Paying People to Ride Transit

Denver urban planner Drew Willsey has what he thinks is a great idea: relieve traffic congestion by paying people to ride transit. He accepts, reluctantly, that the billions of dollars Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD) has spent on rail transit hasn’t worked: transit’s share of commuting has dropped from 4.9 percent in 2000 to 4.6 percent in 2016, and, considering ridership is dropping, probably lower in 2017.

Unfortunately, like many other planners, Willsey can’t get the idea that transit is the solution to everything out of his head. He implicitly assumes that transit is good, cars are bad, and the most cost-effective way of relieving congestion is always by increasing transit.

In Denver, at least, none of these assumptions are true. The Transportation Energy Data Book says that cars used about 3,000 BTUs and light trucks about 3,600 BTUs per passenger mile in 2015 (and probably slightly less in 2016). The National Transit Database says RTD used 3,800 BTUs per passenger mile in 2016. Cars emit about 212 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger mile, light trucks 268, and RTD 272. Certainly some cars and trucks are worse, but some are much better.

Willsey’s brilliant idea is to pay people 25 cents every time they board a transit bus or train. Since RTD carries about 100 million riders a year, he calculates this would cost about $25 million a year. He estimates this would lead transit usage to “skyrocket,” but he neglects to note that, if it did, it would end up costing a lot more than $25 million a year.

Curiously, he never mentions fares. RTD collected an average of $1.32 a ride in 2016. If Willsey means to refund 25 cents of that, the actual fare would average $1.07. Reducing fares by 25 cents a ride would probably increase ridership, but I doubt that it would skyrocket.

Let’s say for the sake of argument it increased ridership by 50 percent. Then the annual cost would be $37.5 million, of which $25 million would be going to people who were riding transit anyway. In the extremely unlikely case that a 19 percent decrease in average fares doubled ridership, the cost would be $50 million, not $25 million.

Since he never mentions fares, it is possible that Willsey is proposing to completely eliminate fares and pay people 25 cents a ride. That would certainly increase ridership, but it would cost a lot more than $25 million. If it doubled ridership, it would cost about $314 million a year, about 1150 percent more than his estimate, and half of which would be going to people who were already riding transit.

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Although Willsey is arithmetically challenged enough to not realize the cost would be eleven times what he claimed, he enthuses that doubling transit’s share of commuting would “decrease substantially” the need to build new roads in the next 25 years. The Denver area grew by 75 percent in the last 25 years, and it is reasonable to expect it might do the same in the next 25 years. Doubling transit’s share might get roughly 5 percent of commuters out of their cars, which I don’t consider to be “substantial” compared to a 75 percent growth in commuting.

Willsey totally ignores the transportation elephants in the city, which are ride sharing and the prospect of driverless ride sharing in the next few years. Ride sharing has already significantly reduced transit ridership nationwide since 2014. One investment firm estimates that driverless ride sharing companies will charge 35 cents a vehicle mile, which is only slightly higher than average transit fares of 28 cents per passenger mile.

Given that fares only cover a quarter of RTD’s operating costs, moving someone by a driverless ride share in Denver will soon cost less than transit, and the fares will be only a little more than transit. So why should taxpayers spend even more money on a transportation system that is likely to soon go extinct?

There are a lot of ways to relieve congestion, and almost none of them have anything to do with transit. One of the few ways transit could relieve Denver congestion is by reducing it, because on many routes buses and light-rail trains get fewer cars off the road than the congestion they themselves create.

As the Antiplanner never tires of reminding people, roads are unique in that their capability for moving people declines when demand increases. A freeway lane that can move 2,000 vehicles per hour at 50 miles per hour can only move 1,000 vehicles per hour at 25 miles per hour. Keeping traffic from slowing down can actually double road throughput during rush hours.

