For those of you ordering passes for January 2011, please recall that all [adult and Access] Metro fares are going up a quarter beginning the first of the year, which escalates the price of your PugetPass by $9. The senior fare is not going up, but the pass price is increasing from $18 to $27.
I am going to argue again for fare unification between Metro and ST, especially where they provide over-lapping service, which definitely includes across I-90 and 520. Metro will be $2.25/$3.00 but giving a much more valuable paper transfer. ST will be $2.50 all the time but no paper transfer. The discrepancy makes no logical sense when the same commodity is being provided, an inherently creates inefficiency as at least some riders will prefer ST on peak trips, especially those with a pass for $2.50, and cash riders may prefer MT to get a transfer. It would really make more sense for a unified fare policy, which is what was promised when ST said it would be “seamless” transit. Just figure out the politics and revenue distribution. It can be done in a revenue neutral way.
Along with fare unification we should also do away with Metro’s paper transfers and eliminate that value disparity. In lieu of 100% off-board payment, ORCA represents the best chance of consistently speeding up and simplifying the transit experience and cash payment should be discouraged as much as possible.
That RapidRide provides a paper transfer underscores it’s ludicrous name.
I don’t disagree. The value disparity is significant. Without even considering driver discretion, paper transfers are cut to give you 2 hours after you arrive in downtown Seattle to BOARD a connecting bus. With ORCA, the 2 hour validity begins when you first scan it, and if you scan as you exit on the connecting bus, your ride time on the connection eats into the ORCA too. Lack of driver enforcement further increases the value of the paper transfer.
I agree that paper transfers should be eliminated. But they will have to beef up ORCA delivery options well before they do that. Also, I think they should either bump up the transfer time with ORCA to 3 hours or make monthly passes less expensive. For example, a 30 day monthly pass on the CTA is $86. That covers any train, or bus or even the suburban bus system. It does not cover the commuter rail (METRA) system.
We should also have branding unification. I would love to see all transit service in the region have a Sound Transit logo, and to have the Sound Transit website be the single authoritative source for transit information for the whole region. The conflicting route numbers could be addressed by prepending a “K”, “P”, or “S” to the route name.
We have 1000 numbers to choose from. There’s no need for any conflicts.
Yes, but there *are* conflicts. CT has lots of buses in the 100s and 200s that overlap with Metro numbers. Almost every PT route matches either a Metro or a CT route.
We could pick a new number for one (or both) of each of the conflicting routes, but that would be confusing and annoying for everyone who had to learn a new route number.
Or we could just prepend the region name, like NYC does, and let everyone keep their numbers but avoid any ambiguities.
Somehow it seems fitting that route null should ferry techies between Goggle in Kirkland and Microsoft in Overlake :=
I’m still upset that they changed the route number for my bus. It used to be the #8 Ravenna. :)
ELASTICITY OF FARE: The more you charge, the less people will ride. The less people ride, the less revenue you take in. I know 25 cents isn’t a big deal, but fares keep rising, along with operating costs.
Metro’s revenue for 2007 was $675 mil, and in 2008 $725. Trying to find out current revenue and expenses from their website is next to impossible, as 2008 was the last year on file for a General Managers year-end report. We’re now entering 2011. It’s distressing it take 3 years to file a report.
The Task Force ‘power point’ report from last May talks about many thing, but revenue and total expenses are not among all the pretty graphs.
I think riders will likely pay up, and shut up, but it seems to me that accountability and transparency is not one of Metro’s selling points these days.
This funding crisis has been brewing for 3 years now, and sure, some cuts and efficiency moves have been made (layover times, bus zones, etc), but I don’t see any big push to reduce costs to balance the budget, so the hole keeps getting deeper. How deep? Who the hell knows?
Instead, all the windsocks are pointing in the direction of a big tax increase, which IMHO – Ain’t gonna happen any time soon.
End of Rant.
Correction: “It’s distressing it take 3 years to file a report.”
It’s only been 2 years, but I still don’t see a report.
If my brokerage firms last report to me was dated 2008, guess what, YOUR FIRED!
