Written Comments of
Mike Litt, Sierra Club District of Columbia Chapter
For the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) Performance Oversight Hearing
Before the Council of the District of Columbia’s
Committee on Transportation and the Environment
3 March 2025
My name is Mike Litt. I am a car-free renter in Ward 6 and Chair of the Sierra Club DC Chapter, as well as Chair of our Sustainable Transportation Committee. The Sierra Club is America’s largest grassroots environmental organization, with millions of members and supporters. In DC, we have about 2,100 dues-paying members and many thousands of additional supporters. As a top 12% Metro rider (according to Metro Rewind), thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony for the performance oversight hearing on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA).
According to the District of Columbia’s Multimodal Long-Range Transportation Plan, also known as moveDC, transportation is the District’s second highest source of GHG emissions, accounting for 21% of such emissions. WMATA, which operates public transit facilities that help move more than 700,000 people in the DC metro area every weekday, therefore, plays a critical role in meeting the District’s goals for a 60% reduction in GHG emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2045, as required by the DC Climate Commitment Amendment Act. Meeting our national and local carbon reduction goals and improving air quality and health will require both shifting more trips away from vehicles and making sure that vehicle trips—including those on transit vehicles—are powered by clean energy.
As Metro’s 2024 Benefits of Transit Report found, transit not only improves health and reduces greenhouse gases but also saves riders money on car costs, provides an affordable and equitable transportation option for those who can’t afford cars, and saves lives.
Funding
Metro is the lifeblood of DC’s economy and an essential service for DC residents and workers, suburban commuters, and the Federal government. It is a part of what makes the DMV area a special place to live and is critical to having a climate smart transportation system, where people can get around the District as sustainably and affordable as possible. It should be treated as such and fully funded as the priority it should be.
We commend the agreement from DC, Maryland, and Virginia to fill a $95 million funding gap in the FY2026 proposed budget, and urge the three jurisdictions to follow through with those subsidies. Although we appear to be avoiding another potential short-term cliff like last year, the long-term consequences of Metro not having a dedicated source of funding for its operations budget must finally be addressed. Metro’s financial stability is not just a fiscal issue—it is a climate, health and safety, and equity imperative for the entire region.
Federal Relief funding has completely dried up, and Metro’s proposed budget continues to transfer preventive maintenance expenses from the operations budget to the capital budget. Last week’s proposed decrease in the FY26 preventive maintenance transfer from $129 million to $109 million is a promising sign, but such annual transfers will still cut into capital budget funding for critical infrastructure projects to ensure Metro’s safety, reliability, and sustainability, such as those to rehabilitate facilities, infrastructure, and systems; electrify bus garages; and deploy zero-emission buses. In fact, Metro’s six year Capital Improvement Program (CIP) postpones ~$5 billion worth of state of good repair investments, due to a shift from a proactive asset replacement program to a reactive maintenance strategy, which Metro alarmingly notes, “will lead to decreases in reliability and increases in incidents.”
Ultimately, Metro needs dedicated funding like other transit authorities. As a member of the DMV Moves Community Partners Advisory Group, we will continue advocating for dedicated funding so Metro can operate more frequent, reliable service. The DMV Moves Task Force should seize this generational opportunity to create a unified regional transit system. This means going beyond the status quo or modest service improvements by maximizing frequency, expanding service, and seriously exploring funding sources like congestion pricing and “land value return,” which have not yet been raised or thoroughly examined at the DMV Moves meetings as far as we know. We will follow up with more information about those funding ideas soon.
Service Improvements
Increased Frequency
We applaud Metro’s more than 12% increase in ridership in 2024 and leadership in increased ridership among large transit systems across the country. To increase ridership even more, we support the proposed increases in frequency for some peak rail service and increases in weekend hours of rail operation.
The Year One 2025 Better Bus Network, which uses existing resources, is a good step in the right direction toward more frequent, well-connected, and faster bus service. Ultimately, dedicated funding will be needed to implement the full Visionary Network, which includes plans to eventually provide at least 30-minute frequency throughout the day for most bus routes after Year One, and to expand past the Visionary Network to fully meet the needs of our region.
As moveDC explains, transit’s usefulness and attractiveness to the public is determined by high-frequency service, defined as no more than a five minute wait for rail and no more than ten minutes for buses. This tracks with WMATA’s Better Bus Network project survey, which found that “[s]horter wait times and on-time arrivals are among the most important factors for current and potential customers.” It is also essential to address the additional time that transit riders are, effectively, taxed with compared to driving. For example, according to a Greater Greater Washington post, “it takes residents three to five times longer to get their groceries via transit than it would take them by car.”
