I've always been a bit frustrated by public transit fare prices, because I see them as falling short of the policy objectives I want them to achieve. As an example, I live near a light rail system...
I've always been a bit frustrated by public transit fare prices, because I see them as falling short of the policy objectives I want them to achieve.
As an example, I live near a light rail system that works fairly well. The prices are structured based on the distance you travel with a maximum price of around $6 per ride on weekdays or $2 per ride on weekends.
There is a movie theater one stop down the line from me, about 3 miles or so (not walkable). They have a $2 matinee screening of kids movies on Saturday morning. A family of five with three young kids could drive to the theatre, pay $10 in tickets, $2 validated parking at a nearby garage, and a small amount of gas. However, if they took the rail a single stop, the round-trip cost would be $20. That said, if you pay a rail fare any connecting buses are free.
You can qualify for half price rates based on income, which is great. But $10 is still more than driving, which doesn't help get cars off the road or reduce carbon. Meanwhile, the trains are at half capacity or less outside of peak commute times, while the roads are hectic everyday.
Personally, I feel like you need to make driving into cities more expensive through things like congestion fees, use that to subsidize public transit and offer sliding scale family passes based on income. There just isn't a world where I think it is reasonable to charge a family $20 to round-trip one stop on an otherwise empty train, where they are going to a movie or to buy groceries.
Is it so hard to get family discounts? I don't mind paying $12 to take a train to the city for a night for myself, but if I want to bring my family of 5 I'll be paying $60 plus the stress of...
Is it so hard to get family discounts?
I don't mind paying $12 to take a train to the city for a night for myself, but if I want to bring my family of 5 I'll be paying $60 plus the stress of public transit with kids. We gotta make it EASY and CHEAP for families to use public transit.
Where I live they made it free for everyone 18 and under. They prefer if children get a fare card for this (still free, just requires registration, this is mostly for metrics and probably to build...
Where I live they made it free for everyone 18 and under. They prefer if children get a fare card for this (still free, just requires registration, this is mostly for metrics and probably to build the habit of tapping for transit when they’re old enough to pay) but it’s also ok for them to ride without tapping since we don’t do turnstiles.
Big fan of the lack of registration requirements, keeps it as simple as possible.
This is weirdly a thing I'm on the opposite side on. We can keep kids off transit mostly and let parents (of multiple children) drive a car. I'm, personally, fine with this being a weird...
This is weirdly a thing I'm on the opposite side on. We can keep kids off transit mostly and let parents (of multiple children) drive a car. I'm, personally, fine with this being a weird subsidization of the family by society.
In a perfect world, of course, where transit is even possible. In the real world, I'd just like parents to stop buying kid crusher SUVs and trucks and maybe reduce their fossil fuel impacts.
The idea of public transit as a kid-free zone is patently absurd in any context where public transit is not woefully inadequate (as it is in most of North America), and is especially silly in...
The idea of public transit as a kid-free zone is patently absurd in any context where public transit is not woefully inadequate (as it is in most of North America), and is especially silly in cities where owning a car is expensive and inconvenient by comparison.
Here in Berlin, children under 6 are always free and several of the other adult ticket options allow them to accompany up to three children under 15 for free. In addition to there being reduced fare tickets for children ages 6 to 14 in contexts where they don't ride for free.
I fear I have been misinterpreted: I am totally fine with children being on transportation and don't want transit to be a kid-free zone any more than I want most other places to be kid-free (that...
I fear I have been misinterpreted: I am totally fine with children being on transportation and don't want transit to be a kid-free zone any more than I want most other places to be kid-free (that is, ideally there would be no children anywhere ever, but that's just me being a child-free old grump!) But I have to acknowledge that parents in America largely don't want to add stress to their lives by doing public transportation (or, honestly, any transportation other than an SUV) with multiple children.
Of course, I also have to acknowledge that we are from different countries with different infrastructure and that I came at this from an American viewpoint. You might be surprised how fundamentally and societally broken our public infrastructure is! I would love for anyone to ride our public transportation but that would also require us to have it to begin with.
Ultimately, I do really support public transportation and support it being fully funded by a regular budget and I would love to see a public transportation system in a usable enough state to actually see families on there.
I'm from the US myself (I moved to Germany in 2018), so I absolutely get you when it comes to how fundamentally broken US transit infrastructure is! I just think a lot of Americans really struggle...
I'm from the US myself (I moved to Germany in 2018), so I absolutely get you when it comes to how fundamentally broken US transit infrastructure is! I just think a lot of Americans really struggle to picture what a functional system looks like and what's possible when they haven't had firsthand experience with it. Here they don't have school buses and kids who don't live within walking distance of their schools usually go to and from school via public transport -- without parental accompaniment in most cases! It really is wildly different, and I think Americans too often have no idea how much better it could be with the right investment in the infrastructure.
It's funny to hear Americans come back from countries (or even American cities!) with functional infrastructure and rave about it and then vote to not fund infrastructure in their own area....
It's funny to hear Americans come back from countries (or even American cities!) with functional infrastructure and rave about it and then vote to not fund infrastructure in their own area. Unfortunately, with everything being continually set on fire in America, infrastructure is fairly low on on the agenda these days.
The big benefit of family-friendly public transport is that kids can be more independent. Here in Germany, it's very common to see children taking buses and trams by themselves to get to school or...
The big benefit of family-friendly public transport is that kids can be more independent. Here in Germany, it's very common to see children taking buses and trams by themselves to get to school or to visit friends. By setting up public transport such that it's easy for the whole family to ride together, you normalise public transport for children and in turn make it easier for those children to start riding by themselves.