Maybe transit shareholders (the general public) deserves better? Quarterly financial reports are routine in the business world. Should taxpayers settle for less?
The projections they develop when determining whether or not to raise rates assume that some riders will no longer ride due to the increased costs.
However Metro does have a large chunk of “price insensitive” consumers–those with employer/school subsidized passes.
One last thing, then the ranting will be officially over.
ST, to their credit, do quarterly reports. The last one was for the period ending Jun 30th, 2010, including detailed sources and uses of funds, and reporting on capital programs in great detail.
http://www.soundtransit.org/Documents/pdf/about/financial/2010/Q2_%202010_Financial_Report.pdf
So the information is sitting there. It’s not impossible to generate this info in a timely manner, and may actually be useful for problem solving.
“The more you charge, the less people will ride. The less people ride, the less revenue you take in.”
This is not true. Higher fares, even coupled with lower ridership, will likely bring in more revenue. If the fare increases 10% and ridership drops 2%, as one example, then revenue will increase even with the decline in ridership.
At the same time, if ridership drops significantly, then Metro can cut service — since there are fewer riders — which would reduce Metro’s costs.
So, what may well happen is increased fares plus reduced ridership plus reduced service (reduced costs) = better bottom line for Metro. I hope, and assume, this is what Metro is expecting to happen. In other words, this fare increase should be good for Metro’s bottom line.
Definitely. If Metro didn’t think that the fare increase would bring more revenue, I can’t fathom why they’d implement it.
Of course, a significant issue for Metro (and other government agencies, e.g. Amtrak and the USPS) is that it’s required/expected to provide high geographical coverage at the expense of profitability. In particular, 60/20/20 means that if Metro cut service, it’s entirely possible that the average cost per rider would *increase*, because productive Seattle routes would be cut while Eastside milk-runs remained.
I eagerly await the implementation of the Regional Transit Task Force (RTTF) recommendations, especially the replacement of 20/40/40 and 60/20/20 with new productivity measurements. Once Metro is free to eliminate unproductive service, it almost goes without saying that its financials should drastically improve.
So by your logic, why not just stop everything, fire all the drivers, sell off the buses, and sell all the land…
There is no more Metro to lose money, but there will be a ton of people stranded because traffic will be gridlock, unless of course we widen all the freeways to 24 lanes each direction…
OR we could skip that step, bulldoze all the buildings in all the major cities (no more pesky utility costs or workers to clog the freeways!)and cover every square inch of land with ashphalt so that people like YOU can hop in their gas guzzling SUV to drive to WalMart to buy more Imported-Chinese garbage to fill their house with.
Norman: in 2009, the farebox recovery ratio for the 42 was 14%. In fact, that made it the third worst-performing route on the system. Probably, whatever caused that precipitous decline has had a similar impact on Link performance.
The 174 was, by any measure, one of the most productive routes on the system. In both 2008 and 2009, it had about 40% farebox recovery at both peak and off-peak (but not after 6pm). So yes, for now, Link probably costs more money to operate than the 174 would.
Given that, would I be okay with Link costing more than the 174 did? Well… yes, though not much more. It’s undoubtedly a higher-quality service than local buses (of which the 174 was one of the worst), and there’s lots of precedent for charging higher rates for rapid/express service than for local service. But I don’t want to see Link become more expensive than express buses, for the reasons I’ve discussed.
Whoops, that comment was posted to the wrong place. Please ignore! Sorry! (Moderators, could you delete this and my previous comment? Thanks!)
Different riders have different demand elasticities. In particular, people who don’t pay for their own monthly pass — like most riders of express buses — are, for all intents and purposes, completely indifferent to fare increases.
Most other cities that I’ve seen charge a huge premium for one-seat express buses. In Boston, a subway+bus ride costs $1.70, but an express bus to the same destination might cost $2.80 or even $4 ($5 if you’re paying cash). This policy has two great effects: it provides an incentive for people to use more economical services, and it raises extra revenue from people who are willing to pay for a premium product.
