Interjurisdictional Conflict and Cooperation Between Transit Authorities: A Case Study of the Washington, D.C. Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project

Abstract

As population continues to shift from rural to urban areas, "cities" in the United States today may stretch across multiple municipalities as population overflows the seemingly-arbitrary constraints of official boundary lines, a trend known as metropolitanization. In an increasing number of cases, several large urban centers may even find themselves connected by uninterrupted suburban zones, forming megalopolitan regions. Though jurisdictions may have lost much of their significance in citizens' day-to-day lives, they are still fully relevant and present significant hurdles to metropolis- or megalopolis-wide provision of regional services such as utilities, education, or transportation. The traditional solution for the transcending of legal boundaries has been for the involved municipal entities to create special district governments to oversee the provision of services across jurisdictional lines. While examples of both fruitful coordination and wasteful conflict between special districts can be found, there is a gap in the literature relating to general principles governing relations between special districts. To address this gap, this dissertations utilizes an inductive qualitative, single-case study methodology to examine how various factors contribute to conflict or cooperation between two transportation special districts - transit authorities. The districts under study, the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority (WMATA) and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) began in 2004 an extended cooperative project to extend a subway line, operated by the former, to Dulles International Airport, operated by the latter. The first phase of this line opened in 2014, and work on the second phase is ongoing. Based on this study, Organizational Culture, External Positioning, and Finance and Revenue are posited to have the most salient effect on inter-agency relations. Understanding the nature and causes of cooperation and conflict yields policy suggestions for all levels of local governments, to accentuate cooperation and ameliorate conflict between transit authorities, leading to increased cost-benefit efficiency, reduction of waste, improved trust and confidence in local government, and an increased probability of successful collaborative projects.