So it would be nice if planners such as Willsey would stop obsessing with last century’s form of travel. They could instead spend their time finding cost-effective ways to keep roads from becoming congested, which would benefit everyone.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

8 Responses to Paying People to Ride Transit

  1. Henry Porter says:

    “A freeway lane that can move 2,000 vehicles per hour at 50 miles per hour can only move 1,000 vehicles per hour at 25 miles per hour.“

    A freeway lane that is moving 2,000 vehicles at 1.5 passengers per vehicle is carrying 3,000 people per hour and is woefully underutilized. If occupancy is increased to 1.75, it has the capacity to carry 3,500 pph. At 5 ppv, it has the theoretical capacity to move 10,000 pph.

    Denver would be better off incentivizing people to carpool and vanpool during peak hours.

  2. C. P. Zilliacus says:

    The Antiplanner wrote:

    Since he never mentions fares, it is possible that Willsey is proposing to completely eliminate fares and pay people 25 cents a ride. That would certainly increase ridership, but it would cost a lot more than $25 million. If it doubled ridership, it would cost about $275 million a year, half of which would be going to people who were already riding transit.

    Hmm, gives new meaning to the phrase (did not originate with me), “transit loses money on every customer and does not make it up in volume!”

  3. LazyReader says:

    Carpools are potentially 5 times more efficient than any transit, because if you can pack 5 people in one vehicle, 100% capacity

    I’m sure paying people to ride transit will work out as well. Government has a propensity to incentivize behavior. Illegal immigration, drinking, stupidity, eugenics.
    If we paid people to educate themselves education in this nation would not be behind all industrialized nations.

  4. prk166 says:


    Given that fares only cover a quarter of RTD’s operating costs
    ” ~anti-planner

    http://www.rtd-denver.com/documents/financialreports/RTD-continuing-disclosure-operating-data-2016.pdf

    2016 amended fare revenue: $134,970,000
    2016 amended operating expenses: $638,253,000

    At 21% of operating costs, It looks like RTD is following the old 20/80 rule of thumb for transit with fares covering 20% of operating costs.

  5. prk166 says:


    If it doubled ridership, it would cost about $275 million a year, half of which would be going to people who were already riding transit.
    ” ~anti-planner


    Hmm, gives new meaning to the phrase (did not originate with me), “transit loses money on every customer and does not make it up in volume!”
    ” ~ cpz

    yes! 🙂

    I was thinking of the old business joke, where my uncle louie made dresses for $10 and sold them for $9. He said no problem, I’ll make it up on volume.

    In this case the dresses the joke is that volume only increases loses. You have to find ways of making it cheaper. The volume may justify the capital costs to make them more efficiently. But that takes a lot of capital.

    In the case of Denver and RTD, the author of the Westerword piece does nothing to look at capacity. RTD’s rail lines are already at capacity. They can’t add cars to the trains because most of the platforms can’t handle more cars without being re-constructed to do so. And the buses coming into downtown are full, too.

    And never mind the problem that trying to double the number of buses on the streets creates it’s own capacity issues. How do you double the number of buses downtown during rush hour? Do you close off some streets and make them bus only? Where to do come up with the money to do that?

    Mr Willsey seems to be one of those people who will never stop insisting that unicorn farts are real and they smell like roses.

  6. prk166 says:

    BTW – Any idea as to how and why RTD’s operating expenses jumped 10-15% in just a year from 2015 to 2016?

  7. prk166,

    The increase in operating costs is mainly due to the airport rail line, which cost $0 to operate in 2015 and $46.7 million in 2016.

  8. prk166 says:

    https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/free-transit-helps-combat-dirty-air-in-salt-lake-city

    The free fares had the desired effect. UTA saw a marked system-wide bump in ridership and estimates a big reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. But, free rides cost the agency money and, short of a dedicated funding stream or new partnerships, it doesn’t think it can afford to make free fare days a recurring event. Local transit advocates were happy to see the bump in ridership, but rather than focusing on free fares, think the agency should spend money to improve transit service in a way that will naturally draw in new riders.

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