Currently, this policy wouldn’t work quite so well here, only because we don’t have very much redundant service. But when U-Link arrives, I would *love* to see ST charge a $3 premium for anyone who wants to ride the 545 between UW and downtown.
Why not a $5 charge for riding Link between UW and downtown? Link is supposed to be “premium” service. Wouldn’t people be willing to pay more to ride a “premium” service?
Link to the airport should cost more like $10. That still would not pay for the actual operating cost of the trip (not to mention the construction cost), but, if Link is truly a “premium” service, competitive with Shuttle Express or a taxi, then why let people take it between downtown and the airport for only $2.50?
Quite a few cities do actually charge a premium for airport travel, with exceptions for people who have monthly passes. (I know that at least Vancouver and NYC do this.) The assumption is that occasional airport travelers are already spending a lot for travel and are probably insensitive to spending a bit extra. (The monthly pass exception avoids penalizing airport workers.)
That said, I believe that this would be the wrong decision for Seattle, because Link only becomes cheaper as more people ride it. In cities with mature rail systems (i.e. not Seattle, but yes many other cities that are approximately the same size), farebox recovery on rail generally far exceeds that for buses.
In Q2 2010, the cost per boarding on Link was lower than the cost per boarding on ST Express. The former was $6.75, and the latter was $8.05. The Link numbers are only getting better, and the bus numbers are only getting worse.
Thus, if ST wanted to price services to match their relative cost, Link should be substantially cheaper than express buses.
It wouldn’t work well under that case. Most riders to the UW area (students and employees) would be covered under the U-Pass program, which at $99 for a 3-month quarter, is still a great bargain. Microsoft riders have their ORCA Passports which give them unlimited rides on any service. Many downtown workers have subsidized transit passes.
With the freeway station going away by the time U-Link opens, you won’t have a choice.
As for charging extra to ride Link to the airport, an example would be Canada Line to YVR where a $5 “Add Fare” premium is charged in addition to cash fare on trips to/from YVR Airport, passes and prepaid tickets excluded. Or BART to SFO. Unlike Link, both are branch lines and both serve only the isolated airport. Those premium fares are still far lower than cabs or airporters.
What is the cost per boarding for Metro buses? A lot less than $6.75, I believe. The latest figure I find from the Metro 2009 year-end report is Metro bus average cost per boarding was $3.67 in 2008, just more than half that for Link. Of course, the most cost-effective Metro routes are probably below $2 per boarding.
Likewise, the cost per boarding for SWIFT bus is less than for Central Link.
But, that is only the operating cost. Include the capital cost, and Link is just insanely expensive.
But, that is beside the point. If Link is truly far superior to buses, then Link passengers should be willing to pay a much higher fare than they would pay for a bus. So, ST should be charging Link passengers a lot more than bus passengers, right?
By the way, what is the fare recovery % on Central Link?
Oran, the $5 is only added on the Canada Line coming from YVR. It is a regular zone fare to get to the airport. It was originally planned as a $2.50 surcharge both ways but instead was made a $5 charge from the airport only.
It would be difficult to have an airport surcharge on Link since there is connecting service underneath the station in addition to all the walk-ins from the City of SeaTac.
Thanks for the correction M.
I agree with Kaleci. It would also be unfair to residents of SeaTac and conflict with the goals of developing the station area as a transit-oriented city center. SeaTac is not like YVR, SFO or other airports that are isolated from the communities around them.
Norman, the fare recovery target for Link is 50%. For Metro buses it’s 20-25%. I agree that no fare is set at its revenue-maximizing rate, for reasons that should be obvious.
And, I might add, tolling is not done at that rate either, for similar reasons.
I apologize for yet another super-long post. I just get carried away… :)
Anyway, let’s look at some numbers. Here’s Metro’s 2009 Route Performance Report. There’s a bit of calculation here. The numbers I’m using are the “Annual Rides”, “Annual Passenger Miles”, “Annual Fare Revenue”, and “Fare Rev / Op. Exp” (aka farebox recovery) for the system and for each subarea, which can be found on pages 11-16. The numbers I’m calculating are:
– Average ride length = annual passenger miles / annual rides
– Average revenue per rider = annual fare revenue / annual rides
– Annual costs = annual fare revenue / farebox recovery
– Cost per rider = annual costs / annual rides
Here’s the data.
