Reply to Metro warns of huge budget deficits and a death spiral

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Metro in its current form is obsolete, as it functions principally to get city-based workers to and from the suburbs.

We need a regional subway/rail system that supports getting across the city easily, as well as from major suburb to major suburb.

Unfortunately, as the Purple Line demonstrates, there is neither the money nor political will to do this.[/quote]

The Purple Line that is actually currently getting built, finally? Is that the Purple Line you're referring to?

In the 1960s, Metro was designed and built to get office workers from the suburbs into office jobs in DC. However, now it's 2023, and it serves many other functions as well. [/quote]

Yeah with untold billions in overrun costs and years and years of delays.  They’ll never get their money back and probably even hemorrhage even more money.  Let’s spend billions on a system hardly anyone will use that connects to other transit systems people already aren’t using.  Brilliant plan for solvency I tell you.  You know their solution is going to be raise fares and taxes when the purple line starts blowing a hole through budgets and runs up huge deficits. [/quote]

As my Dad always said, infrastructure and transit programs are all about development. No, a transit system will never make money and that is not its objective. The objective is to move people so that downtown real estate is desirable and valuable.  The people that get to decide things don't care if WMATA "loses money" as long as office space around metro stops is valuable and keeps going up in price. For a variety of reasons, this dynamic is no longer true. Without that backing, our eyes turn to whether WMATA is a worthwhile venture on other grounds or at least doesn't lose too much money.  It doesn't look good.[/quote]

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