Gas prices are at record levels, transit ridership is growing, so what do transit agencies do? Cut service!. Denver’s Regional Transit District says it plans to cut some of its “lowest-performing routes,” including one of its light-rail lines.
Of course, transit agencies face higher fuel costs, too. And since transit fares cover only 28 percent of average transit costs (and just 13 percent in Denver), increased ridership doesn’t pay for much of the increased cost.
RTD says that one of the buses it plans to cut costs $330,000 a year and only carries 295 riders a day. Assuming they mean “weekday” (and annual ridership tends to be about 300 times weekday ridership), that works out to an operating cost of about $3.73 a rider. But the average bus operated by RTD costs $3.46 a rider, which isn’t much less.
It seems somewhat hypocritical for RTD to be cutting bus service when it is spending hundreds of millions of dollars per year building light-rail lines that will cost far more per rider (when capital costs are amortized) than almost any of its bus lines.
It is time to think about a new model for transit systems. This model should be flexible enough to respond rapidly to changes in ridership (which rail can’t do); it should provide levels of service in various corridors commensurate with demand; and it should cover most of its costs out of fares, not tax dollars.
What this describes is paratransit, meaning jitneys, shared taxis, and other transit that does not follow fixed routes. Partly because of the taxi lobby, most U.S. transit agencies limit paratransit to people with disabilities, which is a shame because there are so few such people that the cost per trip is high — more than $28 in 2006. Private companies can offer paratransit to and from airports, but usually nowhere else.
Since he was a boy Christian Audigier carries rock’n’roll rhythm in his pharma-bi.com brand cialis price heart and all his inspirations drawn from rock’n’roll he introduces in his collections giving them recognizable charismatic touch. Both the brand and tadalafil samples is, in fact, the best way to combat a curse is through prayer and meditation. Libido is a conscious cheap levitra professional or unconscious sexual desire. All these issues can cause infertility buy cialis in australia pharma-bi.com in males. One American city that does not have such limits is San Juan, Puerto Rico, where públicos — privately owned 17-passenger buses — carry more people than public buses and rail combined. As noted in this book, públicos fares are two to four times as much as public buses, yet they still attract more riders. Similar services are found in many South American cities.
Moreover, according to the National Transit Database, fares cover 98 percent of the operating cost of públicos and an average of 97 percent of the total (capital plus operating) costs. The remaining 2 percent of operating costs is the administrative overhead for the public agency that monitors the públicos, while the reported capital costs are mostly for the públicos‘ share of transit stations. Most of the vehicle costs are paid by the owner-operators, which means that — unlike almost every other transit service in the U.S. —
públicos‘ fares actually cover much of their capital costs.
The chart above shows that públicos ridership varies wildly from year to year, probably due to inconsistent reporting by the private operators. But 2006 numbers are just about the same as numbers for 1994 (the earliest year for which data are available). So, while públicos are losing market share to the auto, they may not be losing overall ridership.
Could it be that the $19 billion we spend subsidizing transit buses each year (not to mention the $2.4 billion spent subsidizing paratransit for disabled riders) is really just a subsidy to the taxi industry? As in, “we will offer crappy transit service that doesn’t compete with taxis even though we know we could actually offer better service at a far lower cost to taxpayers”? I suspect the answer is “yes.”
If American cities were crawling with private paratransit services, would we be so eager to build rail transit? Sadly, as long as federal money were available for it, the answer is probably also “yes.” Puerto Rico, for example, spent $2.25 billion of your money building the Tren Urbano rail system that carried, in 2006, only about 5 percent as many riders as the públicos. Nevertheless, the públicos are a rebuke to those who say, “all transit is subsidized, so just ignore the gargantuan subsidies required for rail transit.”
