Control over the routes – the ability to add more service, especially – would be fantastic.

Your comparisons between Metro and the systems in Boston and New York (at least – those are the ones I’m more familiar with) aren’t completely accurate. Both of those systems offer express bus service that is comparable to a lot of Metro’s peak hour service but which costs a premium – $3.50-$5.00 in Boston and $5.50 in NY.

But when you’re facing serious budget issues, it simply doesn’t make sense to keep increasing fares but not cutting where service falls off. Simple common sense would suggest that the folks most likely to pay the fare increase are going to be employer-subsidized and/or higher income commuters. But if you turn around and cut express service or decrease frequency, those are also the riders most likely to switch (back) to cars.

It will be interesting to see the results of the audit and it will be interesting to see what the candidates for County Executive (and to a lesser degree the Mayor of Seattle) make of it.

Now at some point raising fares gives you diminishing returns as ridership drops. There is a price point where you maximize revenue. It would be interesting to know what those numbers are, though I suspect they are far higher than any of the proposed fare increases.

I’m advocating tax increases to the maximum extent allowed by law. So then what do you do? Raise fares or cut service? It’s really that simple. Complaining that the system is broken won’t keep the buses on the roads. If and when more authority arrives, we can have the discussion on whether to buy even more service or cut fares. But until then, this is a binary choice.

This is more than a *poor people can’t afford high fares* issue. These are simple market pressures that increase the use of bus service when fares are low, decreasing demand for roads, and decrease the use of bus service when fares are high.

Of course I see you’re really looking at this as constrained by our tax realities and you see it really as increasing fares or decreasing service. But working within a broken system will give broken results. Want to tap into that wonderful business revenue stream? Change the rules so that we can tax them. Increasing fares just won’t do it (an no, I don’t have numbers to back that up – although I think it’s interesting that recent massive decrease in ridership has been blamed on the economy and not the recent increase of fares).

Since Metro is part of King County in theory they might have access to additional sources of revenue a pure transit agency like Pierce Transit, Community Transit, or Sound Transit wouldn’t have. For instance placing a property tax levy for Metro operating funds on the ballot. However given all of the holes in King County’s budget and that Metro has a dedicated funding source any property tax levies are likely to address other areas like parks or social services.

So the short answer is all transit agencies really need the legislature to give them additional tax authority. MVET is the one I’ve heard discussed most though the ability to put property tax levies on the ballot would be good too. Assuming the legislature agrees to allow one or both taxes I’d like to see some portion limited to capital spending.

Of course they’re high fares; our bus system and operating costs are far more extensive relative to population than those, not least because we don’t have trains covering the most important corridors.

No one said everyone has an employer-provided bus pass. There are people in my household that don’t have one. If you clicked through to the editorial I linked to, you’ll see that I support extending low-income programs to cushion the blow on the needy.

However, there’s a large source of untapped revenue in people who can afford it, their employers, and the federal government. If you’re interested in helping the needy, let’s help the needy, instead of maintaining a system that lavishes huge subsidies on those who are not.

If you have data on “what the market will bear” with respect to how the fare increases impact will impact ridership, I’d love to see it. As it is I’m not yet convinced that the fare increase will do more damage than the service cuts will.