On November 30th, the Greater Washington Board of Trade (the Board of Trade) and the Greater Washington Partnership (the Partnership) hosted the 6^th annual Capital Region Transportation Forum. This annual event brings together the Capital Region’s transportation leaders – from Washington D.C., Maryland, and Virginia – to discuss shared challenges and opportunities that require multi-jurisdiction collaboration. This year, the discussion centered around the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) fiscal challenges and regional efforts to overcome them. 

The Partnership and the Board of Trade work together to ensure the region is advancing comprehensive and strategic transportation investments that will keep our economy moving. An efficient, accessible, and reliable transportation system is essential to ensuring businesses and residents can thrive.   

We kicked off the morning by celebrating many of the region’s transportation wins from the past year, including the relaunch of the Baltimore Red Line, Metro’s post-pandemic ridership recovery and historic levels of service, as well as record-breaking ridership on Virginia’s passenger trains. Most notably, WMATA’s $750 million operating budget deficit for the upcoming fiscal year, remains a major challenge facing the region and we urged leaders and elected officials to work together toward a sustainable solution.  

Charting the Path to Sustainable Mobility 

The event opened with Dr. Cinzia Cirillo, who is a professor and the interim director of the Maryland Transportation Institute at the University of Maryland. Dr. Cirillo discussed recent research from the Maryland Transportation Institute regarding persistent traffic and congestion in the Greater Washington region despite the prevalence of remote work. She also shared the data science behind those insights, and how such models can be invaluable tools for decision makers going forward to forecast usage, expected impacts, and externalities of future infrastructure projects. “[Monitoring congestion] is not enough, because in order to make investments, we need to be able to predict the consequences of our actions, or no action,” Cirillo said. 

SEE MORE PICUTURES FROM OUR EVENT HERE

Randy Clarke: State of the Metro Address  

Randy Clarke, the General Manager and CEO of WMATA, updated the audience on WMATA’s current financial crisis. The transit agency, which is facing a $750 million operating budget deficit, has been working toward reforms, cost savings, and service cuts to help bridge its funding gap. Clarke outlined the major factors contributing to the agency’s deficit, including decreased ridership post-pandemic, inflation, and the depletion of COVID subsidies. If a funding agreement is not defined in the coming weeks, the immediate consequences could include significant service cuts and layoffs. “The state of Metro is strong but highly uncertain. We need to choose as a region what we want Metro to be,” Clarke said.  

Clarke presented various budget scenarios with the worst-case scenario requiring drastic cuts to bus and rail services, longer waiting times for commuters, the shutdown of numerous bus lines, and early shutdowns of the Metrorail system. Equally concerning is the huge number of WMATA employees that will face the prospect of layoffs and hiring freezes if funding is not secured. Layoff notifications and the hiring freeze could begin in January 2025, with impacts to service starting to show during DC’s busy cherry blossom season next spring. 

Panel: Regional Transportation Leaders Panel 

A panel discussion, moderated by WUSA9 anchor Lesli Foster, brought together the transportation leaders from DC, Maryland, and Virginia to discuss recent progress and collaboration on regional transportation initiatives. The panelists, Virginia Secretary of Transportation W. Sheppard Miller III, Maryland Transportation Secretary Paul Wiedefeld, and Interim Director of the District Department of Transportation Sharon Kershbaum, shared insights on their administrations’ respective visions and shared regional priorities. Safety was stressed as a top priority across the region. All three secretaries emphasized their shared focus on reducing roadway injuries and fatalities.  “We lost over 1,000 people last year on our roadways. The problem is that we’ve gotten used to that fact,” said Sheppard Miller III.  

WMATA was another key concern and topic of discussion. The uncertain future of WMATA services, escalating costs, and impacts on service are creating instability across the region. “The importance of WMATA to Maryland and to the region cannot be overstated. It’s what makes us competitive nationally and internationally. We cannot let it fail, but we also have to work with our financial realities. We’re going to have to make some hard choices,” said Paul Wiedefeld. The panel explored how each administration is working to ensure stability for WMATA, its funding partners, and the broader community that relies on its services “WMATA’s survival is the District’s survival. The District is really trying to drive demand [for transit] because that is a lever that we have. Priority bus lanes have been key to that.” said Sharon Kershbaum. 

