Free and accessible transit now

This isn't exactly about "free" transit, but it's about less expensive transit, and it kind of makes sense.

Here is what the TTC should do instead of killing the two-hour transfer on St. Clair

Quote:

On St. Clair, the TTC has been in the midst of a semi-permanent pilot project for the past dozen years where different rules apply: instead of covering a single trip in a single direction, a transfer is good for two hours of travel on the St. Clair line. If you live near St. Clair, you can go to the grocery store, do your shopping, and return home, all on the same fare. You can hop off, visit a newsstand, hop back on and then get off at the café, then get back on and go to the subway. Or whatever you like. One fare is good for two hours of travel.

If you hop off the streetcar to grab a newspaper at your favouite newsstand, then hop back on, it's not like it costs the TTC something extra.  It is a bit perverse that you can travel the entire length of the east-west subway line, pretty much from Etobicoke to Scarborough, on one fare, but if you take a two block trip on a bus, get off, then get back on for two more blocks, it costs you two fares.

I'll tell you one genius thing that HSR did:  instead of laying streetcar tracks on the main routes, they use electic buses that are powered by overhead wires.  It's similar to a TTC streetcar, but where the streetcar only needs one wire (the track is effectively the other), HSR buses need two.  They connect to the buses via two telescoping "feelers", which allow the buses to change lanes.

This means that one stalled bus (or car) doesn't mean a whole long lineup of others that can't get past -- just pop the feelers down on the stalled bus and any behind it can just go around.  It also means that Hamilton doesn't have to rip up and replace track every few years like here in Toronto.  A clever solution, IMHO.

Ok I'm going to contribute to this thread through the perspective of China. The reigning king of public transportation!

in my wife's city of Nanning, Guangxi province in the south, a subway line was built. Started a couple years ago and is very long and also goes to the airport!(but not sure if the airport line is complete)

there's also the numerous buses which I hope now aren't so fuckin packed now and you can actually get a seat!

now I'm not sure how the fees work for Nannings subway line, but in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Bangkok(Thailand) they use tokens dispensed at kiosks with a map and u pay by distance travelled. The buses in nanning use the same pay per distance formula so I would imagine the subway will work same way. 

Then there's the hi speed rails that connect the country! This is another jewel in the crown of the Chinese public transit that ties the whole public transit culture together! Right now I believe most if not all major coastal cities from north to south are connected. Tickets for hi speed is cheaper than air flight. And since train stations are located closer to downtown, the slower speed of hi speed rail compared to jet airplanes is offset with quicker boarding times and cheaper cab/bus/subway fairs closer to downtown. And there's still hi speed lines being built as we speak connecting more and more cities into the interior. Now none of this free. But it is significantly cheaper than Canada for sure! I'm adding this because I believe it's foolishly impossible to look at any aspect of public transportation without being fully aware of what's going on in China! And two side notes. There's talk of building tubes for the hi speed rail and creating partial vacuums within so the trains are travelling through less resistance air such as jets at 30k feet. And in Nanning the gas morticycle was banned a few years ago and electric scooters are soooo freakin popular it's not funny! The real zinger is that u can buy a new electric scooter for less than 500 RMB(100$ Canadian)

There should be free public transport everywhere on the island. It may be necessary to prioritise certain groups at the outset, but this should be transitory as an incentive for public transport and disincentive for car use.

Our narrow pre-car streets are a positive, not a negative.

Traffic is always gridlocked on Mont-Royal, from avenue du Parc to the eastern end near Iberville. There is no way to make one-in-a-car traffic functional there. It is also hell for cycling, but I often take a "longcut" up to Gilford or down to Marie-Anne or Rachel. Before Richard Bergeron sold out, I thought he was dead right about a tram along Mt-Royal, and limited hours for deliveries to shops (this exists in other cities). It is also possible to have "small freight" cars on trams for deliveries.

It also means a saving on enforcement of fare payment. There could still be some form of "police" on transport vehicles, but they could be devoted more to ensuring the peace and also helping people in difficulty. In many places the transport authority police have a reputation for singling out visible minority youth and those who look like "street people". This could mean a more socially positive role.

It would also make it much easier for people on low incomes and/or limited mobility to shop, take part in cultural activities and appointments. Many people find it difficult to go to a library, for example, in the winter cold.

epaulo13 wrote:

..further to what lagatta is saying...several cities and towns that have free transit experience the financial cost being near equal to the cost of collecting fares. not quite equal but more to the point, not requiring a huge injection of capital. 

