I like to think of myself as a pretty well-educated and reasonably smart person, but there are limits to my understanding of the world around me. One of the things I don’t understand is the economics of mass transit. According to an article in yesterday’s Washington Post, our local mass transit authority (Metrobus and Metrorail) is looking for ways to resolve a $116 million budget shortfall in the coming fiscal year, using the standard remedies: higher fares and reduced service.
I would find all this easier to swallow if it weren’t for a few annoying issues:
Metrorail authorities say that trains are overcrowded during peak hours, and they need find ways to convince riders to travel at off-peak times. They propose to do this by substantially raising the peak fares, charging an extra fee for passengers entering or leaving the system at the busier “core” stations, and hiking the fees to park at the garages at Metrorail stations. I find this stupid. People travel during peak hours because that’s when they need to travel to get to their jobs. Most of us don’t have a choice. So instead of penalizing the rider who needs to travel at a particular time, why not work with employers to stagger operating hours to spread out the rush, or encourage more telecommuting for those for whom it can work? With the Federal Government as the largest employer in the area, you’d think this could be a reasonable option.
Also, it seems to me that the local transportation authorities are working at cross purposes. The Virginia Department of Transportation encourages people to reduce congestion on the roadways by … taking Metrobus and Metrorail! At the same time, Metrobus and Metrorail are looking for ways to reduce the ridership by getting people to change their commuting times or … drive! Perhaps it might be worthwhile to view our miserable transportation system as just that – a system – and look for a systemic solution that doesn’t rely on pricing the system out of the reach of real people.
I have a few ideas, and I’ll present them in the next post. For now, good luck with your commute.
Have a good day. More thoughts coming this weekend.
Bilbo
1 comment:
The anonymous commenter returns with the following observation: the authorities who are running Metro do not understand the fundamental purpose of a public transportation system. My view of the fundamental purpose of an urban public transportation system arose from living in the Far East for quite some time. In both Seoul and Bangkok, the authorities understand the proper role of public transportation.
The proper role of public transportation is to make it possible for the hard-working lower level urban workers to get to their place of work on time and most important, at a reasonable price. If getting to work daily costs more than several hours work earns, then not working is a rational economic choice. As a result, during my time in Bangkok anybody could ride the public buses for less than a nickel. Later, in Seoul, the subway/bus system provided rides all over town for about 16 cents, which was virtually the equivalent of a nickel in Bangkok. This low price incentivized workers to enter and remain in the labor market. The city fathers made no atttempt to balance the public transportation budget. They understood that they were subsidizing the poor and the rich both. The poor had their transporation subsidized, and teh rich business owners could hold wages down because of the cheap transportation. I'm betting if the Metro managers raise the fares so that a daily commute costs more than 2 hours wages, welfare costs will rise all over the Metro area, as will labor costs. And as Bilbo points out, Metro has no clue when they complain about rush hour crowding. Duh. That's when people need to go to work. Actually, they should reverse the current pricing structure and make rush hour travel less expensive than off-peak travel. Let the tourists subsidize the honest workers of the metropolitan area. That's what tourists are for! Especially the buses, which are used much more by lower paid workers, should be practically free, as they are in much of the world.
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