Two signs show the Purple Line map and the new Purple Line Operations Center, during a groundbreaking ceremonyon Aug. 28 in Hyattsville, Md. (Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post)

AMONG THE problems that beset Metro is the stark fact that top officials from its three regional partners, Maryland, Virginia and the District, are strangers to one another. In recent conversations about the transit system, a prominent Virginia elected official mangled the names of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D), who chairs the Metro board. A top aide to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said he'd never heard of D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D). And a senior District official involved with Metro said he'd never met or spoken with Maryland's transportation secretary.

Add to those symptoms of Metro's dysfunction the fact that any jurisdiction on the Metro board can veto decisions favored by the other two, and you have a recipe for gridlock.

Metro's fissures cracked open the other day when board members from the District, Virginia and the federal government suddenly balked at a land swap , potentially delaying construction of Maryland's light-rail Purple Line. The move, which infuriated Maryland officials, was not just gratuitous and greedy, although it qualified on both counts. It also threatened Metro's own interests.

At issue is a long-planned deal under which Metro would transfer land around its Silver Spring, College Park and New Carrollton stations to Maryland, so that construction work can start there on the Purple Line. In return, Metro would receive a parcel of state land and a 450-space state-owned parking lot.

The Purple Line, which runs like an eyebrow through close-in Maryland suburban neighborhoods just north of the District, isn't part of Metro, but it would provide a link among those three stations, as well as the Bethesda station. Metro would feed passengers to the Purple Line and vice versa. In partnership, the Purple Line and Metro are a win-win proposition — until parochialism is factored into the equation.

With just weeks to go before work is scheduled to start on the Purple Line, Metro's Virginia and federal representatives now say Maryland is underpaying, because the land Metro would receive, valued at about $17 million, is worth $7 million to $20 million less than the land it would give up. Separately, the District's representatives on the Metro board are threatening to veto the land swap unless Maryland agrees to a reorganization of the board's committees.

Never mind that some of the land Metro would give up was granted at little or no cost to the transit system by Maryland or its localities in the first place. (One parcel, in Silver Spring, worth $8 million in 1990, was given to Metro in 2015, gratis.) Never mind that the Purple Line would provide a convenient new link for Metro passengers. And never mind that the stakes involved in streamlining the board's committee structure are minuscule.

The core problem is that Metro board members are so parochial and tunnel-visioned that they cannot discern the Purple Line's clear benefit to the region amid the clutter of their separate agendas. That they would threaten to delay the new light-rail line — which has survived a welter of lawsuits and political obstacles — is outrageous.

Former U.S. transportation secretary Ray LaHood has recommended getting rid of Metro's current board and replacing it with a much smaller body including no elected officials. Current members seem determined to prove the wisdom of his recommendation.