News Story

Loudoun’s Board of Supervisors last night endorsed a workplan formed by regional leaders to address capital project funding challenges faced by Metro in the coming years.

The transportation system spans Washington, DC, Maryland and Virginia. 

Metro has separate budgets for its operating expenses and capital expenses. This year, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority board approved a $2.5 billion fiscal year 2026 operating budget. That budget is funded from fares and other revenues, and is also subsidized by the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.

The capital budget funds projects that help maintain and improve the system and the system. In 2018, the Metro’s funding partners established the agency’s first dedicated capital funding source that provides $500 million a year, but since the funding is a fixed amount, it has lost purchasing power over the past seven years.

DMVMoves, led by the WMATA and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments was formed to develop a new plan. Over the past year and a half, the task force has been meeting to address the problem. That effort involved garnering agreement across a wide range of stakeholders—chambers of commerce, state senators and delegates, county administrators including Loudoun’s Tim Hemstreet, local officials including Loudoun Chair Phyllis Randall (D-At Large) and transportation experts.

In November, the task force published a work plan that identifies the need for $460 million a year in additional capital funding for Metro. It recommends contributions grow at 3% each year to keep up with inflation.

Virginia’s portion of the proposed additional funding, based on the current formula, is $142 million with $5.96 million coming from Loudoun. That would bring the total Loudoun contribution to Metro’s capital fund to $13.6 million, with $7.34 million already earmarked from the county’s gasoline sales tax revenues. Those are tentative numbers and subject to change as plans are more firmly laid out.

Council of Governments Executive Director Clark Mercer presented the plan to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday night.

“DMVMoves sought out to do two things: one, to look at how we can better coordinate between all of our transit providers and provide better efficiencies and service to the riders. And two, look at funding. And that funding that we’ll get into looks at all transit in the region, but it's largely focused on Metro,” Mercer said.

The funding needs to be enough to support Metro’s needs and allow the organization to put money into bonds, pay off those bonds and issue new bonds in an evolving manner, while still being sustainable for the localities and states.

“That $460 million is split between the three states and the three states pay their Metro bills differently. In Maryland, the bill goes up to Annapolis, and their share of the bill is 100% paid out of state tax dollars. Obviously in DC it gets paid in full. And here in Virginia, typically, that bill is split 50% between state and 50% between the localities,” Mercer said.

Loudoun supervisors voted unanimously to endorse the plan, which includes supporting legislation necessary to secure the additional funding at the state level. That funding must be available to Metro in advance of reaching its debt capacity limit in fiscal year 2029.

Randall praised the team’s work developing the plan, calling it a “very heavy lift and very arduous process."

“The goal is, of course, that this $460 million will have a 3% increase year over year, and so this is sustainable, bondable money. If we don't find sustainable, bondable money, we're 

going to be back here in five years and eight years to 10 years, doing this again. And when we think about how important the Metro is to the entire region, it is important to get this done now, once and for all, to get it done right once and for all,” Randall said.

Supervisor Matthew F. Letourneau (R-Dulles), who served on Metro’s Board of Directors for years until resigning this summer, said the work to review Metro’s finances was an important part of the effort.

“I grew increasingly confident in Metro's finances and our sort of institutional framework coming out of a tough period, but others didn't see and didn't have access to the information that I did in my conversations with staff and things like that,” he said. “And so it really was important to have a group that came in and validated what Metro was saying in terms of what the needs are, in terms of how the money's being spent. The capital delivery program, for instance, even from the time that I was on the board, dramatically in terms of efficiency, delivering projects on time under budget, in some cases. So those things were happening, but we needed a group to come in and really verify it, so it wasn't just a measure of saying that was happening. And that's what this this effort did, as well as kind of coalescing around the strategy.”

The initiative will be taken up by surrounding jurisdictions as well ahead of the 2026 General Assembly session.