American Dream

Consider the story below, published in the Baltimore Sun today as an example.

City could keep rolling if $100 oil parked cars

By Meredith Cohn
Sun reporter

March 25, 2006

Believe ... we could survive $100-a-barrel oil?

Baltimore would be one of the best U.S. cities to be stranded without a car during an oil crisis, partly due to its public transportation, an earth-friendly San Francisco group said in a study it released yesterday.

SustainLane, an online information provider about resource conservation, ranked Baltimore ninth, behind New York, Boston and Philadelphia in coping with $100-a-barrel oil.

Baltimore even beat Washington, ranked No. 11, which has perhaps the nation's largest circular parking lot in the Capitol Beltway but also carried 190 million riders on its Metro subway system in fiscal 2004.


Now I suppose it is possible that "SustainLane" has not heard the old saw, be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it, but that caveat applies here. If a large drop-off in highway use (which SustainLane seems to desire) were to happen as the result of a big increase in the cost of petroleum-based fuels, then there would likely be a big cutback in transit subsidies (and thus an increase in fares or a cutback in scheduled transit service), at least in Maryland.

The transit system that serves most of the Washington, D.C. area and its suburbs, WMATA, gets most of its Maryland operating subsidies from motorists (motor fuel taxes, titling and registration fees and so on). According to published data, WMATA recovers about 57% of the money it needs to operate from fares.

None of WMATA's capital costs are funded by rider fares.

You can read all about it here (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 707 KB) - this is a analysis of WMATA operating and capital costs prepared by staff with the Maryland Department of Legislative Services (DLS).

Now I know that the article above was from the Baltimore Sun, and was supposed to be about Baltimore. So here's the story from the other end of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

Transit services operated by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA for short), excluding the MARC commuter rail services, recover only about 34% of their operating costs from fares. So the other 68% comes mostly from Maryland motorists. For more details, click here (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 966 KB) for the DLS analysis.

And consistent with Washington, Baltimore's transit riders don't fund any of the capital costs of the systems that they ride.

And if you are interested in knowing where the revenue comes from, the DLS has that covered as well. Click here (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 666 KB) for the analysis.