RTD’s cuts confuse me as to why they’re needed despite the increase in ridership. They just had a fare increase. And since most trips they run aren’t near full, they should be able to absorb the ridership increase with little in the way of increased costs. But they’re collecting 3.3% less in fares than they anticipated. I’m not sure if that means despite ridership being up they had anticipated an even larger increase or it means more people riding means they’re selling more passes. If more passes I’m curious why they didn’t anticipate that with higher ridership. If I’m only taking it a couple days a week for work, it’s not worth buying a monthly pass. But if I’m taking it 5 days a week, I can save a bit on it. 3.3% less could even be from selling more 10-trip books. Those offer a small discount over buying regular fares. Does RTD have to give out information like that if requested?
prk,
If you make a formal (written) request, they must provide this information.
Denver’s Regional Transit District says it plans to cut some of its “lowest-performing routes,†including one of its light-rail lines.
No it doesn’t.
It floated a trial balloon* and plans to hold public meetings to see how badly this will p!ss people off. Likely much of this will happen, but let’s not stir things up by ululating as if its a done deal.
DS
* “RTD is proposing $4.1 million in reductions to bus and light-rail service in August…RTD adjusts its schedules three times a year, in January, May and August. The cost savings are for a 12-month period.” [emphasis added, before ellipsis quoted from the very first sentence in Randal’s link]
I find Randal’s views quite persuasive, and all the more so when followed by flame wars of pathological parsed-out hyper-technical rebuttals.
hI find Randal’s views quite persuasive, and all the more so when followed by flame wars of pathological parsed-out hyper-technical rebuttals.
Haha – so to you, there’s a negative correlation between the truthfulness of a statement and the rigor of its supporting arguments?
and all the more so when followed by flame wars of pathological parsed-out hyper-technical rebuttals.
Translation: Randal’s arguments are even more persuasive to me when they are shown to be incorrect.
I actually expect this of certain ideologies, and there is a percentage of the overall population who thinks this way. It is human nature.
DS
Soaring fuel costs force LTD to dig into reserves to stave off service cuts
By Jeff Wright–The Register-Guard April 24, 2008 12:00AM
Lane Transit District’s budget committee on Wednesday approved a 2008-09 budget that eats up more than half the district’s reserves  in hopes of buying time to find ways of avoiding service cuts next year that could conceivably approach 20 percent.
http://tinyurl.com/3vlpzm
Transit district considers increasing most bus fares.
Rising fuel costs are one reason cited for proposed change
By Eunice Kim • Statesman Journal May 3, 2008
For the third time since 2005, Cherriots riders might have to pay a little more to take the bus.
Salem-Keizer Transit District staff members have recommended increasing adult cash fares by 25 cents to $1.25 and the cost of adult monthly passes by $10 to $35 this year. Other Cherriots and Cherrylift fares, except the cost of the summer youth pass, would be proportionally boosted.
http://tinyurl.com/4hc2g5
There is a simple explanation why these transit agencies are cutting back on services. Firstly as fuel prices increase transit operating costs increase. Secondly as fuel prices increase workers push for higher wages. Thus the two biggest expenses for transit buses have been increasing faster than inflation and, possible as fast total auto operating costs, ie fuel plus depreciation plus insurance plus etc etc. This means that the cost advantage of shifting from auto to bus travel is quite small. Even if transit subsidies cover a fixed percentage of operating costs there will still need to be fare increases to cover the riders share of the cost increases. These increases reduce the number of commuters who save money by using the bus instead of auto. Hence many of them will switch back to autos. Eliminating routes with the least number of riders in order to minimise fare increases on the remaining routes may actually result in higher overall ridership, on fewer vehicle miles. Smart operators would use the freed up buses to increase service frequency on main routes where this is likely to increase passenger numbers by at least the same percentage as the increase in vehicle miles.
