Metro Board Passes Expansive Plan for System's Future

Thursday the full Metro Board of Directors voted on and passed the Metro Momentum strategic plan, which will advance the transit agency into 2025, 2040 and beyond.

Regional leaders applauded the vision for its role in maintaining the economic prowess of the DC area. 

“We applaud the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Board for the development of its Momentum strategic plan. This initiative continues the governance reform work at WMATA. Momentum provides a framework which will help support the continued economic viability of Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia and across the region," Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley and District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray said in a joint statement.

Momentum, Metro's first strategic transit plan for the National Capital Region in more than a decade, seeks to address growing demand for a system originally built for a much smaller population. 

According to Momentum, in the 1970s metrorail served 100,000 customers a day. Today, an expanded system serves 750,000 customers a day — 20 million trips each year. And in the next three decades, the DC region's population is expected grow another 30 percent.

The new transit plan aims to increase efficiency within the system and expand capabilities in an improved system. 

Momentum divides projects and investments into short-term and long-term goals: projects maximizing the existing system, to be completed by 2025, and long-term goals to help expand it by 2040 or 2050.

"As the regional leaders work to develop an implementation strategy and plan, we encourage WMATA’s management to continue its focus on further enhancing productivity and efficiency as it has over the last three years,” McDonnell, O’Malley and Gray said in a statement. 

In issuing the plan, Metro also made it clear that maintenance and improvement to meet future demand comes with hefty price tag.

Just reconstructing and maintaining the existing system will run an estimates $1 billion (in 2012 dollars) per year. Metro 2025 proposals to "expand the core and system capacity" will require on average an additional $500 million in capital annually through through 2025. 

“While this is a forward looking plan, it will benefit today’s passengers who know that many of our trains, stations and buses in the peak periods are bursting at the seams,” Metro General Manager Richard Sarles said in a statement last week when the 2025 Special Committee approved the plan.

Read more about Metro Momentum on Patch:

• Metro Momentum Offers Expansive Plans for System's Future