– Farebox recovery: 27.4% (system), 16.9% (east), 23.3% (south), 32.8% (west)
– Average ride length: 4.6 mi (system), 6.8 mi (east), 7.4 mi (south), 3.3 mi (west)
– Average revenue per rider: $1.07 (system), $1.15 (east), $1.10 (south), $1.05 (west)
– Annual costs: $422 mil (system), $77 mil (east), $110 mil (south), $235 mil (west)
– Average cost per rider: $3.92 (system), $6.79 (east), $4.74 (south), $3.21 (west)
There’s similar data available from ST, from the Q2 2010 financial report. Note that I am not using the farebox recovery numbers listed on page 13, since they don’t add up by the formula listed underneath the very same table. Instead, I’ve simply divided Passenger Fares by Fully Allocated Operating Expenses, as the formula suggests.
– Average farebox revenue per rider: $1.61 (bus), $1.32 (Link)
– Q2 2010 costs: $5.5 mil (bus), $2.4 mil (Link)
– Q2 2010 average cost per rider: $8.05 (bus), $6.75 (Link)
– Farebox recovery: 20.0% (bus), 19.5% (Link)
From these numbers, it’s clear that a major factor driving down Link’s farebox recovery ratio is the absurdly low revenue per rider. If the average revenue was even $1.75, the lowest fare, then the ratio would be 26%. (If the average bus revenue were the minimum fare of $2, then the ratio would be 25%.) I wonder if a lot of this is because of monthly-pass holders who don’t bother to tap in or out. My understanding is that ST has become stricter about this only very recently, so we may see a significant increase in this number when the Q3/Q4 numbers are released.
The fact that Link is a high-quality service is irrelevant. The more compelling point is that the cost per rider of Link is cheaper than that of buses. Every time that a passenger chooses to ride Link instead of an express bus, ST saves money — about $1.30, by those numbers.
Capital costs are irrelevant here as well, because they’re sunk. It’s a reasonable argument (albeit one I disagree with) to claim that Central Link’s expense shows that we shouldn’t build any more trains. But given that it’s already built, the rational thing for ST to do is to encourage people to ride the service with lower marginal cost. To take an extreme, if ST simply shut down Central Link entirely tomorrow, and replaced it with an equally-frequent bus, their operating costs would soar, and their revenues would drop (since the lower-quality service would lose riders).
Finally, when you think more about marginal costs, it becomes even more clear that incentivizing Link is the right thing to do. In reality, each extra rider on a bus or a train doesn’t cost ST very much. What does cost money is having to increase service levels because of ridership. Link was engineered to meet the capacity demands of the next 20+ years, rather than the needs of today. There’s lots of extra capacity on Link right now, especially off-peak (as you’ve pointed out dozens of times). Thus, a whole lot of people could ride Link without incurring a single penny of extra cost to ST. (Maybe a penny for the extra electricity to move the extra weight, but that’s a rounding error.) On the other hand, if ST is able to reduce (or avoid increasing) bus service because people take Link instead, that’s a significant savings.
I should note that the capital cost issue is the exact same with cars. If you own a car, you might choose to drive less because of fuel costs, but you’re never going to choose to drive less because the car cost $20,000. If anything, you’ll drive more, to “get your money’s worth”. Even if you think Link shouldn’t have been built, now that we have it, it’s clear (I hope) that we should “get our money’s worth” from it.
Aleks,
One reason the average farebox revenue per rider may be low is the revenue sharing agreement for transfers. For example, last week I took a trip from my house on Capitol Hill to Mukilteo. I rode Metro to Westlake, Link to the ID, then Sounder to Mukilteo. Total cost to me with ORCA was $4.00. Summing the fares for each segment, it would have cost $2.00 + $1.75 + $4.00 = $7.75. If Link only gets part of my fare equal to the fraction of the total cost, the revenue from me would only be about 90 cents. (I have no idea how this actually works).
