The time has come to stop making people pay to take public transit.
Why do we have any barriers to using buses and urban trains? The threat of global warming is no longer in doubt.
The hue and cry of the traffic- jammed driver grows louder every commute. And politicians are getting the message. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has ordered his staff to seriously examine the costs of charging people to ride public transit. And Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, recently voiced to a reporter his top dream: "I would have mass transit be given away for nothing and charge an awful lot for bringing an automobile into the city."
Consider this sampling of communities providing free rides on trolleys, buses, trams and ferries: Staten Island, N.Y.; Island County, Wash.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Vail, Colo.; Logan and Cache Valley, Utah; Clemson, S.C.; Commerce, Calif.; Châteauroux, Vitré, and Compiègne, France; Hasselt, Belgium; Lubben, Germany; Mariehamn, Finland; Nova Gorica, Slovenia; Türi, Estonia; and Övertorneå, Sweden.
Transit officials in parts of Belgium and the state of Washington have advanced fare-free transit in their communities for years.
Raising Fares Kills Ridership
As even conservatives like California
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger trumpet a
green agenda, more people are taking
a hard look at just how many of their
tax dollars subsidize the private car
versus less polluting buses and trains. You have to figure in roads, parking
and other infrastructure, tax breaks
for car and fuel companies, as well
as subsidies for car-carrying ferries
and federal income tax reductions
and write-offs for companies that use
motor vehicles.
By some estimates, the government
subsidy to each private vehicle owner
is about $3,700, while a common cost
for providing a single trip by transit is
about $5.
Yet big or small, most transit systems
are scraping by or on the brink of
financial collapse, paradoxically
because of their reliance on the
farebox. Revenue for any system
drops when ridership dips or when
fares are increased. Yes, when fares
are increased. Most often the dip in ridership is caused by a fare hike.
To understand this cycle better,
let’s imagine that you are in charge
of a transit system. You feel pressure
to increase service or to maintain
service despite increasing costs. You
need to raise more money. Politically
and practically, for most systems, the
easiest way is to raise fares. But soon
after, ridership goes down. It drops 3.8
percent for every 10 percent increase
in fares, researchers have found.
Which means you either haven’t gained
much new revenue, or worse, you’ve
started spiraling downward.
Fare-free Success Stories
Recently I met the people who run
Island Transit in Whidbey Island,
Wash., and rode their fare-free bus
system. It’s a serious operation with 56
buses and 101 vans. Ridership tops a
million a year. Its operating budget is
$8,392,677 – none of it from fares, all
from a 0.6 percent sales tax collected
in Island County.
Despite the pressure to conform,
the pressure to make users pay
and the pressure from conservative
politicians at all levels, Island Transit
has been fare-free from day one and
is proudly so 20 years later. Not one
Island Transit bus, shelter or van has
advertising on it. All of Island Transit’s
buses are bike rack equipped and
wheelchair accessible. For folks with
disabilities, Island Transit also offers
a paratransit service with door-to-door
service.
Done right, fare-free transit can
transform society, says Patrick Condon,
an expert on sustainable urban
development who knows the system in
Amherst, Mass. "Free transit changed
the region for the better. Students,
teens and the elderly were able to move much more freely through the region. Some ascribed the resurgence of Northampton, Mass, at least in part, to the availability of free transit. Fares in that region would have provided such a small percentage of capital and operating costs that their loss was made up for by contributions by the major institutions to benefit: the five colleges in the region," says Condon, a professor at the University of British Columbia.
Another success story, a decade old, can be found in Hasselt, Belgium. This city of 70,000 residents, with 300,000 commuters from the surrounding area, has made traveling by bus easy, affordable and efficient. Now, people in Hasselt often speak of “their” bus system and with good reason. The Boulevard Shuttle leaves you waiting for at most five minutes, the Central Shuttle has a 10-minute frequency, and systemwide you never have to wait more than a half an hour.
A prime lesson offered by Hasselt is the fact that it radically improved the bus system as well as its walking and cycling infrastructure before it removed the fareboxes. In 1996, there were only three bus routes with about 18,000 service hours/year. Today, there are 11 routes with more than 95,000 service hours/year.
The Hasselt City Council’s principal aim in introducing free public transport was to promote the new bus system to such a degree that it would catch on and become the natural option for getting around. And it did – immediately. On the first day, bus ridership increased 783 percent! The
first full year of free-fare transit saw an increase of 900 percent over the previous year; by 2001, the increase was up to 1,223 percent, and ridership continues to go up every day.
The Costs of Collecting Fares
A prime reason to quit charging people to take the bus is that collecting bus fares costs a lot of money. It takes both machines and people to sell, make and distribute tickets and collect, count and deposit cash.
King County’s Metro Transit System, which includes the city of Seattle and an estimated population of just under 2 million, concludes, after a comprehensive assessment, that the cost of collecting fares will hit about $8 million this year – enough to buy 18 new buses.
A major analysis of U.S. public transit systems found that for larger systems, fare collection costs can be as high as 22 percent of the revenue collected. Another study showed that New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority spends roughly $200 million a year just to collect money from transit riders. What about switching to “smart card” technology? Wouldn’t that save money? In Toronto, the city’s Transit Commission estimates the switch will cost almost $250 million (or about 520 new buses) for card readers, vending machines and retrofits, and over $10 million a year (22 new buses) after that, which has some transit authorities saying the money could be better used in improving service.
Mr. Olson has written extensively on fare-free transit and is a bicycling and walking enthusiast and advocate. This article was originally published at the website www.thetyee.ca and also at www.alternet.org.
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