(The Center Square) – The task force assembled to address the capital region’s ongoing public transit needs and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s funding problems has not yet arrived at definitive solutions.
Those solutions might be coming into focus.
“This is the best DMVMoves meeting we’ve had so far,” said Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Phyllis Randall.
Members were presented with three main questions, starting with what they believed the baseline required investment would be for the region’s transit systems to meet the area’s needs in the next 10 years and beyond – perhaps better than they do now. Task force member and Virginia state Sen. Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, mentioned complications the last two times he had taken the Metrorail.
They were presented with four scenarios that built on each other.
Scenarios 1 and 2 involve continuing to operate with existing equipment and assets. Scenario 1 would mean providing enough funding to maintain existing service levels and functional equipment, while Scenario 2 would work to enhance services provided by existing assets, like continuing to run buses in off-peak hours that only currently operate during peak hours.
Scenarios 3 and 4, described simply as “maximized service and modern assets” and “expansion,” are where “you start to see things that would enhance and expand the system in a meaningful way beyond maximizing the existing service and infrastructure that we have today,” according to transportation consultant Nick Donohue.
Most who voiced their opinion agreed that Scenario 2 was the minimum DMVMoves should recommend in the future, and the task force should eliminate Scenario 1 as an option. It has been said that “all options are being fully vetted.”
Some thought Scenario 2 would prove insufficient.
Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, thought the expansion of public transit was the region’s only hope to avoid “congesting its way out of economic growth, and the region can’t afford to shoot lower than Scenario 4.”
“To me,” he said, “four is the objective – getting the system expanded. The people I represent, that’s what they would like to see. Every time I look, we widen roads and they fill right up with cars as soon as we widen them. All I see is the land around here getting more and more expensive and it getting harder and harder to justify widening roads.”
WMATA Principal Director Sarah Kline agreed with Surovell that four “should be the goal,” with Scenario 3 as the minimum. Scenario 1, to Kline, should be discarded.
“If I look at Scenario 1, I don’t see any difference from what we have today. It does not include more service,” Kline said. “I absolutely do not think that Scenario 1 should still be on the table.”
Donohue, who presented and facilitated the group discussion, also asked members whether they thought a new, uniform regional revenue source would be the best funding model or if jurisdictions should be able to choose how to raise and allocate new revenues to WMATA and local transit systems.
While some agreed that a uniform regional revenue source would likely present better to the public and to other decision makers, most noted it would be difficult to achieve and a reasonable solution could be a combination of the two.
“Do we keep both of these on the table? I think the answer is yes, because it may be a combination of both of them,” said Kate Stewart, Montgomery County Council vice president. “I think there is what is feasible and then there is what is aspirational.”
Jeffrey McKay, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, said jurisdictions should be allowed flexibility within a “uniform system.”
“Jurisdictions, should they go down a sales tax path, should be able to scale that rate to what they actually need to pay their projected contribution,” McKay said.
Finally, Donohue asked members what they see as the “priorities of the priorities in the near- and mid-term,” as advisory groups look to flesh out Scenarios 3 and 4 for the task force. Regionally adopted priorities include moving to 100% eight-car trains, a zero-emission bus system, and a fully automated Metrorail system, among others.
Most advocated for the expansion of the bus rapid transit system and at least some consolidation of the region’s more than a dozen different bus systems.
“We do have an opportunity to make sure that we don’t have 13 different BRT providers five, 10 years from now,” said Clark Mercer, executive director of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
He challenged members to return to future meetings with a vision for “what a truly regional bus system could look like.”