There are also the senior/disabled and youth fares that would drive the average down.
Having gone through all that, and considering the maximum fare, I think you’re right that the number of people with passes tagging in is probably very low. Hopefully ST can crack down on that some more.
It would certainly be fun to play with some anonymized (sp?) ORCA data to see what kinds of trips are being made.
David, you make a very good point. Monthly passes have the same problem too. If I pay $100 for a pass, and my commute is bus-Link-bus, then I’m probably taking over $10 worth of transit a day. Effectively, all my trips are half price, and that probably shows in the revenue numbers.
Does anyone here know how passes and transfers factor into the revenue numbers?
Aleks: the cost per boarding for Link is almost twice as much as the average cost per boarding for Metro buses. Link is taking the place of several Metro buses — not of former ST Express buses. Therefore, the cost per boarding for Link is far higher than the cost per boarding of the Metro buses it replaced.
Aleks: just to add a little detail to that: one of the main buses Central Link has replaced is Metro 42. The 42 was in the west, where you say the average cost per boarding was $3.21 for Metro buses.
The 42 fare recovery in 2008 was 39% for the Express and 43% for the local in peak hours, and 38% in the off peak hours. So, just using 40% fare recovery for the #42, that means that the subsidy per boarding for Metro #42 down MLK Jr Way was 60%. 60% of the average per boarding cost of $3.21 means the subsidy per boarding for the #42 was about $1.93.
The subsidy per boarding for Central Link light rail is about $5.43. So, the per-boarding subsidy on Link for trips that used to be taken on the #42 is almost 3 times as high as it was on that bus, or about $3.50 more per boarding taxpayers are paying to have people ride Link instead of the #42 bus. And, again, that is just the OPERATING subsidy comparison, completely ignoring the incredible capital cost of Link.
Link trains cost about 3X per hour the cost of operating a bus. That’s why Link fare recovery needs to be ~50% to break even with a bus fare recovery of 20-25%. Cost per boarding is also misleading when two modes are so radically different. What’s the average cost per boarding of a commercial airliner? What’s more, who cares. Cost per boarding is only a valid comparison when you are comparing similar service. Most ST buses run much longer routes than Link. Compare the cost of boarding with the old Metro 174. Quality of service isn’t the same. The bus got you closer to the terminal and rail is a nicer ride. Easier to schlep you baggage into the rail car but you have to walk a lot farther at the airport end to get there. Travel time about the same. The comparison might also valid for ST 560; although once East Link is running the 560 can probably shave 10 minutes from it’s run time not diverting to the out of the way South Bellevue P&R.
Norman: in 2009, the farebox recovery ratio for the 42 was 14%. In fact, that made it the third worst-performing route on the system. Probably, whatever caused that precipitous decline has had a similar impact on Link performance.
The 174 was, by any measure, one of the most productive routes on the system. In both 2008 and 2009, it had about 40% farebox recovery at both peak and off-peak (but not after 6pm). So yes, for now, Link probably costs more money to operate than the 174 would.
Given that, would I be okay with Link costing more than the 174 did? Well… yes, though not much more. It’s undoubtedly a higher-quality service than local buses (of which the 174 was one of the worst), and there’s lots of precedent for charging higher rates for rapid/express service than for local service. But I don’t want to see Link become more expensive than express buses, for the reasons I’ve discussed.
That said, the problem you describe isn’t unique to rail. When Metro service is upgraded to ST Express, farebox recovery decreases. We’re paying for the nicer service with subsidies rather than fares. And we’ve done this somewhat intentionally, because it allows us to pretend that the rapid service is also local service. In Boston, express buses serve as extra service for customers who are willing to pay more for a nicer trip. Here, express buses completely replace local service, so travelers who aren’t willing to pay an extra fare could be left without any options.
It’s a tradeoff. You can run duplicate service, and pay the cost, with reduced frequency for the local and/or higher total operating costs. Or you can run only the express/rapid, and forgo the potential extra revenue from less price-sensitive customers.
