July 12, 2007
Transit on Thursday: What Goes Around Edition
Could Metro be Smartening up?
Will you get hit by Virginia's new transportation fees and taxes?
Is a road better than a rail?
Will your Metro trip be delayed this weekend?
Find out after the jump!
Photo by Terecico
SmarTrip, Meet 2007
SmarTrip. Sometimes it just doesn't feel all that smart. Why, for example, are there not SmarTrip machines located in inner stations? Why indeed, asks Metro! Though a final vote is still pending, the Metro planning and development committee agreed to put nearly $25 million into upgrading the farecard machines in all 86 Metrorail stations. Over the next four years, the machines will be upgraded to accept $1 coins and the new $5 bills, and well over half of the machines will be equipped to sell both plastic and a new, paper-based version of SmarTrip cards.
Though the paper SmarTrip cards are still being tested, they will be a cheaper alternative to the $5 plastic cards, which are currently only available online, in stations with parking lots, and at Metro sales offices. Metro will also double the number of machines that accept credit cards, and is even installing touch screen farecard machines also will be tested in six machines at major stations. Why it took Metro this long to do what Sheetz and Bank of America were doing five years ago, and why it will take them so long to make it happen (4 years?!?) are not even questions worth asking. Just bring on the face-lift!
"No Va" No More?
For some reason, one of the biggest sticking points of the Great Virginia Transportation Debacle was whether to allow Northern Virginia towns and counties to tax themselves to raise desperately needed transportation money. It seems like a quibbling point; who cares if an area that requires massive infrastructure upgrades votes to collectively pay for them? But during debate over the multi-million dollar legislation, a handful of zealots thought that defeating any new taxes -- even local ones -- was more important than democracy. Thankfully for both commuters and citizens with a lingering sense of faith in the democratic process, the measure was approved, allowing the region to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for local improvements.
With fresh new powers, the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority wasted little time, and is set to approve more than $300 million in taxes and fees to pay for upgrades to roads, bridges, and transit service. Prince William County, long a holdout for any new tax-based revenue despite its chronic congestion, voted yesterday to approve the plan, leaving exurban Loudoun County as the lone point of opposition and clearing the way for the plan's approval.
The commission will also decide how to spend the money. With VDOT's stunningly long list of backlogged projects, it shouldn't be hard, though it will be interesting to see what they prioritize. As to who will really pay,
[t]he taxes and fees would hit drivers and home buyers the hardest. Home buyers would pay a new "congestion relief fee" of 40 cents per $100 of a house's value. Drivers would pay an additional 1 percent tax on the value of new vehicles, $10 a year more in local registration fees, a $10 safety inspection fee and a 5 percent sales tax on auto repairs. Additionally, area hotel taxes and car-rental fees would increase by 2 percentage points.Aside from the tax on car repairs, which one member of the Authority has vowed to block, the rest of the revenue measures seem perfectly apropos; homeowners and drivers are the ones creating the currently clogged conditions, so the taxes act as a kind of user fee. Though some might argue that these fees will encourage people to move out of the region to avoid paying, we're pretty sure that if Northern Virginia legislators with all their tax anxiety, wouldn't have gone for it if it wasn't what their constituents wanted. Besides, it's not like the traffic is any better in farther out counties or Maryland.
The Isiah "Ike" Leggett Inter-County Connector
Not that the problem is solved in Virginia, but things, unfortunately, don't even look that rosy in Maryland. We've been saying it for a while now: the multi-billion dollar Inter-County Connector is going to suck up more of Maryland's transportation money than anyone is willing to admit. First-term Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett is finally willing to say as much. “There’s only so much money out there,” he told the Examiner. “So to say that we’ll automatically get funds for the Purple Line ... would be disingenuous.”
There's not much more to see here, besides a big, disappointed I told you so. What's frustrating about the situation is that despite acknowledging the extent of the problem, Leggett says nothing about what he thinks should be done about it. What's worse, there's no good reason why the Inter-County Connector should be built and the Purple Line should not. If we want to compare costs and benefits of the two, we're pretty confident that a well-designed Purple Line would out-perform a 17-mile tolled highway any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Like his namesake, apparently Ike doesn't agree.
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Weekend track maintenance and rail car testing to affect Metro's Orange, Blue, Yellow and Green Lines
Track maintenance and rail car testing on the Orange, Blue, Yellow and Green Lines this weekend will cause inbound and outbound trains to take turns sharing one track.