I'd argue families on public transport are a great litmus test for whether the public transport really is broadly usable as a general transport system, or whether you've just built an overly complicated car-pooling system for commuters.
Ah, like I said in my other comment, I'm coming at this from an American standpoint. We have so many societal issues that lead to our public transportation being unused. I would love to see a...
Ah, like I said in my other comment, I'm coming at this from an American standpoint. We have so many societal issues that lead to our public transportation being unused. I would love to see a suburban, white kid in a mid-sized city ride a bus alone. Instead the only children in America who regularly use public transportation are those who are in underprivileged areas where public busses are used to supplement or replace school busses. In the suburb I was raised in, busses were only run during rush hour and pretty much exclusively to take suburban workers to the downtown core. Combine that lack of service with a lack of inner-suburb transportation - you are on your own for how to get to the bus stop, these are largely "park and ride" stops - and the amount of time it takes to ride the bus anywhere worthwhile.... well, you just drive a car. That's before you even get to any of the other issues caused by our refusal to fix any societal problem (who doesn't like crack smoke being blown around the train?!).
I would love to see families on public transport but it feels like a mountain to climb to get there in most of America.
I don't know, at a certain point you've just got to bite the bullet and force change to happen. You need people to take to bus who are not currently taking the bus, otherwise change will never...
I don't know, at a certain point you've just got to bite the bullet and force change to happen. You need people to take to bus who are not currently taking the bus, otherwise change will never happen. Targeting families, or perhaps young adults with limited income, or the elderly, with deals and free rides helps bring more people onto buses in the first place.
I live in the US and use public transit as my car replacement, which makes the cost much more reasonable. If that family can get away with only using public transit the extra cost doesn't mean...
I live in the US and use public transit as my car replacement, which makes the cost much more reasonable. If that family can get away with only using public transit the extra cost doesn't mean much compared to lease/finance cost + gas + upkeep + parking. But there are few places in the country where you can get away with using public transit exclusively.
Yep. In my example, rail could only replace a car on a few high cost neighborhoods. That, plus an unlimited pass being $200/month per rider makes it not feasible for anyone not fairly well off.
Yep. In my example, rail could only replace a car on a few high cost neighborhoods. That, plus an unlimited pass being $200/month per rider makes it not feasible for anyone not fairly well off.
Making public transport cheaper than a fully filled car is not the point and trying to make it so through making life in the city even more expensive for others (because not everyone has a choice...
Making public transport cheaper than a fully filled car is not the point and trying to make it so through making life in the city even more expensive for others (because not everyone has a choice to avoid things like congestion fees) is nonsensical.
Even here in Czechia, where the public transport is great and almost everyone uses it, a full car is easily cheaper and more practical than a train, and that is despite the fact that we have more expensive gas (though on average more economical cars, but also significantly smaller wages) and cheaper heavily subsidized public transport.
Public transport should most of all be cheaper than a car driving one person or two people. Because there are a ton of those and this is the main issue you want to reduce, because it can work without introducing other nontrivial regulation, which never works perfectly and always is unfair to someone else.
Imo the way to make more people use the system is to simultaneously offer cheap yearly passes and provide lines useful for getting to/off work and evening activities. When the choice for a single person to get to work vs using their car without ride sharing is economically trivial and the lines are practical (go close enough to be faster when accounting for getting stuck in peak traffic), there's no need for more regulation. And when the whole family owns these passes to get to work and school, you don't pay anything more to get to the movies.
The issue with stuff like congestion pricing is that, like every regulation of this kind, it hits people with lower incomes more, and making cars more expensive for them makes it even more difficult to keep their income and social status unless the public transport is already excellent. Therefore this should be the last thing you do, not the first.
Meanwhile, the trains are at half capacity or less outside of peak commute times, while the roads are hectic everyday.
This is pretty much inevitable if you want to provide service that's regular enough an flexible enough, happens in almost every functional public transport system that's not heavily overcrowded.
I think we are conflating general and specific situations, which to be fair, is easy in casual conversation. When I gave price examples in the prior situation and my thoughts on how to address it...
I think we are conflating general and specific situations, which to be fair, is easy in casual conversation. When I gave price examples in the prior situation and my thoughts on how to address it I was thinking specifically about my local rail while phrasing things more generally. Beyond that, I generally agree that incentives are a good way to go, while also believing that in some cases you need to make driving more expensive for some drivers.
So to be clear, I think DC could benefit from a combination of youth passes tied to student enrollment in regional K-12, and disincentives to drive into the beltway, targeting higher income drivers because DC is a higher income area, overall. The metro rail is often busy during commute hours, and relatively lightly used outside of that. Increasing utilization outside of peak hours while getting cars off the road is a win in my book, and the Saturday morning movie outing is an example I've seen in person with my neighbors with young kids. A youth pass is one way to do that, while also incentivizing more regional travel and the economic activity associated with it.
Additionally, in the DC area I swear I see more luxury cars like Porsche's than I see beaters. Driving is a nightmare in much of DC and the freeways, including on the weekends, so we should push more people to use the rail and buses while they run empty. Additionally, I've had a few fun days hopping to different sites along the Metro, but a day pass is $13/rider, and that is a real cost barrier for families.
Finally, there are real negative externalities to choosing to drive everywhere when you don't have to. Global warming, accidents, local pollution, etc. We heavily subsidize and obfuscate the true cost of driving so nothing else can compete on price. Then we sacrifice large swathes of our cities to create parking so nothing else can compete on convenience. When the marginal cost of each excursion is cheaper driving, then people drive even when they don't need to. That is where I think things like tolls and congestion pricing need to come in, in specific metro areas, to change the per drive cost function.
