Maryland Community Newspapers Online
Readers are being bombarded with articles debating the benefits of a new growth policy focused on building high-rise residences near Montgomery County Metro stations. However, no article looks at the long term underfunding of the Metro system, even though the Metro is the cornerstone of this growth policy. Let's take a look. The Washington Metro Area Transit Authority receives no dedicated federal funds despite the fact that it serves thousands of federal workers and local residents. In fact, it has no current dedicated source of funds at all, depending on fares and ads for [60 percent] of its budget.
The rest is a pittance from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, and some federal appropriations, creating an underfunded, overstretched system labeled by the Brookings Institution as "deficits by design." Montgomery County cannot approve changes in its growth policy without linking such approval to a level of regional and national outlays for Metro funding. Unless the two policies are linked, we will end up with a dual disaster, more crowded roads and an extremely overcrowded, barely functional Metro system.
Jon Weintraub, Bethesda