Maryland transit budget would cut millions from Baltimore, leave D.C. Metro whole

The Baltimore Regional Transit Commission, which began meeting this year to explore structural changes to how decisions get made about Baltimore’s buses and trains, was the first stop on the state transportation department’s fall tour presenting its six-year budget. State officials will visit with leaders and the public in Baltimore City and Maryland’s 23 counties to field questions and solicit feedback on the roughly $19 billion Consolidated Transportation Program, a roadmap for capital spending through fiscal year 2030.

Jon Laria, a Baltimore attorney and chair of the commission, set the tone for the meeting last Friday quickly and frankly. “The CTP [Consolidated Transportation Program] is not good,” he said in his opening volley. Though Laria recognized that money is tight for everyone, he said he would “unapologetically” stick up for Baltimore transit and the riders that rely on it.

Though without decision-making authority, the commission is beginning to find its footing, and represents a tectonic shift of local lawmakers and business leaders making transit in Baltimore a priority. Their advocacy could play a role in how dollars get shifted around as a budget crunch threatens to compromise Gov. Wes Moore’s ambitious goals for climate, education, housing and more.

“Just like how all Marylanders are making tough decisions to live within their means, that is the position that those of us at MDOT [Maryland Department of Transportation] had to be in as well as we developed this draft program,” said Samantha Biddle, deputy state transportation secretary, as she began her presentation to the commission last Friday.

The draft transportation document, released last week, proposes deferring more than $670 million in projects for the Maryland Transit Administration. The deferrals include projects such as upgrades to Baltimore light rail track and midlife rehab to 54 MARC commuter train rail cars, but the majority of cuts come from delaying the agency’s transition to an electric bus fleet.

Department-wide, the biggest hit is in store for the State Highway Administration, which will have to defer more than $1.7 billion in capital projects, though the majority of that figure is made up of federal matching funds “unlocked” by down payments made by the state.

Much of the trimming for the MTA is with projects associated with “state-of-good-repair,” industry speak for maintenance and rehab work that keep assets like trains and buses running properly. Lakey Boyd, who represents Howard County on the commission, worries how these decisions will ripple into the future. She recalled how cascading decisions to defer work on the light rail have resulted in fewer rail cars available for service today. And cuts to transit expenses could have a disproportionate impact, given the long timeline to get any brand new transit vehicle in service, she said.

“Dollar for dollar, I think there’s a greater impact on the viability of transit to be competitive and to have that ultimate impact across the region,” Boyd said.

The budget crunch has created hard questions for Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld and his team — questions like which state law to adhere to. The draft plan calls for honoring mandated increases for Highway User Revenues, which are state moneys to local jurisdictions to take care of their roadways — for Baltimore City, it’s the primary driver of roadway repair and maintenance. But delaying the transition to electric buses and deferring other state-of-good-repair projects mean the transit agency wouldn’t be able to comply with two other state laws.

“A legislative mandate is a legislate mandate,” said commissioner D’Andrea Walker, administrative officer for Baltimore County. Walker challenged Biddle to look at all of the department’s obligations and how it decides which to meet.

The draft includes more than $3.2 billion for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, commonly referred to as WMATA or Metro. Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., all contribute for the capital region’s rail and bus lines as part of a contract agreement. Those contributions make up about 56% of the system’s nearly $4.8 billion budget for this fiscal year.

WMATA had its own budget crisis and proposed huge service cuts and fare increases earlier this year to deal with it. It avoided the majority of those cuts, however, when Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., all agreed to up their contributions.

Laria, the commission chair, said that he has “no interest in depriving WMATA the resources it needs” and wants the system to remain “healthy.” But he floated the idea of renegotiating the contract. “I just have a hard time to continue to reconcile the idea that it seems like we are choosing and favoring WMATA over the MTA, and somehow we’ve got to find a way, frankly, to fund both,” he said.

In a written statement after the meeting, Laria said that “we all recognize that this budget climate is challenging, yet no such reductions are planned for our sister system in the DC Metro area, WMATA, and ideally none should be. But Greater Baltimore deserves equitable treatment.”

Commissioners continued to come back to the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. dichotomy, at times frustrating transportation officials with repeated requests to section out which projects in their spending plan were more of a Baltimore thing and which were more of a D.C. thing.

The Purple Line was the main culprit. The 16-mile future light rail line in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties is an MTA project, not WMATA, but primarily serves the D.C. region, not Baltimore. So when commissioners saw that 26% of the MTA’s six-year budget — and the majority of dollars slated for expanding transit in general — was for the Purple Line, they took it as another knock against Charm City.

The cuts for the MTA in the Baltimore region are “not aligned with what I know are the Moore-Miller Administration’s priorities,” began Laria’s written statement after the commission meeting.

“As Governor Moore said recently, ‘Our communities are expanding, our jobs are growing, and we need to make sure that everyone in the Baltimore region can get from where they live to where opportunity lies.’ I’m confident the Governor and MDOT will help MTA meet this challenge. But it won’t be met with the Draft CTP released this week,” he concluded.