This is all from my experience in the US. Things might be different in other countries. I also know that not every city needs congestion pricing, in part because they need to improve their public infrastructure before pushing people to it en mass.
However, I will pick at one point you made:
Making public transport cheaper than a fully filled car is not the point and trying to make it so through making life in the city even more expensive for others (because not everyone has a choice to avoid things like congestion fees) is nonsensical.
If all you are looking at is price, then yes. Again, if you can replace a full car of tourists by getting them on an empty train, then you reduce carbon, local pollution, congestion, and traffic risks. There's no good reason not to maximally leverage existing capacity at off peak times, and changing the personal cost decisions is one of the few ways to do that. And many transit authorities have the express goal of reducing cars on the road. So I don't think this particular view resonates with me.
Not at all. If you want people to use your public transport, you first need to make it useful (dense and safe enough) and financially viable for both the local/state government that's subsidizing...
If all you are looking at is price, then yes.
Not at all. If you want people to use your public transport, you first need to make it useful (dense and safe enough) and financially viable for both the local/state government that's subsidizing it and a large portion of its citizens who are paying the fares. If that's not enough, you can go seeking more drastic regulation, but this needs to be the starting situation. There's a ton of low-hanging fruit to harvest if you just make the public transport more practical and cheaper than being stuck in traffic in a car on your own, you can't skip this step if you want people to use it. A full car is so economical even with considerably more expensive gas that it's very difficult to get cheaper than that, and you don't really need to because if most of road traffic consisted of full or nearly full cars, all of the issues with both traffic and environment would be significantly smaller, it would be a huge improvement over the current situation.
Additionally, in the DC area I swear I see more luxury cars like Porsche's than I see beaters.
I believe you, but the city still needs its lower-income workers and it's in your and their best interest to not reduce their mobility or increase their cost of living even more because both would make them poorer.
Driving is a nightmare in much of DC and the freeways, including on the weekends, so we should push more people to use the rail and buses while they run empty.
I understand that part of this is surely cultural, there is a bias towards cars and against the public transport that's just historical. But I don't believe that's all there is. If you have a public transport system that has enough coverage for people to get where they need to go when they need to go and it's noticeably faster than being stuck in traffic, then why are not enough people using it? You talked about price, so sure, push for more subsidies to create cheaper year-round passes, which motivate people to use the system more, and give even lower prices to students. If we can afford this without congestion pricing and other taxes, surely DC can. If that's not enough, then you have other problems you need to solve, whether it's safety and cleanliness (would you send your 10 year old on the train on his own?), density or something else.
But taxing people before you solve them won't help, and franky I have an ethical problem with just adding more taxes that are technically not mandatory and called something else but in real life are often impossible to avoid. I think that various calls to "tax the rich" are generally impractical populism and mostly a red herring, but in this case increasing tax progression and directly and transparently taxing the wealthy would make more sense to get more subsidy funds than just starting with ideas like congestion pricing.
I'm not really sure what your argument here is. I've already said that working infrastructure, useful lines and destinations, and inducements are good. Sometimes to get cars off of roads you also...
I'm not really sure what your argument here is. I've already said that working infrastructure, useful lines and destinations, and inducements are good. Sometimes to get cars off of roads you also have to use disincentives. This isn't an either or thing, and as I've said, it's my opinion.
I'll also remind you that I'm talking about a specific situation, and I'm not interested in debating the general case in detail because the region specific details matter. The problem with a general tax in the DC area is two fold: there isn't one single tax authority; and it doesn't directly change the cost formula for marginal use of the car as a means of modifying behavior.
You seem to be assuming that the Metro needs to be made useful. It already is useful. I'm advocating for incentives and policies that maximize its use off hours through a combination of discounts for youth and targeted cost barriers for driving in areas well served by public transport.
Edit: I'll also add as a final note, that discounts for youth help people without reliable cars.
Washington state in the US does an excellent job balancing fares to fund transit with free rides. All youth ride free no questions asked (though they're encouraged to get a transit card) which...
Washington state in the US does an excellent job balancing fares to fund transit with free rides. All youth ride free no questions asked (though they're encouraged to get a transit card) which really helps families and instills a habit of using public transit!
Yep, miss that state. Lived there for a while and remember how the school id's were unlimited bus passes in the town I lived in. Not sure how common that was, but it meant free transit for all...
Yep, miss that state. Lived there for a while and remember how the school id's were unlimited bus passes in the town I lived in. Not sure how common that was, but it meant free transit for all K-12 where I lived.
I think this touches on what I think is the more important part of free transit. Yes, it has direct costs but it also has indirect profits in the form of increased economic activity. The article...
I think this touches on what I think is the more important part of free transit. Yes, it has direct costs but it also has indirect profits in the form of increased economic activity. The article complains that the majority of increased ridership is from existing transit users simply making more trips — this is a feature, not a bug.
How many increased theatre visits would result from all that increased access? How many unfilled jobs can be filled because the cost of getting to that job now makes it profitable for a distant worker? How many new jobs are created from increased customer access? How much unused housing is now useful because transport to one’s job is now economical?
Alternatively, what if funding from fares increased transit access? If more people could access safe, fast, and reliable transit then usage numbers would increase. More types of businesses would...
Alternatively, what if funding from fares increased transit access? If more people could access safe, fast, and reliable transit then usage numbers would increase. More types of businesses would thrive as a greater variety of people started riding transit.
Is that $20 round trip actually that much more expensive than driving? If you took that trip every day, that's around $600/month. I can't drive so I don't have a great sense for how much it costs...
Is that $20 round trip actually that much more expensive than driving? If you took that trip every day, that's around $600/month. I can't drive so I don't have a great sense for how much it costs to own a car, but I'd assume once you factor in a car payment, insurance, maintenance and gas it would probably be in the same ballpark. Granted that probably depends on the types of trips you typically take. Like if you make that trip multiple times per day, it would probably scale differently.
