It’s a fare increase.
METRO is pointing out that their new fare proposal does not increase the base fare:
Under the proposed fare structure, the base fare of $1 remains the same.
The problem is that a lot of METRO riders don’t pay the base fare. According to METRO’s own numbers, 53% of boardings are with daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly passes. That’s not 53% of riders, but it’s still a significant number of people. What METRO is proposing is not an across-the-board fare increase, but it is a fare increase for many of METRO’s regular riders. In many cases, it’s a very large fare increase. In some cases, people will actually see their fares go down.
Here are the winners and losers:
Winners:
- People who pay full fare and ride between 2 and 4 times a week. These are people who ride too infrequently to buy passes but frequently enough to buy fares in $5o dollar increments.
- College students whose colleges are not currently involved in the UPass program and who do not ride more than 9 times a week. College students will now get 50% discounts.
Losers:
- Elderly and handicapped riders who ride more than once a week. If they ride twice a day, they would see their yearly fare expense go from $52 to $330. That’s a significant increase for people with limited incomes.
- Anybody who commutes by METRO every day. These are the people who buy passes, and in some cases they’ll see very large increases. A local monthly pass holder who rides twice a day would see their monthly cost go from $35 to $55. If they ride four times a day, they’ll see their monthly cost go from $35 to $110. A park-and-ride yearly pass holder who commutes from Katy to Downtown 5 days a week woudl see their yearly cost go from $990 to $1,654.
- People who depend on transit. Pass holders who ride only twice a weekday won;t see large increases. The people hit hardest are this riding more often, which are the people who need to take the bus not just to get to work but to run errands.
- Students at UH, Rice, TSU, HCC, Baylor College of Medicine, or the 9 other colleges in the UPass program. Some schools issue Upasses for free; other charge around $100 a year. A student riding to and from school 5 times a week will now pay just over $100 a year.
- People with very long bus rides. Transfers will now be good for 90 minutes, not 3 hours, from the first boarding. On a long bus trip, a missed transfer could now mean paying more fare: agreat way to make a bad bus trip worse.
How many people win? How many people lose? METRO isn’t saying. They do say that only 18% of riders currently pay full cash fare. They’ll be happy that the base fare isn’t going up. To most everyone else, this looks to their wallets like a fare increase.
We do know the bottom line. METRO estimates fare revenues — now about $52.5 million — will go up by $10 million. That’s about a 20% increase.
There are good arguments for a fare increase: fare have stayed constant for 12 years, and costs — particularly the price of fuel — have gone up considerably in that time. In 2004, bus fares paid for only 20% of operating expenses, compared to a national average of 27%.
But there’s more than one way to increase fares. The method METRO is proposing would impact some riders much more than others. And the hardest hit are those who depend on METRO most — the elderly, the diabled, and those who take the bus every day. An increase in the base fare to $1.25 (still low by national standards) and a corresponding increase in pass prices would have the same effect on the bottom line as the proposed changes but have much less impact on many individual pocketbooks.
We are funding METRO with sales taxes because METRO provides a public service: it serves as basic lifeline transportation for many, and it takes cars off the street. The big question is: does the fare structure METRO is proposing serve those objectives?
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