Really smart operators would stop using buses like some sort of infill streetcar system. By this I mean that the streetcar systems radiated out from the CBD in a hub and spoke arrangement. Suburbs grew along those spokes. The area between the spokes was like a slice pie waiting for a filling. When buses and autos replaced the streetcars suburbs filled in those empty slices of pie. Many bus routes weave their way along local streets simulating these spokes, all the way from the CBD to the furthest reaches of suburbia. The city where I lived followed this pattern till the early 1990s. Then some smart cookie came up with the idea of splitting the suburban runs into inner and outer zones and using urban shopping malls as hubs. Now buses serving the outer suburbs have lateral routes that travel across the suburb till they reach an old streecar spoke. They then use that as an express route to the CBD. Inner suburb buses travel from CBD to shopping mall rather than continuing miles to the edge of the city. The result is routes times are are cut by one-third. On outer routes this results in one-third less travel time cost for passengers. On inner routes there is no time saving for passengers but there is a one-third reduction in route time which does allow for a 50% increase in service frequency. Getting the best out of this re-arrangement does mean investing in more and smaller buses. The underlying aim is to make travel time cost of transit buses comparable with autos.
Frequency of service is hugely important for two of the biggest group of transit users: students and low-income workers and especially the welfare to workers sub-group. The other group that needs to be encouraged to use trasit are senior’s with failing eyesight who are a menace behind the wheel.
The stats since this new system was introduced show that the 50% increase in the number of buses has been followed by a 100% increase, an average 7.5% per annum growth rate. Auto km increase by 4% per annum in the same period. There have been a range of other transit improvements during this period including the introduction of super-low-floor buses which use air suspension which is less damaging to pavements, enclosed bus shelters funded by advertisers, and GPS tracking of buses to provide realtime ETA info via cellphone SMS. All costing a fraction of LRT. The fact that traveller surveys have consistently found that 50% of bus passengers would have travelled by car if the bus wasn’t available does suggest that the increase in ridership has actually suppressed the growth in congestion or air pollution. But probably not by enough to justify amount of roading revenue used to subsidise bus fares. Social equity analysis provides a good justification for subsidies from general taxes because most of the increase in off-peak travel is associated with education, senior’s health and welfare to work participants. Added value and/or reduced costs in these aeas is greater than the proportion of subsidies spent on off-peak services.
Good comment. One thing I’d be interesting in exploring stems from this comment “By this I mean that the streetcar systems radiated out from the CBD in a hub and spoke arrangement.”. In short, I disagree. IMHO hub and spoke has some usefulness but as a wide spread model it died 20 years ago (airlines, city-suburb, etc). I should make a point about posting something on it in my blog to get that conversation rolling.
Do these rising gas prices make it even more practical for transit agencies to find routes on which they can run smaller buses?
Well in short the one of the big problems is the lack of streetcars in cities, yes the this means puting the tracks back, but the operating savings will pay for it self over time.
Another problem is with the current gas tax structure it self leads to higher prices. One idea would be to reset it to 18 cents a gallon, but with 9 cents going to roads and 9 cents going to transit.
Dan and rationalitate, the truth is generally simpler, cleaner, more easily expressed, and more easily understood, than what is false. Facts will always more directly connect to truthful reasoning than they will to false reasoning. Language is infinitely malleable and will allow constructions in support of or against any proposition, however language true to the proposition will always be more direct and self-evident than language opposed. What I like about Randal is he operates from a sound set of propositions that his detractors just can’t fathom. They accuse him of all sorts of stupidity since he won’t buy into their tortured logic, but they never for a moment allow that his fundamental values could be correct because that would spell the end to more than just an argument. It would mean the end of the world as they know it, the end to the utopian vision they have invested years building. If only those pesky little independent flies in the ointment would go away things would be so much easier. Sorry boys and girls. There are islands of good reasoning based on sound facts and solid fundamental principals in this internet. No amount of whining, ad hominem abusive, emotional characterization, or harassment, will undermine the truth. The louder the complaints, the more obvious the truth becomes. So please, rave on.
Sorry, but Mr.O’Toole is a spin doctor who gets his funding from the big oil/highway/sprawl lobby. If that weren’t the case he’d have to find a real job!
BrookImp,
Just about everything you said about those who disagree with Randal can be said about Randal and his ideologues. Your values and world view are based on a stack of cards subject to collapse in the face of contradictory evidence and argument just as much as ‘The Planners’ you so smugly brush off as espousing “tortured logic.”
