Metro board members avoided any major discussion of proposed service cuts Thursday as they haggled over smaller trims to try to plug a $154 million gap in next year’s proposed $1.38 billion budget.
Yet in discussing why they delayed presenting those service cuts on Thursday, they highlighted a divide among board members on when — and how much — to publicly debate what could amount to the largest cuts to the transit system.
“There’s anxiety about how much anxiety to cause,” board member Christopher Zimmerman later said in an interview.
A regional advisory group was tasked with suggesting which parts of the system’s rail and bus service should be cut after General Manager John Catoe proposed a budget for next year that called for $87 million in service cuts.
The initial ideas included closing some rail station entrances and eliminating low-performing bus routes. The group also said Metro could end its 3 a.m. rail service on weekends and stop its weekday trains at 10 p.m.
But rider advocates howled at the suggestions even before they have been formally released. A handful of union, environmental and transit advocates gathered outside Metro’s downtown headquarters before the board meeting. And board members backed away from discussing the suggestions as initially planned for Thursday.
“We’ve just created a lot of agitation that we didn’t need,” said board Chairman Jim Graham, a D.C. councilman. “The way we’ve got it now is the wagon in front of two horses.”
Peter Benjamin added, “We don’t want to go to public hearing for service changes we don’t want to make.”
But Zimmerman countered on why the public should know about the suggestions soon. “We are in fact considering devastating changes to what we do,” he told fellow board members. “That means they need to hear a full list of what we are thinking about.”
The list of potential service cuts has not been released. But Catoe said Thursday he opposed cutting weekday service at 10 p.m., while Benjamin knocked a rider’s idea to start charging for weekend parking at Metrorail stations that is now free.
Any cuts likely would begin in July when the new budget takes effect, Metro officials have said. But the agency would hold public hearings on any proposed trims to rider services before approving the final budget.
