Photo by jsuhanick

This morning’s Post features a roundup of Metro’s financial talking points for the year ahead: most notably, that Metro — unlike VRE and many other transit agencies around the country — has “no plans for new fare and fee hikes” in the coming year. If Metro sticks to that claim, it will mean an almost two-year span between rate raises, no small feat for an agency constantly looking to rectify deficits.

The bad news? Well, according to the Post, “the portion of Metro’s income from sources other than rides is not increasing.” (This includes lots of different things: from the painfully obvious like parking fees, to the less so, like rates for fiber optic line and property rentals, which are sluggish due to the weakened economy.) So even though this year’s combined projection of $762 million in revenue and $535 million of subsidies from government sources comes close to the $1.3 billion which Metro will cost to operate this year, WMATA still needs to make cuts to account for the toll of inflation and other such factors.

Oh, and Metro “did not anticipate the cost of inauguration service” in its budget for 2009. Sigh.

In the interest of pragmatism, the focus now shifts to where Metro can realistically make cuts in service. It appears as if Metrobus and MetroAccess are first in line:

The transit authority staff has not publicly proposed specific service reductions, although it seems probable that bus routes with too few passengers would be among the top targets. Catoe also is asking for a review of how well MetroAccess meets the standards of the Americans With Disabilities Act. It might be that the transit authority is exceeding standards.

As far as finances go, that’s certainly not going to be sufficient enough to get them to where they need to go, although bus performance is a good place to start — check our report from last September for some of the severly underperforming bus lines which Metro could stand to rid itself of.

Is there any part of Metro service that you’d be willing to part with for the greater good? Let us know in the comments.