I just pulled the latest data for current car payments and the range is $500-$750/month spanning used, leased, and new car payments. So in a worst case scenario, you hop from one new car to the...
I just pulled the latest data for current car payments and the range is $500-$750/month spanning used, leased, and new car payments.
So in a worst case scenario, you hop from one new car to the next, and carry a perpetual $750/month payment and your always have a new vehicle. If you are an individual and the DC or similar metro can meet all your needs, then a monthly $200 unlimited pass makes sense. But for a family of five that jumps to $1,000/month and all of a sudden the new car is cheaper.
For people like me with two cars, both long payed off, my monthly car costs are basically amortized maintenance and fuel. It certainly doesn't cost $20 for a 6 mile drive in overhead maintenance and fuel costs. Using government mileage reimbursement rates for personal vehicles, they reimburse at a rate of $0.70/mile. Using that as a comparison, it would be $4.20 for the trip to the movies compared to $20 by metro.
As a final note, I'll say that cost aside, some of it is about living assistance for low income families and reducing traffic by incentivizing public transit or discouraging driving through targeted fees.
I hope that makes sense and answered your question!
Edit: I used my older vehicle to run an estimated lifetime cost per mile calculation, including maintenance and gas and got to a cost of $0.626/mile, or $3.76 for vehicle cost plus two dollars for validated parking, giving an all in movie transport cost of $5.76 by car, vs $20 by metro for a family of 5 ($4 for an individual), $10 for a reduced fare based on income ($2 for an individual).
The big difference in this calculation would be long trips. Since the prices on the metro are capped, a long trip is cheaper on the metro. E.g., 40 round-trip to the airport is $25 to drive plus parking. Metro is either $12/person or $4/person depending on if it is workday or weekend.
Older vehicle used because it is closer to the end of its useful lifespan and more of the costs are realized vs estimated. E.g., I know exactly how many oil changes and at what price, and what the major repairs were.
Driving, however, is a better transportation 'product' to the family: you go straight to your destination. 15m drive. $20 is probably a low-estimate for a rail trip for a family. You probably have...
Driving, however, is a better transportation 'product' to the family: you go straight to your destination. 15m drive.
$20 is probably a low-estimate for a rail trip for a family. You probably have to take buses to/from the departure station, and buses to/from the destination station. You'll probably interact with two or more agencies that don't offer free transfers between their services, so you're paying multiple fares.
And the same drive can result in a complex transit trip that could take 1h 15m (in both transit and waiting-around time). If you're money-poor and time-rich, then it makes sense. But if you're an educated professional and peg your family's collective time at say $100/hr, then the trip costs $145 in money+time.
(I know it's a little crass to put a price on time, but everyone's doing it at some level. Like, I'm not going to take an 8 minute detour just to save $3 at a slightly cheaper gas station.)
Surprised no one else commented on this already, but for me the real debate we should be having is talking about how we get more creative with funding transit: This makes so much more sense. It...
Surprised no one else commented on this already, but for me the real debate we should be having is talking about how we get more creative with funding transit:
Fundamentally, there’s an issue with public transit agencies like New York’s, which is the backbone of New York’s economy, having to beg for funding from the state and federal government. In Japan, it was incredible seeing how much the train company owned real estate like offices, hotels, apartments around their stations. The train companies directly collected income from the economy and returned it to riders in the form of cheap fares. But in the United States, the NYC Subway, DC Metro, SF BART etc. owns so little land despite contributing so much to the value of land. Their fares are higher and their agencies more dependent on subsidies as a result.
This makes so much more sense. It routinely makes me want to scream when I read about planning development around transit centres stalling because the developer doesn't want to accommodate the station properly or allow for enough retail and the City is wasting years herding cats. Just let transit agencies be a public-good developer too!
A huge difference is that train companies are privatised in Japan. They're competitive businesses that want to succeed in every way they can, so they provide a damned good service. The US has a...
A huge difference is that train companies are privatised in Japan. They're competitive businesses that want to succeed in every way they can, so they provide a damned good service.
The US has a private company in Florida, Brightline, making retail plays around their high speed rail stations, and they're expanding to California and Las Vegas. Spain too has recently begun allowing private railway operators to great success.
I would be hesitant to equate privatization with good service, though, even if it works in Japan. This is not an inevitable result of privatization, and one need only look at the trouble in...
They're competitive businesses that want to succeed in every way they can, so they provide a damned good service.
I would be hesitant to equate privatization with good service, though, even if it works in Japan. This is not an inevitable result of privatization, and one need only look at the trouble in countries like the UK after rail privatization to see how it can backfire.
The UK just doesn't have a good incentive structure for their rail system. The british rail networks aren't really fully privatized, it's in a limbo state. The franchises just have fixed-term...
Exemplary
The UK just doesn't have a good incentive structure for their rail system. The british rail networks aren't really fully privatized, it's in a limbo state. The franchises just have fixed-term contracts with the government, and don't own the rails or their own stock. In that situation, the path of least resistance is absolutely to cut costs while maintaining acceptable service. There is little economic upside in improving service.
On the other hand, the JRs are vertically integrated and independent. They also have to deal with competition, as the existing private rail companies before JR was splintered off have continued, like Odakyu and Teio.
The ease of land redevelopment in Japan helps them quite a lot as well. In the end, passenger fares rarely end up being a net profit. Much of JRs revenue is from the leases on their property, and that's a better incentive structure - better service, more foot traffic, more rent that you can charge for shops in the stations you own.
