MBTA Winter 2015: Failure and Recovery

[datadyne007]

As long as we're clear that people of means can and should pay what it's worth to them, I agree with you. FWIW, there's going to be more and more of those people in coming decades as some of the rich move back into the city.

How do you plan on doing your income scheme without having people enter their SSN at Fare Vending Machines? Seriously, no other place in the world charges fares based on a person's income.

If you want to talk distance traveled, like Berlin's ABC zones, I'd entertain that. You can go a long way on the T for a single fare. That's for sure.

 

[The EGE]

Seattle's King County Transit is going to begin implementing income-based fares, based on qualifying for reduced fares based on enrollment in other social programs (i.e, KCT isn't reinventing the wheel).

 

[datadyne007]

Seattle's King County Transit is going to begin implementing income-based fares, based on qualifying for reduced fares based on enrollment in other social programs (i.e, KCT isn't reinventing the wheel).

Interesting and thanks for sharing... but awesome - more people at the CharlieCard store! They haven't been able to produce reduced fare CharlieCards for whatever reason for the past 3 weeks now! (Announced everyday on Twitter)

 

[Proposition Joe]

I could probably stomach a one time, emergency fare hike in this instance; however, removing all barriers to raising fares is incredibly irresponsible. I do not want to experience eight years of runaway fare hikes because the Governor can't be bothered to implement open roll tolling or implement gas taxes because of campaign pledges and ideology (or because the MBTA is starving and can't do anything else).

Fare zones are something that make the system less user friendly and I doubt that any pennies pinched from such a scheme will make any difference. We all know that we got here because of the Big Dig debt, forward funding, and the stagnant gas tax and there is no escape unless those things are fixed.

Of course we could always just progressively tax income at higher levels but, LOL.

Constitutionally banned ROFL.

 

[Equilibria]

How do you plan on doing your income scheme without having people enter their SSN at Fare Vending Machines? Seriously, no other place in the world charges fares based on a person's income.

If you want to talk distance traveled, like Berlin's ABC zones, I'd entertain that. You can go a long way on the T for a single fare. That's for sure.

Distance traveled would require all-new fare gates, since you have to swipe a card on both ends. It's possible that they planned ahead and bought gates with a retrofit capability.

You don't implement it at the vending machines, you implement this whole thing through monthly passes. It's possible that you could charge a high price at the vending machines to catch tourists and occasional travelers (not gouging, mind you).

Ultimately, your goal should be implementing a fare system that uses Apple Pay or some other RFID system to bypass the need for fare machines altogether. Then, you could limit the one remaining machine per station to single-ride passes. That's a long term vision, though.

Seattle's King County Transit is going to begin implementing income-based fares, based on qualifying for reduced fares based on enrollment in other social programs (i.e, KCT isn't reinventing the wheel).

This is a good place to start, but again, it places the burden on the low-income people to be signed up for one of these programs, and there are plenty of people that can't afford a $125/month transit pass that aren't on welfare.

My very rough concept:

1. When you first sign up for a monthly pass, you do so online or at a Charlie Card Store. You're asked to report your income range (low/med/high) and you're charged for the rest of the year until April 30th based on the applicable rate.

2. Then, with your MA income tax forms you receive an optional transit form. People outside of Metro Boston or who don't ride the T simply ignore it (or maybe there's an RTA version). If you have a pass, you write in your account number and elect to either renew (which just tells the MBTA to keep charging you at the appropriate rate) or pay an annual fee equivalent to 11.5 months at your monthly rate, pre-tax. That's a big chunk, but the benefit won't be meaningful to people not able to pay it, both because of their lower monthly cost and because their tax bracket negates the value of pre-tax.

3. If you don't send back the form, your subscription expires effective May 1st (there would be a way for people to renew after 4/15 a limited number of times, so that people who forget the form don't get booted). Each credit card number can only be used once to initially register. Some people will continue to open new accounts with new cards, but as with POP the losses will be minor.

4. For first time renewal, if you send back the form and your previous year's income doesn't match what you reported initially, you get billed for the difference on May 1st.

This isn't so different from how the RMV promotes and administrates EZ-PASS alongside driver and vehicle registration. In fact, if people get used to the tax form, the State could slap a VMT tax on there at some point down the road...

I have two concerns:

1) Raising fares on higher-income individuals could allow transportation alternatives (e.g. Bridj) to become more attractive to that population leading to under funded public transpo.

