Money on a train stock photo from any_keen/Shutterstock.

It’s been in the news, at the WMATA Board, and here on Greater Greater Washington. Now, WMATA has officially opened up public comments for its next budget, which includes more late-night service, free transfers between bus and rail, fare increases, some bus service increases, and a larger number of bus cuts.

The agency posted an online survey about the budget proposals. There will also be three public hearings. On Monday, February 24 in Ballston and on Tuesday, February 25 in New Carrollton there will be an open house at 6 and a public hearing format at 6:30. The third, on Wednesday, February 26 at WMATA HQ in DC, the open house starts at 4:00 and the hearing at 4:30.

There is also a pretty nifty fare proposal calculator where you can enter your typical commute trip and see how much that will change under the proposed fare increase. It also will show how you might save if you get a monthly pass — which people should consider if they can! (Some employers let people use SmartBenefits for passes but some don’t).

Output of the fare calculator for some riders. Image by WMATA.

The many budget proposals will go into the meat grinder this spring

There are a pile of changes, some that give to riders and some that take away, in the budget. There are also some extra proposals that came from Maryland and Virginia board members at the meetings where the board authorized public hearings.

The survey is open until March 2. After that, WMATA staff will collate the comments for the board members, two each from DC, Maryland, and Virginia, whose negotiations ultimately determine what goes in and what does not. There are also two federal board members, but they play a smaller role in budget fights; that’s because of the “jurisdictional veto.”

Basically, nothing can pass the board if both voting members from DC, or from Maryland, or from Virginia vote no. That makes budget negotiations a high-stakes battle until they can reach a compromise. Each jurisdiction’s members are in part (and rightly so) concerned with the best interests of their riders, which don’t always coincide. Their members might also be reflecting particular views on transit of their state government or biases of the particular board members.

DCST has weighed in with its recommendations

DC Sustainable Transportation, a coalition of business, advocacy, and other organizations working on transportation, sent its comments last week about the budget proposals based on what was publicly available at that time. Here are the key comments:

We support restoration of late night service. Cuts to late night service have caused significant hardship for workers in late-night businesses, particularly workers who live in Maryland and Virginia and have few or no affordable other options for getting home late at night. We appreciate WMATA’s efforts to find ways to restore some late-night service while still ensuring time for needed maintenance, and urge that this proposal be adopted in the FY 2021 budget.

We support free transfers between bus and rail. Free transfers were a top recommendation from the Bus Transformation Project and the second-most requested bus improvement after bus lanes in the survey (first among low-income riders). Among top transit systems, WMATA has the highest penalty for transferring between bus and rail operated by the same agency. This transfer penalty discourages bus ridership by workers and visitors and also leads many lower-income riders to take long bus rides instead of a faster train without good reason. Our buses and trains should be seen as part of a holistic transportation system rather than as silos.

We oppose a cash surcharge for bus boardings and SmarTrip loading. While cash does slow down buses, many riders lack a viable alternative to cash when they cannot afford to carry a significant SmarTrip balance and/or lack places to load them. Riders not near a rail station or certain participating stores cannot reload easily, and other riders have challenges affording or safeguarding SmarTrips. We support broader analysis by WMATA on ways to ease barriers to SmarTrip, but do not support a cash surcharge at least until more progress is made in this area.

We oppose a $1 surcharge for MetroExtra [a proposal from Maryland board members]. Encouraging people who can use limited-stop lines to do so is in the interests of not just riders but the agency and the public. Greater ridership on limited-stop lines saves operating dollars by putting riders on the most efficient routes, not to mention ones that best help many people get where they need to go more quickly. A surcharge would reverse this and, worse, promote a disparity between lower-income and higher-income riders which is counterproductive.

We support keeping pass costs low. For those who can purchase them, passes increase the usefulness and usage of our transit system. Getting riders toward a subscription model for most riders is a valuable trend for WMATA’s budget predictability and ridership, and we applaud proposals that would continue this progression.

We ask for more information about proposed bus changes. The manner of roll-out for the proposed bus changes has caused a great deal of consternation and did not best serve stakeholders or the the public’s ability to intelligently weigh in. We are open to the possibility that some bus changes may be necessary or even desirable if they benefit riders, or may have some logic if done in combination with free transfers between bus and rail when a bus largely duplicates rail service. However, there is not sufficient information provided thus far to effectively evaluate this, and we ask that the agency provide easily understandable maps and text to inform riders and help everyone to form a useful opinion.

We also continue to have significant concerns about some of the changes. Frequent bus service is an important component of enabling people to travel to commercial centers by transit, and many workers and visitors depend on late-night bus service which would also see reductions under this proposal.

On the last point, the new release has some more information about the bus cuts. They’re covered in four documents, detailing DC, Marylamd, Virginia, and Late Night bus changes. I’d say the new documents give more information about the bus changes but riders may still have a hard time understanding if and how much they will be hurt or helped. There are individual data sheets about each bus line change, and they tell riders about alternate service, but often don’t show how much the wait times will go up or down, or where exactly the alternate services run.

It’d have been ideal to have a sort of “travel time calculator” like the fare one, where people can put in their own trips and see the trip times and waits today versus in the future. That’s not so easy to do, though.

A Virginia and Maryland state law limits options

In some past years, jurisdictions agreed to pay more to forestall service cuts. But this year, a provision in Virginia and Maryland law from 2018 says that WMATA’s subsidies can’t increase by more than 3% a year. That means the board and riders can decide between less of a fare increase, fewer cuts, and things like late-night service and free transfers, but can’t have them all.

Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth said in an email,

The WMATA budget Is not the place to redesign our region’s bus network. Nor should bus cuts be driven by the arbitrary 3% operating cost growth cap.

We have heard overwhelming concern about the cuts and join others in opposing them. We support many other aspects of the GM’s budget including free transfers, late night service, service expansion on bus and rail, and the funding to make it possible.

Our economic competitiveness, access to jobs, anti-poverty goals, and climate change all demand that our region increase investment in our bus network, increase frequency and ridership, provide dedicated lanes — all measures called for in the Bus Transformation Project.

What do you think of the budget changes? Post your thoughts in the comments, then fill out the WMATA survey and/or plan to attend one of the budget forums. The decision the board makes this spring can make transit significantly better, or worse, or harder to afford, for many riders.