Three ways WMATA’s budget could do more to win back riders

WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld will present the agency’s Fiscal Year 2019 budget proposal on Thursday. Walking a difficult tightrope between big maintenance and safety needs and jurisdictions that don’t want to pay more for better transit, the budget unfortunately has few moves to win back riders who’ve broken up with Metro.

The budget proposes no new rail or bus fare increase, but it also does not restore any of the service which has been cut over the past couple years. The GM is asking the local jurisdictions to pony up an additional $165 million to keep things running as is.

A brief overview of the budget

WMATA receives approximately 48 percent of its current budget from fares. For the upcoming year which will start July 1 2018, Wiedefeld is proposing a budget of just over $3.1 billion.

$1.8 billion goes to the operating budget (which runs the buses and trains every day), and $1.2 billion goes to the capital budget (which funds big projects like buying new railcars and buses). Just under $1.8 billion would be paid by the jurisdictions, while the rest will come from fares and other income.

The agency closed its gap in the FY2018 budget (the one we’re in currently) through rail and bus fare increases and service cuts. Without raising fares again or asking for even more from local governments, Wiedefeld is positioning this as a middle-of-the-road budget.

To continue the level of capital program work which he says Metro needs to not slide back down in reliability, the agency’s six-year capital budget will scale up over the next six years from $1.2 billion now, to $1.5 billion in FY 2022. (It’s been under $1 billion the past few years since WMATA wasn’t able to actually spend all the money it was given).

The staff presentation says the money in the capital budget focuses on “projects that improve the safety, reliability and state of good repair of Metro’s infrastructure, equipment and other assets.“

Virginia elected officials have said that they’ll have a hard time fulfilling the request for extra money—although Jack Evans, the chairman of the WMATA Board of Directors, says he’s disappointed that WMATA didn’t ask for more.

There’s no immediate strategy to restore lost ridership

Metro’s funding from fares has slipped over the past few years. Daily trip counts of 750,000 which were considered “normal” during 2010 have slipped to around 612,000 trips per day now. The less riders pay out of pocket for the trips, the more the local jurisdictions pay to fill the budget gap.

The agency’s budget presentation notes that some rides on both rail and bus have been lost to ride-hailing, biking, and teleworking, among others. Most of the ridership losses continues to be seen during off-peak hours.

This trend is likely to continue without some sort of service increase to make the product that Metro is trying to sell more palatable to riders. Those with options are more likely to take alternate transportation like Lyft or Uber, which a study recently suggested was faster than Metro during the off-peak hours.

Some of the recently-lost peak period ridership has come back with SafeTrack now over, and there are only a couple long-term trackwork projects on the calendar. However, now the agency is dealing with an ironic issue: train crowding. The overall number of people riding the system is down, but the numbers during rush hour are back up while Metro is running fewer trains–only every eight minutes, not every six.

Service cuts in recent years that include running fewer trains and shortening service hours primarily impacted non-rush-hour riders, when the fewest riders ride. But by cutting service hours off-peak, the agency is only encouraging more riders to look for alternate transportation options by making their bus or rail service less reliable and frequent.

Here are three specific suggestions

What can be done? Here are a few ideas.

1. Give price tags for restoring service: As written, the budget doesn’t give jurisdictions an idea of the amount of money it would take to restore some of the recent service cuts. Including some options for service restoration in the budget, along with the associated costs, would open the door for the jurisdictions to findmoney for re-expanded service which might draw riders back to the system.

For instance, one proposal last year suggested dropping off-peak headways from 12 minutes to 15 minutes—a drop in usefulness of Metro—but the price tag was only about $12 million, and that cut ended up being restored. How about a similar option to bring late-night headways up from a terrible 20 minutes to 18? Or add buses on high-congestion routes?

A budget proposal to fund WMATA is a negotiation between the agency, riders, and local jurisdictions. Options could give those who want better transit service (myself included) a way to push for that. The agency is under pressure to be “responsible” and not ask for unreasonable things, but jurisdictions are not going to be “generous” and offer to add important service themselves, either.

2. Minimize unnecessary service cuts during track work: While cuts to the overall level of service were well-publicized, the agency often ends up with even more curtailed service around track work.

This upcoming weekend, for example, Orange Line trains will run every 30 minutes due to track work between Vienna and West Falls Church, halving how frequently they normally come.

The agency could try to creatively deal with it, like by rerouting the Silver Line to New Carrollton or attempting to run normal service at East Falls Church and stations east. That would allow more service at the opposite side of the line.

This same thinking extends to the Red Line, where single-tracking between Medical Center and Grosvenor shouldn’t mean all stations between there and Farragut North (the next-closest pocket track) see reduced service. There are a number of interlockings in between that could be utilized to turn trains.

3. Fix the transfer penalty: Riders only get a 50-cent discount when transferring between Metrobus and Metrorail. This is far less than in similar transit systems; of the eight largest, five allow fully free transfers between rail and bus. Of the rest, Metro’s fares penalize riders of both rail and bus the most.

Contributor Patrick Kennedy said that while it’s “great” that Metro is looking to overhaul the bus network to make it more cost-effective, “they'll never be able to truly ‘unlock’ —to use a buzzword—efficiencies as long as their fare structure punishes transfers.”

There’s still lots of time to influence the budget

The budget is being unveiled this week, and Metro is hoping to have some form of it approved by March of next year. This leaves plenty of time for riders to push for service restoration, additional funding from the local jurisdictions, and/or attempt to find additional cuts inside Metro itself.

Riders will have the option to voice their opinions at public hearings to be scheduled early next year. It may be possible to get a better budget than this opening salvo, but the WMATA Board will need to your thoughts, concerns, or accolades.