The articulated bus map probably still has some gaps. If you have a minute, please take a look at it and let me know if you spot any missing or incorrect info. I especially need help east of the river.

by BeyondDC on Jul 26, 2012 9:01 am • link • report

So Hoyer wants to give DC voting rights in the House, just like states do, but he doesn't want them to be able to impose a commuter tax, just like states do. Or am I misinterpreting the WaPo article?

by Fitz on Jul 26, 2012 9:13 am • link • report

Argh. More useless education numbers!?! When will people figure out that these aggregate statistics show us close to nothing about educational attainment in the city's traditional and public charter schools?

Statistics like these can be too easily affected by students who move between DCPS and public charter schools, as well as students who move in and out of the city. The most important metrics are those that follow random and anonymous individual students over their school careers. That is the only way for us to know how the system and individual schools are facilitating learning and achievement.

by Adam L on Jul 26, 2012 9:15 am • link • report

@Fitz

You got that right. As I said before, you know Steny would be singing a different tune if D.C. were returned to Maryland and he got to impose a commuter tax on several thousand Virginians.

The tax situation, along with the near-immediate abolishment Height Act, are two of the most important less-mentioned reasons why the District will never gain statehood or be retroceded to Maryland.

by Adam L on Jul 26, 2012 9:18 am • link • report

Calling on metro to increase night service doesn't do much if you don't provide them more money.

by Sam on Jul 26, 2012 9:46 am • link • report

I wonder if DC would be better off if some Fed jobs were in fact moved out of the city in exchange for a commuter tax. What is the real cost of having suburbanites travel into the city and use public services without paying for them (roads, EMT, water bills(which the Fed rarely pays on time), increased commuter time because of stopped up roads, other infrastructure costs. I guess the real question is, do suburban commuters actually cost the city or does their sales tax contribution make up enough of their cost to the city? Would be interesting to see the figures. It might be better for the city to loose some federal jobs in exchange for a commuter tax.

by DAJ on Jul 26, 2012 9:53 am • link • report

RE: Late bus service

The S2 and S4 buses are a joke after 8PM on weekdays. Every single bus is jammed full of people just like in the picture in the article. Forget about relying on the bus if you want to get on north of M street - you're better off walking. And the buses are late and take forever because they are so overcrowded - between 8 and 10 the buses are supposed to come every 10 minutes but you can regularly wait 20 or more. After 10 they are supposed to come every 7 minutes! For WMATA, rush hour ends at 6:30 and they completely ignore the large population of people who clean office buildings and work in bars/restaurants downtown who take the S buses home. I have been complaining to WMATA about this for years but they do not seem to know what to do about it. Keeping the articulated buses on the road would be step one.

And I agree with the poster above - if Ms Bowser and Mr Graham want Metro to provide more bus service, shouldn't they be calling up Jack Requa and having a meeting with him and figuring out how much it would cost and how to make it happen? Instead the best we get from them is a lip-service quote when the WP is doing a story and calls them.

by MLD on Jul 26, 2012 10:01 am • link • report

@DAJ, Honestly, I'm ok with losing some Federal jobs. Walled off compounds where the majority of the workers don't live in DC, don't interact with DC in any meaningful way, don't pay property taxes on the building they occupy, don't generate any revenue, etc.

The cost of moving agencies along makes Hoyer's threat hollow, but I'd be happy to see, say Federal Triangle, be a little less Federal.

by Tim Krepp on Jul 26, 2012 10:07 am • link • report

@Beyond DC, I can't say that I've ever seen any articulated buses EOTR...outside of the X2. Of course, I only recently found out what "articulated" meant.

Or am I misinterpreting the WaPo article?

Nope, you've pretty much summed it up. Tells you a lot about our "friends" in high places hunh?

by HogWash on Jul 26, 2012 10:07 am • link • report

Advocates of a commuter tax should carefully consider whether the goal is to tax commuters for the services DC provides commuters, or to also require commuters to also fund to perations of the DC government from which they derive no tangible benefit.

I think that there are alot of fair-minded suburbanites who would remain neutral about a tax merely intended to make us pay for our fair share for the roads, traffic enforcement, emergency services, etc. If DC was part of Maryland, then MD-SHA would be maintaining the major thoroughfares, for example. So why should we avoid that cost just because DC is no longer part of Maryland?