Seattle currently errs in the latter direction. I’d prefer to see us push towards the former. It allows rapid service to be more rapid (compare with RapidRide, which has way too many stops), and I believe it has the potential to bring in more revenue. But so long as express buses aren’t considered a premium product (even though their cost per boarding says otherwise), it’s only fair that trains shouldn’t be either.
Aleks: in mid-2009 Link began operating, in direct competition with the 42. You conveniently forgot that, or what? Therefore, the 2009 figures for the 42 are not valid.
The 2008 number for the 42 was fare recovery of about 40%. This was before Link began operating. This was the last full year of the 42 with no light rail running down MKL Jr Way.
So, if we stayed with just buses — did not build Central Link — the tax subsidy for bus riders on the #42 was about $2 per trip. The tax subsidy on Central Link is about $5.50 per trip.
So, the operating subsidy for Central Link light rail is about 2.75 times as high as for the 42 bus. Or, it is costing taxpayers about $3.50 more per trip on Central Link than it did per trip on the 42 before Link began operating.
Also, the operating cost of SWIFT premium bus service per boarding is less than for Central Link, although I have not seen any fare recovery figures for SWIFt buses yet.
Aleks, I know you did not mean to post your comment about the farebox recovery ratio for the 42 & 174, but after reading that I became interested. Do you know why Metro is the 8th largest transit agency in the country but only has a 19.1% fare recovery ratio? Very few agencies have lower ratios than that. Is it purely high operating costs?
I did not “conveniently forget” that; I was honestly unaware that the Link and 42 routes were so closely aligned. Given that, you’re absolutely right that the low numbers for 2009 aren’t useful for comparison.
Your snideness, however, is not really winning you much support around here.
I can think of four possible responses to this information.
1. As Central/Airport Link matures and more lines come online, costs will go down, ridership will go up, and the effective subsidy will decrease until it becomes one of the region’s most productive routes.
2. Central/Airport Link will never see enough ridership for its per-rider costs to drop to Metro local bus levels. But the quality of service that Link provides is substantially better than the local bus was, so it’s a reasonable use of our region’s transportation dollars to maintain this higher-quality service.
3. Central/Airport Link will never see enough ridership for its per-rider costs to drop to Metro local bus levels, and further, the quality of Link service is not high enough to justify the extra operating costs. Raise Link fares until the per-rider subsidy is closer to $2 per trip. Bring back local bus service to accommodate the riders who cannot or will not pay the higher Link fare.
4. Central/Airport Link will never see enough ridership for its per-rider costs to drop to Metro local bus levels. The quality of Link service is not high enough to justify the extra operating costs. And increasing fares will only drive away riders, so it’s not possible for Link’s per-rider subsidy to reach $2 per trip no matter how high fares are. Stop running Link service immediately, and immediately start running the bus service that was displaced by Link.
Unsurprisingly, (1) is an accurate summary of my beliefs. I’m guessing that you disagree with both (1) and (2). Do you agree with either (3) or (4), or do you have a different response?
Louis, I don’t have a good answer to your question, unfortunately. But I have a few guesses.
First, Metro is somewhat of a hybrid, in that it serves both dense urban neighborhoods and almost-rural exurbs. This shows in how their farebox recovery rates are wildly inconsistent between routes. Quite a few of the core urban routes had peak recovery rates over 50%, including the 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11, 13, 15, 68, 72X, and 73X. (In 2008, which was a better year for Metro all around, significantly more buses made this cut.) In fact, the north part of the 4 had recovery rates of 71%. Conversely, the East subarea is chock-full of buses that don’t even recover 10% at peak hours.
It’s interesting to see what 20/40/40 does to Metro’s productivity numbers. On the Eastside, 52.5 riders per revenue hour and 29% farebox recovery are considered the thresholds for a “strong” peak route. In Seattle, 43.7 riders per revenue hour and 24% farebox recovery are considered the thresholds for a “weak” peak route. By Westside standards, the only Eastside routes that don’t have weak farebox recovery are 212, 225, 229, 230, 240, 253, 255, 271, 306X, and 312X — and a good number of those go to Seattle! Off-peak, the threshold is 22% for strong in the eastside and for weak in Seattle; the only Eastside routes that aren’t weak are 230, 253, and 213.
