I think I saw a bumper sticker that said that works for the military. Maybe not.
Flush with riders, transit is short on money and options
Revenue from the sales tax on motor vehicles, which provides about 38 percent of the funding for Metro Transit’s bus operations, has plummeted as car sales slumped. State government, already plagued by a shortfall in the billions, isn’t in a great position to help ease a transit funding deficit estimated at $11 million for the current year and at $60 million for the next two-year budget period.
I have a novel idea. How about charging the people that use it a fare commensurate with the costs? You know, like real businesses do. One of two things will happen.
People will buy cars. Problem solved.
People will pay their share. Problem solved.
One remedy — raising fares by as much as 50 cents in 2009 — isn’t leaving anybody laughing. And it would fill only part of the gap.
How about a dollar then?
Indeed. Charge what it costs. A bright elementary student might be able to figure that one out. But at the capital it remains a “mystery”.
You know the argument– that we subsidize the building and maintenance of roads, so why not LRT? The flaw in that argument is that we could have doubled the lanes on every freeway in the metro– which collectively carry 50 times the people LRT does– for what we spent to build LRT, and maintenance shows a like value. Also, the gas tax pays for roads and their maintenance, so how to LRT riders pay THEIR “fair share” of their chosen transportation option?
For the cost of the new Central Corridor line, we could give every potential rider a new hybrid or electric car, and for the cost of operating it, we could put gas in all of those cars, and have LOTS of money left over. For the cost of the Hiawatha line, even with the greatly increased ridership, we could have provided every /pair/ of riders with a chauffered limo, in perpetuity. It makes no sense to subsidize things that shouldn’t have been built in the first place. If those who choose it decide to do something different because of the cost, maybe we’ll gain the wisdom to avoid future such boondoggles.
“How about charging the people that use it a fare commensurate with the costs?”
OK. You ride the bus. I drive. I benefit from you riding through shorter commutes, lower gas prices, and cleaner air. Should I have to pay for those benefits or should you pick up the whole tab for me?
Psst. . . Rick?
The topic is TRAINS.
Yossarian:
True. My mistake. The point is still the same regardless of trains or buses.
Except for the whole “trains being an economically-ridiculous albatross that continually disappoints its staunchest supporters” thing, whereas buses are just a bit less so. Then, yes.
When I drive, don’t I open up a seat on the train for you Rick?
Can I send you one of my twelve lease payments? Or will you at least subsidize my license tabs? Pay some of my gas tax? pick up one of my oil changes?
It sounds stupid when you reverse the argument doesn’t it?
By nature of the beast, mass transit is publicly funded. I rode the LRT for almost a year before moving and still ride the bus every day (and Yossarian, this post was not specific to LRT, but was regarding transit in general…J. Ewing’s comment was the only one specific to LRT, and Rick wasn’t addressing J. Ewing). I tend to find that those who hate transit don’t use it and those who love it do.
Having said that, with a budget shortfall, it makes perfect sense that the first people to take a direct hit are the users of a given service, and with transit, that means higher fees for me (for what it’s worth, my transit pass has gone up twice in the last year). Raise the license and registration fees. Raise the transit fees. Raise state park fees. Make people who are using the commodity pay for it first before applying higher income and property taxes.
A user-fee-based philosophy just makes sense, no matter which side of the transit argument you wind up on.
You can’t find a decent game of “three card monty” in your car.
I’m an anti-big gov’t right winger who is usually on the side when it comes to tansit. I think another analogy would be for highways to be charged property tax. If the BNSF pays property tax on the line that the Northstar will be running on, why shouldn’t hwy 10 and I-94 also be taxed? For every lane of freeway, every interchange, that’s alot of land no longer producing tax revenue. How many millions would Richflield and Bloomington take in if 494, 35W, 77 etc had to pay the same taxes as the landowners alongside it do. We need city streets to reach our garages. But you could make the arguement that freeways should be on the same footing as rail and airways (oh, and the airport should be taxed).
“For the cost of the Hiawatha line, even with the greatly increased ridership, we could have provided every /pair/ of riders with a chauffered limo, in perpetuity.”
They are carring about 30,000 a day on average. That’s 15,000 passengers making a roundtrip 365 days a year.
Didn’t we solve this problem with a Constitutional Amendment that required no less than 40% of the transportation money to go to transit?
Just quit spending money on roads and bridges. Give it all to the trains. Eventually, when all the bridges collapse and the roads revert to gravel, everybody will ride the train.
Unt zey vill LIKE it, ya?
.
People are seriously arguing that running a diesel powered bus vs. a gasoline powered car is a net BENEFIT to the environment? Are they perhaps unaware of the facts of “soot” and “can’t use a catalyst with a diesel”?
