Federal funding restrictions are stranding thousands of DC-area bus riders

Striking Metrobus drivers rally in front of WMATA headquarters on November 6, 2019. (Photo by me)

This week, Fairfax Connector’s drivers walked off the job, leaving a large swath of DC’s Northern Virginia suburbs with little to no bus service. The labor action expands upon a strike that has suspended or substantially reduced service on 18 Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Metrobus routes – also all in Northern Virginia – for more than a month. Combined, bus routes affected by the two work stoppages see nearly 40,000 boardings per weekday.

The disrupted bus routes are all operated under contract by French multinational corporation Transdev. Last year, WMATA contracted out the 18 afflicted routes – which comprise about 5 percent of the DC area’s Metrobus system – in an effort to save $15 million, while Fairfax Connector shifted from a different contract operator to Transdev earlier this year.

The Metrobus drivers have reported that they earn as much as $12 per hour less and pay thousands of dollars more in health care deductibles than drivers of routes operated directly by WMATA, and Fairfax Connector’s drivers have voiced similar frustration with Transdev’s plans for their salaries and benefits.

The current structure of federal transportation funding helps explain WMATA and Fairfax Connector’s ill-fated cost-cutting efforts. But Congress could help transit agencies avoid similar challenges in the future by allowing states and localities to use this funding to operate transit service, rather than just to build and buy things.

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Today’s federal transportation funding formulas not only are calculated to perpetuate auto dependency, but also fail to account for transit agencies’ core mission: transporting people. Specifically, almost all federal transit funds are reserved for capital expenditures such as infrastructure construction and vehicle purchases, and accordingly are fenced off from system operation. This restriction, in place since 1998, prevents states and localities from substituting federal funds for the operating subsidies they provide, but arguably is a relic of the archaic expectation that public transit – in contrast to other transportation modes – must fund itself.  

Thus, states and localities are responsible for funding most transit operation. A 2015 Transportation for America report describes how this reality puts pressure on agency management to minimize these expenditures at all costs. This squeeze has the greatest effect on bus service since operating expenditures comprise 59 percent of its cost, relative to 42 percent for rail.

 

For WMATA, this pressure is particularly strong, as an agreement between DC, Maryland, and Virginia to provide the agency dedicated long-term capital funding came with a cap on year-to-year changes to operating subsidies. This cap came after WMATA cut service substantially in 2017 following a steep ridership decline the previous year, when maintenance-necessitated service disruptions forced many people to find alternate ways to get where they need to go. Fairfax Connector, which carries many people to and from WMATA bus and rail routes, also faced ridership challenges during the same period, affecting farebox revenue.     

Thus, in both WMATA and Fairfax Connector’s cases, contract bus operation, which research has shown achieves cost savings largely through lower wages and fewer work rules, may have seemed more palatable to both riders and agency management than additional service cuts.

Labor comprises more than 70 percent of WMATA’s operating costs – in line with national figures – so given the funding structure-based pressure the agency logically saw cost-cutting in this area as low-hanging fruit. The agency’s leadership adopted competitive contracting among their primary strategies for keeping expenses down.

Fairfax Connector, which serves a relatively auto-oriented part of the DC region, turned to contract operation much earlier than WMATA did. In fact, Fairfax County is one of several jurisdictions in and around the nation’s capital that have reduced costs by forming their own transit agencies, which often provide contract-operated local bus service, instead of subsidizing additional Metrobus service.

But unlike federal appropriations, transit labor costs are based in market forces, not politics. And as the people who operate our bus systems are tasked with keeping riders safe while navigating the same scary U.S. roads on which more than 36,000 people are killed annually – a job that requires months of rigorous training and can subject workers to high stress, fatigue, and other health problems – these costs are understandably high.

In fact, a national bus driver shortage that has caused delays and necessitated service cuts on urban, suburban, and rural transit systems alike suggests that current compensation for the U.S.’s 430,000 transit workers is not sufficient.

Accordingly, funding formulas that encourage transit agencies to reduce workers’ already-insufficient compensation are likely to catalyze failure.  

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Advocacy organizations such as TransitCenter and Transportation for America have expressed support for allowing federal funding to be expended on transit operation. TransitCenter, which envisions federal transit operating funds as a match for the subsidies states and localities provide, also has encouraged Congress to redesign some capital transit grants in a manner that encourages localities to operate more service. Such expansion would catalyze increased transit ridership – as has happened in Canada, where per-capita transit service levels are higher than in the U.S. – and a more stable future for U.S. mobility.  

However, if the structure of federal transportation funding is not adjusted to help fund transit system operation and encourage expanded service, transit agencies will be forced to continue defying the labor market. The American public will continue to bear the consequences, through both work stoppages by undercompensated operators and longer-term service reductions stemming from a continued operator shortage.

For people in Northern Virginia, those severe consequences are already here. Those consequences could just be the beginning, as WMATA’s largest employee union has indicated a broader work stoppage – bringing the entire capital region to a halt – is possible if the transit agency proceeds with plans to contract out operation of its Metrorail Silver Line extension, which is set to open next year.   

But at a rally last month for WMATA’s striking Metrobus operators, an environmentalist stood in solidarity with labor interests and suggested a better option.

“We know that for us to invest in transit, we need to invest in the workers who are on the front lines of making the system actually good for our communities and for their families,” Liz Butler, Vice President of Organizing and Strategic Alliances at Friends of the Earth, told the 500-strong crowd. “We want to…make sure that resources are invested into public transportation so that we can have an impact on climate change.”

The rally was held in front of WMATA headquarters, intended to motivate agency officials to step in and encourage Transdev to negotiate in better faith with the striking workers.

But the people who most need to heed Butler’s words work at a much more powerful public-sector headquarters, under a certain iron dome located just a few blocks from WMATA’s Brutalist office building. Because it’s there that, next year, legislators will ride a subway train to their respective chambers and cast a vote reauthorizing hundreds of billions of dollars in federal transportation funding that will shape how we get around for years to come.