Second, Metro’s network is filled with bizarre routes that are circuitous and redundant. Metro’s list of least productive Westside routes includes the 25, 35, 38, 45X, 46, 242, and 256, among many, many others. Does anyone ride these routes? Well, no, and I have the papers to prove it. :) It’s not really surprising that no one rides a route like the 46, which makes about 10 trips a day (for comparison, the 44 makes about 10 trips every 2 hours during peak). So why are we wasting resources on an hourly route between neighborhoods that have 15-minute service?
Finally, I’d be willing to bet that Metro’s per-rider revenue is substantially lower than that of most other bus-only networks. It’s official Metro policy that bus drivers shouldn’t kick riders off for refusing to pay their fare, which is not something I’ve ever seen in another city. Between that, and transfers, and inter-agency accounting issues, and the large number of subsidized fares, Metro ends up receiving less than a dollar per rider on average. (It’s no surprise that the routes with the highest farebox recovery are in Queen Anne and Ballard, both relatively well-off neighborhoods, and the U-District, where most riders have a U-Pass.)
If Metro is willing to take the new RTTF guidelines as a license to make radical changes, then I would expect to see huge improvements in this area in the next few years, as unproductive routes are culled and productive ones are enhanced.
What matters is relative cost. Metro revenue was up in 2008 because gas prices went through the roof. The windfall “profits” more than made up for Metro’s increased fuel costs. If it didn’t then the whole public transit thing being more efficient would be proven a lie. Apropos, the news today said local gas prices rose from $2.84 this time last year to $3.14 currently. That’s a 30 cent increase. Given that the average commute is something like 12 miles each way and the fleet average in the USA is about 25mpg a 25 cent increase is right in line with the marginal cost of driving which tells me no net change in mode share. Index the gas tax to inflation (really the cost of crude oil) and voile, sustainable decreases in the impact and quantifiable cost of mobility.
With tolls coming to the 520 bridge in Spring, Metro and ST should see a nice increase in new riders, even with the fare increase.
I think you’re right. I’m probably one of those people that currently drives across 520 almost daily that will take the bus at least a few days a week after tolling begins. I wonder how bad the actual service will become? I do take the 545 from time to time and know that it can get packed. Can it take on any more passengers which the tolling will almost definitely create? Thankfully I’m one that could probably utilize the new 542.
I have a brilliant idea. I ride the 15 mostly. But get around a bit. Why doesn’t metro save all the money from printing those worthless time schedules? Stop worrying about time. They come when the come and you and I know it. You could simply say that a bus or link comes approximately (better use approximately) every 10 minutes, or 15, or a placard that states that Xpress runs between such and such hours, such and such days, at approximately so many minutes apart.
Stop pretending there really is a schedule. Stop wasting the money to print and update the info, stop wasting the money to maintain a fake website of times. Just tell us about the intervals.
The webbased and internet feeds on location of buses is nice. But the printed stuff is a joke.
That only works for regular riders on frequent routes. But even they need to get their information about where and when a route goes at some time.
A printed schedule is a good way to convey that information to someone that doesn’t have immediate access to the internet.
But Metro is partly doing what you advise; they’ve cut down on the print run for the schedules as a cost-saving measure.
But we could use technology to limit the cost of printing and the use of trees.
Put the schedule on a kiosk. Have an electronic version available to print out for a collection of 10 cents each.
I have a feeling that people are intimidated by kiosks, just like they are with computers. Put it on a gigantic touch screen display embedded into the wall like a regular map. That’s more approachable.
We have those approx schedules down here in Portland… hate em. They want you to call their system to find your next bus- but that won’t tell you when it arrives anywhere. A sign ‘frequent service at least every 30 minutes’ really isn’t worth anything– especially if you are near 3 different routes, so you would need to check every stop to see if the other one comes before 30 minutes. I get that the printing costs, but the lack of schedules really makes the riding more of a pain.
Schedules are important because Adam Parasts time is valuable and if there weren’t schedules you’d have more drivers being late for “no reason” and stealing his 4 minutes away.
