In the wake of yesterday’s blue skies Metro shutdown, the Maryland Public Policy Institute says it’s time to “end Metrorail”:

The closure will prompt yet another round of calls for increased government funding of the system. But instead of forcing federal, Maryland, Virginia, and D.C. taxpayers—most of whom scarcely use the rail system—to further subsidize Metro and its riders, public leaders should be discussing how to wind down and ultimately close the failed transit system. . . .

Dauntingly, Metrorail is about to face enormous new expenses. The core of the system is reaching the end of its 40-year functional life. WMATA officials can try to nurse it along, but that will be costly and riders will face many more disruptions like today; ultimately, costly and environmentally damaging reconstruction will be needed. And after all that expense, the system will still be a high-cost, low-capacity, inflexible failure.

The Maryland Public Policy Institute is the think tank arm of the Hogan administration with Hogan serving as an Emeritus Director of the group along with former Gov. Bob Ehrlich. Hogan’s brain trust proposes that we shut Metro even as Hogan moves forward to build the Purple Line to connect its defunct branches.

Beyond its modest proposal, the piece raises the issue of how Hogan plans to help fix Metro and to cover the State’s share of the ever increasing costs of fixing its aging and ailing infrastructure. So far, the Governor and the General Assembly, as well as Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties, have been silent on this question.

This lack of direction continues even as riders long ago grew tired of the decline of the system with no sign of management or leadership able to address the serious problems. The Purple Line increases the pressure, as its commits the State to a large but ultimately unknowable sum of money (estimated at $5.6 billion). Conveniently, the bill comes due only after Hogan has long skedaddled out of the Governor’s chair.