Why does WMATA increase fares?

Like most people who live in the National Capital Region (NCR), I use the WMATA Metro system to get to work.  Over the last two years, WMATA has increased fares at least 3 times:

• Jan 6, 2008: Fare are increased for the first time since 2004.  The average increase is about $0.50


• Jun 28, 2009: Bus fares are increased by $0.10 on average


• Feb 28, 2010: Fares are "temporarily increased" by $0.10 on average

There are other fares that were increased but were not included.  Service was also trimmed several times in the last two years.

WMATA, unlike most other subway systems, does not have any dedicated funding from local governments.  Ignoring the fact that they get money from the federal, VA, MD, and DC government every year, the fact is that there is no law saying that these agencies will fund WMATA.  WMATA likes to bring this up every so often to remind people that this is why cuts must be made and fares should increase.

I say bull.



WMATA is what most people call a private-public partnership.  While technically, they are their own "company", they are still managed by the rules and laws that are passed by the various jurisdictions.  Now, you may be saying the fare increases are not a lot of money.  And in many ways, I'd agree with you.  What this boils down to is transparency.  Is WMATA really strapped for cash?  Is that why they cannot afford to upgrade its oldest 1000-series cars, which were responsible in the June  2009 crash?

WMATA has yet to release their actual expenditures for 2009.  When they do, I will update my spreadsheet.  In the mean time, below, you'll see the actual expenditures for 2008 in a nifty chart format:

The chart was made in Google Docs.

Anyway, salaries and benefits (the blue) made up 77.6% of their budget.  That's a lot.  According to the Society of Human Resource Management, the sector with the highest salary to operating expenses percentage is the health care services, coming in at 52%.  Within health care, there are a lot of specialties, many of which command very large salaries.  But most of WMATA's jobs are not that specialized.

It is my belief and contention that the Amalgamated Transit Union (part of the AFL-CIO, which is pretty much a mafia-like force that controls most of the government) has negotiated rather large salaries for its members at the expense of the safety of the public.  If the graph above does not say it, maybe the following will.

So a couple of days ago, I drafted a letter to WMATA's Office of the General Counsel.  Even though WMATA isn't an official government agency, they have something similar to the Freedom of Information Act called the Public Access to Records Policy.  PARP is modeled after the FOIA in many ways, but with a few restrictions.


My request to WMATA for Salaries -

If approved, I will share my findings here on my web site.  What I find sad is that it takes a private citizen to report this, not the Washington Post.  The liberal toilet paper has proven that it either is a willing participant in allowing unions control the government work force or is being bullied in not covering union-defacing news.  But, no matter.  Individual blogs like mine are showing that we have the uncanny ability to uncover news that the mainstream news outlets either refuse or choose ignore.