Schedules are important because I don’t want to stand in the cold and rain longer than necessary and I want to be on time to appointments.
And to build connections
For users of passes and ORCA cards (not cash fares), there should be no difference in fare based on the mode used. In other words, a two-zone bus ride should cost the same as a two-zone train ride. Just like any world-class city.
Speaking of ORCA, I noticed there is no ‘Rail Plus’ option on the kiosk at one of the Sounder stations.
Does anyone know what’s going on with that?
Programming problems? (“It’s not a bug, it’s a FEATURE!”)
As far as I know, RailPlus is only available at the TVMs at King St, Edmonds, and Everett. Also, it’s only available to full-priced ($4.75), non-employer provided PugetPass holders. I take the train to Vancouver BC monthly, and it’s frustrating that my employer-provided ORCA Passport doesn’t allow me to print RailPlus tickets. Otherwise I’d use RailPlus from Seattle to Everett and buy my Amtrak tickets from Everett-Vancouver, saving $10-$20 each way…
At the Lynnwood Transit Center, I was told that Rail Plus works with the ORCA card if it’s loaded as a Monthly Pass, but not if it only has money loaded to the ePurse.
At the TVMs there used to be a ‘Rail Plus’ option. It is not there anymore.
With the reduced fair monthly passes going up from $18 to $27, does anyone know if they will still offer the $99 annual passes?
I don’t think so. Since the $27 is the monthly pass rate for the 75-cent pass, it will no longer be a Metro-only product.
Does Metro really make more money selling a $.75 PugetPass for $27 dollars as opposed to selling a metro only pass for $18? I guess I don’t really understand how the money from a PugetPass sale is distributed to all of the different agencies.
Ouch, so $90/month come January for a peak 1-zone pass.
Just for comparison (as similar as I could find in a few minutes):
Boston: $59/month (MBTA – includes subway, $40/month for bus-only)
NYC: $104/month (MTA 30-day unlimited – going up from $89 soon)
Chicago: $86/month (CTA 30-day unlimited)
Philadelphia: $83/month (SEPTA TransPass)
San Francisco: $70/month (Muni “A” pass)
Los Angeles: $75/month (Metro)
Minneapolis: $76/month
Portland: $77/month (adult 2-zone)
Denver: $79/month (up from $70 starting in Jan.)
Baltimore: $64/month (MTA Maryland)
What proportion of riders buy their own passes? I believe it is over 50% and that employer-provided passes are the minority. At $90 for a 1-zone peak pass and $108 for a 2-zone peak pass, our monthly pass prices are starting to be the most expensive in the country and are probably reaching demand elasticity.
If your business was shipping cargo, and you had various modes to choose from (rail, air, truck, mule-train, etc), you’d look at your cost for each, combined with speed, ease of use, etc.
Now let’s say our commodity is people. If one mode raises fares, then that give a slightly better advantage to the other modes, resulting in some riders switching. The ones that are left (most of them, for a variety of reasons), pay more, and the net result is hopefully more revenue with less effort expended (fewer routes).
I’ve enjoyed the ‘to and fro’ exchanges on the efficiency of various trips, as that should be near the top of the list as to why we do things.
RapidRide A is a good example of substituting an efficient trip, with one that has a really long way to go to catch up to the one it replaced. Bus hours were doubled on the route (cost doubled), and ridership has yet to be reported, but Metro is hoping to see a 50% gain in five years. Doubling the ridership in five years would just get you back to where you started. Surely, there has to be some middle ground here, like incrementally adding service to ensure a high productivity standard is maintained, while rolling out a new service.
The same comparison can be made for Link and bus service it replaced, or service across 520 with tolling for cars, and a free ride for buses and van pools. I’m sure a privately operated 15 passenger van is way more efficient than anything else traveling across the bridge.
Day passes are going away too according to the Rider Alert. I guess that means the weekend day pass.
I noticed that as well. I’m disappointed that the weekend day pass is going away. Maybe this will bring us one step closer to getting a day pass for ORCA, ideally for weekends _and_ weekdays!