Editor’s note: This op-ed was adapted by the authors from their original post that appeared on www.dcist.com on July 20.
In last week’s editorial arguing against Virginia Rep. Tom Davis’ Metro funding bill, The Examiner offered three points demonstrating the epic wastefulness of the legislation.
According to the paper, this federal “bailout” will disproportionately benefit the wealthy at the expense of lower income citizens, will force local tax increases, and is undeserved by a system that regularly experiences service problems. To these, we offer a modest rebuttal.
The Examiner points to Metro usage in affluent Fairfax County to support the claim that the bill is “regressive, even elitist,” asking whether “the daily commuting costs of people making twice the national median household income should be subsidized by hard-working middle- and lower-middle-class taxpayers?”
While Metro does serve affluence in Fairfax and elsewhere, the system is hardly a plaything of the rich. Many lower- or middle-class neighborhoods are served by Metro, often enabling workers in those neighborhoods to travel to Fairfax (among other places), to run businesses, lay shingles, or otherwise provide the quality of life our dear Fairfaxians enjoy. It is also apparent that wealthier commuters are more likely to ride in a private car than share a train with the hoi polloi.
Next, The Examiner argues that Davis’ bill is an unfunded mandate, requiring local communities to raise taxes or cut spending.
In reality, rather than requiring local tax increases, local sources of funding must be found before the federal money becomes available. Far from being a mandate, if any of the jurisdictions fail to act, the money disappears — a small but important difference.
This false line of reasoning also fails to recognize thattransportation infrastructure costs money. The Washington region is growing rapidly, making traffic a constant feature of the city. Investments must be made to increase the capacity of our transportation network. If The Examiner objects to that money coming from either local or federal taxes, we leave it to them to find another source.
Davis’s proposal is not a stick, but a carrot to entice D.C., Virginia and Maryland to do what should have been done years ago, and dedicate a certain amount of annual revenue to Metro. Roads have long had such dedicated funding — an 18-cent to 24-cent regional gas tax, in addition to the 18-cent federal gas tax and untold billions from general government funds.
For its final argument, the paper quotes the Maryland Public Policy Institute, claiming that Metro does not deserve a federal “bailout” because it is “[u]nreliable and poorly run … subject to frequent shutdowns and service interruptions due to equipment failure, bad weather, suicides, driver error and passenger medical emergencies.”
Setting aside the detail that MPPI opposes most government spending, their list does not present a compelling case against Metro. Medical emergencies are not failures of management, nor is weather, which often complicates road travel and transit alike. Equipment failure, which Metro can and should work to reduce, is part of any complex mechanical system.
In fact, many of Metro’s problems are caused by the lack of dedicated funding that Davis’ bill offers. Metro lacks the resources to make the massive capital investments needed to address a ridership that has grown far beyond projections, and the result is crowded trains, service lapses and other difficulties.
Instead of looking at transportation pragmatically and economically, The Examiner has chosen to look at the situation ideologically, ignoring the city’s best interests. At well more than 700,000 trips per day, it’s difficult to imagine the federal government or the regional business community operating without Metro.
Ultimately, The Examiner completely misses the point of mass transit.
Metro is not meant to run a profit, and it’s wrong to call money allocated to Metro a bailout. Just like money spent installing traffic lights or replacing the Wilson Bridge, Metro funding is an investment made by the public because the benefits to the community outweigh the costs. If we only ran services that operated in the black, we would see few interstate highways, schools or missiles.
In closing, The Examiner urges Congress to “[s]top subsidizing the waste and mismanagement inherent in an obsolete 1950s mass transportation concept, and force Metro to cut costs, become more efficient and undertake a crash course [in] competitive contracting … .”
But the paper doesn’t elaborate. It doesn’t note whether Metro is more or less mismanaged than private companies it might contract with, or mention how transit privatization has fared badly elsewhere. The Examiner fails to explain what costs they believe should be cut, or what efficiency might look like, and it doesn’t consider that these goals might involve increased investment.
In the end, it seems that The Examiner doesn’t understand the purpose and nature of mass transit any more than it understands the needs of a growing city.
Ryan Avent and Colin Peppard are writers for the Web site www.dcist.com
