A recent financial report shows the Maryland Transit Administration facing a $2 billion funding shortfall – creating challenges across the state’s multi-modal Transportation program.

The Maryland Transit Administration is the unified State agency overseeing mass transit projects around the state. Directed by the General Assembly on its fiscal capacity and funding, its report shows a concerning shortfall in funds.

From coverage on Maryland Matters:

The numbers are contained in the state’s first Capital Needs Inventory, an assessment mandated by the legislature in 2018 to give lawmakers and others a clear view of how the state’s transit needs measure up against expected revenues.

Critics said the $2.058 billion gap — divided evenly between projected “state of good repair” expenses ($1.031 billion) and “enhancements” ($1.027 billion) — reflects a failure to properly invest in the state’s transit systems.

The transportation-oriented Streetsblog wrote about the problem as well, with its own assessment and a flavor of the immediate political fallout:

State Delegate Brooke Lierman told the Baltimore Sun that the report shows that Gov. Larry Hogan and Transportation Secretary Pete Rahn are “drastically under-funding investments in our public transit infrastructure.”

“Now that there is a full accounting of the need, I look forward to hearing from Secretary Rahn and Gov. [Larry] Hogan what their plan is to ensure public transit infrastructure — the buses, the transit cars that Marylanders ride on every day — are in a state of good repair and are safe,” Lierman said.

The Hogan administration pointed to $14 billion in investment the state has pumped into the MTA and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority between 2019 and 2024. State transportation officials will present the state’s six-year spending plan to state lawmakers in the fall.