DC unveils aggressive 25 year transportation plan

[MDAllstar]

Originally Posted by DginnWonder

In what way are they unconstitutional? The state/district needs to pay their bills somehow, and people who don't have cars (like myself) pay taxes that maintain the roads that car users use.

I think it's a great idea to circumvent the fact that many VA and MD residents work and play here, increase the city's congestion, and aren't eligible to be taxed by the district.

Ridiculous.

This! Maryland and Virginia drivers use the roads more than DC residents. They need to pay for their upkeep if they want to drive. If they don't want to pay for their upkeep, they can take the train in.

[geoking66]

Originally Posted by AeroGuyDC

If DC sought to have more people to ride Metro, it would have done so LONG ago by increasing it's subsidy so that Metro could lower fares. Instead, fares have steadily risen. Why? To pay for infrastructure improvements.. DC has little to no control over the Metro system, it's fares, or its effect on traffic in the City.

Not that simple. DC, Maryland and Virginia all have to contribute equal amounts of subsidy into WMATA and agree on it. DC can't raise its contribution if Maryland or Virginia is unwilling to reciprocate.

Metro raises fares to compensate for a combination of inflation, increased labor costs per union regulations (pay increases and so on), poor fiscal management and currently to counter flat and potentially falling ridership. Maintenance is expensive not solely because of equipment and parts but also because the labor costs are high and regulations limit how much workers can actually work. Now they could go the European route of simply closing the entire line and do non-stop maintenance only once per year, but WMATA isn't that smart or logical. I mean really, they're still not back on automatic mode. London and Paris can retrofit century-old lines with automatic running and DC reverts back to manual.