Conversely, making commuters pay for the DC school system would be manifestly unfair (unless maybe our children were allowed to attend those schools) since we already have to pay for our local school system. The commuter tax that some envision (more than the 2.5% income tax we pay to our county) would replace the current opportunistic failure of suburbanites to pay for the roads, with an opportunistic taxing of suburbanites to pay for things from which we derive no benefit. Any suburban politician with any common sense would do everything possible to prevent that happening, since it would drain away from her constituents an amount of money comparable to the value of federal funds provided to the state and local governments.

Mr. Hoyer's suggested response that he would retaliate by moving federal offices to the suburbs is a bit silly. It would be far easier to simply exempt all federal salaries from the commuter tax, or at least limit the commuter tax on federal employees to a fixed percentage of income based on the services derived. That might be one element of a compromise solution.

The State of Maryland should not necessarily give a 1:1 tax credit to residents paying a commuter tax, especially if the tax goes beyond services provided. Residents who live in Maryland require the same government services whether or not they work in DC. One who chooses to work in DC should logically bear the cost of that choice, rather than shift it to Maryland residents who work in Maryland. If that causes a few businesses whose employees all live in the suburbs to relocate into the suburbs, it might also cause some businesses whose employees live in the city to relocate into the city, with a net reduction in commuting. Not so bad.

One key difference between DC and other cities with a commuter tax, is that those other cities are all within states who can limit the commuter tax to a level politically acceptable to the state. Also, those states are often liable for the costs of operating the city government if the city proves unable to raise the funds. So the DC situation is unique.

The uniqueness of the DC situation does not necessarily mean there should be no commuter tax. But it probably does mean that Congress would need to set some limits, and that the neighboring jurisdictions should not automatically treat this commuter tax the way states treat it in other cities.

by JimT on Jul 26, 2012 10:07 am • link • report

I wonder if DC would be better off if some Fed jobs were in fact moved out of the city in exchange for a commuter tax.

Hoyer is seriously bluffing. He knows he has little (to no) control over whether the fed gov't moves. Besides, where would they go and how would businesses be affected.

by HogWash on Jul 26, 2012 10:11 am • link • report

A commuter tax might be a good idea for DC, but I do not think it's a good idea for the region as a whole. Incentivizing moving jobs out of the core is a bad idea - it makes Metro and other transit options less efficient for moving people to their jobs and back. Removing federal offices may provide space for development, but at the same time having more of those jobs in the suburbs makes living in the city that much less valuable.

by MLD on Jul 26, 2012 10:11 am • link • report

Advocates of a commuter tax should carefully consider whether the goal is to tax commuters for the services DC provides commuters, or to also require commuters to also fund to perations of the DC government from which they derive no tangible benefit.

What services does DC provide for commuters that don't involve DC gov't?

by HogWash on Jul 26, 2012 10:16 am • link • report

It's an open question as to the wisdom of a commuter tax. If simply an income tax, I'm not sure that makes sense. If it were packaged as part of a regional congestion charge, that's different.

That said, the reason it gets brought up is due to DC's structural imbalance, which is directly related to DC's semi-colonial status. If someone like Hoyer doesn't want a commuter tax, fine - he better be willing to have the Feds pony up the funds to fill the gap the structural imbalance causes.

The Fed-DC relationship could be all federal, or all local - either have the Feds pay for everything and everything, or have the local government do it. However, the Feds want to have their cake and eat it, too - give DC limited home rule, but not pick up the tab for the remaining expenses.

by Alex B. on Jul 26, 2012 10:20 am • link • report

@Hogwash: Perhaps my typo confused the sentence. It should have read

Advocates of a commuter tax should carefully consider whether the goal is to tax commuters for the services DC provides commuters, or to also require commuters to fund operations of the DC government from which they derive no tangible benefit.