In comparison, the reality is that no matter how much one of the franchises in Britain improves their service, it will make little to no difference in their balance sheet.
It would be difficult for said franchises to become land developers in the same way, due to the fixed length contracts, lack of vertical integration, and low capital available to them.
The key word wasn't "privatized" but rather "competitive". Many governments aren't competitive and fail to set up incentives and structures to accomplish their goals. Of course the same thing can...
The key word wasn't "privatized" but rather "competitive". Many governments aren't competitive and fail to set up incentives and structures to accomplish their goals. Of course the same thing can happen with private companies with the wrong incentives.
Funnily enough there is one transit authority in New York that does own real estate: the Port Authority! Most notably they own the World Trade Center area, and a good amount of their revenue comes...
Funnily enough there is one transit authority in New York that does own real estate: the Port Authority! Most notably they own the World Trade Center area, and a good amount of their revenue comes in from that.
From the blog post: ... What this suggests to me is that bus fares could be seen as something like a congestion tax, used only for lines that get too busy, with free transit passes available for...
From the blog post:
Most research on free fares shows that:
Transit riders tend to ride transit more when the bus is free, increasing overall ridership.
There’s fewer fights between drivers and patrons who can’t afford fares.
Buses can board faster because less time is spent fiddling with cash or passes.
Transit agencies get their funding in advance rather than depending on farebox and ridership.
The issues with free fares are that:
It’s very consistent that free fares does not compel many non-transit users onto transit compared to service improvements, therefore it has a little impact on reducing CO2 emissions.
Revenue that could’ve gone to improving service is used to subsidize fares, when agencies already receive little federal funding for operations.
Buses can be slowed down with increased patronage by transit riders who would’ve limited their rides.
Transit agencies have to get more funding, not just to compensate the loss of fares from existing ridership, but for increased ridership and thus increased service demand.
...
Do we have an excessive transit rider problem to warrant fares? Sometimes. At peak hours in major cities on certain lines, yes. Fares can help keep people who don’t need to take the bus from doing so. For example, I live 19 minutes on foot from my local subway station in Berkeley. I could take the bus and transfer, but I’d be crowding it up during rush hour so I just walk. The fare helps convince me that it’s unnecessary to board a bus for 10 minutes and clear up space and dwell times for those who need it. Free fares have a clear effect of convincing people to use transit for short trips.
What this suggests to me is that bus fares could be seen as something like a congestion tax, used only for lines that get too busy, with free transit passes available for low income people.
I’d be curious to see a more thorough study of the peak demand effects of free transit fares. My commute is roughly equivalent in terms of travel time whether I take the bus, train, or walk, but I...
I’d be curious to see a more thorough study of the peak demand effects of free transit fares. My commute is roughly equivalent in terms of travel time whether I take the bus, train, or walk, but I choose to walk because I prefer a moderate (around 1.5mi) walk to the “hurry up and wait” of the bus (and also crowding). My transit fares are paid fully by my employer, so it’s effectively free.
Of course I’m young and personally enjoy walking, so I imagine this doesn’t apply smoothly across the entire population.
I'm not sure that's the correct takeaway since free fares don't seem to decrease car trips. My understanding is that free fares only increase usage amongst people that are already using transit....
I'm not sure that's the correct takeaway since free fares don't seem to decrease car trips. My understanding is that free fares only increase usage amongst people that are already using transit.
Many urbanists argue against free fares because they usually starve transit agencies of funding, and the funding shortfalls prevent agencies from expanding. Expanding mass transit is critical to reducing emissions, so we should do everything possible to increase transit funding and replace car trips.
I've always been a bit frustrated by public transit fare prices, because I see them as falling short of the policy objectives I want them to achieve.
As an example, I live near a light rail system that works fairly well. The prices are structured based on the distance you travel with a maximum price of around $6 per ride on weekdays or $2 per ride on weekends.
There is a movie theater one stop down the line from me, about 3 miles or so (not walkable). They have a $2 matinee screening of kids movies on Saturday morning. A family of five with three young kids could drive to the theatre, pay $10 in tickets, $2 validated parking at a nearby garage, and a small amount of gas. However, if they took the rail a single stop, the round-trip cost would be $20. That said, if you pay a rail fare any connecting buses are free.
You can qualify for half price rates based on income, which is great. But $10 is still more than driving, which doesn't help get cars off the road or reduce carbon. Meanwhile, the trains are at half capacity or less outside of peak commute times, while the roads are hectic everyday.
Personally, I feel like you need to make driving into cities more expensive through things like congestion fees, use that to subsidize public transit and offer sliding scale family passes based on income. There just isn't a world where I think it is reasonable to charge a family $20 to round-trip one stop on an otherwise empty train, where they are going to a movie or to buy groceries.
Is it so hard to get family discounts?
I don't mind paying $12 to take a train to the city for a night for myself, but if I want to bring my family of 5 I'll be paying $60 plus the stress of public transit with kids. We gotta make it EASY and CHEAP for families to use public transit.
Where I live they made it free for everyone 18 and under. They prefer if children get a fare card for this (still free, just requires registration, this is mostly for metrics and probably to build the habit of tapping for transit when they’re old enough to pay) but it’s also ok for them to ride without tapping since we don’t do turnstiles.
Big fan of the lack of registration requirements, keeps it as simple as possible.
And it's one fewer item for a child to lose especially when losing it at school could mean not being able to get home from school.
This is weirdly a thing I'm on the opposite side on. We can keep kids off transit mostly and let parents (of multiple children) drive a car. I'm, personally, fine with this being a weird subsidization of the family by society.
In a perfect world, of course, where transit is even possible. In the real world, I'd just like parents to stop buying kid crusher SUVs and trucks and maybe reduce their fossil fuel impacts.
