Public comments due August 11 on WMATA Metro funding and service future

Back to Basics on the D.C.-area transportation survey you should complete by August 11

The D.C.-area transportation rethinking effort “DMVMoves” is offering a public comment opportunity for DMV residents to complete by the end of the day this Sunday, August 11. 

DMVMoves is a task force “to create a unified vision and sustainable funding model for the region’s transit network.” It’s a joint committee of WMATA Metro and the Transportation Planning Board (TPB). As I’ve written, the TPB makes critical decisions to send limited funding between projects that primarily favor car movement or people movement overall with transit and bike/walk projects. This is an urgent discussion because the D.C.-area’s transit funding methods are failing: previous state budget promises from Annapolis and Richmond trail post-inflation project costs and federal government supports for transit operations (i.e., service) are expiring just as WMATA tries to improve ridership with rethinks like the Better Bus Network.

I ask my neighbors to go back to basics with their responses to this public comment request: tell the DMVMoves officials that our region should deliver increasing amounts of dedicated, predictable funding for transit service in rail, bus, microtransit, and bikeshare (which is the fastest growing of those four modes). There must be more investments in both capital (big maintenance projects and new stuff like bus rapid transit) and operating budgets (transit service and living wages for staff, but also proactive and low-dollar repairs that reduce life-cycle costs).

How is that getting back to basics? Well, we know that the only financially sustainable way to reduce road congestion as our region grows is to make it less appealing to drive and much more convenient to use transit or active alternatives like electric bikeshare. The nerds call this “modeshift,” and it takes a combination of sticks and carrots. The most successful of those nudges is applied directly at the point of use: tolls and other road usage charges, congestion pricing, local gas taxes, and reductions in road space given to single-occupant vehicles, and vehicle registrations/fees priced based on weight and size. Revenue from those things should then be automatically driven into funds for things like improved transit service in re-purposed road space, bus shelters in a time of extreme heat, bikeshare stations and e-bike rebates, comfortable-for-everyone bike routes like trails and protected bike lanes, and land-use incentives for denser, walkable, child-friendly communities where homes, jobs, schools, healthcare, worship, and recreation are all geographically coordinated.

While these changes are often caught up in “the war on cars,” they are the best way for the DMV to help poor people. I’m not asking for a revolution. I’m asking for our regional leaders to change the math for my neighbors who are practical more than political. We should ask for something better than “drive until you qualify,” three-row SUVs with blind spots 11 children long, and roadway expansion projects that steal public space from future Metrorail on the uncertain promise that pennies on the toll lane dollar will go to perpetually planned-for-but-unfunded transit visions and walkability mirages.

DISCLAIMER: All opinions and analyses in this newsletter are those solely of Gordon Chaffin and do not represent his employer or community groups with which he’s affiliated.