I feel as though the following could be a major downside: No barrier to entry = unhoused individuals using the bus for shelter, thereby potentially degrading the overall experience for the rest of the ridership.
>Without question, there are advantages to letting passengers board for free. Total ridership typically rises when no one has to pay. Assaults on bus operators may decline because passengers are not swiping a card or handing over cash, and the boarding process can be faster (although this seems not to have happened during the MTA’s fare-free pilot, potentially due to a jump in riders). Because many bus passengers have low incomes, eliminating fares is fiscally progressive, disproportionately benefiting the less wealthy.
>But prior fare-free deployments provide some cautionary lessons. In most cities, including Boston, the much-celebrated bump in ridership has almost entirely consisted of prior transit users who take more trips, along with people shifting to the bus from walking or biking. Eliminating fares seems to have no impact on driving, likely because those affluent enough to own a car care more about travel time than the fare. (In Tallinn driving actually surged after fares were dropped, perhaps because Estonia’s GDP was rising, and people used their new wealth to purchase cars.) Notably, if fare-free transit does not reduce car use, it cannot mitigate pollution or greenhouse gases. That reality contradicts the environmental framing of many free-fare efforts, such as Colorado’s “Zero Fare for Better Air.”
>Then there’s the fact that fares are collected for the purpose of *running transit*. Along with state and local subsidies, farebox revenues fund transit agencies’ operating costs, such as staffing, fuel, and maintenance. The MTA currently collects upward of $800 million in bus fares annually. For context, that is more than the $500 million that Manhattan’s new congestion program is projected to add to MTA’s coffers this year. Mamdani’s team has estimated the annual cost of his fare-free proposal at $600 to $800 million, but those figures may be low, particularly considering the need to deploy additional buses and invest more in maintenance to handle a predicted uptick in passengers (some of whom will probably switch from the subway, further depressing MTA revenue). Ditching fares can be justified in smaller cities, like Olympia, Washington, which went fare-free a few years ago because the cost of managing fare collection exceeded the revenue collected. But that is certainly not the case in New York City, where a whopping third of all U.S. transit trips occur.
>[…]
>And, of course, taxpayers cover the cost of all kinds of things that benefit the public good [as Riders Alliance, an advocacy group argues that free transit is ‘absolutely a good idea’]. But is it the *best* way to spent $600 million–plus in taxpayer dollars, every year, ad infinitum?
>It’s hard to see how that could be the case, particularly given the myriad opportunities to upgrade MTA’s bus service, which is the slowest in the country and not getting faster.
>Low-income passengers themselves often say they would prefer speedier and more reliable transit service than one that’s free of charge. Basic math can explain why: If a bus rider makes $20 per hour and their commute takes an average of 40 minutes, reducing their average trip to 25 minutes would save them half an hour per day, worth the equivalent of $10—far more than the price of a round-trip ride.
>[Alongside the money used to subsidise free transit could be used to expand bus fleets and rolling stock, and provide more frequent and reliable service. With one estimate putting six-minute service from dawn to dusk on every subway line costing $350 million.]
erasmus_phillo on
People care a lot more about transit reliability/frequency than they do about having free fares, and removing a huge source of revenue from the transit system will imperil that. Most riders would rather have a bus/train that reliably comes every 3min that they have to pay for, than have a bus/train come every 20min that’s free
Shkkzikxkaj on
Next time a republican is mayor, they will be eager for the opportunity to stick it to the union by cutting the bus system’s budget, without any fare revenue as backup. They call it “starving the beast”.
4 Comments
I feel as though the following could be a major downside: No barrier to entry = unhoused individuals using the bus for shelter, thereby potentially degrading the overall experience for the rest of the ridership.
Archived version: https://archive.fo/1XSay.
>Without question, there are advantages to letting passengers board for free. Total ridership typically rises when no one has to pay. Assaults on bus operators may decline because passengers are not swiping a card or handing over cash, and the boarding process can be faster (although this seems not to have happened during the MTA’s fare-free pilot, potentially due to a jump in riders). Because many bus passengers have low incomes, eliminating fares is fiscally progressive, disproportionately benefiting the less wealthy.
>But prior fare-free deployments provide some cautionary lessons. In most cities, including Boston, the much-celebrated bump in ridership has almost entirely consisted of prior transit users who take more trips, along with people shifting to the bus from walking or biking. Eliminating fares seems to have no impact on driving, likely because those affluent enough to own a car care more about travel time than the fare. (In Tallinn driving actually surged after fares were dropped, perhaps because Estonia’s GDP was rising, and people used their new wealth to purchase cars.) Notably, if fare-free transit does not reduce car use, it cannot mitigate pollution or greenhouse gases. That reality contradicts the environmental framing of many free-fare efforts, such as Colorado’s “Zero Fare for Better Air.”
>Then there’s the fact that fares are collected for the purpose of *running transit*. Along with state and local subsidies, farebox revenues fund transit agencies’ operating costs, such as staffing, fuel, and maintenance. The MTA currently collects upward of $800 million in bus fares annually. For context, that is more than the $500 million that Manhattan’s new congestion program is projected to add to MTA’s coffers this year. Mamdani’s team has estimated the annual cost of his fare-free proposal at $600 to $800 million, but those figures may be low, particularly considering the need to deploy additional buses and invest more in maintenance to handle a predicted uptick in passengers (some of whom will probably switch from the subway, further depressing MTA revenue). Ditching fares can be justified in smaller cities, like Olympia, Washington, which went fare-free a few years ago because the cost of managing fare collection exceeded the revenue collected. But that is certainly not the case in New York City, where a whopping third of all U.S. transit trips occur.
>[…]
>And, of course, taxpayers cover the cost of all kinds of things that benefit the public good [as Riders Alliance, an advocacy group argues that free transit is ‘absolutely a good idea’]. But is it the *best* way to spent $600 million–plus in taxpayer dollars, every year, ad infinitum?
>It’s hard to see how that could be the case, particularly given the myriad opportunities to upgrade MTA’s bus service, which is the slowest in the country and not getting faster.
>Low-income passengers themselves often say they would prefer speedier and more reliable transit service than one that’s free of charge. Basic math can explain why: If a bus rider makes $20 per hour and their commute takes an average of 40 minutes, reducing their average trip to 25 minutes would save them half an hour per day, worth the equivalent of $10—far more than the price of a round-trip ride.
>[Alongside the money used to subsidise free transit could be used to expand bus fleets and rolling stock, and provide more frequent and reliable service. With one estimate putting six-minute service from dawn to dusk on every subway line costing $350 million.]
People care a lot more about transit reliability/frequency than they do about having free fares, and removing a huge source of revenue from the transit system will imperil that. Most riders would rather have a bus/train that reliably comes every 3min that they have to pay for, than have a bus/train come every 20min that’s free
Next time a republican is mayor, they will be eager for the opportunity to stick it to the union by cutting the bus system’s budget, without any fare revenue as backup. They call it “starving the beast”.