For Whom the Train Rolls: Metro’s Proposed Budget Cuts Would Hurt Communities of Color and the Poor the Most
By: Alex Kern
Tags: Washington DC, Wmata, Covid 19, Inequality, Metro

Riders board and exit a train at Metro Center. Photo by ElevenPhotographs on Unsplash.

In the midst of a deep economic recession caused by a catastrophic pandemic, WMATA (Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority) has proposed some severe cuts to service, which would take effect in July 2021 if approved by Metro’s planning board.

With communities locked down and many people working from home, Metro’s ridership has plummeted in the months since the pandemic began. It was already in freefall after several years of spotty service due to the SafeTrack initiative causing the system to lose many passengers’ trust, but the numbers have been even more grim than they were in the already-gloomy months and years preceding the outbreak of Covid-19 (with the exception of 2019, which saw overall ridership climb slightly.) Despite several campaigns to get Washingtonians to ride the rails as faithfully as they once did, the network has struggled to lure them back.

However, the system still fills a critical need for many working-class communities throughout the region, which tend to be communities of color. Metro’s proposed cuts include slashing service at 19 stations, which accounts for over a fifth of all the stations on the network — and, though some selections on the list make sense, like Arlington Cemetery (among Metro’s least used stations for several years running), certain cuts look likely to deal additional blows to communities which are already among the hardest hit by the pandemic.

Take Cheverly, an Orange Line stop facing cuts under Metro’s proposal. Cheverly has seen an average of just 1,174 passengers use it since 2010. This makes it a very small station, especially compared to stations around it (Cheverly’s northern neighbor of Landover saw a slightly higher average of 1,756, and the next station going south, Deanwood, had an average of 1,403 passengers each day over the past ten years.) Cheverly sits in a predominantly Black community, making its residents much more likely to be essential workers who cannot work from home. During a pandemic which has already placed them on the front line, exposing them to a lethal disease which they are less likely to survive than white people, Metro is considering cutting service to them as well. Also worth noting is that people living in these areas are much less likely to have access to cars — making Metro, both trains and buses, the only viable option for long-distance transportation. (Though this figure has dropped in recent years, the number of Black families without car access was more than double the rate it was for white families in 2017, the most recent year for which data is available.)

Then consider a station like Spring Hill, part of Metro’s brandspanking, shiny new Silver Line which runs through many affluent sections of D.C.’s Northern Virginia suburbs which is not facing closure. Spring Hill has averaged just 650 riders per day per year, according to Metro’s data. The median household income for the zip code in which Spring Hill sits, 22182, is about $164,730, but in Cheverly’s zip code, 20785, it’s just $92,813, according to data from city-data.com. What makes Spring Hill, a station with less ridership and richer residents, more deserving of Metro service than Cheverly, a community which is more likely to rely on it?

The knee-jerk response from many readers might be that, because Spring Hill sits in the greater Tysons area, it’s red-hot for transit-oriented development (TOD). That might explain why high-rise office buildings and apartment complexes have been “spring”ing up all around the station (pun intended), as well as many others along the Dulles corridor. This is correct — despite the changes which have been made to adhere to safety guidelines, Americans are still buying homes, and spending more in their communities, especially on local businesses, to help keep money flowing in local economies. But development for development’s sake does nothing for solving income and investment inequality, as demonstrated by the noticeable lack of flashy, large-scale construction sites around Cheverly and the rest of Prince George’s County, among other places.

If you need an example that doesn’t lie hidden in government data reports, take the areas around the stations themselves. From the platform at Spring Hill, you can clearly see several luxury car dealerships, impressively landscaped condos, and the outer reaches of the vibrant, rapidly growing Downtown Tysons. From Cheverly’s platforms, you can basically see nothing — it’s boxed in by concrete walls and overgrowth — but leaving the station does not earn one the magnificent, sweeping cityscapes that Northern Virginia offers. Nearby Arbor Street, to analyze one example, looks deflated, home to a number of run-down houses and industrial buildings whose services are identifiable by little other than their sun-faded signs. Clearly, this area has much to gain from access to jobs in the capital — increased incomes would likely translate to more spending on local businesses, allowing them to develop and attracting more to come. Yet, despite having current higher ridership of Metro, and much more to gain, WMATA has proposed cutting service to it.

Always important in discussions of development is land value — how can we invest in working-class communities without making them unaffordable for their residents? After all, many Prince George’s County residents are, or are the descendents of, Black people who were forced out of the District by skyrocketing rents, which resulted from similarly rising land values — a trend which continues today. The answer, as it usually is, is investment in affordable housing. This, of course, would be out of WMATA’s hands and up to bodies like the Prince George’s County Council; both a stimulus package and an affordable housing guarantee, just for starters. The lack of these, however, does not stop Metro from continuing to service areas in need in the short term. If the mere promise of more riders in Northern Virginia is enough to build an entirely new line connecting it through D.C. to Largo and build new businesses and homes all over NoVa, where’s the financing for more established communities?

Until vaccines are made widely available, there is no end in sight for the pandemic which has, as of publication, already killed 697 people in the District, 4,864 people in Maryland, and 4,200 people in Virginia. The whole region — indeed, the whole country — relies on Metro, pandemic or no pandemic, to get government workers to and from their jobs and essential workers who make their lives possible. WMATA’s responsibility to keep the region moving in a safe and efficient way remains, even with a scarily large budget deficit looming over the heads of the members of its planning board.

With the system hoping for a bailout deal with Congress, it’s also time for the system to bail out the region’s most vulnerable. If cuts must be made, instead of doing so to disadvantaged communities, they should be prioritized for areas where mobility and access to other means of transport is already high. That means stations with many bus lines, high rates of car usage, and services like LimeBike, but also areas where there are many stations clumped together — like downtown Washington. Though these are stations used by far more people every day than in the city’s outskirts, if a given set of two stations are within easy walking distance of each other — say, McPherson Square and Farragut West — one should be closed, since any jobs close to them are probably not made inaccessible by a slightly longer walk. This will probably save more money in the long run, leading to fewer closings and, if we’re lucky, Metro getting back in the green as soon as possible.

No one doubts the hardship faced by many during this pandemic, and no matter how carefully Metro plans its budget, there will be people who rely on the Metro who are stranded. The trick is to focus the impact of these increasingly inevitable cuts on communities which are best equipped to handle them — well-connected, car-centric areas. For everyone else, Metro is essential, and its reliable, regular service will be a key part of getting the region back in order after a pandemic whose scope has been vast and whose impact has been ruthless. Unemployment spiked, for example, and though jobs are slowly returning to the region, many current policies continue to leave the most at-risk populations behind. We don’t want a return to normalcy, but a solution to the area’s protracted problems. A Washington that works for everyone starts with a Washington that gets everyone to work.