Increased fares vs. Free fares

  I found Permanent Campaigns Consulting's post entitled "Eliminate fares for higher ridership, less congestion- Honolulu investigates" very interesting in the midst of the upcoming metro fare hike here in DC.  The post highlights some good points- free transit benefits drivers with less traffic and of course riders get the monetary incentive.  Everything can't be free, but just imagine if taxes from fuel and/or congestion could mitigate transit costs and make it either free or discounted...

I'm interested to see if the upcoming fare increases on metro will effect ridership.  Will more people drive or will ridership plateau or perhaps even increase?  What are your predictions?

Carly Nider, Arlington Transportation Partners

Comments

[Richard Layman]

I wrote a paper in the Spring for a class at UMD. The topic was creating a linked transportation and land use planning paradigm for DC specifically (as opposed to the region).

One of the idea sources was the Arlington transportation plan where it discusses the primary and secondary transit network.

I proposed a third level. The tertiary network would be intra-neighborhood, and neighborhood to transit node (bus, subway or streetcar) -- related to my idea of the mobility or transit shed.

In a different part of the paper I posited the idea of a transit withholding tax similar to that in the Tri-Met and Land Transit Districts in Oregon.

I think the number I came up with was $150 million in annual revenue. (Commuter tax issues aside.)

The question is what to do with the money generated.

WRT a "fareless square" idea a la Portland, I thought that this is focused more on congestion and not equity and that providing free transit only downtown serves people of means more than people of lesser means.

I think given how the WMATA Compact is organized, it would be impossible to do fareless square type service for the subway. SO I took that out of the equation.

So then the idea was free surface transportation within DC. I estimated that beyond the annual DC transit payment, that this would cost maybe $70 million, based on an estimate of farebox recovery for bus operations in DC. (I couldn't get hard numbers on DC-based bus revenue.)

The issue is you have to weigh the value of this versus other options. I figured that it would make more sense to use $70MM for transit expansion (i.e., the separated blue line subway). And as streetcar service is implemented, this would cost more.

Instead I proposed that the tertiary network could be free. That intrs-neighborhood transit (including delivery services from commercial establishments) and getting people to transit nodes/stations, would be free. I didn't estimate how much this would cost, but I can't imagine it would be more than $30-40 million.

That would leave $100 million for subway expansion, and maybe $20 million for bus and marketing improvements, i.e., converting many of the bus routes to double decker buses.

[Commuter182]

"Good points regarding tourism. Should fares be higher for tourists and lower for the riders who use the system on a regular basis?"

Well, Metro is kind of planning to charge tourists more by making people pay 10 cents more for bus fare when paying with cash as opposed to with a SmartTrip Card, which natives, not tourists, are more likely to have. But beyond giving a slight price advantage to SmartTrip cards in the name of saving paper and labor, counting change, there is no good way to differentiate between tourist and native. I feel natives should not subsidize tourists (letting them and everyone else ride free), but should not gouge tourists either.

[Carly Nider]

Good points regarding tourism. Should fares be higher for tourists and lower for the riders who use the system on a regular basis?

[Commuter182]

Fares should be subsidized and "cheap", but not free. As I recall another poster writing in a forum similar to this one, free fares will encourage people who have no legitimate business in transit to board, such as the homeless or gangs of kids.

Fares may become a detriment when they approach the cost of driving to and parking at work, as Metro's recent fare hike might do. Below that level, the more likelier reasons why people won't ride transit would be (in no particular order):
1) Saves no time over being stuck in traffic and may even take much longer.
2) No parking available at Metro stations. No good connecting bus from home to station either, or takes too long.
3) No eating and drinking permitted. Such a long commute time but none of it may be used to catch up on breakfast or coffee.
4) Personal discomfort, such as standing room only, smelling other passengers, claustrophobia, etc.

The above four obstacles will not be easily overcome even with free fares.

Having free fares will impose an even further burden on public funding. Right now, fares generally pay up to half of public transportations' operating costs.
If the public had to pay for the remaining half as well, there would be even less money available for other transportation needs, such as road improvement, maintenance, and bike lanes. Transit is important, but not the only transportation game in town.

As for tourists, they will come to DC (or not) based on whether they find DC worth visiting, not because it offers free transit. Anybody who is so cheap as to not visit some place just because they make you pay for the subway or bus fares does not qualify to be a tourist. Metro and Circulator are still cheaper than a cab or Tourmobile.
All the local businesses and vendors want a share of tourist dollars, so why shouldn't our public transportation system take its share?

[Dan Johnson-Weinberger]

Thanks for the link Carly. I think fares should be eliminated as the benefits of much higher ridership would be enjoyed by drivers and people who breathe (and we can find revenue streams to cover the cost of those benefits). That, at least, is the policy we should be moving towards.