The idea of public transit as a kid-free zone is patently absurd in any context where public transit is not woefully inadequate (as it is in most of North America), and is especially silly in cities where owning a car is expensive and inconvenient by comparison.
Here in Berlin, children under 6 are always free and several of the other adult ticket options allow them to accompany up to three children under 15 for free. In addition to there being reduced fare tickets for children ages 6 to 14 in contexts where they don't ride for free.
I fear I have been misinterpreted: I am totally fine with children being on transportation and don't want transit to be a kid-free zone any more than I want most other places to be kid-free (that is, ideally there would be no children anywhere ever, but that's just me being a child-free old grump!) But I have to acknowledge that parents in America largely don't want to add stress to their lives by doing public transportation (or, honestly, any transportation other than an SUV) with multiple children.
Of course, I also have to acknowledge that we are from different countries with different infrastructure and that I came at this from an American viewpoint. You might be surprised how fundamentally and societally broken our public infrastructure is! I would love for anyone to ride our public transportation but that would also require us to have it to begin with.
Ultimately, I do really support public transportation and support it being fully funded by a regular budget and I would love to see a public transportation system in a usable enough state to actually see families on there.
I'm from the US myself (I moved to Germany in 2018), so I absolutely get you when it comes to how fundamentally broken US transit infrastructure is! I just think a lot of Americans really struggle to picture what a functional system looks like and what's possible when they haven't had firsthand experience with it. Here they don't have school buses and kids who don't live within walking distance of their schools usually go to and from school via public transport -- without parental accompaniment in most cases! It really is wildly different, and I think Americans too often have no idea how much better it could be with the right investment in the infrastructure.
It's funny to hear Americans come back from countries (or even American cities!) with functional infrastructure and rave about it and then vote to not fund infrastructure in their own area. Unfortunately, with everything being continually set on fire in America, infrastructure is fairly low on on the agenda these days.
The big benefit of family-friendly public transport is that kids can be more independent. Here in Germany, it's very common to see children taking buses and trams by themselves to get to school or to visit friends. By setting up public transport such that it's easy for the whole family to ride together, you normalise public transport for children and in turn make it easier for those children to start riding by themselves.
I'd argue families on public transport are a great litmus test for whether the public transport really is broadly usable as a general transport system, or whether you've just built an overly complicated car-pooling system for commuters.
Ah, like I said in my other comment, I'm coming at this from an American standpoint. We have so many societal issues that lead to our public transportation being unused. I would love to see a suburban, white kid in a mid-sized city ride a bus alone. Instead the only children in America who regularly use public transportation are those who are in underprivileged areas where public busses are used to supplement or replace school busses. In the suburb I was raised in, busses were only run during rush hour and pretty much exclusively to take suburban workers to the downtown core. Combine that lack of service with a lack of inner-suburb transportation - you are on your own for how to get to the bus stop, these are largely "park and ride" stops - and the amount of time it takes to ride the bus anywhere worthwhile.... well, you just drive a car. That's before you even get to any of the other issues caused by our refusal to fix any societal problem (who doesn't like crack smoke being blown around the train?!).
I would love to see families on public transport but it feels like a mountain to climb to get there in most of America.
I don't know, at a certain point you've just got to bite the bullet and force change to happen. You need people to take to bus who are not currently taking the bus, otherwise change will never happen. Targeting families, or perhaps young adults with limited income, or the elderly, with deals and free rides helps bring more people onto buses in the first place.
I live in the US and use public transit as my car replacement, which makes the cost much more reasonable. If that family can get away with only using public transit the extra cost doesn't mean much compared to lease/finance cost + gas + upkeep + parking. But there are few places in the country where you can get away with using public transit exclusively.
Yep. In my example, rail could only replace a car on a few high cost neighborhoods. That, plus an unlimited pass being $200/month per rider makes it not feasible for anyone not fairly well off.
Making public transport cheaper than a fully filled car is not the point and trying to make it so through making life in the city even more expensive for others (because not everyone has a choice to avoid things like congestion fees) is nonsensical.
Even here in Czechia, where the public transport is great and almost everyone uses it, a full car is easily cheaper and more practical than a train, and that is despite the fact that we have more expensive gas (though on average more economical cars, but also significantly smaller wages) and cheaper heavily subsidized public transport.
Public transport should most of all be cheaper than a car driving one person or two people. Because there are a ton of those and this is the main issue you want to reduce, because it can work without introducing other nontrivial regulation, which never works perfectly and always is unfair to someone else.
Imo the way to make more people use the system is to simultaneously offer cheap yearly passes and provide lines useful for getting to/off work and evening activities. When the choice for a single person to get to work vs using their car without ride sharing is economically trivial and the lines are practical (go close enough to be faster when accounting for getting stuck in peak traffic), there's no need for more regulation. And when the whole family owns these passes to get to work and school, you don't pay anything more to get to the movies.
The issue with stuff like congestion pricing is that, like every regulation of this kind, it hits people with lower incomes more, and making cars more expensive for them makes it even more difficult to keep their income and social status unless the public transport is already excellent. Therefore this should be the last thing you do, not the first.
This is pretty much inevitable if you want to provide service that's regular enough an flexible enough, happens in almost every functional public transport system that's not heavily overcrowded.
I think we are conflating general and specific situations, which to be fair, is easy in casual conversation. When I gave price examples in the prior situation and my thoughts on how to address it I was thinking specifically about my local rail while phrasing things more generally. Beyond that, I generally agree that incentives are a good way to go, while also believing that in some cases you need to make driving more expensive for some drivers.
