President Obama may be trading in Air Force One for Washington’s Metrorail when he leaves the Oval Office in January.



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White House spokesman Eric Schultz said Thursday that Obama hopes the beleaguered Metro transit agency is able to tackle its financial woes and safety issues because "he could soon be a customer, a passenger,” the Washington Examiner reported.The Obama family plans to remain in Washington after leaving office so that Obama’s youngest daughter, Sasha, can finish high school.The region’s subway system has been undergoing a massive, yearlong repair effort that has involved service disruptions and partial shutdowns. Metrorail is the second largest subway system in the U.S. and is responsible for carrying many federal workers to and from the office."The president believes that a well-functioning transportation infrastructure is important for the capital region," Schultz said, according to the Examiner. "This is a transit system that needs to get its house in order, but it doesn't help that Congress has stalled funding for what has traditionally been a bipartisan priority."Obama has weighed in on Metro issues before, pinning the agency's state of disrepair on Congress’s refusal to invest in big infrastructure projects.“The problem we have is that the Republican Congress has been resistant to really taking on this problem in a serious way, and the reason is because of an ideology that says government spending is necessarily bad,” the president told reporters earlier this year.