Or perhaps running a coal fired power plant to run the death train is a net benefit to the environment, too? Or covering up acre after acre with park-n-rides, bus lanes, and such is better than letting that land be covered in “grass” or “trees”?
Sorry, every ride taken on SW Metro requires .3-.5 gallons of diesel to be burned, and most of them require at least one new parking space. That’s not what I call environmentally friendly.
Bike….but you feel so much better afterwords. Kind of like buying carbon offsets. Or flying in a jet to go to a global warming conference.
You can’t find a decent game of “three card monty” in your car.
You can’t play Chicken on the Train/Bus
“It sounds stupid when you reverse the argument doesn’t it?”
No. When you drive, there is an extra seat on the bus train. Which simply reinforces the point that, with transit, it is very hard to tease out who benefits from any given act. Thus is it very hard to charge individual users a fee that captures that cost exactly.
Roosh wrote: “Flush with riders…”
Lemme guess. This is one of the posts you wrote on your laptop in the bathroom?
Rick, it’s not that hard to figure out an appropriate fare. Add
Wages & benefits of transit employees
Bus purchase and operation costs.
Diesel fuel costs
Costs of overhead & park & rides
Road and fuel taxes not paid by transit
Divide by
number of riders.
There is your fare–about $10/ride. $20/ride for the Hiawatha line once bond interest is included.
(that is, of course, about TWICE the vehicle cost for a very nice car from the MOA to downtown)
I agree with Bubba otherwise but this part is no longer true—“can’t use a catalyst with a diesel”?
They can and are now using emissions reduction devices effective on model year 2008 on-road diesel engines. The next regulatory change is due to take place for the 2010 model year. It apparently has been a big enough hurdle that one manufacturer is getting out of the on-road segment of the diesel engine industry, Caterpillar.
Oh yeah, I’m new here as a commenter but have been reading long enough to know to raise my hand when Peevish posts. 😉
Roosh wrote: “Flush with riders…”
Lemme guess. This is one of the posts you wrote on your laptop in the bathroom?
You’re on a roll AC. A roll of TP.
And “Flush” now you’re gone.
According to the Metropolitan Council itself, the farebox only covers 35% of the cost. Maybe we could double that to a mere 70%?
Bike Bubba:
But who pays for the cost? Non-riders receive significant benefits from transit use. How do you assess non-riders a fee to cover the benefits they enjoy? For example, transit riders reduce congestion, do we discount their fare to reflect this savings or do we add a fee to car users?
RickDFL said:
“transit riders reduce congestion”
Oh really? Do tell!
Remember the 6-week long metro strike a few years ago. Traffic flowed remarkably smoother during all time of the day! Reality sucks… when you’re on the left!
RickDFL, when are you going to assess yourself for using space on Mitch’s blog? Jeez, you could hit the tip jar once in a while.
Where is that tip jar again Mitch?
Non-riders receive significant benefits from transit use.
In 2005, transit use accounted for 2.8% of daily commutes in the Cities. 2.8% is HARDLY “a significant benefit”. Most people whose commute crosses Hiawatha would disagree that LRT is a “benefit”.
For example, transit riders reduce congestion
And if you look up at the sky and blow hard enough, you’ll keep dry in a rain storm.
do we discount their fare to reflect this savings
They already get a discount, approximately 70-75%.
or do we add a fee to car users
Car users already pay for mass transit. Mass transit riders don’t pay for roads. Mass transit riders don’t even pay for themselves. Quit being so disingenuous.
Wait, this IS RickDFL I’m talking about. Never mind.
Here is an insaner (sic) level of insanity:
From: http://www.usbusiness-review.com/content/view/1177/31/
The biggest new project is the Northstar Commuter Rail, a $320 million, 40-mile service that will extend from Big Lake, Minn., to downtown Minneapolis. Northstar will be powered by diesel locomotives that will pull four cars that can seat up to 700 people. Northstar will have five locomotives and 18 passenger cars.
The line is expected to be completed in the end of 2009, says Vince Pellegrin, COO of Metro Transit, the transportation authority that serves the Minneapolis and St. Paul areas. About 4,200 commuters are projected to use it daily, he adds.
How much of a benefit is this? Check Adam Froehlich’s Twin Cities Freeways website for traffic levels from Big Lake to Maple Grove.
Also, 700 riders per train? Unless they limit passengers at each stop, that will be full by the first 2 or 3 stops every trip. Not a lot of help for people closer to the Cities. The cost-to-benefit ratio of Northstar makes Hiawatha LRT look reasonable, which is, truly insane.
First, transit is not inherently subsidized. Twin City Lines charged 25 cents in 1965, and that paid for everything, including new buses.