Bridj is looking to make money. If you raise public transit fares up to a point, they'll raise their prices. Uber has already demonstrated that effect.

 

[kevtron2000]

I'm sorry, but I find the whole notion of "raise fares until ridership drops" to be absolutely absurd. That's class warfare/income inequality at its finest. Transit isn't just for the elite with buckets of money to blow on getting to work.

Those who ride transit aren't supposed to be the sole contributors to the funding. Putting it on the backs of riders is horrifically wrong. Our tax dollars go to fund roads to nowhere in Western MA. Theirs can go toward our transit.

Higher Prices has the incentitive/potential to decrease the future expected ridership. I highly doubt if the T were to increase prices by 5% tommorow, ridership will fall by greater than 5%. When has that ever happened? Also, population grows every year, so ridership will always increase. Those 5% of riders aren't going to instantly decide that they will take the car/bus/walk/other methods for a dime to a quarter increase in fares the next day. Overtime, they might cut back, so the rate of growth of ridership might slow down. The only potential area where fare hikes will decrease the expected ridership the most and quickiest would be the commuter rail. People outside the city don't have many options.

 

[Matthew]

You can already deduct MBTA pass costs from your state income taxes, up to a point. They could expand that system.

There is a silver lining to removing the fare hike cap: under the status quo, the T has very, very strong motivation to hike fares by 5% every two years like clockwork. It's not officially "indexed" to CPI but it might as well be.

Going back to a system with no fare hike cap, we'll see more infrequent fare hikes for higher percentages. Each of those can be argued politically, and the T will not feel that pressure that they're missing their only opportunity to keep pace with inflation at every time it comes up.

Regarding fare structure: the T could look at a system where single ride tickets cost $3.00 (like Montreal), but passes are heavily discounted and strongly encouraged. In addition, the standard monthly pass could be somewhat less discounted, with further discounted passes available through programs that verify some kind of eligibility.

Having most people on passes helps speed up boarding, and it can be part of a roll-out of proof-of-payment.

That doesn't solve the problem of helping people who can't afford monthly passes. Well, even at the heavily discounted rates. So they could expand the use of weekly passes, 3-day passes, or even more flexible spans. They could sell <n>-ride tickets instead of time-limited passes. E.g. maybe an eligibility program would allow you to pay $X for 10 rides that are stored on your CharlieCard where X is smaller than the full fare cost for 10 rides.

I don't really have a good solution right now for the person who shows up with cash and can't afford a weekly or monthly pass, though. Maybe the answer is just more outreach, from the cities and towns, to really push to get discounted passes into their hands.

 

[JeffDowntown]

You can already deduct MBTA pass costs from your state income taxes, up to a point. They could expand that system.

There is a silver lining to removing the fare hike cap: under the status quo, the T has very, very strong motivation to hike fares by 5% every two years like clockwork. It's not officially "indexed" to CPI but it might as well be.

Going back to a system with no fare hike cap, we'll see more infrequent fare hikes for higher percentages. Each of those can be argued politically, and the T will not feel that pressure that they're missing their only opportunity to keep pace with inflation at every time it comes up.

Regarding fare structure: the T could look at a system where single ride tickets cost $3.00 (like Montreal), but passes are heavily discounted and strongly encouraged. In addition, the standard monthly pass could be somewhat less discounted, with further discounted passes available through programs that verify some kind of eligibility.

Having most people on passes helps speed up boarding, and it can be part of a roll-out of proof-of-payment.

That doesn't solve the problem of helping people who can't afford monthly passes. Well, even at the heavily discounted rates. So they could expand the use of weekly passes, 3-day passes, or even more flexible spans. They could sell <n>-ride tickets instead of time-limited passes. E.g. maybe an eligibility program would allow you to pay $X for 10 rides that are stored on your CharlieCard where X is smaller than the full fare cost for 10 rides.

I don't really have a good solution right now for the person who shows up with cash and can't afford a weekly or monthly pass, though. Maybe the answer is just more outreach, from the cities and towns, to really push to get discounted passes into their hands.

What about looking at peak demand pricing -- basically variable fares based on time of day? I think that the current system could accommodate that without a lot of changes.

 

[BPLange7]

I would think small modest increases would be a lot easier to handle for a low-income budget than massive sweeping changes every few years. The massive fare changes also consume a substantial amount of time and energy.