Orange Line Track Maintenance
Riders traveling between the New Carrollton and Cheverly should add up to 15 minutes of travel time for their trips because of track maintenance. Inbound and outbound trains between these locations will single track from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.
Blue Line Track Maintenance
Metrorail will operate special shuttle train service between the Franconia-Springfield and King Street this weekend during switch maintenance. Riders traveling between Franconia and King Street should add 40 minutes of travel time as the shuttle train will single track from 10 p.m. Friday to midnight Sunday.
All other Blue Line trains will operate from the Largo Town Center to the Huntington from 10 p.m. Friday to midnight Sunday.
Green Line Rail Car Testing
Riders traveling on the Green Line should add 10 to15 minutes of travel time for their trips because of new railcar testing. Inbound and outbound trains operating between the Greenbelt and College Park will single track while new trains are tested from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.
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Maybe NoVA could come up with some kind of car tax in which the owners pay a tax based on the value of their car. Oh ya, they already do. So where does all that money go??????????
Where to begin. Again, in the guise of "doing something", VA lawmakers do something stupid. Just raise the gas tax or the income tax, instead of slamming poor people with jalopy cars with a %5 tax on their car repairs.
And a Gas Tax or Income Tax would not hurt the poor? Explain yourself #2
Are new machines and disposable smart trip cards really worth $25Million?
While I support the idea behind the taxes, I'm not thrilled with the implementation, for 3 reasons.
1) The real estate tax is a grantor's tax, so it's levied on sellers, not buyers, despite what the Post article claims; if the goal is to put the burden of supporting the infrastructure on the people generating the demand for the infrastructure, then the tax should be on buyers, but since buyers are usually the ones who are struggling the most to cover all of their expenses at the settlement table, doing that was politically inexpedient.
2) The tax amounts are a little ludicrous in some cases; that $0.40/$100 grantor's tax increase, for example, is an increase to a $0.10/$100 tax--that's jacking up the amount that sellers have to pay by 400%, which will amount to thousands of dollars per sale.
3) The Loudoun Co. board's argument about the new taxes does make sense--they don't oppose the taxes themselves so much as they oppose the legislature giving the NVTA the ability to levy arbitrary taxes as though it were a municipality. The legislation basically gives NVTA the ability to set the rates at whatever they want, which really does turn them into a taxing authority on par with other local governments, and there has already been talk from NVTA of levying other taxes in the not-too-distant future; in my book, a change in local taxing structure with such large potential ramifications down the line really needs to be discussed in more depth before being implemented in such a sweepingly unconstrained manner.
For VA residents... petition to repeal the crazy new fines etc.
http://www.petitiononline.com/va3202/petition.html
Thanks, guest #6. I was about to mention the "crazy" fines issue. But, I gotta admit, I've noticed people driving a lot slower in parts of Alexandria, particularly the GW Parkway. Probably the perpetual speed traps south of Old Town. I have to wonder, though, about the revenues the higher tickets are going to generate. Is it going to be like the cigarette taxes where States don't reasonably factor in the number of people who quit? Will the fines actually make people drive less like manic jackasses, and thereby reducing predicted revenues?
Call it a pseudo-municipality if you will (and I will), but I say thank God NoVA is finally getting the power it needs to generate revenue to solve its own transportation problems. If the anti-tax ideologues and anti-NoVA miscreants in Richmond had their way, NoVA would be allowed to sink under the burden of its own strained infrastructure. And no one down there would shed a tear. I will also be happy to pay a little bit extra, thank you very much, if it means more money for transportation projects, especially mass transit projects, which are sorely, absolutely, unequivocally needed. Nor do I tremble at the prospect of higher taxes. The specter of tax hikes tomorrow is not a good enough reason to derail today's transportation solutions.
Are new machines and disposable smart trip cards really worth $25Million?
Maybe, maybe not. But at least I'll have another place -- other than the Post Office vending machines -- to use my $1 coins. Oh joy.
"Why it took Metro this long to do what Sheetz and Bank of America were doing five years ago, and why it will take them so long to make it happen (4 years?!?) are not even questions worth asking."
Um, maybe because Metro does not make billions of dollars in profit each year? Also, TVMs are custom equipment, unlike ATMs. Honestly, I don't see the need for touchscreen machines, though I suppose it allow for more languages.
