Author: Ayesha Amsa

Who We Are

Posted on by Ayesha Amsa


The Fund Metro! coalition is made up of several DC-area nonprofit groups. List of the groups who have signed on to date:

  • Coalition for Smarter Growth
  • Active Prince William
  • Chesapeake Climate Action Network
  • Clean Fairfax
  • DC New Liberals
  • Gaithersburg HELP
  • Grassroots Alexandria
  • Greater Greater Washington
  • Just Economics
  • League of Women Voters, DC
  • League of Women Voters, Maryland
  • Mobilize Frederick
  • Prince William Conservation Alliance
  • Sierra Club – Maryland Chapter
  • Sierra Club – DC Chapter
  • Southern Environmental Law Center
  • Sustainable Mobility for Arlington County
  • Washington Area Bicyclist Association
  • YIMBYs of Northern Virginia

Our Asks

Posted on by Ayesha Amsa

Short term stopgap (by April/May 2024):

Close the FY25 and FY26 funding gaps with enough funding from Virginia, DC, and Maryland to avoid service cuts and minimize fare hikes and shifts of preventative maintenance funds to operations. Minimum request:

  • $150 million from Maryland
  • $130 million from Virginia (split 50/50 with Northern Virginia localities)
  • $200 million from DC

Ideally, we can win even more funding to avoid fare hikes and shifting maintenance funds to operations.

Long term solution: 

  1. Solve the long-term dedicated funding challenge once and for all by reaching regional consensus on sources of dedicated funding legislatively earmarked to WMATA and indexed to inflation.
    1. Consider numerous funding sources including land value (“split-rate”) taxation for transit-oriented development areas.
    2. Shift funding from highways to Metro and other transit given the climate crisis.
  2. Improve efficiency through dedicated bus lanes, consolidated bus purchases with local providers, and even consolidating bus operators.
  3. Continue Metro’s progress in improving safety, preventative maintenance, operations, cost controls, financial reporting, and communications with decision-makers and the public.
  4. Standardize WMATA’s reporting to the three states, Northern Virginia Transportation Commission, and Federal government on finances, operations, maintenance, and safety to provide more transparent and accessible reporting and reduce the administrative burden on all parties.

Why We Need Metro

Posted on by Ayesha Amsa

Metro’s benefits to our region include:

  1. Shaping a more sustainable region through walkable, bikeable, mixed-use, transit-oriented communities and reducing greenhouse gas emissions
  2. Affordable access to jobs and opportunity – within the Metro Compact Area, the land within ½ mile of the system’s Metrorail stations and Metrobus stops contains 60% of the region’s population, 70% of jobs, and 50% of businesses. 
  3. An effective alternative to sitting in traffic that benefits everyone by reducing congestion.
  4. An essential service underpinning a competitive and growing economy – attracting companies and the next-generation workforce.
  5. An important contributor to tax revenue – Metrorail station areas are only 3% of the region’s land area, but contribute 30% of its property tax revenue.
  6. Lower combined housing and transportation costs, particularly when combined with affordable housing – Washington metro area commuters can save over $13,000 per year by using transit instead of driving.
  7. Reduced consumption of land, saving farms and forests, and leaving room for parks and protected stream corridors.

Event: A Virtual Walk & Talk Along Little Hunting Creek

Posted on by Ayesha Amsa

If you missed our virtual stream walk with the Audubon Naturalist Society and Fairfax County staff, you can watch the presentation here.

From ANS: On September 10th, 2020, Fairfax County staff Charles Smith & JoAnne Fiebe led us on a virtual walk-and-talk of an area around Mount Vernon Plaza, part of Little Hunting Creek, one of the sites of a proposed “ecological spine“. This concept, introduced in Chapter 3 of the Richmond Highway Urban Design Guidelines, envisions how streams can be made part of the community again. Instead of burying streams and building on top of them, how can redevelopment integrate streams and their riparian buffers into walkable, bikeable areas where people and nature can thrive in urban settings?

Tune in to the webinar to hear about the vision for the Route 1 redevelopment and hear about how redevelopment can be tied to creating healthier streams, and therefore a healthier world for us.

TESTIMONY re: Support of the Heritage at Old Town

TESTIMONY re: Support of the Heritage at Old Town

Posted on by Ayesha Amsa

We urge you to approve the Heritage at Old Town. Alexandria has lost over 90% of its affordable housing over the past two decades. We face a housing affordability crisis in Alexandria and neighboring jurisdictions. Multiple studies demonstrate that we need both more supply and more long-term committed affordable units. This project provides both. Supply is critical to avoid displacement, and a range of tools are needed including leveraging land value and density to ensure we create more affordable units.