6 ms·

> The problem is there's no additional investment into the system to make it attractive to riders. It seems to me that public transit probably follows the law

by baddox 7y ago

> The problem is there's no additional investment into the system to make it attractive to riders. It seems to me that public transit probably follows the law of demand fairly strongly, and reducing the price will almost certainly make it more attractive to riders. Of course this won't fix all problems with public transit, and I don't think that's the goal. It sounds like the goal is to increase ridership (and specifically to increase access to people who cannot easily afford the fares). > Better to keep charging the fare and use the revenue to improve service Or...use tax revenue to improve the service. That's the point, and is exactly what happens with most public roads.

bobthepanda 7y ago
The question is whether or not $9M annually would be better off making more useful transit. As it stands, very little of KC is covered by frequent transit throughout the day, and in fact much of it is covered by services that don't run the entire day. https://ridekc.org/assets/uploads/route-maps/SystemMap.pdf https://ridekc.org/assets/uploads/route-maps/SystemMap.pdf A free bus that runs every hour is still going to screw you over if you mistime your walk to the bus stop and it leaves without you. The bus not being available at noon is not made better because it is free, because there's still no bus to take.
- baddox 7y ago
  But the point is to offer rides for free and use other money (presumably tax money) to maintain (and hopefully invest in more) infrastructure. I don't see how the current quality of the KC infrastructure is relevant: if it's bad, then they clearly the $9m in fare revenue isn't cutting it, and they already need tax revenue to make it better. If they can't or don't get the tax revenue they need, then that's definitely a problem!
  - huebomont 7y ago
    You leave out the possibility that they could run much better service with the money they have and they need to plan better. I don't know if that's the case here, but it's always the first thing to ask. Too many poorly run transit systems skip right over that to dumping more money into a poorly planned system and wonder why it doesnt work.
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    Or, you could use the tax money that you could use for free rides (that only makes bad service marginally more useful) and put it towards more useful service? It's not as if this money came out of a box labeled "only for free fares." Right now this is a $9M opportunity cost, annually. To get both the free fares and $9M of better transit would double the cost of this, but then you'd have to ask why not use all $18M on better transit, etc. Making a service that isn't usable most of the day free still makes it unusable for most of the day.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      > To get both the free fares and $9M of better transit would double the cost of this, but then you'd have to ask why not use all $18M on better transit, etc. But then there is a reason for that -- spending has diminishing returns. If you have some money and you could use it to serve an area with 1500 riders then that may be worth it, but once you've served it, the next best unserved area which costs just as much to serve would only have 750 riders, which may not be worth it. The point where you stop is where the value of the service no longer exceeds the cost. And the value of eliminating fares has a major comparative advantage because it allows you to eliminate the cost of collecting fares, which is typically a huge fraction of the money collected in fares. Especially when the fares are already subsidized (which they are most everywhere), because then you still have the pay the full cost of the collection infrastructure but generate much less revenue. In some places the cost of collection can exceed the total revenue from the fares. And even if you beat break-even, the little amount left over is hardly worth losing the benefits of having fewer cars on the road.
      - bobthepanda 7y ago
        I would argue that KC is nowhere near diminishing returns on transit spending. Right now, despite having lower fares and higher metro population than, say, Rochester NY, KC has less than half the transit ridership per capita. https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/Resources/resources/statistics/Documents/FactBook/2018-APTA-Fact-Book.pdf#page=29 https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/Resources/resources/... Off peak travel is generally also much less expensive, since you already have the buses and drivers doing peak-only shifts generally spend the middle of the day just sitting around. KC could run a lot more all-day service and garner a lot more ridership.
ReptileMan 7y ago
Public transit follows the law of utility. Shitty transport cheap or free is used less than expensive but good. Tfl could hike the fare wuite a bit and after the riots have died down people will use it the same. And you could make Emirates Air Line free and I doubt it will bump ridership substantially.
huebomont 7y ago
Better and more frequent service is the number one ridership driver. Free transit is a nice perk but there's some convincing argument and survey data indicating that most people aren't avoiding transit because of the price, but because of perceived lack of utility or reliability. (And yes, obviously continue to use tax revenue as well, just like we charge tolls for some roads but that doesn't pay for all their upkeep.)
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  The thing about eliminating fares and having more frequent service is that they're complementary. To have more frequent service you need enough riders to justify it; eliminating fares gives you at least some increased ridership. Suppose you have an existing A line with 1500 riders and you're considering building a B line, but you need 1000 riders to justify it and you predict there will only be 900, so you don't build it. However, if you eliminated fares then you might expect 1100 riders for the B line. Then the lack of fares also gives you another 300 riders for the A line, and the existence of the B line gives you another 600 riders for the A line since then people can then go from A to B. So eliminating fares allows you to build the B line and add 2000 riders across the two lines, even though only 500 of them were directly from the elimination of fares. And you get a much better incentive for ridership when you go from something like $1 to zero than you would from, say, $2 to $1, because it increases convenience. You don't have to worry about tickets or exact change or anything, you just go through the door and you're on your way.
  - huebomont 7y ago
    You would never want to build a B line that doesn't have any ridership. The move here would not be to make it free, but to reconsider the project and re-align it with a route that would actually attract riders.
brewdad 7y ago
If the transit system sucks compared to the alternatives, free fares are meaningless. When I lived in Phoenix, I could drive to work in 20-30 minutes. The same trip by bus took 90 minutes if I made a successful connection midway. If I missed that connection, which I did once, it became a 2 hour trip home. I only made the trip by bus two days, when the city was literally out of gas in 2003. The city could have paid me to take the bus and I still would have driven. I have to think the same would be true for pretty much everyone there who wasn't already stuck taking the bus.
- shantly 7y ago
  Kansas City buses are like that. Outside parts of a handful of routes they're only tempting if you have way more time than money. Making them free does help the people already using them but I can't imagine it'll do much to increase use of it for actually getting from place to place (increasing its use as a place for the homeless to get out of the heat/cold, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, might happen, and isn't exactly a bad thing, though I agree that if it becomes common it might actually reduce total ridership)

by baddox 7y ago

bobthepanda 7y ago

The question is whether or not $9M annually would be better off making more useful transit. As it stands, very little of KC is covered by frequent transit throughout the day, and in fact much of it is covered by services that don't run the entire day. https://ridekc.org/assets/uploads/route-maps/SystemMap.pdf https://ridekc.org/assets/uploads/route-maps/SystemMap.pdf A free bus that runs every hour is still going to screw you over if you mistime your walk to the bus stop and it leaves without you. The bus not being available at noon is not made better because it is free, because there's still no bus to take.

