Political Quotes

“I understand our friend from New Jersey apparently doesn't like Metro or the clientele it serves. So much of what he said I think is, in fact, distorted. The Metro system in metropolitan Washington is one of the great success stories of regional cooperation in the United States of America. In less than 40 years, this system has created the second highest transit utilization in the United States. New York's is well over 120 years old; we're less than 40. In addition, my friend talked about taxpayer money. Not a dime of Federal money sustains or subsidizes Metro's operating costs. That's a problem because 40 percent of the Federal workforce uses Metro every day; and it is subsidized not by the Federal Government, I say to my friend from New Jersey, but by local governments in the metropolitan area. And I know because I was chairman of one of them, and I had to write that check every year for the subsidy for Metro--not the Federal Government, the government of Fairfax County. And we were happy to write the check because we saw the value in Metro. Metro also has the highest fare box recovery rate in the United States of any transit system. Subsidies, we recover 80 percent through the fare box. It's the most efficient recovery in the United States. It lacks a dedicated source of revenue. It's the only major transit system in the United States that lacks a dedicated source of revenue.…”