MARC spending over the years
Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. caught my attention recently when he said he would pull the plug on light rail for Baltimore's Red Line and the Washington suburban Purple Line and focus spending on, among other things, rehab of MARC.
That got me to wondering about the relative levels of spending on MARC during the first Ehrlich term and the O'Malley years. Here are the totals for both capital and operations spending, provided by the Maryland Department of Transportation.
Fiscal Year Total Investment in millions (000)
FY 2003 $ 71,509
FY 2004 76,944
FY 2005 76,708
FY 2006 97,488
FY 2007 101,622
FY 2008 144,831
FY 2009 195,314
FY 2010 (Projected) 162,099
Fiscal years begin July 1. The first fiscal year of a governor's term (FY2003 for Ehrlich, FY2007 for Martin O'Malley) generally reflects a combination of that governor's decisions and his predecessor's. The second fiscal year is a better reflection of that governor's priorities. The fiscal 2010 figure may be incomplete.
What do these figures mean? MARC riders (and others) are welcome to weigh in.
Comments
Do the figures include the 20-some new engines? If so, that would easily account for the huge (relative) increase starting in 2008, when they probably had to start paying the loco vendor to start building them.
If you factor the loco order out as a large one-time expenditure (given that you only go out for new locos every 20-30 years), the figures you're left with for "everything else" are relatively flat. They would have needed new locos no matter who was in office. Not that I'm a shill for Ehrlich or anything (I don't agree with his plan to change the Red and Purple Lines to buses), but the fiscal and specification planning for the loco order probably even started when he was still in office.
Posted by: Traffic Engineer | May 21, 2010 10:29 AM
I do love the way you call Ehrlich on his B.S. There is no evidence that Ehrlich spent any significant amount of time or attention on MARC issues during his initial (and hopefully, only) term in office.
If it wasn't asphalt, it didnt matter.
That said, O'Malley's team has wasted nearly 4 years in getting the Red and Purple Lines moving. Even when the TTF was flush, there was no sense of urgency to get them moving. MO'M should have pulled an Ehrlich and vowed that shovels would be in the ground on Red/Purple by end of first term
Posted by: planner dude | May 21, 2010 9:30 PM
Anybody who lived through the sky high gas prices of 2008 (which should be everyone who reads this blog) knows that the area desperately needs public transportation alternatives to hedge against future oil prices. The Chinese and Indian economies are burgeoning every single year and demanding more and more fossil fuels. Once the world economy fully recovers the price of oil is going to go right back up. The time to build public transportation is right now, while the price of energy is still relatively cheap, since the cost of doing everything increases once oil prices increase.
Bob Ehrlich is a joke pandering to the entitled vote in the state who think it's their right to take everyone's tax dollars to subsidize their gluttonous driving habits. That dog is only going to hunt for so long. The adults know that public transportation is desperately needed and needed now.
Posted by: Patapsco Jones | May 24, 2010 9:00 AM