The WMATA 2023 budget gives us a blueprint of Metro’s funding priorities for the next fiscal year (July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023). The 4.8-billion-dollar budget was approved in March 2022.
A few observations:
- Paul Wiedefeld, WMATA General Manager, Does not mention MetroAccess once in his opening budget message. He talks about improving Metrobus and Metrorail but not improving MetroAccess.
- The advertising budget for MetroAccess has been cut so severely that it is now just 1% of the WMATA budget.
- There is no line item in the budget for Abilities Ride, even though it is responsible for substantial savings for WMATA. A Metro representative said that it is possible that there was not enough room in the 343-page document. It was also said that there are no plans to report on the amount of savings generated by Abilities Ride.