Can’t let that one pass. Think what you will about our complicity in what the Israelis are doing in Gaza, but if oil supply maximization is your sole objective pissing off the entire Arab world would not be our policy choice.

Stockholm also does the same thing, one fare for a majority of city and suburbs, and then two more zones for places outside and the airport. These systems are useful for everybody, and it encourages people to give transit a shot who otherwise wouldn’t use the system.

The complaints from people who use the system for short distances are understandable, however, the objective for the system needs to be promoting growth in use from those traditionally who use cars. Transit in America is fighting a public perception, and the more people who get hooked on it, the better it will fare in the ballot box and with our governor. Furthermore, the system needs to grow to become attractive. The more people who use it, will bring increased frequency of service and expanded routes which will attract more riders.

If one compares the menial fare of $2, or $4 for a round-trip to the price of using a car, it is certainly still worth it. And density dwellers should consider themselves to be subsidizing suburbanites because the marginal difference in cost is so small that is well worth the boost in user simplicity.

Finally, if we want to talk about marginal costs, and most of us are probably in accord with this one, we should be pushing for a gas tax, because the marginal cost of maintaining extra roads is rather high. All road transportation should be funded by a gas tax, and the sales tax should not be used to subsidize the wide range of driving habits in the state.

If I were to add an objective, it would be to generate revenue. Further distances are worth more to riders than close distances, so they’ll pay more. In fact, if your objective 1) and 2) were the only objectives, then we should remove fares and simply support transit with taxes.

I remember my visit to Singapore during the EZ-Link roll out in 2002. Their bus system uses a distance-based system (called fare stages). They have you tap-in and tap-out on the bus and MRT. We only had the magnetic stored value cards so we got confused about the fare and didn’t pay. We managed to slip past the inspectors because of the crowded bus. We also took the brand new MRT extension (back in ‘02) from Changi Airport to the CBD. It cost us only US$1.25 per person. Dirt cheap.

The taxi fare system is centered around the objective of discouraging congestion. The cabbie’s delight would be if every customer only had to be driven to the end of the block. Then taxi driver would collect his flat fee, without incurring any costs in gas, mileage, etc. That’s also why they usually let you “double-up” with a customer going the same direction.

So again, their fare policy deals with different objectives.

Again, its a matter of linking the policy to the underlying objective. Certainly we want targeted density and a general tendency towards “localism”, but just by having a light rail station in a neighborhood we will encourage some measure of that, and the introduction of “urban village” zoning laws will greatly encourage it further. Distance pricing would seem to be a sort of third redundancy in this regard.

Again, we have to identify our objectives, and then we can create the policy that will fulfill them. If I may, I think your objectives (both laudable) are 1) to encourage local patronage and 2) to prevent over-use (congestion) of the system that would stem from an over-subsidy. If those were our objectives, then distance pricing would make sense, though again, proper zoning accomplishes some degree of those objectives for you.

I just don’t think those are our 2009 objectives; I think they may be our 2029 objectives. Our current objectives are 1) winning ridership and 2) keeping ridership. That’s it. And that means showing prospective customers that our service is affordable, reliable, convenient, and easy to use. And that would seem to be accomplished with a zone fare system, or (Sounder aside) a flat rate that lets me use Link, buses, & streetcars. Usage of the transit system could even earn you credits on car-shares and car rentals. That policy would accomplish our 2009 objectives.

(Also, keep in mind that if you adopted a multi-modal zone fare, you are building off an existing and widely accepted usage model that has been used by Metro bus for years and years. With distance pricing, you are trying to introduce not just a new means of physically moving from one point to another, and not just a new payment method, but a new method of thinking about the costs of transportation. That’s a lot of “new” upfront, don’t you think?)

Now, in 2029 or 202X, we might have a system that is largely built out, with high and consistent ridership, and where developers have taken advantage of urban village zoning to create office and housing capacity for a wide range of needs and socio-economic demographics. Terrific! Our original objectives were accomplished. If we feel that there is too much congestion due to a lack of proportional usage fees (in this case distance fares), or an underutilization of the urban village development pattern, well then we would adopt your proposed objectives, and the distance fares would naturally follow.

Now, I’m not a transportation policy expert by any stretch of the imagination; I’m just thinking this out aloud along with you. If distance pricing was your idea, or that of someone else on the blog, well I’m only here to be constructive.

