The inflation woes of Maryland’s transit agencies were not at the top of the General Assembly’s priority list this year, with lawmakers instead focused on digging out of a deficit. In most of the state, that means slim chances of transit service expansions in the foreseeable future.
For the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), which operates the D.C. region’s metro system, it means stretching capital dollars to avoid turning back the clock on a decade of safety and reliability improvements.
Baltimore’s Red Line is one of the notable exceptions. With backing from Gov. Wes Moore, the General Assembly voted to support the Maryland Department of Transportation’s latest six-year capital budget proposal, which includes ongoing support for Red Line project planning and engineering.
“We need to do the planning now,” MDOT Assistant Secretary Joe McAndrew told Capital News Service. “If we get that work done soon, and President Trump and his administration are interested, we’d love to move forward. If they’re unable or unwilling, doing the work now will put us first in line when the federal government is ready to be a partner.”
But some transit spending skeptics in the General Assembly question the decision to prioritize development of a new service over inflation adjustments for existing systems.
“A lot of the big ideas that some Democratic leaders had on mass transit” didn’t reach the finish line this year, said House Minority Leader Jason Buckel, referring to proposals to shore up the state’s investments in WMATA and smaller local transit agencies.
“Frankly, if I had my choice, I’d rather spend money on some of those things than [on] the Red Line,” the Allegany County Republican added, though he underscored that Republicans would rather see the state dial back its transit spending and redirect resources to roads and highways.
Though the proposal is now more than two decades old, both state and local leaders maintain that the Red Line project remains as relevant as ever, often pointing to rebounding ridership on Baltimore City’s east-west bus routes. “The need didn’t go away,” said McAndrew. “If anything, it got more important.”
The Red Line’s planning phase is far from over: the Maryland Transit Administration is still finalizing a route for the light rail line and working through an environmental review. Construction is still years away, and that step can only begin with federal buy-in.
Not all backers of the project share MDOT’s cautious optimism about the Red Line’s prospects under the Trump administration. “We do not have a good federal partner right now,” said Del. Marc Korman, a Montgomery County Democrat and chair of Maryland’s House Environment and Transportation Committee. “Ultimately, we made the decision to keep the process moving forward for that day when we do have a partner again.”
Lawmakers did not move forward with proposals to tie state funding for WMATA and other local or regional transit agencies across Maryland to the consumer price index.
Maryland is required by statute to contribute $167 million in capital grants to WMATA each year – the result of a 2018 agreement with Virginia and D.C. to move away from a pay-as-you-go model for WMATA’s capital program.
The 2018 shift helped the agency dig out of a $5 billion maintenance backlog, largely bringing an end to an era of frequent track fires and other chronic reliability problems.
But the purchasing power of those capital grants has not kept pace with inflation, and the agency dipped into its capital account to cover some gaps in its operating budget after pandemic-era federal relief ran dry.
“We are clearly going to hit a capital [budget] cliff” in the near future, WMATA General Manager Randy Clarke told the agency’s board of directors on Thursday, referring to a point at which inflationary pressure and debt payments will constrain WMATA’s ability to cover other capital costs.
Korman, whose constituents include many commuters reliant on WMATA, introduced a proposal this year to re-base Maryland’s statutory capital contribution to account for inflation.
“Ultimately, WMATA is a math problem,” Korman told CNS. “At some point, we will have to acknowledge that $167 million in 2019 is not the same as $167 million in 2025 or 2030 or 2035.”
The proposal survived the cross-file deadline, but it did not advance to a vote on the Senate floor. Had it passed, the legislation would not have taken effect until D.C. and Virginia lawmakers adopted the same plan.
McAndrew, who also sits on WMATA’s board of directors, underscored that the agency will still have resources to maintain their services in the coming years, even if they are forced to work with a tighter capital budget. He added that stakeholders recognize the importance of maintaining WMATA’s momentum.
“WMATA is running at its best in decades,” he said. Ridership is growing faster than anticipated, bringing with it much-needed farebox revenue – at least in part because of the recent return-to-work order for federal employees.
Many of Maryland’s smaller local transit agencies are also attempting to balance rising demand for their services with budgets – drawn from federal, state and local sources – that haven’t kept pace with price increases.
“We’ve been bursting at the seams,” said Roman Steichen, Frederick County’s director of transit services. “The ridership trends we’re seeing right now – we can handle it, but we’re not far from it being unsustainable without additional funding to expand our services.”
Ridership on the county’s fixed-route buses is now nearly three times higher than during the pandemic, he added, and the paratransit services primarily used by older and disabled residents are running at capacity.
But Maryland’s funding formula for supporting local transit agencies isn’t indexed to inflation, and like WMATA, many agencies are now attempting to do more with less.
A bill put forward this year by Del. Mark Edelson, a Baltimore City Democrat, would have tied increases to the state’s total allocation for local transit agencies to inflation. That proposal faltered in committee.
Victoria Venable, Frederick County’s Director of Government Relations, says that while the bill would have provided more predictable state support for her county’s efforts to serve growing ridership, she wasn’t surprised that the General Assembly didn’t bite this year.
Maryland’s budget troubles are “not a one year and done situation,” she said, making it “difficult to advocate for any sort of funding, let alone indexing it.”
Venable remains optimistic, however, that growing enthusiasm for public transit, both in places like Frederick County and among state lawmakers, means better times for local transit budgets could still lay ahead.
But some looming challenges are far outside the hands of the General Assembly or MDOT.
The threat of a $1 billion cut to D.C.’s budget still threatens to undermine WMATA’s bond rating. Though the U.S. Senate voted to avert that cut last month, their House counterparts have yet to do the same.
A clearer picture of Maryland transit’s future will coalesce in the coming months.