Statement Urging Action on Highways and the METRO System in the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Area.

LATE in its second century of life as the Nation's Capital, the Washington metropolitan area is suffering severely from hardening of vital transportation arteries. The nearly 3 million people in the District of Columbia and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs are acutely aware of this worsening problem as they struggle to move about the area pursuing business or pleasure or the work of government. So are the 18 million visitors who come here each year from across the country and around the world, expecting magnificence-and finding it, but finding also, in the simple matter of getting about the dry, more frustrations than they deserve in the capital of a nation that has sent men to the moon.

In recent months, though, Washingtonians have also become increasingly aware that something is being done about the transportation tangle. METRO---our superb area wide rapid rail transit system of the future---is already a fact of life for all who use the downtown streets, as construction pushes ahead on the first 8 miles of the project. Streets are dug up, ventilation shafts have been dropped, tunnels are being bored. Over $863 million has already been committed by the eight participating local jurisdictions and the Federal Government. At the same time, a coordinated interstate highway system for the region is progressing toward completion, as many thousands of detouring commuters know.

We need these freeways, and we need the METRO--badly. I have always believed, and today reaffirm my belief, that the Capital area must have the balanced, modern transportation system which they will comprise. Yet now, almost incredibly, in light of the manifest need for both of them, the future of both is jeopardized by a complex legal and legislative snarl.

To save them, here is what has to happen:

1. The local highway actions mandated by the Federal-Aid Highway Acts of 1968 and 1970 must go forward immediately.

The question whether the District of Columbia and the Federal Government, in their efforts to carry out this mandate, are presently in compliance with statutory requirements has been the subject of lengthy litigation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has recently ruled that they are not yet in compliance in the case involving the Three Sisters Bridge. But I am convinced that they are. Accordingly, I have ordered the Attorney General to proceed with the filing of a motion for rehearing en banc before the Court of Appeals. I have also instructed him, if that fails, to file a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court.

2. The METRO system must move toward completion and operation as rapidly as possible.

Not only do delays in METRO work cost taxpayers heavily; they might even erode confidence and cooperation seriously enough to consign the entire project to an early grave, with all the sad consequences that could have for metropolitan development in the years ahead. I strongly urge the Congress, therefore, to take appropriate action at once to end the present delay and to prevent any more such derailments of METRO progress.

We have come to a critical juncture. Obedience to the law is at stake. A huge investment is at stake. The well-being of the Capital area is at stake. It is time for responsible men to join in responsible action and cut this Gordian knot.