Rise in MTA funding OK’d; Hogan to sign it

The Maryland General Assembly on Thursday approved legislation requiring Gov. Larry Hogan to allocate an extra $178 million over three years to the state agency that operates the subway in Baltimore, which was recently closed for a month for emergency repairs.

The measure to provide more money to the Maryland Transit Administration passed the House of Delegates 96-41. The bill now goes to Gov. Larry Hogan, who has said he would sign it.

The legislation also requires Maryland to award a $167 million annual grant to the Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority — provided Virginia and the District of Columbia match the funds. The authority operates the Washington Metro, which has been plagued by unreliable service and safety problems after years of under-funding of maintenance projects.

The legislation initially called for new funding only for the Washington Metro. But an effort by Baltimore-area lawmakers to include the MTA received added impetus in February when the Baltimore Metro was forced to shut down for a month to repair deteriorated tracks that posed a threat of derailment.

The closure brought increased attention to the needs of the MTA, which operates the Baltimore region’s transit systems as well as MARC commuter trains and commuter buses serving both of the state’s urban regions.

“It increased the urgency and demonstrated to policy makers how important this was,” said Del. Brooke Lierman, the Baltimore Democrat wholed the effort to include the region in the bill. She called the bill’s passage “a big step forward for the MTAand its riders.”

The legislation would require the governor to allocate minimum 4.4 percent increases in the MTA’s $1.6 billion operating budget for each of the three years starting in mid-2019. It also requires a capital infusion of $29 million a year above current spending levels for those three years, money that could be used for the Baltimore subway or other MTA systems. Together that adds up to $178 million for the agency.