baddox 7y ago
But the point is to offer rides for free and use other money (presumably tax money) to maintain (and hopefully invest in more) infrastructure. I don't see how the current quality of the KC infrastructure is relevant: if it's bad, then they clearly the $9m in fare revenue isn't cutting it, and they already need tax revenue to make it better. If they can't or don't get the tax revenue they need, then that's definitely a problem!
- huebomont 7y ago
  You leave out the possibility that they could run much better service with the money they have and they need to plan better. I don't know if that's the case here, but it's always the first thing to ask. Too many poorly run transit systems skip right over that to dumping more money into a poorly planned system and wonder why it doesnt work.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  Or, you could use the tax money that you could use for free rides (that only makes bad service marginally more useful) and put it towards more useful service? It's not as if this money came out of a box labeled "only for free fares." Right now this is a $9M opportunity cost, annually. To get both the free fares and $9M of better transit would double the cost of this, but then you'd have to ask why not use all $18M on better transit, etc. Making a service that isn't usable most of the day free still makes it unusable for most of the day.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > To get both the free fares and $9M of better transit would double the cost of this, but then you'd have to ask why not use all $18M on better transit, etc. But then there is a reason for that -- spending has diminishing returns. If you have some money and you could use it to serve an area with 1500 riders then that may be worth it, but once you've served it, the next best unserved area which costs just as much to serve would only have 750 riders, which may not be worth it. The point where you stop is where the value of the service no longer exceeds the cost. And the value of eliminating fares has a major comparative advantage because it allows you to eliminate the cost of collecting fares, which is typically a huge fraction of the money collected in fares. Especially when the fares are already subsidized (which they are most everywhere), because then you still have the pay the full cost of the collection infrastructure but generate much less revenue. In some places the cost of collection can exceed the total revenue from the fares. And even if you beat break-even, the little amount left over is hardly worth losing the benefits of having fewer cars on the road.
    - bobthepanda 7y ago
      I would argue that KC is nowhere near diminishing returns on transit spending. Right now, despite having lower fares and higher metro population than, say, Rochester NY, KC has less than half the transit ridership per capita. https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/Resources/resources/statistics/Documents/FactBook/2018-APTA-Fact-Book.pdf#page=29 https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/Resources/resources/... Off peak travel is generally also much less expensive, since you already have the buses and drivers doing peak-only shifts generally spend the middle of the day just sitting around. KC could run a lot more all-day service and garner a lot more ridership.

ReptileMan 7y ago

Public transit follows the law of utility. Shitty transport cheap or free is used less than expensive but good. Tfl could hike the fare wuite a bit and after the riots have died down people will use it the same. And you could make Emirates Air Line free and I doubt it will bump ridership substantially.

huebomont 7y ago

Better and more frequent service is the number one ridership driver. Free transit is a nice perk but there's some convincing argument and survey data indicating that most people aren't avoiding transit because of the price, but because of perceived lack of utility or reliability. (And yes, obviously continue to use tax revenue as well, just like we charge tolls for some roads but that doesn't pay for all their upkeep.)

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
The thing about eliminating fares and having more frequent service is that they're complementary. To have more frequent service you need enough riders to justify it; eliminating fares gives you at least some increased ridership. Suppose you have an existing A line with 1500 riders and you're considering building a B line, but you need 1000 riders to justify it and you predict there will only be 900, so you don't build it. However, if you eliminated fares then you might expect 1100 riders for the B line. Then the lack of fares also gives you another 300 riders for the A line, and the existence of the B line gives you another 600 riders for the A line since then people can then go from A to B. So eliminating fares allows you to build the B line and add 2000 riders across the two lines, even though only 500 of them were directly from the elimination of fares. And you get a much better incentive for ridership when you go from something like $1 to zero than you would from, say, $2 to $1, because it increases convenience. You don't have to worry about tickets or exact change or anything, you just go through the door and you're on your way.
- huebomont 7y ago
  You would never want to build a B line that doesn't have any ridership. The move here would not be to make it free, but to reconsider the project and re-align it with a route that would actually attract riders.

brewdad 7y ago

If the transit system sucks compared to the alternatives, free fares are meaningless. When I lived in Phoenix, I could drive to work in 20-30 minutes. The same trip by bus took 90 minutes if I made a successful connection midway. If I missed that connection, which I did once, it became a 2 hour trip home. I only made the trip by bus two days, when the city was literally out of gas in 2003. The city could have paid me to take the bus and I still would have driven. I have to think the same would be true for pretty much everyone there who wasn't already stuck taking the bus.

shantly 7y ago
Kansas City buses are like that. Outside parts of a handful of routes they're only tempting if you have way more time than money. Making them free does help the people already using them but I can't imagine it'll do much to increase use of it for actually getting from place to place (increasing its use as a place for the homeless to get out of the heat/cold, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, might happen, and isn't exactly a bad thing, though I agree that if it becomes common it might actually reduce total ridership)