In my day to day debates on transit and land use policies in this region I am often criticized as being a stooge for WMATA and consistently promoting the benefits of mass transit use. It is true, I think mass transit is the most powerful transportation tool available to planners and engineers and no one has ever disputed mass transit’s efficient capability of removing single occupancy vehicles from congested corridors. However there are times in life when you just wish the people you defend would stop doing such seriously stupid things. The case in point, WMATAs 2013 budget.
To call the 2013 operating expenses and projected revenues a budget is likely giving it too much credit. In an era where most people are desperate to find any employment, WMATA is planning on expanding it’s payroll expenses by 100 million dollars, 70 million of which goes towards benefits costs. To be fair, much of the payroll increase is attributed to new capital employees (849) for construction and engineering services associated with system improvements, but for 100 million dollars this increase in employees would constitute an average $118,000 per new hire.
The escalated speed of the system upgrades will hopefully get the headaches that riders have experienced over with quicker but surely isn’t worth $100,000,000 in this years cost. This is especially apparent when silhouetted against the backdrop of significant fare increases.
Speaking of fare increases, this years increases (already enacted), unfairly continue to bear the cost of operating a 4:1 discrepancy of bus cost vs revenue on the backs of rail riders. Bus services barely reaches $150 million in revenue and yet costs $565 million to run. That gap continues to get larger and yet no one is coming up with ANY ideas on how to retain some sanity to the mess. Instead of evaluating the benefits packages of bus drivers, they retain levels of benefits, which increases the payroll from natural wage increases. Instead of addressing the extremely low priced fares for long haul buses, they provide a cost of inflation increase in fare of 6%, yes on average a WHOLE DIME!
I am all for hard working people getting their fair share. I think a happy employee is also one who is more attentive and careful to retain their job. But as it is the benefits package accounts for nearly 40% of payroll expenses, which outpaces every major transit organization in the country as well as the most generous of private industry unions.
It’s not that WMATA doesn’t have a great network. It moves more people than any system in the country other than New York and frankly it’s been pretty safe over its 40+ year history and for the most part far more reliable than our NYC counterparts. The problem is WMATA has always been a system that seems to be barely getting by instead of being one that is planning for the future. Consider this, if WMATA were just to retain the same operating expenses for 2013 as 2012, that would be 100 million dollars more that could go towards saving for real improvements for the next decade. This lag in cost increase, associated with fare increases that from this point would keep up with natural payroll increases (a steady 2-3% increase). Add in a possible analysis of which locations actually use their buses and how to make that system more in control and we could be looking at an inflow of a couple hundred million dollars.
I think that the jurisdictions should be chipping in more towards capital improvements as budgeted, but I don’t think it is fair to shuffle around these funds accompanied by a fare increase to justify unwise increases in an already stifling payroll cost. That increase in jurisdictional subsidies should be going towards saving up for Metro 2.0 including connection between lines (Completing a metro beltway and adding new river crossings) that will be more difficult to find funding for through private sources (as was the case with the Silver Line).
Taking the 100 million dollar increase in subsidies from the jurisdictions proposed this year away from payroll financing and transferring to a no touch fund for future improvements will add up to 1 billion dollars in 10 years. By our accounts this could help pay for 1/3 to 1/2 of a new river crossing that will be necessary by 2020 if current trends continue and more importantly will help to finance projects through money in hand instead of the increased cost of financing. WMATA, I hate to say it as a transit supporter, but you NEED CHANGE.