Comments on: fairer fare in bowels of NYC?

By: Steven Hauser

Steven Hauser — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 21:47:09 +0000

“Pay for what you use”, when trucks pulverize the freeway and road system compared with auto traffic the minimal gas fees and little increase in license costs that do not come close to “pay for what you use”, trucks cause 90% of the damage to the roads and pay close to nothing.

Anyone who declares and enforces that people who commute on freeways pay
for them by mile driven and damage done (trucks) would be shot as a terrorist in this society. So why try to impose that same reasoning on transit? These people say this to make transit unusable. Transit systems cost nothing compared to massive road system costs. When you recover those huge road costs from the truckers and commuters that drive more than one mile, then you can impose “fairness” on transit users.

By: david vartanoff

david vartanoff — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 01:50:32 +0000

The point is precisely that the rush hour capacity MUST be sufficienr for the ecomy of the service area. Once that is in place, encouraging non rush usage incurs minimal expense while the various workers necessary for rush are still at work. As to some nebulous equity issue, transit is a public service–do you want to charge for police and fire servuces based on use?

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 13:31:43 +0000

The trips of a regular 40-hour jobholder do indeed set the high-water mark for a transit agency’s operating and capital needs, since, for most such people, the trips occur when service is at its highest level, i.e., during the morning rush hour and the evening rush hour. The highest service level is the high-water mark: the moment when you need the most vehicles and the most employees.

If there are to be unlimited-use monthly passes, pricing them at 40 times the single-ride fare is certainly better than pricing them even lower.

Still, would you say it is fair for passholders to provide, say 30% of all fare revenue but take, say 50% of all trips? This situation is not at all unusual.

People should pay for what they use.

By: david vartanoff

david vartanoff — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 05:20:01 +0000

Passes priced in the 35-44 single fare range DO NOT “set a high-water-mark for an agencys capital and operating needs”. These are the average trips of a regular 40hr jobholder. The “bonus” rides typicaly are off peak, evenings and weekends–all times of excess capacity. Encouraging riders outside rush hour benefits both riders and transit agencies.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 05:43:58 +0000

By not offering discounts to frequent users, BART maintains one of the most equitable fare structures in the nation. It’s also interesting to note that BART achieves an unusually high farebox recovery ratio — historically about 50%.

Transit agencies that offer unlimited-use passes create a situation where the most frequent users account for a relatively large share of trips taken, but a relatively small share of fare revenue.

Frequent users set a high-water-mark for an agency’s capital and operating needs. Supplemental peak-hour service is the most expensive to provide, since the assets (and sometimes the operators) remain idle for the rest of the day.

The discounts are financed by higher cash fares. This, in turn, penalizes low-income-earners (who may be “cash-poor” and unable to afford the up-front cost of an unlimited-use pass all at once) and deters “choice” occasional riders (who are known to be more price-sensitive than regular riders).

AC Transit staff have twice proposed the following revenue-positive and ridership-positive combination: eliminating passes and charging everyone a much lower cash fare. It’s an economically-sound idea, but one too radical to win political approval.

For details, see: http://www.actransit.org/aboutac/bod/memos/bab67f.pdf

By: Another New Yorker

Another New Yorker — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 22:09:24 +0000

I think the LIRR comparison is right (though the the actual distance from say, downtown SF to Daly city is proably about the same as Manhattan to the end of the F line in Queens.) I’d also point out that in New York many people ride a train like LIRR, New Jersey Transit or Metro North, all of which charge distance based fares, and then get on the subway, so commute expenses are often much higher than the subway fare alone would indicate. On the other hand all of those commuter rail systems offer monthly passes that are far cheaper than the per ride fare, about 30% less.

By: Bob Franklin, BART Board

Bob Franklin, BART Board — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 22:24:11 +0000

I think the solutions and answers to the above-mentioned problems reside in the smart card. As it can be registered, lost cards can be canceled, to protect any balance.
The BART fare structure is very complex, with over 94 different fares. A smart card would be able to track the number of trips taken in a month, and then reward frequent travelers after they hit a threshold (i.e. 40-44 trips per month) If you travel less, then you would only be charged for the trips you took. And after the threshold, discounts or free travel would begin for the remainder of the month.
When Translink (the universal smart card) comes online in the next several years, BARTPlus will go away. This is the main Bus to BART fare instrument, aside from the Fast Pass in SF, which is good on both BART and Muni within SF.
We will have to come up with a new fare structure to encourage people to use BART and buses in conjunction with each other.
My latest thought is for people to pay for bus and BART separately on their smart card, but if you go over 40 trips on each in a month, you would get a compounded discount for using multiple systems together, as well as some type of bonus for travel after 40 trips. 40 trips is a current number of trips on which a price of a monthly pass is usually based. And again, if you travel less than 40, you only would pay for the actual number of rides taken. A monthly pass would automatically kick in, and you wouldn’t have to commit to it at the beginning of a month.
I will be posting on my website http://www.BobforBART.com the progress on this monthly pass issue at BART. Please feel free to forward me any thoughts here or on my website.
Also, there are a couple of quick corrections: I didn’t say that you only would get 1 free ride after 40 as is Meg above claims. Also, in Erik’s original story, I wanted to point out another correction. BART developed its own smart card internally to allow employees access to the BART system. Stanford did not develop this. Stanford is the first external organization to use BART’s smart card aside from BART’s employees. We will gradually begin to roll this card out to the public. This card is in the advance of Translink and will be replaced by Translink when that card is available in the next several years.
Thank you,
Bob

By: South Bay Resident

South Bay Resident — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 19:00:44 +0000

I think that the New York City subway is the wrong comparison to BART. The primary purpose of the NYC subway is to circulate people around the densest part of the NYC metropolitan area. It doesn’t cover the outlying areas. Bart is different in that it primarily functions to move people between San Francisco and its outlying suburbs. BART’s operations are far more comparable to the Long Island Railroad, which, like BART charges distance based fares. The Muni Metro lines are much more comparable to the NYC subway in terms of function than is BART.