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Metro Will Need Hundreds Of New Cars, Manager Says
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Metro is the only major transit agency in the country without a significant source of dedicated funding. A federal bill to provide Metro $1.5 billion over 10 years, to be matched by Virginia, Maryland and the District, is pending in Congress. All three jurisdictions have identified their share of the funding. The bill is being blocked by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.)
Even if the bill were to pass this year, the earliest that funds would be available to Metro would be fiscal 2011, Catoe said.
To address growing ridership, Metro wants to expand regional bus service and integrate that service with planned streetcar and light-rail lines along major corridors to supplement the 106-mile subway system.
In addition to expanding its current fleet of 1,066 rail cars, Metro needs to make major improvements to stations by adding staircases, escalators and pedestrian tunnels connecting Farragut North and Farragut West and Gallery Place and Metro Center.
The agency also can increase capacity by realigning the Blue Line. That plan would reroute some Blue Line trains between Virginia and the District during rush periods on the Yellow Line bridge near the Pentagon, instead of running them through the Rosslyn tunnel, the system's biggest chokepoint. The plan would send the trains to Greenbelt, the last stop on the Green Line. The plan would be the first major realignment of daily service in recent years.
Officials are soliciting comment from riders before making a final recommendation to the board.
Many of the measures to increase capacity, including the pedestrian tunnels, Blue Line realignment and new rail line downtown, have been discussed by Metro planning officials in the past. But as ridership has grown, officials say there is an urgent need to revisit them.
"In the next five to 10 years, there needs to be a serious ramping up of the planning and development," said Nat Bottigheimer, Metro's planning chief. "It's not like you can go to Target in 2015 and buy 130 rail cars."
It takes at least five years to design, order, build and test rail cars. Additional rail cars also require increasing storage capacity at rail yards, which is expensive and time-consuming. Longer trains also use more electricity, and Metro is upgrading its power substations to accommodate running half of rush-period trains with eight cars by next spring.
