Today Open House/Hearing on WMATA service changes

In "Plans for Metrorail contraction in the face of London Night Tube expansion" I mentioned today's hearing on service changes, which includes very gross-grained suggestions of how WMATA could offer overnight transit service.

Because a deficit is projected for next year, separately WMATA is considering a variety of changes including bus and subway service cuts, fare increases, and other measures for the FY2018 budget ("Can WMATA's death spiral be staunched").

Proposed changes to Metrorail operating ours, Docket B16-03

They are seeking input through a variety of methods, and have set a deadline of 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday October 25th to respond. Public feedback will be provided to Metro's Board of Directors in December 2016 as part of the final decision process.

-- Email written comments to writtentestimony@wmata.com

-- Provide feedback to staff in person at various Metrorail stations. Click for a list of dates, stations and times

-- Attend an open house on Thursday, October 20, 2016 (anytime between noon and 9:00 p.m.) and public hearing anytime between 12:30 and 10:00 p.m.) at Metro Headquarters, 600 5th St NW, Washington DC

The "death spiral" entry mentions that Maryland especially but the State of Virginia too may not be fully on-board in providing more funding to WMATA, seeing such funding as disproportionately benefiting DC at their expense, which may or may not be true.

In the comments on that piece, charlie pointed out that in calling WMATA as being in a death spiral, I failed to distinguish between the system falling apart, versus its dialing back to a commuter-focused service, as opposed to a transit service supporting a sustainable land use and transportation planning paradigm and lifestyle more generally.

(Note that Metrorail was created as a commuter focused service, that it helped promote urban revitalization in DC outside of Downtown was more of side benefit that had been acknowledged in the planning process--after all, that's why the routing for the Green Line was changed within DC--but wasn't a top priority for WMATA.)

On Monday, the Baltimore Sun ran a great editorial on the perilous state of transit funding in Maryland, both for Greater Baltimore and in the context of WMATA's current debacle and the need for more funds to get out its various crises, and how Gov. Hogan has been quoted as saying "why put in good money after bad" (paraprhase).

Inexplicable, the editorial is not available online in most any form (other than if you subscribe to pressreader), but I managed to make a jpg and have posted it below.