That being said, I find the flat fare to be very user friendly and decreases the anxiety of transit newbies. In fact, I think it would be wise for Seattle to emulate the Boston system sans the Silverline/BRT nightmare.

If the answer is to recover some of the money spent on the system, then shouldn’t we use market forces to do this? Do Taxis charge a flat rate if you commute from Shorline downtown or from Belltown to downtown? It seems to me that distance is a good proxy for value.

1. Log in the terminal properly to set the route and run number for proper fare collection. This should already be done when the driver begins a run. The system should handle the rest automatically, especially if GPS tracking is going to be part of the new system.

2. Know how to adjust the reader when someone is only traveling one-zone when the reader is set for two-zones. I talked to a driver and he said he just pushes a button to do that. Or to adjust it when someone makes a mistake and tags their card at the wrong fare.

Care to elaborate what did you spend most of your time on during training?

The principle arguments for a free-zone is to have an easy/free way for people to get around within downtown, and to speed up bus boarding. Unfortunately, it leads to the “pay as you leave” nightmare, where someone at the back of the bus needs to get through a huge crowd to actually get off the bus, walking past two perfectly good doors on the way. Instead, have a set of free buses to circulate people around downtown, and speed up boarding by only accepting ORCA.

Distance-based fares are confusing, and discourage both tourists and occasional riders from taking transit, since they don’t know offhand how much they’ll be spending to get from A to B. It also adds the need to either have fare inspectors or a swipe-as-you-leave system. Fare inspectors are an unneeded expense, and swipe-as-you-leave adds confusion, and will cause occasional riders/tourists to get charged more than they should; it also means you have to wait in line at both ends of your trip.

Peak/Non-peak fares are confusing, and makes it difficult to choose between a pass & a pre-paid card at the beginning of a month.

$2/trip is good enough for New York City; why isn’t it good enough for Seattle?

With out ST fare…

1) What’s the problem we’re trying to solve: Not only is the Link system not congested, it’s not even built yet. And won’t be for some time. For that matter, what’s wrong with a long commute via rail? Highways have big enviromental costs; Link is via hydro-generated electricity. Highways have considerable maintenance costs, as greater use of long commuting routes means more re-striping, more potholes to fill, etc; is there really a high maintenance cost to long commutes via rail? Especially when you consider that a road commute from one burb to the next can be possible via 10 different routes (translating to a broader burden of road maintenance) while rail by definition is channeled…

2) Working against ourselves: While Link ridership is subsized, that subsidy is dwarfed by what is given to the primary alternate mode of travel: roads and highways. So how are we encouraging transition from cars to Link, if we maintain the subsidy for cars, but partially remove it for Link?

3) Branding: Think of the message you are communicating with this fare plan. You’ve just introduced a new service, and in your initial handoff to your new customer, you tell them to “try not to over-do it”. That is very odd messaging, and it is the one thing that will get through to people, drowning out the benefits of the usage model. The few services out there that do have such pricing, such as cell minutes or rental cars…both of these examples tend to have a substantial threshold of use before you incur extra charges…but the last time you had a rental, weren’t you thinking about it in the back of your mind the whole time, even when you knew it was unlikely you would run over the limit? And ST is not even proposing to have a threshold. Again, this is not the thought process that is going to win and keep new customers.

4) Removes an important benefit of Link: As Julie Patterson herself stated, one of the real benefits of Link is that middle and working class citizens who are being priced out of Seattle (and increasingly, out of King County) would have an affordable way of commuting between home and work. How does this fare plan help in that regard? Hopefully developers will start to focus on affordable housing for everyone, not just the capstone of the economic pyramid, but that change will not happen for some years. How is Link, under this fare plan, helping in the mean time?

We don’t seem to have a strong connection between our current objectives (winning ridership; keeping ridership) and the proposed solution (this fare plan). Variable pricing certainly has its place, but I think it’s obvious that ST should only use it when the primary objective is to rationalize usage. And that will not be the goal until North, South, & East link are all in place, several major burbs have their own streetcar systems, and the housing market is such that people actually have a real choice as to where they live.

OK, so that’s my .02.

What method would you use to collect P&R payments, each of the several options has benefits and drawbacks.

Lor Scara