Fare hike or fair hike?
I got wind of this the other day on the morning news: Metro is now considering a fare hike . . . to the tune of 45 cents. (For my non-DC readers, think of this like you would the price for gas, where the lowest you're paying is $1.35, and are now being told that prices are going to increase by 45 cents a gallon.) Somehow I don't see a lot of Metro customers taking too kindly to this idea, because as I've said a few times already, with so many breakdowns, security scares, service disruptions, un-air conditioned stations, and uncomfortably overcrowded trains, this has been Metro's summer of discontent. It's enough to make even me renounce Metro commuting in favor of driving.
And given how disenchanted many other Metro customers have become, I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of people follow suit if this fare hike goes through. Metro should really think long and hard about this before instituting any kind of fare increase, because after all the disasters visited upon Metro this summer, they run the very real risk of losing many of their regular customers. And on a more common-sense note, how can anyone justify paying more money for shoddy service?
I'm sure Metro will argue that they need the funds to improve service yadda yadda yadda, but that responsibility should fall to the local governments—who themselves should remove their collective heads from their asses and stop passing the buck from one state (district?) to the next about who should provide dedicated funding. Because seriously, Metro badly needs a source of dedicated funding.
Labels: DC happenings, Metro
posted by Fritz @ 9:09 AM
3 Comments:
I believe the District is officially on board with dedicated funding. Maryland may be already, I cannot recall. Virginia is not though and is likely the toughest to get on board.
In my interview with Zach Schrag, author of The Great Society Subway, he noted: "I am not convinced that a dedicated funding source is a panacea. You would need to guess just how much money Metro will need in future years, then try to guess how much revenue a given tax would provide. If you guess wrong and the revenue stream is too high, the board will be tempted to let fares lag behind inflation, which strikes me as a potentially unjust subsidy to riders. More likely, the revenue stream will be too low, in which case WMATA will have to face critics who complain that it is not living within its means."
See, I thought I'd heard somewhere that Metro had dedicated funding, but after reading several articles, they left me with the impression that Metro wasn't in fact receiving any. Maybe I was just reading the Virginia papers.
No, nothing yet. Tom Davis (my parents' US Rep) has a bill on the table (it may have even been passed) that would provide $1.5 billion in federal funding if each jurisdiction commits to dedicated funding. It won't happen until all have committed. Not bad legislation, I must say.
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