Michael Perkins of Greater Greater Washington live-tweeted WMATA’s meeting about the budget. You may recall that in order to balance the budget, a series of service cuts have been proposed. Presumably Michael will do a write up at GGW soon with more details, but in the mean time here are some of his most important tweets:

@perkinsms Catoe: 20 cent fare increase would eliminate service reduction

@perkinsms Graham is really concerned about 20 cents as compared to 10 cents.

@perkinsms Graham lone vote against 20 cent fare increase amendment

@perkinsms Graham: we should not needlessly agitate the riders with our proposals.

Dear Mr Graham,

Transit is how we the residents of your city get around. Good transit is not a luxury for us; it is a requirement. Every minute we lose waiting for transit that comes infrequently is money out of our pockets. If service cuts go so far that the transit doesn’t come often enough, it will mean we’ll all have to buy cars or use taxis, which is much more expensive and much less efficient. Every time you cut service or raid the capital budget for operating money, you make our transit system worse, which makes our lives worse.

Please stop trying to do our pocketbooks a favor. In the long term you’re not helping them anyway, because it will cost us more to get around if the transit system sucks. We’ll pay the 10 extra cents, for goodness sake.

In conclusion, IT AGITATES US TO LOSE SERVICE!

Hugs and kisses,
BeyondDC

Update: GGW writes about the meeting in post Graham blocks giving riders choices for budget, with the main point being that Graham didn’t only oppose the fare hike, but in fact opposed even holding a public hearing to get feedback on the idea. GGW asks readers to email Graham at grahamwone@gmail.com (as well as DC’s other representative on the WMATA board neil.albert@dc.gov) and “ask them to stop treating riders like children”. BeyondDC thinks some emails are a great idea.