Two, LRT is most of the money trouble, not the buses. LRT also increases congestion. I was out walking Sat, had to wait several minutes to cross Hiawatha at 26th because one train reset the light, then another train came before I was about to get the green. Ask your friendly neighborhood cabbies and ambulance drivers what they think.
Mr. Shirt:
“Remember the 6-week long metro strike a few years ago. Traffic flowed remarkably smoother during all time of the day!”
That is just the kind of well backed empirical research we expect from SITD.
Bill C:
“2.8% is HARDLY “a significant benefit”
a. It is not a punch in the nose either.
b. So increase the transit subsidy, increase ridership, and increase the benefit.
“And if you look up at the sky and blow hard enough, you’ll keep dry in a rain storm.” See reply to Mr. Shirt
“Mass transit riders don’t pay for roads.”
Mass Transit riders pay less for roads in that they probably pay less on the gas tax, car sales tax, and the registration fee (assuming they drive less and own fewer cars). But they certainly pay taxes that fund road construction and maintenance, along with much of the gas tax which is passed along to consumers by transportation companies.
More importantly we all pay higher rents because of municipal parking requirements. If local governments did not prevent them, builders could reduce parking spaces and pack more housing and commercial space into a smaller lot. Thus, someone who takes the LRT to the MOA pays a built in cost to cover the cost of all that parking.
Once again, I have no particular interest in debating transit vs. cars, but any transit mode comes with an enormous amount of hidden and indirect costs and benefits. Thus, there is no way to charge an individual user for their transit consumption.
I receive benefits from transit? Do you mean like the fact that 494 has three lanes instead of the four or five that ought to be there because of the money being siphoned off for buses and light rail? Do you mean like the fact that 394 is a byzantine maze because of all the lanes and ramps made to accomodate buses, hybrids, and carpoolers?
Sorry, Rick. Reality is that if we’d applied gasoline and motor vehicle tax revenue to roads, we’d have done far more to reduce congestion, pollution, and so on than we did by subsidizing transit. Drivers receive no real benefit from transit once the costs are taken into account.
“Drivers receive no real benefit from transit once the costs are taken into account.”
Perhaps. Others would disagree. As I said “I have no particular interest in debating transit vs. cars”.
Then why are you debating? :^)
But that said, I’m glad to compare a 2.8% or less reduction in traffic (and that in a good year) with a 40% reduction in funds available for building and maintaining roads–plus the reality that buses aren’t paying road taxes to support the roads but use them (and damage them) far more than cars.
Benefit from transit? Pretty hard to establish once you count the cost. It might be necessary in places like Chicago and Manhattan (though probably not even that if you restored the street grid where the WTC used to be), but it’s hardly a panacea for traffic or environmental issues.
Bike Bubba:
“Then why are you debating?”
I am debating a different point; whether we can solve the transit vs cars issue by charging consumers of each their ‘cost’ and letting the ‘market’ decide. My point has the advantage of being the topic of the original post.
And I established you can. Charge the bus companies road and fuel taxes, add up the costs, divide by the number of riders, assess a fare.
E.A.S.Y. It’s called “running a business properly.” And the bus fare, except for a few place in downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul, would be about $10/ride.
And I’d get that extra lane or two I’ve wanted on 494, and 394 could get rid of two bus/carpool lanes in favor of four lanes for everyone, and maybe even clean up the mess there a little bit.
I suppose if you have such ideas about the costs and benefits of various transit modes, then the debate seems pretty pointless. Makes me wonder why you want to join in.
:^)
It’s to help benighted DFL voters like yourself realize that when the state requires only 30% of the funds for transit to come from fares, and furthermore subsidizes the capital that transit uses, it’s not exactly rocket science to figure out that there is indeed an actual cost for a ride on the bus. In fact, there are entire government agencies whose job it is to calculate that entire cost.
Although, in your defense, they do work a lot to obscure the actual costs so suburban voters don’t just shut the whole thing down.
Actually RickDFL is not talking about “the costs and benefits of various transit modes” as calculated by millions of actual, living individuals who think about these things all the time. He’s talking about “the costs and benefits of various transit modes” from the point of view of society, or an economics experiment, or a transportation commissar or somebody, anybody who agrees with his own individual interpretation of “the costs and benefits of various transit modes”.
Yeah, but we can quantify the benefits we do have, too. Buses emit just as much pollution as cars, reduce traffic by 2.8% (maybe 5% in the city itself), need just as many parking spaces, but reduce road funds (lanes, etc..) available by 40%.
But they do enable rich people to get their maids and gardeners to work in Edina, Aspen, and Vail, while billing the middle class for the cost, I guess.
I think that absent billing transit for the entire societal cost they inflict, maybe just billing the riders for the official spreadsheet cost would be sufficient.