement to fix it?

I guess what I’m saying is, I’d love to be an optimist who believed that simply by appointing a new GM, all of Metro’s ills would be solved over night. But I don’t believe that all of those ills began with Catoe’s appointment to the position in the first place.

It’s like the people who bitch and moan because some stations really don’t have, say, the number of exits or entrances they need: well, explain to me what exactly you want the GM of WMATA in 2010 to do to resolve an architectural design choice made in the late 1960s, okay? No Metro stop in Georgetown? How is that WMATA’s fault?

I wonder how long it’ll be until Catoe’s replacement goes from the person who was going to fix everything, to “just another Catoe”.

*For the first time since I started using it (irregularly) in July of ’09, both escalators are fully functional at Medical Center as of yesterday (possibly earlier).