A Montgomery County liaison on Metro’s board of directors says extending the rail system’s operating hours to 3 a.m. could jeopardize a plan to add more frequent service between Silver Spring and Glenmont.
A committee of the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority voted Thursday to maintain the system’s current hours and the full eight-member board will vote on the matter Feb. 28, possibly reversing the recommendation.
Mike Goldman, a board member who represents Montgomery County, said that he favored the decision to maintain the current closing times of 11:30 p.m. on most weeknights and 1 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
Goldman said keeping the earlier closing times will allow Metro to continue performing maintenance work that started in 2016.
WMATA General Manager Paul Wiedefeld has budgeted $3.2 million in the fiscal 2020 operating budget to allow more trains on the Red Line in Montgomery County to continue northbound from Silver Spring and continue to the terminus at Glenmont.
The change would end the Silver Spring turnback, where about half of outbound rush-hour trains ended at Silver Spring. A similar turnback at the Grosvenor-Strathmore station ended in December, allowing more outbound service during rush hours.
“It’s part of a package of service improvement that he’s [Wiedefeld] pushing, and the two big constrains are that the overall budget would be a 20 percent increase in subsidy payments for Maryland and so there’s a lot of pushback,” Goldman said.
But Goldman said if D.C.’s members on the board vote to bring back late night service, it could force Maryland, Virginia and the District to pony up an additional $45 million in subsidies, which would make ending the Silver Spring turnbacks more difficult.
“That becomes the first priority to figure out how to handle that,” Goldman said in reference to the question of how to pay for the late-night service addition.
The federal government, voicing concerns that expanding hours would delay needed rail safety work, is threatening to withhold $1.6 billion should Metro restore the late-night service.
Goldman said this would impact projects such as the planned Purple Line light rail line, scheduled to open in 2022 and connect stations in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. Other transit systems in the state that rely on federal funding, such as MARC commuter rail, could also be impacted he said.
“This is one of the unintended consequences of the district’s push to restore late night service,” he said.
Dan Schere can be reached at Daniel.schere@moco360.media