Further, to state that a simple argument is more likely to be true, while a more complex argument is likely to be false is in most part a meaningless attack on your opponent’s style of writing, while ignoring the substance of your opponent’s argument. If simplicity were the god of truth, than you should be questioning neoclassical economics, which relies on complex mathematical calculus and econometrics to justify itself as a science. In fact we can take it a step further using the simplicity = truth formula and come to all sorts of great conslusions, like creationism must be true and evolution must be false, because creationism is so much simpler.
“Well in short the one of the big problems is the lack of streetcars in cities, yes the this means puting the tracks back, but the operating savings will pay for it self over time.”
The operating savings will pay for itself over time? Really? How is this the case? Is there someplace for us to look to as a model?
My fault. I assumed we were discussing the factual world. I wasn’t addressing mysticism.
Oops, my fault too BrooksImp. I assumed I might actually be dealing with someone who would have actually addressed what I said, instead of making generalizations and insulting simplifications of what I said through a few snarky “I am right” comments. I won’t waste any more of my time with you, because I’m not a masochist.
Good night Imp,
SBN
“If simplicity were the god of truth, tha(e?)n you should be questioning neoclassical economics, which relies on complex mathemtical calculus and econometrics to justify itself as a science.
No. Economics relies on the ability to use of the tools of positive science and apply them to human behavior to justify itself as a science. It relies on the fact that the relevant mathematics and logic can be used to construct realisitic theories of individual and group behavior. The tools of econometrics and analytical modeling are used to test these theories to see how well they fit the real world. Falsifiable hypotheses can be stated and tested — that is what makes it science.
Nor is it true that the necessary mathematics need to be that complicated. The simplest models of markets in equilibrium can be constructed using a little algebra. Not that complicated. Yet is important to know that if such simple models are not adequate to explain some pheomena, the necessary mathematics are available to build more complex models that can.
No. Economics relies on the ability to use of the tools of positive science and apply them to human behavior to justify itself as a science. It relies on the fact that the relevant mathematics and logic can be used to construct realisitic theories of individual and group behavior. The tools of econometrics and analytical modeling are used to test these theories to see how well they fit the real world. Falsifiable hypotheses can be stated and tested  that is what makes it science.
Nor is it true that the necessary mathematics need to be that complicated. The simplest models of markets in equilibrium can be constructed using a little algebra. Not that complicated. Yet is important to know that if such simple models are not adequate to explain some pheomena, the necessary mathematics are available to build more complex models that can.
Why does almost everyone on this blog feel it necessary to give some little econ 101 statement, as if they had some great piece of wisdom that they learned from introductory econ, which others did not. I have a bachelors in econ, and had a near perfect Grade Point Average, so hold off on the little lectures about economics. I havent quite got to the post grad masters degree drop out stage of Randal, but please spare me the horsesh** lectures.
Thanks.
SBN
Nice work folks.
Nowhere did I imply that parsed-out hyper-technical rebuttal equates to rigorous scholarship. Y’all must have some experience in billable hours to think that the mere volume of work product equates to scholarship. Certainly, some subjects require voluminous work to be understood, however economics probably isn’t one of them.
And I really did not mean for my comments to extend to mystical questions about things like creationism. My failure to pick up that stinking red herring is no grounds for hurling a handful of ad hominems and storming off in a huff.
I thought people here could deal with a proposition in itself without hurling invective, feigning insult, casting aspersions, spinning the proposition, and other nonsense. Some of us who disagree with collectivist solutions do so from a very sound philosophical, ethical, constitutional, experiential, pragmatic, and reasonable foundation. Your chalking off dissent to some conception of what you think an ideology looks like tells me you’re really not getting it. Taboo is something primitives trot out when they don’t understand something. A world full of taboos must be a terrifying place to live.
SBN,
Since you mentioned that you have a bachelor’s degree in economics, I find it surprising that you haven’t taken a course that explains in greater detail the philosophy of economics as a science, and how economists approach problem-solving situations. The answer I gave outlines why economics is considered a social science.
If you didn’t want people calling into question the veracity of your statement, then you shouldn’t have gone trolling for comments. As it was, your comment essentially invited a critique.