The two bins of services provided by the DC government are (a) those from which commuters benefit, and (b) those from which commuters do not benefit. Is the goal to get commuers to pay for (a) or for (a) and (b).

by JimT on Jul 26, 2012 10:20 am • link • report

Be careful with your assumptions with Feds being from the burbs. The current trend is that more and more younger employees are living in DC or closer-in while the those living in the burbs are retiring. The ratio is still out of whack, but moving feds out will certainly kill this trend.

by RJ on Jul 26, 2012 10:27 am • link • report

Also, just to head off the rumor that DC gets a huge payment from the feds that offsets the federal restrictions, it's not really true:

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/11051/how-much-federal-money-does-dc-actually-get/

by MLD on Jul 26, 2012 10:34 am • link • report

Re: VRE - when you improve the quality and reliability of service, people like it. Who knew?

by Kolohe on Jul 26, 2012 12:06 pm • link • report

@BeyondDC-
I saw two articulated buses pass me while walking along 16th St near P last night, probably around 9:40pm. One southbound on an S2 run; the other shortly after pulling a northbound S4 run (with another starndard 40-foot S4 bus bunched behind it). There was a metrobus street supervisor with a laptop in a white Ford Explorer on NB 16th between O and P but was busy flirting with some woman -- I didn't see him react at all to the bunched S4's (I thought every other bus was supposed to be S2, S4, S2, S4, etc...). I've never seen artics on the S so late so I am not sure if this was just a trial or a temporary or permanent knee-jerk response to the Post article.

As an unofficial test/observation, someone should stand at the Federal Triangle terminal stand for the S2 and S4 buses and see if the buses actually depart northbound from the start of the route on time, if they arrive there on time to start the next northbound run, etc...

by Transport. on Jul 26, 2012 12:40 pm • link • report

Transport: There have always been a handful of artics on the S2, but recently WMATA began running as many as possible on the S1. They are now quite common on 16th Street during rush hour.

by BeyondDC on Jul 26, 2012 12:55 pm • link • report

The S2 and S4 buses are a joke after 8PM on weekdays. Every single bus is jammed full of people just like in the picture in the article.

The S2 and S4 are a joke any time of day and have been since I first moved to 16th St. in 1982. The same problems articulated in the article were evident then, and not just at night. I have stood at my stop and watched bunched buses crammed full of people pass me by more mornings than I can count.

by Vicente Fox on Jul 26, 2012 1:22 pm • link • report

To add to what AlexB said above, a commuter tax is much less efficient than simply having the Federal Govt cover the lost revenue that results from DC's inability to tax commuters. So in that sense, having the federal government do so is preferable.

But, as noted above, they don't. And on top of that, the support that DC does get from the federal government is often used as evidence that we can't possibly manage our own affairs, because look at how much money we need to stay solvent.

Either give us the money that we'd be able to raise if we were free to charge a commuter tax (and don't call us a bunch of free-loaders as you do so) or less us charge the commuter tax. The first option is preferable, but the second is more realistic, since some people will never be able to stop using it as a political football.

by David C on Jul 26, 2012 2:10 pm • link • report

@JimT The State of Maryland should not necessarily give a 1:1 tax credit to residents paying a commuter tax

In other words, you'd support double taxation? Talk about something hard to sell to Marylanders.

One key difference between DC and other cities with a commuter tax, is that those other cities are all within states who can limit the commuter tax to a level politically acceptable to the state.

Actually, a better model would be cases where the city isn't in the same state as there the suburb sending the commuters. Commuters from Wisconsin or Indiana don't pay a Chicago commuter tax; they pay Illinois taxes and get a credit for it on their state taxes. This is the way it works everywhere else in America, and presumably the way it would work here if Issa somehow gets the better of Hoyer. In such a case, nobody actually pays any more taxes; it just determines where your taxes go.

(Full disclosure: I live in DC and work in Montgomery County. If we went to the default rules of taxing income at its source, I would have to file two tax returns, sending the State of Maryland and Montgomery County more than I currently send DC and asking DC for a refund for the difference. So it would be to my personal detriment, as measured in paperwork and having to pay up front but wait for a refund. Doesn't change the fact that I think it's appropriate here for the DC region to use different rules than everyone else.)

by cminus on Jul 26, 2012 2:29 pm • link • report

Erm, "it's inappropriate for the DC region to use different rules".

by cminus on Jul 26, 2012 2:33 pm • link • report

Does the city pay Metro the same for buses, no matter how much they bunch?

Could the city declare buses "blight" and ticket them when they bunch up?

by Turnip on Jul 26, 2012 8:58 pm • link • report

@Turnip
What would that accomplish? Usually there is little the transit agency can do about bus bunching, especially on heavily traveled lines. They just bunch up because people get on the first bus they see.

What would help is putting real-time info at heavily used stops, so people can see that there is another bus coming in a couple minutes and choose not to cram onto an already full bus.

by MLD on Jul 27, 2012 8:08 am • link • report