On an Uncertain Track
By Alice Reid
Washington Post Staff Writer
29 March 1996
Metro is throwing itself a 20th birthday party today, with cake, balloons and congratulatory speeches, but the festivities can't mask the growing concerns about transit's missed opportunities and future challenges.
On the eve of the celebration, Maryland Gov. Parris N. Glendening told a transit conference that Metro must aggressively lure businesses, retail outlets and residential projects to empty land around many of its stations—or risk becoming a costly anachronism.
If the development comes, so will tax dollars for localities and the new riders the system so desperately needs, Glendening predicted. Without that, he said, Metro "will be little more than a relic of the past century. People will wonder, `Why did those people ever invest $10 billion in that system?' "
The governor's exhortations yesterday are not new themes to regional planners and officials. Federal transit dollars are shrinking and local governments struggling to pay their share of the regional system, while rising fares and changing patterns of suburban employment have helped depress ridership growth.
After completing the last 13.5 miles by 2001, Metro officials must be able to operate a 103-mile train line successfully and economically.
They estimate needing about $150 million annually for upkeep. For now, they can expect only $100 million a year to cover that.
These challenges notwithstanding, the system's achievements during the last two decades have been considerable. Seventy-four stations have been built in six jurisdictions, at a cost of nearly $9 billion. More than 275,000 people ride the rails daily, and representatives from the District, Maryland and Virginia have come together, despite their sometimes divergent interests, to run the sprawling operation.
It is, virtually everyone agrees, a regional success story.
"Metro forces the jurisdictions to talk to one another," Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said yesterday at the transit conference.
Metro has brought the area billions in tax dollars and thousands of jobs. In Virginia, for example, a 1994 study estimated that the commonwealth will have gained $2.1 billion in tax revenue from the jobs created and business and sales taxes paid between 1977, when Northern Virginia's first station opened, and 2010.
"A pretty healthy return on the state's investment," said Rick Taube, executive director of the Northern Virginia Regional Transportation Commission.
In the last few months, the headlines have focused on a January accident that killed a train operator and the politics and issues at play as a new general manager is selected. Despite those issues, most transit officials say Metro's chief problems are fiscal.
"Building is always more exciting than operating. We've done the fun part," said Metro board member Cleatus E. Barnett, of Montgomery County. "Metro faces substantial funding issues in the years ahead, and it stands in need of a more forthcoming spirit of support."
Metro could be waiting a long time for that. Glendening's message to the agency was that it will have to help itself. He called its bureaucracy hidebound and "process-oriented."
In an interview later, the former Prince George's county executive, a Democrat, said he has talked with Virginia Gov. George Allen (R) and D.C. Mayor Marion Barry (D) about Metro's need to pursue development aggressively. "They agree with me," Glendening said.
If federal laws need to be changed so that the system can dispose of property--much of which was paid for with federal and local money--"then we need to change the federal laws," he said.
Among the dozens of Metro sites that were touted at yesterday's conference were 13 acres of parking at one of the stations that kicked off the system's opening 20 years ago--Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast Washington.
Today a trainload of dignitaries will take a commemorative ride to that station from Farragut North, the same 4.6 miles with which rail debuted in 1976. What they will see is an area that missed the urban renaissance that Metro originally promised, and a corner of Washington that Glendening would say is still rife with possibilities.
The elevated Red Line station's exit opens onto an abandoned printing plant, now for sale.
Farther along the busy avenue, past a car repair garage, are a liquor store, a bar advertising dancing girls and a used-furniture store, all with heavy grates at windows and doors. Young men loiter on the corners.
Ben Fantroy, who for 23 years has owned Ben and Shirl's Mattress store in the 900 block of Rhode Island, was full of hope when the subway opened in 1976.
"When we came here, the neighborhood was much better," Fantroy said. "Now there are drugs here and drugs there." To avoid crime, he and his wife "try to keep a low profile."
With little to draw people into the neighborhood, ridership at the station has been declining. Last year, about 4,450 people boarded trains there daily, down from 5,700 in 1992.
Roslyn Ellis, 42, who has lived in the neighborhood for 35 years, also worries about gangs and the sounds of gunfire at night. She would welcome more development.
"It would be good if they brought in some businesses that would bring in more people and more revenues to the neighborhood," she said. "And businesses would bring in their own security," she added.
Across the Potomac on the Arlington portion of the Orange Line is the Ballston station, which local planners cite as an example of how to attract riders and which they would like to see replicated elsewhere.
With encouragement from Arlington County, a shopping mall was renovated and several high-rise developments built near the station.
Daily ridership has grown since then, from 9,660 in 1992 to 9,890 last year.
"The challenge is to build on those successes and do more of that sort of thing," said Ronald F. Kirby, chief transportation planner for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. "But it's not enough to wait for the development. You have to go out there and send a signal. . . . Go hunting for it."
Kirby points to the success of Hong Kong. When the city built its transit system, it put stops wherever it could negotiate development deals, and now a substantial portion of the system's revenue comes from lease agreements.
As area officials look into the future, they talk about extending rail to Largo or even Dulles International Airport. "But if we can't make this work, those projects don't stand a chance," said Metro board member John P. Davey, of Prince George's County.
"You get into a spiral," Davey said. "Fewer riders, higher fares."
Staff writer Stephen C. Fehr contributed to this report.
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