The Partnership and the Board of Trade were honored to host 200 leaders to discuss foundational issues for our region’s ability to grow and thrive. Thank you to Lesli Foster for serving as our moderator, all our panelists and presenters, and a special thanks to this year’s sponsors: Georgetown University, EXP, HDR, HNTB, Transurban, Aon, EY, and Lyft. We will continue to convene and look for opportunities to partner with the leaders who joined us at the 2023 Capital Region Transportation Forum to ensure the region continues to make the long-term investments needed to ensure this region remains one of the best places to live, work, and build a business. 

Watch the full 2023 Capital Region Transportation Forum here.

To watch and share clips from the 2023 Capital Region Transportation Forum, check out the below videos from our YouTube page:

WMATA (Metro) General Manager Randy Clarke discusses transit system’s $750 million funding gap

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JQdLMXgV4&t=217s

Capital Region transportation leaders discuss Metro funding and traffic congestion in DC, MD, and VA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGoIJqYfPOg&t=2s

Maryland Transportation Institute shares traffic research for the Greater Washington region

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpJgO63Ac2Q

Top labor officials from Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia came together to discuss the future of labor markets and workforce development as part of the Board of Trade’s Regional Policy Leadership Series on Oct. 19. Sec. Portia Wu, Dr. Unique N. Morris-Hughes, and Sec. Bryan Slater discussed topics across the labor and workforce landscape including workforce development and retention, labor environment, intraregional cooperation, and preparing the region for the future impacts of emerging technologies like AI (Artificial Intelligence) before addressing the potential impacts of a government shutdown on the region’s labor market and economy as well and more detailed discussion of what intraregional collaboration should look like going forward.    

https://youtu.be/EXekjAV_XTc?si=CQUUmGIfkjKdTQh0

Across the region, all three jurisdictions are experiencing record low unemployment rates and are bouncing back from lower labor participation rates experienced throughout and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Bolstered by concerted efforts on the part of each jurisdiction to shore up existing and create new pipelines from education to the workforce, these employment numbers paint a picture of a region which is recovering rapidly from the malaise of the pandemic and working to engage young residents in the labor market to ensure that this rate of growth is stable and sustainable over time. 

Expansion of efforts to create labor pipelines from local resident students to the IT (Information Technology), Professional Services Management, and Hospitality and Tourism sectors promises to ensure that the region’s economy can be supplied with the local labor market, reinvesting in the current population. Job training programs like Virginia’s workforce innovation act, Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, and DC’s infrastructure academy represent an enormous investment in young residents and in ensuring that departments of labor and employment are able to connect students with the workforce through internship programs, apprenticeships, and signing days, offering tax credits for training programs in critical and growing industries and incentivization of youth involvement in job training programs.  

Continued investment into workforce retention programs like FAMLI and provision of mental health services at all points along the lifetime of an individual’s career promise to further improve the region’s bounce back from pandemic workforce participation levels and keep groups frequently at risk of dropping temporarily or permanently from the labor market engaged. Expanding the mental health care capacity through universal licensing recognition, telehealth services, and demand side subsidization will help to combat the burnout and provide much needed wrap around services to those working on the front lines of the economy.   

https://youtu.be/j_Z1Crqe3y4?si=VSMZG0vnoYR4hUgy

Regional jurisdictions are also preparing for the expansion of AI in the workplace and setting out guardrails for where and how AI can be used to prevent unfair labor practices while actively utilizing artificial intelligences to ensure that every resident has the ability to start on equal ground in the labor market when searching for employment.   

Finally, panelists discussed their concerns regarding a potential government shutdown and the relative risks of a longer or shorter period as well as some loan programs designed to bridge unpaid working periods along with their desire to build a more robust model to protect the region’s largely federally reliant economy.   

Click here to watch the full interview. 

The Board of Trade will continue to connect the business community to information directly from policy makers through our Regional Policy Leadership Series (RPLS), ensuring that our members have the best up-to-date knowledge impacting regional policies. Stay tuned for our upcoming sessions with regional Senate Presidents, Attorneys General, Comptrollers, and more.  

