James Simpson, the Federal Transit Administration honcho who axed federal funding for the Rail-to-Dulles project has explained his thinking to the Washington Examiner. There’s not much in the article that I didn’t cover yesterday in “Rail to Dulles Is Dead. Give It a Pauper’s Burial,” but it hits the highlights with greater clarity than I managed to do.
Plus, Simpson does elaborate on his concerns about the ongoing financial viability of the Washington Metro system. Metro faces a $7 billion backlog of capital and maintenance needs, he says, that remain “unfunded and dire” — even without the additional commitments entailed by extending a heavy rail line to Dulles airport.
That’s what happens to heavy rail systems: They depreciate. It’s not enough to raise the money to build them. It’s not enough to cover the annual operating deficits. You have to continue to invest in them or they fall apart. You can get away with under-funding for a few years, maybe even a couple of decades. But eventually the under-funding catches up with you.
The entire debate over the Rail-to-Dulles revolved around finding the money to build the project. I have neither read nor heard anything about how much it will cost each year to fund the depreciation and operating deficits, much less who would pay for the shortfall. Has anyone made that calculation?
Say what you will about road projects — the process of selecting where to build them is highly politicized, and they often reward developers while promoting dysfunctional human settlement patterns — but at least there is a mechanism in place in Virginia to pay for ongoing maintenance and operations. It’s called the gas tax. The maintenance backlog for Virginia’s roads, highways and bridges is not nearly as bad, apparently, as the backlog for Washington Metro.