I once did this math for Ottawa which is a very car-friendly city with increasing difficulty managing traffic in the small downtown.

Fare collection is profitable -- in other words free transit would not be revenue neutral. However, the cost of an affordable levy on all cars plated in the city would cover this shortfall easily. Those driving cars would be given an incentive to use public transit since it would be free for them just like anyone else. Leaving aside the benefit for those without a car, drivers gaining free transit for a small annual fee would come out ahead. The fact that they would finance transit for everyone is compelling.

Public transit systems can be financed by the addition of a sticker on cars plated within the city. Enforcement is easy since the technology to tell if a car is plated within the city or not is already there. $350/year per car in Ottawa was enough to cover the entire cost of transit at the time I looked. The investment would also benefit tourism and business as more people could move freely. It would have benefits to the environment, save on road repair and construction and reduce pressure for more parking. The social benefits are significant with respect to the mobility of people who have marginal incomes.

I do not think there is any reason at this time for municipalities to take a significantly increased position in subsidizing public transit when cars travel the roads without increased taxation. There is little as far as a credible arguement to suggest that those driving a car cannot bear an increased $350 per year when they can save by not using their cars and taking advantage of the free transit. The tax is quite small compared to the other costs of driving.

We cannot assume that free transit would not increase the total cost of transit in a city so you cannot just assume that taking the cost of fare collection away would work within an existing model of transit cost assumptions. It would be expected to increase ridership and expense. We would want this. This is why any model where you make transit free would require something like a registration cost for cars in order to provide the additional revenue needed by the transit system. However, there is nothing wrong with this approach and the amounts are not prohibitive.

I really wish we could head in this direction.

I have a car myself and would welcome an annual fee in exchange for the many times I could leave my car at home and take public transit.

All present efforts seem directed to replacing having a car which will not work for many people. We need a model whereby those with cars have an incentive to use them less if you want to make a major difference. This is why having car owners pay into the system once a year in exchange for free transit is better than trying to make them give up the car altogether. those people will increasingly use their cars more sparingly enjoying the free transit as do their fellow residents.

cco wrote:

Well, you can start with the farebox recovery ratio. You'd have to drill down into individual agency operating budgets in detail to find out how much collection and enforcement cost, though, and having tried that last year, I can attest that those budgets are opaque as hell. In my more cynical moments, I'd say that transit agencies are happier when the public (and politicians who vote on their budgets) can't easily determine which part of their budget goes where.

It has been a few years but I had the numbers of Ottawa. At that time they were not that close and required $350 from every car owner in the city to balance. With the two together it worked, however.

lagatta4 wrote:

If car owners eventually use their cars less and less  (for "major" shopping and excursions outside the city) eventually that could encourage them to abandon car ownership and opt for carshare schemes.

Indeed. But the first step is to have drivers finance the public transit system.

Quote:

If transit fares were eliminated, the demand for transit would greatly increase and this in turn would require spending much more on new buses, LRT's, subways, transit operators, mechanics, etc...

I live in Toronto, so I'll use the TTC for my example.  A trip to work costs $3.25, cash, and the trip home the same.

If someone chooses to drive their car to work, rather than take transit, I have my doubts that it's because the cost of buying, fuelling, maintaining, insuring and parking that car works out to less than $6.50 per day.  So there must be something else.  Do you think we could talk about that something else?  Including what public transit is doing to address that something else?

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..further to what lagatta is saying...several cities and towns that have free transit experience the financial cost being near equal to the cost of collecting fares. not quite equal but more to the point, not requiring a huge injection of capital. 

I once did this math for Ottawa which is a very car-friendly city with increasing difficulty managing traffic in the small downtown.

Fare collection is profitable -- in other words free transit would not be revenue neutral. However, the cost of an affordable levy on all cars plated in the city would cover this shortfall easily. Those driving cars would be given an incentive to use public transit since it would be free for them just like anyone else. Leaving aside the benefit for those without a car, drivers gaining free transit for a small annual fee would come out ahead. The fact that they would finance transit for everyone is compelling.

Public transit systems can be financed by the addition of a sticker on cars plated within the city. Enforcement is easy since the technology to tell if a car is plated within the city or not is already there. $350/year per car in Ottawa was enough to cover the entire cost of transit at the time I looked. The investment would also benefit tourism and business as more people could move freely. It would have benefits to the environment, save on road repair and construction and reduce pressure for more parking. The social benefits are significant with respect to the mobility of people who have marginal incomes.