Sierra Club, therefore, encourages Metro to work toward system-wide high-frequency service.
Frequency is also a matter of equity, as 83% of Metrobus riders are minority customers and 60% have low incomes. According to moveDC, the areas in the District with the greatest transportation needs are defined by factors such as residents’ proximity to frequent transit service and their commute times. People of color, low-income residents, and people with disabilities make up a larger percentage of the population in areas with greater transportation needs than in other neighborhoods in DC.
According to the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment’s (DOEE) Keep Cool DC Story Map, “Some populations, like people of color and households with limited English proficiency, suffer more impacts of heat than others.” Higher frequency bus service is an important way to mitigate heat exposure and those impacts, as DC continues to experience dangerous heat waves.
Clear Lanes
We support the continued rollout of the Clear Lanes Project with the District Department of Transportation (DDOT). We would like an update and analysis on how effectively enforcement is decreasing obstructive activity and improving bus travel times and bus stop safety, as more data becomes available.
Bike and Pedestrian Facilities
We support continued funding for Bicycle and Pedestrian Facility Rehabilitation in the proposed capital budget, which would improve pedestrian access and replace bicycle facilities at Metrorail stations, expanding on the new bike parking upgrades that were scheduled to start last year. We would like to see a timeline for such planned improvements. Also, when our region experiences snowstorms, like the one earlier this year, DDOT and WMATA should work together to ensure that pedestrian access to bus stops is cleared of snow and ice, beyond just the area immediately surrounding the stop.
Safety
We are concerned by the Safety Audit of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, published in January. Troubling findings from the report include that:
- Metrorail does not have a reliable communication system for operations or emergencies.
- Metrorail fire and life safety inspections do not identify and resolve deficiencies with fire life safety equipment and assets within stations.
- Metrorail is not contacting jurisdictional emergency services immediately upon identification of fire and smoke on the Metrorail system.
We would like to know how Metro is fixing the identified problems and which projects in the proposed budget address them.
We are encouraged to see in the FY25 Q1 Service Excellence Report that serious crime across the Metro system was down 40% compared to FY24 Q1. However, we urge Metro to also prioritize meeting its other targets for employee assault and injury rates, and on-time performance.
Electrification
Improved service and safety lead to more ridership, which in turn reduces vehicle miles traveled (VMT). In addition to reducing VMT, it is crucial that improved service on the Better Bus Network is delivered by zero-emission electric buses to comply with the DC Climate Commitment Amendment Act, meet WMATA’s sustainability goals, and improve air quality for District residents. As a Sierra Club report on WMATA's bus fleet shows, there would be a savings of at least $350 million over a 15-year time period if 50% of WMATA’s fleet were electric.
Following Metro’s roll out of two more electric buses last year, doubling the total to four, we await the expected delivery of the remaining eight Battery Electric Buses (BEB) from its pilot program by mid-2025.
According to Metro’s Annual Transformation Report released last week, WMATA “awarded a five-year bus procurement contract to further increase Metro’s zero-emission bus fleet by up to 275 buses if all option years are awarded.” Given that Metro plans to acquire approximately 100 buses per year, this contract suggests WMATA will fall short of its 2027 target to exclusively purchase zero-emission buses and is on track to procure only 287 of the 500 zero-emission buses planned by 2030 in its Zero-Emission Bus Transition Plan. We request a timely update to this transition timeline and urge WMATA to prioritize meeting its goal of a 100% zero-emission bus fleet by 2042, as well as staying on track with its timelines for converting bus garages to support electric vehicles.
On a related note, we appreciate that the scorecard in the FY2024 Environmental Sustainability Report includes progress to goal and comparisons to prior years.
Conclusion
WMATA is an essential part of what makes the DMV area a special place to live. We make these recommendations with enormous gratitude to WMATA’s entire workforce for keeping Metro running despite significant challenges over the past few years. We look forward to continuing to work with this committee and WMATA so that Metro can keep serving as the arteries of the Washington metropolitan area, with sustainable public transportation, including BEBs, in the District taking on a greater share of the trips that people make every day. With sustained investment and bold action, we can ensure that Metro becomes an even more sustainable, reliable, and equitable system for all residents and workers in our region. I can be reached at chair@dc.sierraclub.org. Thank you for taking the time to consider these comments.