This Regional Policy Leadership Series  webinar was presented by First National Bank. Supporting Sponsors of the event series are Comcast, Fox Rothschild LLP, Giant Food LLC, G.S. Proctor & Associates Inc., Holland & Knight LLP, McGuireWoods Consulting LLC, McGuireWoods LLP, MGM National Harbor, and Uber. Thank you for supporting the Greater Washington Board of Trade and our region’s business community.    

Stay up-to-date on Board of Trade events here: https://www.bot.org/events 

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin joined the Greater Washington Board of Trade for its Regional Policy Leadership Series sharing insights with the business community about his administration’s milestones and goals heading into the end of 2023. 

The Board of Trade’s conversation with Governor Youngkin around transportation covered WMATA/Metro ridership, the American Legion Bridge, and the Perimeter Rule surrounding Reagan National Airport. As Northern Virginia’s population grows, as will its transportation efforts, which Youngkin says is a testament to decades of “innovative thinking” by state transportation officials. 

The Governor also addressed Virginia’s 2024 Budget negotiations that are taking place in the Virginia General Assembly and expressed that the tax cuts he proposed in the budget go together with helping boost the state’s economy. There is speculation that a special session could be called so that Virginia lawmakers can work to pass a 2024 Budget. 

Growing the level of workforce talent in the Greater Washington region is a crucial value for the Board of Trade, and Governor Youngkin shared how his administration is meeting the level of commitment needed to make sure Virginia is helping to grow a stable workforce. He shared that the latest Virginia jobs report shows 175,000 more people are working in the Commonwealth since January 2023, and that the state’s labor participation rate has returned to a 10-year high. The Governor has also recently charged Virginia’s Secretary of Labor, Bryan Slater, with starting the Virginia Workforce Development Transformation Stakeholder Advisory Group, which Board of Trade President & CEO, Jack McDougle, has been appointed.  

Data centers are also a big topic for businesses and residents in Northern Virginia. Governor Youngkin addressed the region’s viability for data centers, and how technology investments are essential for the state. He shared how Virginia’s deal with Amazon Web Service is keeping the state competitive in the power/energy market with its neighboring states. The Board of Trade is committed to growing technology to help advance regional competitiveness and create solutions to regional problems.  

Governor Youngkin also spoke with the Board of Trade about public safety, education, childcare, and affordable housing, and how all these factors have impacts on Virginia’s workforce talent.  

Youngkin ended his conversation with the Board of Trade expressing that he was optimistic about the direction of the Commonwealth and the value his administration brings to the region’s business community.  

We are excited to work with the Governor and all elected and appointed officials in Virginia to help grow economic sustainability in the Greater Washington region. It is a critical part of the Board of Trade’s mission to give our members the opportunity to convene with the region’s elected and appointed officials. We look forward to hosting more Regional Policy Leadership Series webinars in 2023. 

This Regional Policy Leadership Series webinar was presented by McGuireWoods Consulting LLC and McGuireWoods LLP. Supporting Sponsors of the event series are Comcast, First National Bank, Giant Foods LLC, G.S. Proctor & Associates Inc., Holland & Knight LLP, and MGM National Harbor. Thank you for supporting the Greater Washington Board of Trade and our region’s business community.   

Check out Board of Trade events here: https://www.bot.org/events/ 

The Board of Trade hosted police chiefs located in the Greater Washington region to join its Regional Policy Leadership Series event on May 23, 2023. The departments that joined us for a discussion included the Metropolitan Police Department, Fairfax County Police Department, and Prince George’s County Police Department.

Event speakers included Chief Kevin Davis, Fairfax County Police Department, Chief Malik Aziz, Prince George’s County Police Department, and Interim Police Chief for the Metropolitian Police Department, shan Benedict.

The event covered a variety of issues and insights involving publc safety in the Greater Washington region and our members had the opportunity to specifically address issues that are impact the region’s business community.

You can watch the full webinar below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LsGbYBNwjU

This Regional Policy Leadership Series webinar is presented by MGM National Harbor. Supporting Sponsors of the event series are Comcast, G.S. Proctor & Associates Inc., Holland & Knight LLP, McGuireWoods Consulting LLC and McGuireWoods LLP. Thank you for supporting the Greater Washington Board of Trade and our region’s business community.