Just a year after the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority imposed its largest, most complicated fare increase ever — introducing “peak of the peak” into the Washington commuting lexicon – Metro General Manager Richard Sarles is seeking another 5.7 percent fare hike. But passengers have already begun to flee the toxic combination of rising fares, shoddy service, maintenance delays and deteriorating infrastructure. As The Washington Examiner’s Kytja Weir reported earlier this month, Metro was one of only two subway systems in the country to lose ridership during the third quarter – at the same time when cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and even recession-battered Cleveland were experiencing passenger growth. Metro officials blamed the decline on the “economy” even though Washington has the most robust regional economy in the nation.
Metro acknowledges that it has never really recovered from the June 2009 Red Line crash that killed nine people and injured dozens more, the worst accident in its history. But last year’s fare hike certainly didn’t help lure passengers back. Nor has Metro’s ridiculously confusing fare system with its 44,376 different possibilities. A proposal to switch to zone-pricing could triple the costs of commuting for residents of close-in Arlington and Petworth, both located just outside the system’s inner core, which will further depress passenger numbers. Metro is also considering raising off-peak fares even though its weekend ridership is already down 6.4 percent due to lengthy track work delays.
Even Sarles’ FY 2013 budget proposal assumes ridership will keep heading down. But instead of trimming costs, he wants to spend 8 percent more than last year. Half of the $121 million budget shortfall is for a court-ordered pay raise for Metro’s unionized employees, who already enjoy outsized salaries, generous health insurance coverage and overtime-bloated, pension-for-life benefits. Since Metro itself is only 35 years old, labor and maintenance costs will continue to rise as more and more passengers flee the system, particularly if Congress doesn’t restore the $230/month federal transit benefit. This is the “death spiral” predicted by one of Sarles’ predecessors.
Under the circumstances, Metro’s waste of $200,000 on a study “imagining” what D.C. would be like without Metro and another $679,000 on a three-year “mystery shopper” program to determine what Metro riders really want was an astonishing display of let-them-eat-cakism. What Metro riders obviously don’t want is paying more for public transportation that is no longer safe, cost-efficient or reliable.