 

[Arlington]

I'm totally with Stephanie Pollack's statements in the Globe. If the world is a two-by-two of users/non-users and rich/poor its pretty clear you want to focus on targeting rich users (and other beneficiaries, like employers) first, and do what you can to avoid tapping non-users, non-beneficiaries, and the poor. The reality is, though, that most of us here are rich users and our fares will go up.

1) Raising fares on higher-income individuals could allow transportation alternatives (e.g. Bridj) to become more attractive to that population leading to under funded public transpo.

The idea is to raise fares in a zone where it always drives increased revenues but no higher. If 10% raise causes a 2% drop in ridership, that's an 8% funding increase. At some point there's a last 1% hike that causes a 1% drop in riders. Don't do that one.

If you do the lockbox and devote it to service enhancements, the reality is that the fare increase will get matched $1-for-$1 by other sources and be a good deal for riders. No lockbox or just calling it "inflation-that-gets-turned-into-raises" and service will not get better (that's been the reality with recent hikes: the unions see it as raise time, not service-gets-better time, and our increased fares buy us no improvements).

As long as revenues are going up, keep raising even if it means losing some riders (more likely to cars than to Bridj) As soon as (or just before) the ridership losses exceed the revenue gains, stop. You're losing riders, but you can't say that transit would be "under funded" if its funds are always going up. When the revenues gains slow, you have maximized revenues to the system (we like that, right?) and at that point stop raising fares.

2) If we enact zone pricing that may negatively affect low-income riders as they are priced out of housing in the city and forced to move to the suburbs.

As Matthew's map showed upthread, many low income folks have already been priced out of the core and moved to places like Lynn, Chelsea, and Waltham. But the real pain point in the poor's life is the pure cost-of-housing
component, not a T pass, and not if they have a discounted pass program.

I can think of all kinds of variants on a zone system that are fabulously progressive:
1) Lower fares at stations that offer Transit Oriented Development (promotes housing supply (affordable housing) and transit use.
2) Lower fares in disadvantaged zones (Matthew's red-blotch map, above)
3) Lower fares but raise parking fees across all zones (a tax on car use)

 

[whighlander]

“If I didn’t believe that, I would have tried to dissuade the panel from making that recommendation,” she said.

So which T riders qualify for an income-based discount?

The MBTA would work with state agencies that already administer benefits to those on limited incomes, such as those who qualify for subsidized health care or food stamps. People enrolled in those programs could be eligible for reduced fares. The T is testing such needs-based fares with a youth pass for 19- to 21-year-olds, as well as with those who use the Ride, a transit service for people with disabilities. The youth pass provides a 50 percent discount, and eligible Ride customers get $1 off fares.

I Pollack believes the above is a reasonable allocation of Taxpayer resources she should follow the other deadwood out the door pronto

We have plenty of carefully documented general cases of abuse of all of the typical "means-tested" programs -- it all like Willy Sutton said when asked why did he rob banks -- "Its where the money is"

No what is needed is to make the system operate efficiently and price the service as it costs -- this will tend automatically to benefit the lower income people who live in the inner zone where the cost of service is lower than in the high-cost, higher income suburbs

 

[Arlington]

I Pollack believes the above is a reasonable allocation of Taxpayer resources she should follow the other deadwood out the door pronto

She's hardly deadwood. And frankly every transportation provider is well-served by some kind of price discrimination (getting each user to reveal what the service is worth to them, and then extracting it).

The airlines don't ask "are you rich?" but they do offer paid first class (and even Delta Private Jets). They can't ask "is this a business trip?" but they use other clues (are you willing to stay a Saturday night? (business travelers mostly aren't), or need this be refundable or easily changed?(business trips mostly are)). The reality is that IF you can come up with such a scheme, basically everyone benefits.

The State is in a unique position to actually ask "how much can you afford?", and so they should, and have you pay a revenue-maximizing price. The poor are going to answer "not much" and will be charged not much. The rich will answer "more than I pay now" and should be charged more than they pay now (driving away *some* trips, but still raising fare revenues).

We're used to the idea that everybody on our plane or Acela may have paid a different price than us. Kudos to Pollack for adapting this innovation to transit.