What stations don't have SmarTrip machines?
Listen, I think I'd probably support this project if I were a Virginia resident, but I have to take umbrage with some of your language.
For instance, you are easily as much a pro-transit zealot as they are anti-tax zealots. I have no doubt that if you were in position similar to them and you had the power to save a transit program despite the fact that many of the localities didn't want it, you'd save it. Just because someone feels as strongly about an issue in opposition to you does not make them a zealot, or alternatively it makes you a zealot as well.
And also, you could make an argument that the NVTA itself is a step back for democracy. The whole point of the NVTA is to coordinate efforts that would otherwise be subject to the vagaries of democratic whims. Have no doubt, these are big, big tax hikes. There's no way any one of these jurisdictions would be enacting them if the other jurisdictions weren't doing it too. So to say those using procedural motions to block the bill are placing democracy second to ideology is a bit too much, in my opinion. (And do you feel the same way about all filibusters?)
Like I said, I'd probably support the NVTA if I were a Virginian, but I just can't stand it when people give in to their worse angels and start demonizing opponents simply because they feel as strongly on the issue.
I think almost all stations have machines where you can refill your smartrip card. But unless I'm mistaken, you can only purchase a smartrip card at a couple of stations or online....which effectively means that unless they plan in advance (no comment), most visitors to DC are likely to buy paper fare cards.
Like it or not, the ICC is a necessary evil. You would think that Montgomery County would've figured out by now that if they would just build the fucking thing instead of spending years and years bitching about it, it would cost a lot less.
Consider Woodbridge and Manassas, two of the few places in NoVA where it's still possible for a family to buy a two-bedroom home for under $200K. Woodbridge and Manassas are going to attract exactly the sort of people who don't have a lot of extra money to pay for gas or parking in Tysons or Carlyle or Crystal City, and the alternatives (OmniRide and VRE) aren't expansive or terribly reliable. I've lived in NoVA for thirty years, and I've seen variations on this particular bit of kabuki played out over and over again for a thosuand different political issues. Historically the benefit of the doubt is always given to anti-tax, "slow-growth" advocates, and that's one of the major reasons that everything in NoVA is so ass-backwards (apropos of this situation: the lowest-income people, who are exactly the sort of people who need mass transit, are priced out of any neighborhood that has decent access to mass transit.) NVTA may not be a "democratic solution" in the sense that it is a purely democratic institution, but the majority of NoVA residents do favor (democratically-speaking) empowering local jurisdictions to raise funds to address our transportation problems. Naturally you would need some sort of regional body to coordinate big projects (as you say), so I'm not sure what the alternative to NVTA would be, other than returning to the old way of doing things, which has thus far served us very poorly. In other words: let's get past the anti-tax squeamishness, and let's not start split hairs over what is really incremental progress. Because if we derail it (pardon the pun), we're going to be left with the status quo, which is really a downward trend. Then we're going to wake up one morning, and we're going to be Orange County. If we're not that already.
10:28. I agree with you. I think it's crucial for NVTA to be somewhat above democratic whims for it to work and I support that. I was merely making the point that to paint opponents of the NVTA as undemocratic is somewhat ironic since the whole objective of the NVTA is to create an organization less democratic (and thus more efficient) than the current situation.
What about SmarTrip and the buses? I live in Glover Park and work in Georgetown, which means that I take the 30s bus almost every day, and the metro maybe once a month. But whenever I need to add more money to my card- money for riding the bus- I have to go all the way to Tenleytown Metro or wherever to reload it. This makes no sense. WMATA needs to come up with a way to reload your card online (and buying a new card online doesn't count, because that costs $5).
dorktopia:
I'm pretty sure you can "refill" your Smartrip on the bus; that's what those little grey buttons are for (ask the driver for help). Of course, you run the risk of annoying your fellow riders for the holdup, but the option is there.
True, you can just refill your SmarTrip on the bus, but make sure you do it when nobody is behind you or between stops.
The procedure is to press the gray button to the left of the pad ("Add to account"), tap the pad with your card, add your money, tap the pad again. If you haven't yet paid your fare you will have to tap it a third time.
But it's crazy that you can't add money to your SmarTrip card online! Metro has been saying this is coming and they just need to test the software for YEARS. I was uploading money online to shared value cards many years ago, so it's not like it's new technology.