WMATA Gets $34.3M in Funding For New Cars

The US Senate has just announced that WMATA will receive over $34 million dollars in funding to purchase new rails cars. Just yesterday, Senators from Maryland and Virginia sent a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee urging them to provide immediate further funding.

From Fox 5 News:

Senators from Maryland and Virginia announced Wednesday that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) will receive $34.3 million for the purchase of 52 new Metro cars.

Full article here. This comes as the final installment of a Federal funding program for Metro. It is terrible that it takes such a tragic event for these funds to be released and called for, but that situation will never be able to improve until Metro has dedicated and consistent funding. Metro serves a great purpose to the Federal government, as well as local governments and local economies, and deserves the funding it needs to keep the area running.

This funding is to replace 52 older cars. Metro apparently runs about 290 1000 series cars, which are the cars that were involved in the crash and were potentially the cause of it. So all this money is great...but is it just a start?

In this economy, calling for additional funding on anything is incredibly difficult. But when something terrible happens, things change a bit. This needs to be fixed once and for all.