I do not think there is any reason at this time for municipalities to take a significantly increased position in subsidizing public transit when cars travel the roads without increased taxation. There is little as far as a credible arguement to suggest that those driving a car cannot bear an increased $350 per year when they can save by not using their cars and taking advantage of the free transit. The tax is quite small compared to the other costs of driving.

We cannot assume that free transit would not increase the total cost of transit in a city so you cannot just assume that taking the cost of fare collection away would work within an existing model of transit cost assumptions. It would be expected to increase ridership and expense. We would want this. This is why any model where you make transit free would require something like a registration cost for cars in order to provide the additional revenue needed by the transit system. However, there is nothing wrong with this approach and the amounts are not prohibitive.

I really wish we could head in this direction.

I have a car myself and would welcome an annual fee in exchange for the many times I could leave my car at home and take public transit.

All present efforts seem directed to replacing having a car which will not work for many people. We need a model whereby those with cars have an incentive to use them less if you want to make a major difference. This is why having car owners pay into the system once a year in exchange for free transit is better than trying to make them give up the car altogether. those people will increasingly use their cars more sparingly enjoying the free transit as do their fellow residents.

Anyone who lives in Ottawa and has to drive a car around it on a regular basis has my condolences.

The issues with each city are quite different.

I cannot with any authority speak to the situation in other cities although I have some awareness of how Ottawa is different than some of them.

Ottawa has a compact downtown. The logistics of getting there depend on where you live. If you are in Kanata or Orleans, I suspect that you can get downtown faster by bus on the transitway than you can drive. I know that if you are out of Toronto the same is true. So people in these areas are encouraged to use transit to save time.

If you live south, and not near the transitway things are much more difficult. It would take me more than double the time to take transit as it woudl be to drive. This leads to different calculations than cost alone.

Ottawa transit is designed to get people downtown in the morning and out in the afternoon. If you are going any direction or to any location other than this, things are difficult.

So in moving people to transit you have several considerations:

1) Cost -- and this is divided into two: cost if you can replace your private transportation with public only and running cost if you use public transit when you already have a car at home.

All the discussion on cost that I see from the propagandists relates to how much you can save if you do away with the car. If you need to have a car for any reason (as I do) then this does not apply. The costs quickly move against you if you are trying to use your car less and combine the two. Public policy here tends to be inefficient and inconsistent. If you want to move people to public transit you need to get them on it while they have a car and build up a sense that they can rely on it. So the first step is to make a case for drivers to use the system. The city has terrible issues with parking  in the tiny downtown, gridlock, road construction and danger for cyclists who live close to downtown. It spends a great deal on mitigation in the downtown but does not manage connections to transit. If you are out of downtown you need one of two things: routes that are reasonable from your home or parking that is reasonable at the main transitway stations. Ottawa has niether. If you want people to stop taking their cars downtown in Ottawa you do three things: 1) Build large areas for parking at the stations outside of downtown so people can get from where there is no good transit and then get on at park and rides. Presently there is insufficient parking in these lots. 2) You make this parking free so people are encouraged to hook in there. Presently monthly rates are so high that it makes little sense to not keep going 3) You remove daily maximum rates at downtown lots in order to make parking reasonable for meetings and people doing business downtown but more costly for people commuting and parking all day. An increase in parking rates downtown can fund a reduction in revenue from rates at transit lots. Transit lots are for people already paying to use the system and there is no need to charge them to use the system and then again for parking if their home is not serviced with good enough connecting routes to go from there. 4) It is high time public transit gets financed by car users so starting to introduce an annual fee on cars plated in the city should begin. I prefer to go all the way and finance public transit completely in this way and remove all fare collection but we could start with a $50/year levy and a reduction in fares or at least a levy to cover the costs of parking at the suburban transit stations.

Instead of fighting those who live outside the city centre, many who do so becuase they cannot afford to live downtown (if you have a family you are not fitting in a bachelor pad), work with them and give them a rational path to using transit rather than one that is punative without resolving the issues.

2) Time -- this is also divided into two: Time on the trip and time you can schedule trips.

