Last week’s Virginia Supreme Court ruling striking down new transportation taxes is jeopardizing cash-strapped Metro, which was relying on $50 million from the new money.
The transit agency was depending on the money from the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority to help fund a much-needed new batch of railcars and other capital improvements.
“One-third of Metro’s fleet are the original railcars,” Chris Zimmerman, chairman of both Metro and the NVTA, said at a Thursday NVTA meeting. “They’re more than three decades old, and they are beginning to become problems. We need to be ordering the next railcars, and this funding was potentially the source by which we would do that.”
The failing brakes on some of Metro’s original 1000-series railcars were a cause of Metro’s declining on-time rail performance last year, the agency said.
Metro has been working on designs for its 7000-series railcars, which would replace the 1000-series cars in about five years. But railcar manufacturers expect to see proof of the agency’s ability to pay before they agree to a contract, Zimmerman said.
“If you don’t have sustainable, reliable funding, they’re not as interested in your business and they’re going to go elsewhere,” he said.
D.C., Maryland and Northern Virginia each recently agreed to contribute $50 million a year to Metro’s capital program, with the Virginia share coming from NVTA.
The agreement was meant to accompany federal legislation that would authorize $1.5 billion in federal funding for Metro over the next 10 years if those funds were matched by the local jurisdictions. Congress is still considering the legislation.
“Up until last week, we were able to say to the federal government that Maryland, the District and Virginia have all put up their money, and now there’s a big hole in that,” Zimmerman said.
He said the money from the NVTA, which the Virginia Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional, was the only viable means of funding Virginia’s share.
Virginia lawmakers have signaled they will schedule a special session of the General Assembly to try to restore the NVTA funding.
“If they don’t act, we’re stuck,” Zimmerman said. “It’s unfortunately terribly simple.”
