Edit: And from a quick look, that’s high for the US. The average seems closer to 10-15%.
https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2020-11/...
(NY’s 54% number is probably because of mixing of different fareboxes: recovery is much higher on the LIRR and MNRR than it is on the city buses and subways.)
- MTA heavy rail was 70%.
- Commuter rail was 55%.
- Commuter bus was 32%.
- BRT and Bus was 30%.
[1] https://www.enotrans.org/article/the-mass-transit-fiscal-cli...
Nationally in millions, Bus: (Fare Revenues 3,778) / (Operating expenses 16,110.4 + Use of capital funds 3,0444.7) = 19.7%. They also break out Bus Rapid Transit which is much worse 16.1 / (166.1 + 51.7) = 7.4% as is Commuter Bus 57.9 / (597.7 + 170.7) = 7.5%
Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, Bus: $124,011,141 / ( $731,946,008 + $182,850,687 ) = 13.6%
So for WMATA forgoing Bus revenue wouldn’t move the needle very much.
PS: And that’s ignoring the overhead of collecting fairs. Not only are some operating expenses devoted to collecting fairs, busses can move faster if people aren’t stopping and fiddling with payment.
Compare a line of 20 people all try to get on and swipe a metro card vs a line of 20 people all trying to get on. Even collage busses where all people need to do is show school ID you still get people in line who suddenly can’t find their ID.
I agree farebox recovery rate is not something to optimize for. Public services don't lose money, they cost money. Nobody talks about how much the army loses.
However. The choice was between (a) eliminating the $666M farebox recovery and taking it out of the municipal budget vs. adding $666M more funding without eliminating the farebox take. I strongly suspect the municipality would be far better served by the latter.
The former plan doesn't address what people actually want. They want shorter headways. Instead they got the same headways, but cheaper.
People aren't avoiding transit because it's too expensive. They're avoiding transit because it doesn't come often enough, it doesn't go where they need and stops running too early. It doesn't meet their needs. The average American spends $11,000 on a new car per year [2], or almost a half million dollars lifetime. If service was better, they wouldn't have to. This plan doesn't make service better. So, they still need their real cost center: their car.
[1] https://www.enotrans.org/article/the-mass-transit-fiscal-cli...
[2] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2022/08/annual-cost-of-new-car-owne...
I mean, I do. But that boils mostly down to me perceiving more value in a robust public transit network than in a bloated MIC.
Of course there will be outliers, but owning a car is a massive money sinkhole and a disproportionate burden on the poor.
The average car insurance payment alone is $136 (and significantly more for those with 'bad credit' - i.e. the poor). Gas is another $150-200 per month. That's almost $4000 per year right there.
The average monthly transit pass in the US is $83. [1, 2]
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/990891/us-average-monthl...
[2] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/how-much-is-car...
What you see as a small component of transit systems budgets, they seem to see as a quite significant part of their budget.
I think this is going to lead to worst outcomes, and a worse funded system.
"Metro estimates it lost $40 million due to fair evasion in the 2022 fiscal year."
$40 million is not "quite small"
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/transportation/metr...
And 40 million is not a small number for a person, but for a city with a budget of about 20 billion it’s not a very large number at all - especially when viewed in comparison with spending on roads and bridges. You don’t have to spend billions on another road bridge if everyone is taking the train
Also, WMATA's budget is separate from the city...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_Sta...
Public transit can be a remedy, but outside Manhattan I don't think any locale in the U.S. has remotely the density to make it truly viable at scale for the poor and working classes. Obviously public transit is critical for some poorer subgroups, but those groups tend to be the ones trapped in ghettos. To truly bridge the gap so public transit is a substitute for fuel subsidies would require an order of magnitude increase in the size and reach of our public transit networks, plus a dramatic shift in zoning to reduce the costs of housing in urbanized areas, plus a dramatic shift in geographical demographics. Note that poor and working classes will hold onto the white picket fence ideal for much longer than the middle classes. So you're dealing with very strong counter-veiling pressures when it comes to the groups you're attempting to help the most.
Chicken and egg. Density is built along transit because transit supports dense houses. Build transit, get density. Fail to build transit, get sprawl.
Building transit does not guarantee you get density. There are regulatory hurdles at play. In California, for example, cities will often be forced to up-zone the immediate couple of blocks around a station, but then everything else beyond that remains zoned for single-family housing, or at least zoned for far less density than the market could support.
Moreover, there's a time gap between when housing is built and when it becomes economically accessible lower down the income ladder. New housing is expensive, even absent regulatory hurdles, and affordability mandates can't magically change financial viability. New housing can have immediate effects on housing costs, but indirectly on the costs of older housing; and on a regional scale it takes awhile to incentivize people at the periphery to move inward.
Long-story short, to get from the current equilibrium to a more optimal equilibrium requires careful, coordinated policy management across decades. We could and should start, but we live in an age where if people don't see results in 6 weeks, they complain; and even when there are results, they still complain. They complain, vote people out, and vote in new people that promise more immediate results, but invariably can't deliver meaningful results.[1] I mean, this is how democracy has always worked, but the public reactions are far more compressed, while the necessary time spans for effective change are no shorter than they were before.
[1] Case in point: rather than improving public transit, the popular panacea du jure is free fares. Free fares will not improve public transit in any way shape or form; if anything, they'll hasten its degradation. They'll make it cheaper for some, but for the most part not those at the bottom of the ladder, who already enjoy free transit. These gimmicks are popular because they're immediate.
https://electrek.co/2022/04/28/denvers-electric-bike-rebates...
https://electrek.co/2022/05/03/vermont-launches-the-first-st...
https://electrek.co/2022/11/29/another-us-state-adds-electri...
https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/home/showpublisheddocumen...
You could argue that it's all "just funding," but fares can help to prioritize work which will help collect the most future fares, creating the largest positive impact for end users.