Arlington opens door to higher WMATA contributions

On Saturday, the Arlington County Board took a key action to make it possible for the County to contribute extra revenue to WMATA necessary to balance the FY2011 budget without “death spiral”-inducing service cuts.

The General Manager’s proposed budget contains painful measures to close the $189.2 million budget gap, including rail cuts such as no 8-car trains and no Yellow Line on weekends, elimination of many bus lines and longer headways, and fare increases of 15-20% or more on all services.

Even this budget also requires $40 million to come from some other source, which unless money magically rolls off the back of Capitol Hill in the jobs bill, would have to mean contributions from the local jurisdictions.

Drivers benefit when many people take transit, since without transit our roadways would be hopelessly clogged every day. That’s why everyone needs to share in the responsibility of maintaining good transit. Riders will be doing their part with a large fare increase; local governments need to contribute as well.

They should, at the very least, chip in for the $40 million set out in the WMATA budget. A better figure would be $73.7 million, enough to cover the $40M and all service cuts.

Arlington voted to advertise a hearing on FY2011 tax rates and fees, the first formal step necessary to set those rates. As the WMATA Board did when it set up a public hearing including the 10¢ fare increase that gave riders options to stave off service cuts, Arlington chose to advertise larger increases than the County Manager proposed, enough to chip in its share of the $40 million or even its share of the $73.7.

Other Virginia jurisdictions will be taking the same steps soon, and it’s important that they advertise a large enough increase to provide this contribution. If they don’t, they will be unable to later decide to raise the revenue, just as the WMATA Board could not consider a larger fare hike than 10¢ after they voted to advertise a maximum hike of 10¢. The only option for Fairfax County, Alexandria, and to a much lesser extent Falls Church and Fairfax City, would be to take money from other services, a tough proposition in an already difficult budget.

WMATA staff listened to our exhortations to provide more options in their budgets. The proposed budget suggests $15 million in rail cuts but provides $23 million worth of choices; bus has $26M of choices for $18M of cuts. All cuts and fare increases are painful, but options at least give riders the opportunity to weigh some options against others and make recommendations beyond simply, “Don’t cut service! Don’t raise fares!”

However, the budget still doesn’t give riders the opportunity to choose between a fare increase and no service cuts, or service cuts and no fare increase, or other choices. The four options from the January hearing for FY2010 were very successful, giving riders the choice of no fare increase and no service cuts. In that case, they chose the latter.

WMATA staff should expand upon the options in the budget and devise a fare increase proposal large enough to eliminate all service cuts. That would be a $123 million fare hike, which is very large, and riders may not want it. However, it should at least be an option on the menu, so riders can choose between one extreme and another.

Besides, if the jurisdictions don’t chip in for the $40 million this year, the WMATA budget will become even more dire for riders: WMATA will have to come very close to making all $50 million in suggested service cuts, not just the $34 million they currently propose, and a much larger fare increase, all at the same time.

That’s certain to set the system into the dangerous “death spiral” where the combination of high prices and declining service send riders away, creating even deeper holes in the future. We need to ask elected officials across the region to ensure that doesn’t happen.

Update: Fairfax will be advertising their rates tomorrow. If you live in Fairfax, call or email your Supervisor now to ask them to advertise a higher cap than necessary to leave room for increased WMATA contributions.