So to be clear, I think DC could benefit from a combination of youth passes tied to student enrollment in regional K-12, and disincentives to drive into the beltway, targeting higher income drivers because DC is a higher income area, overall. The metro rail is often busy during commute hours, and relatively lightly used outside of that. Increasing utilization outside of peak hours while getting cars off the road is a win in my book, and the Saturday morning movie outing is an example I've seen in person with my neighbors with young kids. A youth pass is one way to do that, while also incentivizing more regional travel and the economic activity associated with it.
Additionally, in the DC area I swear I see more luxury cars like Porsche's than I see beaters. Driving is a nightmare in much of DC and the freeways, including on the weekends, so we should push more people to use the rail and buses while they run empty. Additionally, I've had a few fun days hopping to different sites along the Metro, but a day pass is $13/rider, and that is a real cost barrier for families.
Finally, there are real negative externalities to choosing to drive everywhere when you don't have to. Global warming, accidents, local pollution, etc. We heavily subsidize and obfuscate the true cost of driving so nothing else can compete on price. Then we sacrifice large swathes of our cities to create parking so nothing else can compete on convenience. When the marginal cost of each excursion is cheaper driving, then people drive even when they don't need to. That is where I think things like tolls and congestion pricing need to come in, in specific metro areas, to change the per drive cost function.
This is all from my experience in the US. Things might be different in other countries. I also know that not every city needs congestion pricing, in part because they need to improve their public infrastructure before pushing people to it en mass.
However, I will pick at one point you made:
If all you are looking at is price, then yes. Again, if you can replace a full car of tourists by getting them on an empty train, then you reduce carbon, local pollution, congestion, and traffic risks. There's no good reason not to maximally leverage existing capacity at off peak times, and changing the personal cost decisions is one of the few ways to do that. And many transit authorities have the express goal of reducing cars on the road. So I don't think this particular view resonates with me.
Not at all. If you want people to use your public transport, you first need to make it useful (dense and safe enough) and financially viable for both the local/state government that's subsidizing it and a large portion of its citizens who are paying the fares. If that's not enough, you can go seeking more drastic regulation, but this needs to be the starting situation. There's a ton of low-hanging fruit to harvest if you just make the public transport more practical and cheaper than being stuck in traffic in a car on your own, you can't skip this step if you want people to use it. A full car is so economical even with considerably more expensive gas that it's very difficult to get cheaper than that, and you don't really need to because if most of road traffic consisted of full or nearly full cars, all of the issues with both traffic and environment would be significantly smaller, it would be a huge improvement over the current situation.
I believe you, but the city still needs its lower-income workers and it's in your and their best interest to not reduce their mobility or increase their cost of living even more because both would make them poorer.
I understand that part of this is surely cultural, there is a bias towards cars and against the public transport that's just historical. But I don't believe that's all there is. If you have a public transport system that has enough coverage for people to get where they need to go when they need to go and it's noticeably faster than being stuck in traffic, then why are not enough people using it? You talked about price, so sure, push for more subsidies to create cheaper year-round passes, which motivate people to use the system more, and give even lower prices to students. If we can afford this without congestion pricing and other taxes, surely DC can. If that's not enough, then you have other problems you need to solve, whether it's safety and cleanliness (would you send your 10 year old on the train on his own?), density or something else.
But taxing people before you solve them won't help, and franky I have an ethical problem with just adding more taxes that are technically not mandatory and called something else but in real life are often impossible to avoid. I think that various calls to "tax the rich" are generally impractical populism and mostly a red herring, but in this case increasing tax progression and directly and transparently taxing the wealthy would make more sense to get more subsidy funds than just starting with ideas like congestion pricing.
I'm not really sure what your argument here is. I've already said that working infrastructure, useful lines and destinations, and inducements are good. Sometimes to get cars off of roads you also have to use disincentives. This isn't an either or thing, and as I've said, it's my opinion.
I'll also remind you that I'm talking about a specific situation, and I'm not interested in debating the general case in detail because the region specific details matter. The problem with a general tax in the DC area is two fold: there isn't one single tax authority; and it doesn't directly change the cost formula for marginal use of the car as a means of modifying behavior.
You seem to be assuming that the Metro needs to be made useful. It already is useful. I'm advocating for incentives and policies that maximize its use off hours through a combination of discounts for youth and targeted cost barriers for driving in areas well served by public transport.
Edit: I'll also add as a final note, that discounts for youth help people without reliable cars.
Washington state in the US does an excellent job balancing fares to fund transit with free rides. All youth ride free no questions asked (though they're encouraged to get a transit card) which really helps families and instills a habit of using public transit!
Yep, miss that state. Lived there for a while and remember how the school id's were unlimited bus passes in the town I lived in. Not sure how common that was, but it meant free transit for all K-12 where I lived.
I think this touches on what I think is the more important part of free transit. Yes, it has direct costs but it also has indirect profits in the form of increased economic activity. The article complains that the majority of increased ridership is from existing transit users simply making more trips — this is a feature, not a bug.
How many increased theatre visits would result from all that increased access? How many unfilled jobs can be filled because the cost of getting to that job now makes it profitable for a distant worker? How many new jobs are created from increased customer access? How much unused housing is now useful because transport to one’s job is now economical?
Alternatively, what if funding from fares increased transit access? If more people could access safe, fast, and reliable transit then usage numbers would increase. More types of businesses would thrive as a greater variety of people started riding transit.
Is that $20 round trip actually that much more expensive than driving? If you took that trip every day, that's around $600/month. I can't drive so I don't have a great sense for how much it costs to own a car, but I'd assume once you factor in a car payment, insurance, maintenance and gas it would probably be in the same ballpark. Granted that probably depends on the types of trips you typically take. Like if you make that trip multiple times per day, it would probably scale differently.