At present Ottawa offers a good time option for transit East-West along the transitway but a poor offering as soon as you are off of it. Without the parking mentioned above where people can drive to efficient points, the transit offering is unattractive to many. The city has to invest in having enough out of hours transit to accomodate the needs of people moving outside or against rush hour if they want people not to use cars.

Ottawa is investing in the LRT which should make the commutes faster which should help this issue but again only along those routes. Without an adequate feeder system and or parking the transit will only be meaningful for those with access to the stations.

3) Connections -- is there a reasonable route with public transit from where you are to where you need to go. You have to figure out the amenities for each community and have rational routes for people to get there.

Where I live there is no bus to the closest grocery store which is about 4km away. There is no reason why there is no route from my community in that direction. We are forced to go the long way around and it would take an hour to get there by bus. The city has many situations like this. (For those who know Ottawa, the example is that there are no buses that go up Conroy and then down Walkley connecting into the transit station at Billings. Food Basics is on Walkley. Everyone in my community has to take a route either to Elmvale which is north East or to South Keys which is South West. No route to the North West is available even though that is a busy direction with many wanting to go there and excellent road that could accomodate. These roads have buses on them they just turn around and do not go there.

This is just one example and there are many. I present this in case people want to look on a map for an illustration.

For now Ottawa is jacking the parking downtown, building service to certain stations and ignoring the rest of the problem. This means people will keep their cars if they cannot afford to live near good transit.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

That said, "zone" fares might make some sense.  Why should it cost exactly the same to travel 11km and to travel 200m (one stop)?

Well, the metro train is going the same distance whether I ride it one stop (as I often do, having mild mobility issues) or end-to-end. With the shorter distances, the competition isn't driving, it's walking. What zone fares do in practice is penalize people who live or work farther from downtown, and while some of those (typically the most likely to drive and the least likely to use transit) are big-house-owning affluent suburbanites, others are poor working-class people who can't afford to live close to where they work.

I have a friend who lives on the South Shore, which in addition to having a different bus agency has its one and only metro station in a different fare zone. It used to be accessible with a Montréal monthly pass, but then the extension to Laval opened and cost more, and when the Lavallois complained that they were being treated unfairly, the STM decided to hike the Longueuil price as well. So while our monthly passes could get us to either tip of Montréal Island without paying a cent extra, when we make the far shorter round-trip to Saint-Lambert, we're $19 out of pocket. That's how zone fares work in practice. They turn municipal borders one could cross easily in a car into fiscal barriers for transit users.

This is the problem with using the price mechanism for provision of social services. My week in the hospital prevents seven other people from spending the night in that room (if they space out their injuries carefully), but Canadians have decided that health care should be allocated based on individual need, not equal time allocation. Similarly, when it comes to transit fares, people are coming up with solutions based on conflicting inputs: what's an equitable share of the cost of operation and expansion, what's "frivolous" versus "worthy" when it comes to trips, how to set the fare to discourage suburbanites from overburdening the system, whether higher-income people should be prioritized to get them out of cars, and so forth.

Since this thread is about free and accessible transit, and since I believe in free and accessible transit, I'd say the actual question is: What's it worth to provide the ability for everyone in the metropolitan area to get where they want to go without driving, whether that's because they can't afford a car, they don't want the hassle of parking, or the use of private cars is leading to an environmental apocalypse? To me, that's worth a lot, including removing fares.

Not everyone agrees. At a meeting with some NDP types a few months back, my bringing up free transit was met with the effective response "Poor people take transit because they have no alternative, so eliminating fares won't encourage higher transit use." I was rather dismayed at that answer; if someone's so poor they live in a low-income suburb and take transit out of necessity, wouldn't an extra $1500/year in disposable income help them a great deal?

WWWTT wrote:

This thread is titled wrong. Or everyone commenting here is engaged in slight thread drift. 

Let me explain. Title of thread is free and accessible transit right. But everyone seems concerned only with LOCAL transit? What about commuting from Hamilton to downtown TO? Or Peterborough to downtown TO. Or the equivalent for other Canadian cities. 

As well, what about Toronto to Montreal? Does free and/or transit debate apply with these longer commutes? And if not, than why?

I think this is an important part of the debate and can not be brushed aside. Especially in a large country like Canada (but perhaps the size of Canada is irrelevant?)

I believe transit cannot be pulled apart in terms of distance and addressed in separate parts, ignoring long distance travel. 

 

Excellent point. When it comes to getting cars ofthe road in some cases critical. I agree.