 

[whighlander]

Higher Prices has the incentitive/potential to decrease the future expected ridership. I highly doubt if the T were to increase prices by 5% tommorow, ridership will fall by greater than 5%. When has that ever happened? Also, population grows every year, so ridership will always increase. Those 5% of riders aren't going to instantly decide that they will take the car/bus/walk/other methods for a dime to a quarter increase in fares the next day. Overtime, they might cut back, so the rate of growth of ridership might slow down. The only potential area where fare hikes will decrease the expected ridership the most and quickiest would be the commuter rail. People outside the city don't have many options.

Kevtron -- you are right that the most recent fare hikes didn't effect the ridership at all for anything except the CR

But you are wrong that the population always increases and so does the ridership -- Boston-proper population, despite recent increases, the 2014 estimate of 645,966 is still more than 150k less than the 801,444 peaked in 1950

 

[whighlander]

She's hardly deadwood. And frankly every transportation provider is well-served by some kind of price discrimination (getting each user to reveal what the service is worth to them, and then extracting it).

The airlines don't ask "are you rich?" but they do offer paid first class (and even Delta Private Jets). They can't ask "is this a business trip?" but they use other clues (are you willing to stay a Saturday night? (business travelers mostly aren't), or need this be refundable or easily changed?(business trips mostly are)). The reality is that IF you can come up with such a scheme, basically everyone benefits.

The State is in a unique position to actually ask "how much can you afford?", and so they should, and have you pay a revenue-maximizing price. The poor are going to answer "not much" and will be charged not much. The rich will answer "more than I pay now" and should be charged more than they pay now (driving away *some* trips, but still raising fare revenues).

We're used to the idea that everybody on our plane or Acela may have paid a different price than us. Kudos to Pollack for adapting this innovation to transit.

Arlington -- if the person seeking to use the T is from NYC or Shanghai the T and the Commonwealth can not ask the question how much are you worth or what did you earn last year

As I indicated in an earlier post if you charge by the entry and exit points into the system with the charge being based on time of day and day of the week -- you automatically incorporate economics into the purchase

You get on the CR in Weston going to work as a Money Manager in the Financial District at 9:00 AM, you would pay more than a janitor getting on the Fairmont Line at 5:30 AM heading for the same destination

Similar the outbound CR from South Station to Wellesley in the AM would cost less than the inbound from Wellesley during the rush

 

[Arlington]

If you are rich enough to visit from NYC or Shanghai (or be a visitor at all) $3 or whatever the single ride price goes to is a fine price for a ticket-- DC charges a full $1 surcharge for visitor using paper Farecards (instead of contactless stored value used by locals/regulars)

 

[FK4]

The reminder of the Oyster card made me wish we'd called our card the Lobster Card, or Clam Card... Chowder Card...?

 

[dwash59]

If you are rich enough to visit from NYC or Shanghai (or be a visitor at all) $3 or whatever the single ride price goes to is a fine price for a ticket-- DC charges a full $1 surcharge for visitor using paper Farecards (instead of contactless stored value used by locals/regulars)

Saint Louis charges $1 extra if you buy a 2 hour pass at the airport. For most, it's really $1.50 extra as they are just looking to take a rail trip downtown and don't need the 2 hour pass that is the only option at Lambert ($4 vs. $3 vs. $2.50 on http://www.metrostlouis.org/FaresPasses/FareChart.aspx ).

Compare to Logan where arrivals get free Silver Line to South Station along with free transfer onto the other subway lines.

 

[Scalziand]

Fare Cod was in the running.

 

[The EGE]

Free fares from Logan do not cost the T - they are reimbursed on a 1:1 basis by Massport (which has a larger number of arrivals using public transportation as a major goal).

 

[Matthew]

As Matthew's map showed upthread, many low income folks have already been priced out of the core and moved to places like Lynn, Chelsea, and Waltham. But the real pain point in the poor's life is the pure cost-of-housing
component, not a T pass, and not if they have a discounted pass program.

The map I posted from the Atlantic article was about where rich white people live, not about where struggling working class families live. It was meant to illustrate some of the class segregation that goes on today.

I do want to say a few words about flat fares vs distance-based fares: flat fares do subsidize longer commutes. But the real problem is land-use policies like snob zoning that force sprawl on us. People are being pushed out of the inner suburbs by zoning and planning policies that make it virtually impossible to build new housing, much less affordable housing, where people would benefit most.

Rather than subsidize long commutes with a flat fare, we really should tackle the core problem: snob zoning.