Photo by Kevin H.
After months of grim budget headlines and a series of public meetings to gather input on how to handle it, Metro’s board met Thursday to talk concretely for the first time about looming fare hikes.
The board is being asked to consider a combination of fare increases, service reductions, administrative cuts and dipping into the capital budget to help close an estimated $175.4 million gap in Metro’s FY2011 operating budget. And despite vague reassurances from finance committee chairman Peter Benjamin that “the very last thing we will consider is raising fares and reducing service,” the consensus coming out of the meeting is that both fare hikes and service reductions are pretty much inevitable by this summer.
How big the individual fare hikes might be is still an open question, but take a look at some of the service reductions (in Metro’s terms) that are currently on the table:
• Reducing bus and rail service on some holidays and holiday-related days
• Eliminating bus service that overlaps local jurisdictional service
• Eliminating low-ridership bus service
• Increasing the intervals (headways) between trains and buses;
• Closing some station mezzanines and rail stations during periods of low ridership
• Modifying late-night rail and bus service
• Beginning rail service later in the mornings.
Make no mistake about the careful wording Metro’s trying to use here. “Increasing the intervals” just means they’d be running fewer buses and trains, and “Modifying late-night rail and bus service” means they could decide to close part or all of the system earlier at night.
We’ve been through this fare hike negotiation process before, but never in such a distressing economic climate as this. Metro is citing everything from increased unemployment to declining advertising rates to “less revenue from pay phones” for this $175 million gap, and there’s no denying that the situation is dire. Over the next several months, WMATA’s board will begin trying to decide which of these evils they can live with, and which they can’t. So we want to hear from you: in terms of retaining you as a regular customer, what changes to our transit system would tick you off the least?
