Who Needs This Goose and its Golden Eggs?

Let me just make one more point concerning Metro and its funding shortage. Currently, the plan seems to be to hike fares and reduce service. This will seriously degrade the rider experience on and the utility of Metro. Since it will encourage current riders to start driving, it will also degrade the experience on roads. Given that the movement of people and goods into, around, and through a metropolitan area is of critical economic importance, this seems extremely stupid to me. Better to pay to keep service up in order to support the local economy. Find the revenues elsewhere.

But as it happens, these cutbacks are particularly dumb given the nature of recent growth in the core of the Washington area. From 2008 to 2009, Arlington, Alexandria, and the District added just over 22,000 people. This growth — new taxpayers! — overwhelmingly took place around Metro and in transit-oriented developments. Thousands of new housing units have been built, or are under construction, or are close to breaking ground around the U Street, Columbia Heights, and Petworth Metro stations. At the New York Avenue infill Metro station, the District has seen construction of new office and residential space continue through the recession, and another big new residential project will break ground in April. One station north, the Rhode Island Avenue station parking lot is about to be transformed into a walkable redevelopment. Find a District Metro station, and you’ll find construction plans, which mean new jobs, new tax revenues, and new residents.

The story is the same in Arlington, where new projects are going up along the Orange Line corridor, which has absorbed much of the county’s population growth — growth in the municipality’s tax base — over the past decade. And in Alexandria, a private developer is seeking approval to build three towers — 1.3 million square feet of residential space — adjacent to the Eisenhower Avenue Metro station.

Metro provides the infrastructure along which the core’s walkable developments are built, and those developments have driven local growth and helped central neighborhoods to thrive. It is incredibly foolish to treat that engine of growth so poorly.

Comments

Alex B. says:

March 29, 2010 at 3:44 pm

You’ll get no argument from me conceptually. However, once you try to actually operationalize your “find the revenues elsewhere” plan, you’re going to run into some serious hurdles.
Ralph Garboushian says:

March 30, 2010 at 9:28 am

I find it really, really frustrating that the District’s political leaders are so myopic on the points you raise in this post. They just don’t seem to understand that the District’s revitalization is almost entirely due to its combination of premium transit service in the form of Metrorail and walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods. These two factors also provide the District with its most important competitive edge versus its regional neighbors. But for some reason, the Mayor and DC Council in general seem to regard Metro as just another line item in the DC budget. Indeed, it seems that some of them view it as a line item that they can shortchange without any consequences. They just do not seem to get that Metro underpins almost everything else they are trying to do in the budget, both financially and in the quality of their constituents lives.

DC elected officials must think that the District’s growth in population and the revitalization of neighborhoods such as Columbia Heights are due to a combination of superior political leadership and outstanding government services. All kidding aside, I do not understand why they find these points so hard to grasp. It must be because unlike so many of their constituents, especially those from the 30+ percent of households without a car, most DC elected officials rarely use transit and would see no change in their daily lives. Maybe they will start to notice when their staff are repeatedly late to work and increasingly unwilling to work late.
Cavan says:

April 2, 2010 at 1:36 pm

The Metro is the key. Lose the Metro and the region will once again become a cultural backwater rather than a cultural beacon. Same with the local economy.
Froggie says:

April 2, 2010 at 9:23 pm

On a fundamental level, that’s the key point.

But as Alex suggested, the reality of finding the revenue to maintain Metro without the major service cuts or fare increases, especially in this economy, is something far different.

Should it happen? I’d like it to (since the Yellow Line is my own personal Metro lynchpin). Do I expect it to? At this point, I’m not holding my breath…
rg says:

April 3, 2010 at 10:04 am

Nor am I holding my breath. I have started to mentally prepare myself for a more difficult commute by Metro and for pretty much staying close to home evenings and weekends. I console myself by hoping that when Metro implements these major service cuts, the politicians will face a huge public outcry and that they will never allow this to happen again.

This being tourist season, I have often been reminded these past few weeks that Metro cuts will really have an impact on visitors. Just think about it: every guidebook tells people visiting DC to ditch the care and take Metro. Might not seem like such good advice when, at the end of a long, hot day with the kids getting seriously whiny and cranky you have just missed a train and now have to wait 30 minutes for the next one. Guess what mom and dad are going to tell all of their friends and coworkers about transit once they get back to Tulsa, Kansas City, Louisville or Rochester? Or, for that matter, about a family visit to the nation’s capital?