We are talking about an area encompassing 9 counties, some with some of the highest property values in the country. What would it cost the average resident in additional tax to make BART free?
Steve
1 Like
Part of the problem mentioned in the article was that the largest county in the Bay Area, Santa Clara, is not served by BART and they were expected to pay for a large share of the proposed taxes â without having any say in how the monies were spent. Also, a large part of San Mateo county has no BART service as it does not go south of the SF airport.
DB2
BART actually used to be among the national leaders in farebox recovery rates.
The last full year before the pandemic, BART pulled in about half a billion dollars in fares. Since the Bay Area has about 2.5 million households, that would be about $200 per year per household to cover the lost farebox revenue, give or take.
2 Likes
Was that gross, or net? Where were they in the situation that Detroit was in: fare revenue collected, vs cost of collecting and processing the fares? Now BART is looking at spending millions in an attempt to prevent people jumping the turnstiles. What is to keep people taking a set of bolt cutters to the new gates? Are they going to pay policemen to stand in the stations and guard the gates? If they had policemen in the stations, why not have the police, who are paid anyway, collar the turnstile jumpers, instead of spending 6 years worth of evasion losses on gates that will be quickly defeated?
Steve
1 Like
Similar to red light cameras that can identify vehicles that run red lights and send a ticket, the tecnology to do this with facial recognition is not far behind, they may want to start considering that route as their is software like this sold to the police.
Jumping the barrier in Singapore MRT is not too difficult but all are monitored by cameras. I would be willing to bet if I did this (would have to be on entry and exit) I would soon get a visit by the police. For what ever the charge/fine might be, the real cost would likely be deportation when visa applications come around
2 Likes
Thatâs just farebox revenue, so gross. But again, BART was among the best in the country in farebox recovery (percent of operating costs paid for by fares), so it would certainly be bringing in a ton of net income, and wouldnât be a situation like that you described in Detroit.
There has been a lot of debate in the public transit community about the merits of abandoning fares. Advocates point out that eliminating fares increases usage, which is certainly true. Critics point out that nearly all successful transit systems around the world still charge fares and do quite fine, and that current and potential users of the transit system will typically cite deficiencies in service rather than fares as a negative of the system. IOW, rather than âspendâ the money on eliminating fares, the systems would be better off âspendingâ that money on increasing system frequency or dependability.
The core problem, though, is that many heavy rail systems in the U.S. are geared primarily towards moving people into central business districts during the AM and PM peaks - and in many urban areas, there are just fewer folks making those trips. Some of that is WFH, and some of it is the long-term trend of employment moving out of CBDâs and dispersing into the suburbs. Itâs very bad in SF and DC, and those metros are now stuck with systems that just donât match the needs of their users any more. The problem exists also with rubber-tire systems as well - because while in theory those can be more easily adjusted to match changing commute patterns, in practice itâs politically difficult to change bus routes.
6 Likes
Potential solutions include substantially restricting car access to the central business districts, increasing the downtown parking tax, provide tax incentives for companies to provide annual transit passes to employees, and eliminate reserved parking for city officials (that should motivate problem solving rather than political posturing). Basically turn metro downtowns into Disneyworld with lots of peripheral parking lots with most internal transport done by public vehicles.
In addition, AI has probably reached a level of sophistication that it should be possible to have 24/7 video surveillance at all public transport stations with AI notifying security of suspicious activities in real time with facial recognition software doing a pretty good job identifying people. I bet there arenât too many gate jumpers in Shanghai. Not sure I would like this development, but the way technology is moving I suspect the problem in the near future will be too much security rather than too little.
Maybe. But people donât like being told that they have to change their lives to meet the needs of the infrastructure, rather than the infrastructure being designed to meet their needs. None of the above solutions address the significant reduction in trips going into and out of the CBD; instead, theyâre aimed at forcing a larger percentage of the trips that remain to be taken by transit instead of by car. That certainly helps out transit, but these are trips that the users have already adjudged to be a more convenient/better mode to take by car.
So at a time when there is less need for transit, and it gets easier to take cars into the CBD, the government will step in and force people to switch from cars to transit. Just to serve the needs of the infrastructure, rather than those of the users.
Thatâs always going to be a difficult lift. We see some of that pushback in DC, where local officials and the local business community are pressuring the federal government to force workers to RTO. The employee unions are fighting back against that, arguing that itâs not their responsibility to save CBD retail or the transit system - their employer should base policy based on whatâs best for the agencies and/or their workers, and not what the Mayor of DC wants.
1 Like
That all assumes there is still enough demand for travel to and from downtown.
In addition, IIRC, crime still remains the #1 concern of BART riders and potential riders.
DB2
1 Like
BART needs real policing, against both fare scofflaws and other criminals, and it needs to stop being SF centric, making movement from anywhere to anywhere safe and convenient.
Sigh.
d fb
It is a question of whether central business districts have become obsolete. I think the jury is still out on that.