I just pulled the latest data for current car payments and the range is $500-$750/month spanning used, leased, and new car payments.
So in a worst case scenario, you hop from one new car to the next, and carry a perpetual $750/month payment and your always have a new vehicle. If you are an individual and the DC or similar metro can meet all your needs, then a monthly $200 unlimited pass makes sense. But for a family of five that jumps to $1,000/month and all of a sudden the new car is cheaper.
For people like me with two cars, both long payed off, my monthly car costs are basically amortized maintenance and fuel. It certainly doesn't cost $20 for a 6 mile drive in overhead maintenance and fuel costs. Using government mileage reimbursement rates for personal vehicles, they reimburse at a rate of $0.70/mile. Using that as a comparison, it would be $4.20 for the trip to the movies compared to $20 by metro.
As a final note, I'll say that cost aside, some of it is about living assistance for low income families and reducing traffic by incentivizing public transit or discouraging driving through targeted fees.
I hope that makes sense and answered your question!
Edit: I used my older vehicle to run an estimated lifetime cost per mile calculation, including maintenance and gas and got to a cost of $0.626/mile, or $3.76 for vehicle cost plus two dollars for validated parking, giving an all in movie transport cost of $5.76 by car, vs $20 by metro for a family of 5 ($4 for an individual), $10 for a reduced fare based on income ($2 for an individual).
The big difference in this calculation would be long trips. Since the prices on the metro are capped, a long trip is cheaper on the metro. E.g., 40 round-trip to the airport is $25 to drive plus parking. Metro is either $12/person or $4/person depending on if it is workday or weekend.
Driving, however, is a better transportation 'product' to the family: you go straight to your destination. 15m drive.
$20 is probably a low-estimate for a rail trip for a family. You probably have to take buses to/from the departure station, and buses to/from the destination station. You'll probably interact with two or more agencies that don't offer free transfers between their services, so you're paying multiple fares.
And the same drive can result in a complex transit trip that could take 1h 15m (in both transit and waiting-around time). If you're money-poor and time-rich, then it makes sense. But if you're an educated professional and peg your family's collective time at say $100/hr, then the trip costs $145 in money+time.
(I know it's a little crass to put a price on time, but everyone's doing it at some level. Like, I'm not going to take an 8 minute detour just to save $3 at a slightly cheaper gas station.)
Surprised no one else commented on this already, but for me the real debate we should be having is talking about how we get more creative with funding transit:
This makes so much more sense. It routinely makes me want to scream when I read about planning development around transit centres stalling because the developer doesn't want to accommodate the station properly or allow for enough retail and the City is wasting years herding cats. Just let transit agencies be a public-good developer too!
A huge difference is that train companies are privatised in Japan. They're competitive businesses that want to succeed in every way they can, so they provide a damned good service.
The US has a private company in Florida, Brightline, making retail plays around their high speed rail stations, and they're expanding to California and Las Vegas. Spain too has recently begun allowing private railway operators to great success.
I would be hesitant to equate privatization with good service, though, even if it works in Japan. This is not an inevitable result of privatization, and one need only look at the trouble in countries like the UK after rail privatization to see how it can backfire.
The UK just doesn't have a good incentive structure for their rail system. The british rail networks aren't really fully privatized, it's in a limbo state. The franchises just have fixed-term contracts with the government, and don't own the rails or their own stock. In that situation, the path of least resistance is absolutely to cut costs while maintaining acceptable service. There is little economic upside in improving service.
On the other hand, the JRs are vertically integrated and independent. They also have to deal with competition, as the existing private rail companies before JR was splintered off have continued, like Odakyu and Teio.
The ease of land redevelopment in Japan helps them quite a lot as well. In the end, passenger fares rarely end up being a net profit. Much of JRs revenue is from the leases on their property, and that's a better incentive structure - better service, more foot traffic, more rent that you can charge for shops in the stations you own.
In comparison, the reality is that no matter how much one of the franchises in Britain improves their service, it will make little to no difference in their balance sheet.
It would be difficult for said franchises to become land developers in the same way, due to the fixed length contracts, lack of vertical integration, and low capital available to them.
The key word wasn't "privatized" but rather "competitive". Many governments aren't competitive and fail to set up incentives and structures to accomplish their goals. Of course the same thing can happen with private companies with the wrong incentives.
Funnily enough there is one transit authority in New York that does own real estate: the Port Authority! Most notably they own the World Trade Center area, and a good amount of their revenue comes in from that.
Oh neat! Learned something new. Are they services relatively better or is the money still somehow being wasted?
From the blog post:
...
What this suggests to me is that bus fares could be seen as something like a congestion tax, used only for lines that get too busy, with free transit passes available for low income people.
I’d be curious to see a more thorough study of the peak demand effects of free transit fares. My commute is roughly equivalent in terms of travel time whether I take the bus, train, or walk, but I choose to walk because I prefer a moderate (around 1.5mi) walk to the “hurry up and wait” of the bus (and also crowding). My transit fares are paid fully by my employer, so it’s effectively free.
Of course I’m young and personally enjoy walking, so I imagine this doesn’t apply smoothly across the entire population.
Maybe there are some studies out of Asia in cities like Seoul which have hit the capacity limits of heavy rail trains?
I'm not sure that's the correct takeaway since free fares don't seem to decrease car trips. My understanding is that free fares only increase usage amongst people that are already using transit.
Many urbanists argue against free fares because they usually starve transit agencies of funding, and the funding shortfalls prevent agencies from expanding. Expanding mass transit is critical to reducing emissions, so we should do everything possible to increase transit funding and replace car trips.