[sustran] The Best Things in Life are Free - So Why Not Public Transit in NYC?

[eric.britton]

This article appears in the Summer 2007 Transportation Alternatives
Magazine. Thanks George and thanks TransAlt for sharing this with us. We
tend to think that there are a number of strong arguments for free public
transport - or at the very least giving it a close look in all cities. It's
not as whacky as you may at first think. But of course you have to be
willing to give unfamiliar ideas a break. Not least because most of the
familiar ones are showing their age badly.  What was it that exchange
involving Lord Keynes said on changing his mind: "When the facts change, I
change my mind. What do you do, sir?". Eric Britton (For more go the
www.transalt.org <http://www.transalt.org/> .) 

 

 

Provocateur

 

The Best Things in Life are Free

So Why Not Public Transit in NYC?

 

by George Haikalis

 

"If you were to design the ultimate system, you would have mass transit be
free and charge an enormous amount for cars." -Mayor Michael Bloomberg,
April 2007

 

For many years transit advocates have called for affordable public transit
fares. The MTA took a big step in that direction beginning ten years ago,
when it introduced unlimited ride passes and free transfers between buses
and subways. Ridership soared because of these pricing innovations. 

 

Price really does matter - it strongly affects travel behavior, whether on
transit or in cars.

 

Mayor Bloomberg's plan for congestion pricing to reduce car use in the
Manhattan Central Business District (CBD) is a critical step in improving
the walking and cycling environment in the crowded core of our city, but to
be fully successful it must be accompanied by a strategy to lower the price
for transit use.

 

Just how low can it go? Well, all the way to zero is a possibility.

 

Thanks to a generous grant from Nurturing New York's Nature, a foundation
headed by NYC's storied labor negotiator, Theodore Kheel, the Institute for
Rational Urban Mobility, Inc. (IRUM) has initiated a study of free or
reduced fare transit combined with Manhattan CBD Cordon Tolls. Cordon
pricing has been very successful in Central London, where traffic volumes
have been decreased by 17% and congestion has been reduced by 30%.  

 

Preliminary findings of the "Price Matters" study suggest that if  Manhattan
CBD Cordon Tolls were set at the current London level -- $16 per entry --
and were applied at all times of the day, weekdays and weekends, some $3.113
billion in revenues would be generated, fully offsetting MTA bus and subway
revenues, and leaving a $283 million per year surplus.  Added to this would
be savings resulting from not collecting fares on the subway, some $360
million per year. Further cost savings occur by eliminating fare collection
on buses, which reduces boarding time and improves productivity.  These
gains would be offset by the added cost of operating more bus and rail
service to accommodate increased ridership.  

 

The news media focuses its discussion on one facet of congestion pricing --
reducing the number of vehicles that interfere with each other at busy times
and speeding up the remaining vehicles in the traffic stream.  But even more
important than making life easier for motorists is the gain for the two
million residents, visitors and workers who each day must deal with the
painful negatives that result from too many motor vehicles in the CBD.  And
many of these ills persist after rush hours - noise and air pollution, and
injuries and deaths resulting from motor vehicular traffic occur at all
hours of the day and night.

 

For free transit to work, it is clear that transit capacity must be quickly
expanded to accommodate the diverted motorists and new riders generated by
congestion pricing and free public transit.  Fortunately, the subway and
commuter rail system have the track capacity to handle much higher loads. In
the morning peak hour, where ridership is greatest, only 51.5% of the
capacity on the twenty inbound rail tracks leading to the CBD is utilized.
For most lines, overcrowding is the result of management decisions to
contain operating cost, not because of system limitations.  More trains
could be placed into service over the next several years if the 1,500 subway
and commuter rail cars now slated for retirement were kept in service, as
new cars now being manufactured arrive.  Operating cost would increase, but
only modestly since the bulk of cost is to maintain the fixed plant,
including tracks, signals and stations.  

 

Several subway lines, including the Lexington and Queens Boulevard express
lines, are operating at track capacity, and our study will assess the
ability of commuter rail lines serving the Bronx and Queens to draw
overloads from these subways lines. 

 

A few years ago, congestion pricing in NYC existed only as a fantasy. Things
change. We're finally in the midst a long overdo debate on the
transportation system our city deserves. Let's make free transit part of
that vision.

 

Preliminary results of the Price Matters study are posted at www.irum.org
<http://www.irum.org/> .

 

George Haikalis is President of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility.  

 

[IMAGE: TK]

[CAPTION: The Staten Island Ferry is already free. An ongoing study proposed
free buses and subways.]