“This budget does a lot of damage to our transportation and transit systems,” said D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), chairman of the council’s Transportation Committee. “It’s moving the city in the wrong direction.”
The transportation cuts signal a swift reversal in policy for the Bowser administration, which in years past touted investments in transit and road safety as top priorities. Bowser transportation chief Everett Lott has defended the cuts while citing a projected drop in revenue of more than $390 million that he said is forcing city government to make “difficult decisions” and “make more with less.”
In announcing her proposed $19.7 billion budget last month, Bowser said she sought to fund most city programs and services at their pre-pandemic levels while also proposing $373 million in reductions, including the elimination of 749 vacant city government positions. The proposal, she said, reflects the city’s financial realities amid increased expenses, the looming end of pandemic-era federal aid and reduced tax revenue from commercial real estate.
The effects to transportation programs have surprised some residents and community leaders, while the D.C. Council has begun to spar with Bowser over those and other proposed cuts, ranging from housing programs to D.C. public schools. The council is expected to vote on the spending plan next month.
Under the proposal, the District would downsize its transit operations by cutting three of six D.C. Circulator routes. The proposed service reduction in the 18-year-old system would come months after Bowser announced plans to add a new route to Ward 7. The mayor’s plans would have no effect on the much larger Metro rail and bus system, which operates separately.
“It’s a policy flip-flop,” Allen in an interview after questioning Lott at a six-hour budget oversight hearing Monday. “A month ago, they were telling everyone publicly that they were looking at expanding the Circulator, and now they’re looking at essentially permanently cutting the Circulator in half.”
Three of the six D.C. Circulator routes would be eliminated under Bowser’s plan, including the second-best performing route, which connects Woodley Park to downtown and serves low-income workers in Latino neighborhoods in Ward 1. The plan also would discontinue the Rosslyn-to-Dupont Circle and Eastern Market-to-L’Enfant Plaza routes.
The Circulator reductions, including personnel cuts, would save $10.5 million annually, according to budget projections. Operations costs for the remaining three routes would be about $25 million next year, officials said.
Lott said the decision to eliminate routes was necessary because of increased operating costs, adding that Metrobus service is available in the affected corridors. The District Department of Transportation will also reduce its planned order for 75 new electric buses down to 30 buses, while still planning for an all-electric fleet by 2030.
The proposed service reductions come as ridership continues to lag into the pandemic’s fourth year. In fiscal year 2022, 1.8 million riders used the six-route system, down from 5.7 million before the pandemic.
The system’s busiest route, Georgetown-to-Union Station, will continue to operate with ridership of about 832,000 in the most recent fiscal year, about half of its pre-pandemic numbers.
The city also will keep the Congress Heights-to-Union Station route, maintaining a Circulator presence east of the Anacostia River, while keeping the National Mall route used mostly by tourists. The Mall route has the lowest ridership, but city officials cited a $900,000 annual subsidy from the National Park Service as a deciding factor to save it.
“The reduction of routes in our Circulator program was difficult — a very difficult decision to make,” Lott said.
Bowser’s proposed budget also would cut 30 vacant crossing guard positions. Lott said DDOT will maintain its current level of school crossing guard staffing and provide schools that have submitted requests with at least one crossing guard. Bowser pledged last year to add 100 full-time school crossing guards in response to a rise in crashes involving children near schools. It is unclear how many of those positions were filled, but city data indicates that the 236 guards budgeted for this and next year is lower than in 2022 and 2021.
On traffic safety, the budget includes $9.7 million for intersection improvements. A six-year capital plan includes $30 million to expand the District’s bikeway network with the goal of adding 10 miles per year, as well as $15 million for Capital Bikeshare bicycles and stations. The plan also keeps $114 million for bus priority projects over six years.
The proposed $185.1 million operating budget for the District Department of Transportation reflects a 3.8 percent reduction from its current budget. Its $688 million capital budget is an 8 percent reduction.
Transportation officials said the tough financial picture is also taking a toll on the city’s “open streets” program, which gives car-free space to pedestrians, bike riders and others for half a day. The city had eight “open streets” events last year, but this year is planning two.
A key revenue source will be 342 new automated traffic cameras the city plans to begin rolling out this summer, which had been approved in budget cycles over the past two years. The cameras include 140 to be used on buses that will look for cars illegally using bus lanes. The remaining will look for violations regarding speed, red lights, stop signs and oversized vehicles.
Bowser’s decision to use revenue from the automated traffic enforcement to close the city’s budget gap has been widely criticized. Bowser officials said the move received approval from the city’s chief financial officer, noting the mayor plans to use some of those future funds for efforts to calm traffic.
Some residents and elected leaders said the move would hurt confidence in the city’s automated traffic enforcement program.
“The mayor and her folks are basically now conceding that the main purpose [of the traffic cameras] is for revenue, not for making our streets safer,” said Zach Israel, a resident of Petworth and a traffic safety advocate.
The move also appears to go against a measure that requires the city to use traffic camera revenue to fund Vision Zero, a program that aims to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries. The provision approved last year directed the city to put excess revenue above $98 million in a fund to ensure implementation of a comprehensive Vision Zero law that passed in 2020 and had been largely unfunded.
The Office of the D.C. Auditor recently cited unmet goals and increases in road deaths in concluding that Bowser failed to adequately fund her Vision Zero initiative, announced in 2015 in a pledge to eliminate traffic deaths by 2024. The audit issued last month urged the city to fully fund Vision Zero efforts.
Lott said the city will continue its road safety program, noting that those efforts have historically been funded through the general fund. Allen, however, echoed concerns by residents and road safety advocates, warning that the mayor’s move will fuel critics’ assertions that the camera system is focused on money, rather than safety.
Israel said he hopes the city will reconsider.
“If the goal is to change driver behavior, a good way to go of achieving that is actually using the revenue that we get, which is a lot, to actually make the physical infrastructure safer so that it’s harder for drivers to speed and it’s harder for drivers to go barreling through stop signs,” he said.