If work-at-home is a permanent trend then central business districts and the current public transport systems will become obsolete unless cities reinvent themselves. Restricting cars and transforming streets into plazas and parking lots into more concentrated businesses may be one way to accomplish that. It comes down to whether the tenets of Richard Florida still hold true in a Zoom reality, namely that cities facilitate creativity and economic growth. I am still with Florida on this and so still believe that there will be dense downtowns and central business districts. Big Thinkers ft. Richard Florida
I think the public transit numbers are still reflecting the anomaly of the pandemic.
Perhaps, but how much of that is real? This is from the San Francisco Chronicle showing the % change in different crimes from 2018 levels. Looks to me like the people most at risk of a criminal act are those using a car instead of BART.
I donât think itâs a binary. Itâs not âobsoleteâ or ânot obsolete.â Rather, itâs that a decreasing proportion of employment and other trips in a metro begin or end in the dense CBDâs.
This is not new, nor is it limited to work from home. Itâs been going on since the widespread adoption of the automobile and the rise of suburban employment centers. And itâs not just that jobs are moving out of the formerly transit-focuses CBDâs into the suburbs. Overall population trends have an increasing proportion of the population living in less CBD-focused metros - ie. the relative population decrease in dense urban areas in the northeast and midwest (ie. Philadelphia or Chicago) compared to more decentralized cities like Houston or Phoenix.
The pandemic accelerated that trend by supercharging the adoption of videoconferencing and remote work practices. But even as some of that impact recedes, the long-term trends point towards decentralized work for all but a few segments of the economy.
So while thereâs no doubt that the âoldâ cities that got built in a way that depends on heavy rail transit (NYC is the archetype) will continue to use it, because there will continue to be a need, other metros are going to find that the system just doesnât match their residentsâ needs any more. All the âreinventionâ measures donât fix that problem. You can try to force residents to use a system that doesnât meet their needs, in the short run - penalize or prohibit auto use, provide punitive costs for parking or tolls. But thatâs hard to do even in the short run, and itâs even hard to maintain in the long run. If the system doesnât match what the residentsâ needs are, eventually the system will have to change - or be abandoned.
2 Likes
To borrow your statement: âI donât think itâs a binary.â
Public transportation can meet transportation needs if the economics are right, as it often is in Europe (and Disneyworld). Tax gasoline to the level that pays for itâs negative environmental and health consequences and use the proceeds to improve public transportation rather than roads.
Suppose gasoline approaches $6/gallon as it does in the UK and Italy. What would BART ridership be then?
Iâm not saying we should raise gas prices to that level. Iâm just suggesting that âreinventionâ can fix the problem because the balance between personal and public transportation is influenced by a lot of external factors. The US favors personal car use because that is the way the system is rigged. We spend a lot more money supporting and subsidizing personal car use than public transportation.
1 Like
Not entirely. The U.S. favors personal car use because personal car use has a ton of advantages over mass transit, and (unlike Europe) we have low population densities and are a relatively young country with lots of urban areas that were developed after the widespread adoption of the car. Although even that contrast is inaccurate, because Europe also favors personal car use - the overwhelming majority of transportation in the EU is by personal car also, vastly outweighing any transit mode.
Public transportation is massively subsidized, far more than personal car use. I pointed out upthread that BART is one of the leaders in farebox recovery - but I should have also noted that even this only represented about 70% of operating expenses. Most transit systems cover well less than 50% of their operating costs, and virtually all of their capital costs are entirely subsidized. Contrast that with personal cars, where nearly 100% of the operating costs are privately born (and that wouldnât change much if you internalized gas externalities), and a portion of the capital costs are covered with user fees.
Thatâs why itâs so unlikely that many of these transit systems will be able to pull out of this. Moving people by cars is better than moving them by mass transit in a lot of ways. The handful of ways in which transit was superior mostly disappear if: i) people arenât trying to get into super-dense CBDâs; and ii) cars stop using gasoline. Outside of a handful of pre-car metros (again, NYC is the archetype) the first dynamic is well underway, and EVâs will undermine nearly all of the environmental benefits of transit.
2 Likes
Thatâs easy to answer! Gasoline in the SF area was over $6 for a few months in 2022, so we know what BART ridership was at the time.
btresist
I agree with you, almost across the board. My quibble is that a CRUCIAL aspect of public transit is providing not only the reality but also the experience of security, and not only to attract customers but also as a key means of altering psychologies of residents of neglected and dangerous areas. People who have a daily experience of safety become far less tolerant of hoodlums and idiots in their vicinity, and that is where community transformation begins.
d fb
1 Like
Yes, indeed. And, given the cost of owning a private car, especially in a place like Michigan, we could make a general statement that the taxpayer funded subsidy to public transit is so the âprofessionalsâ in the CBD have janitorial services in their building.
Steve
Even if it werenât true, the widespread perception is real and has effects.
But it may be real. From six weeks ago:
DB2
No! The use of city streets for âfree parkingâ and laws regarding provision of âfree parkingâ in most buildings are both unknown/ignored and hugely expensive, just as one instance.
d fb
2 Likes
City streets, yes. Somewhat - many city streets are built out and dedicated by the adjoining property owner.
But the parking provided in buildings - while expensive - is still built and paid for by private parties, not public subsidies.
1 Like