Fare-Free Transit

[DanPatchToget]

I felt this topic deserved its own thread since I think there's at least a couple transit systems around the country that have gone completely fare-free, and Metro Transit's route 32 and 62 are fare-free until December 31, 2024. https://www.metrotransit.org/free-fare-routes

In Luxembourg their transit is fare-free, so you simply hop on and hop off the bus, light rail, or commuter train. I went there in May and it was really nice not having to figure out the fare system like I have to do for every other city I've visited, and I felt a lot more confident and comfortable using transit than I would visiting a city where you have to pay a fare (especially if the fare system is complicated). It got me thinking about how much revenue our public transit operators (Metro Transit, the suburban opt-outs, etc.) make, and how much does it cost to install and maintain ticket vending machines plus paying staff to check tickets.

As long as it wouldn't mean reducing service, I'd support fare-free transit in the Twin Cities. While this doesn't necessarily improve service (e.g. more frequent buses and trains), it would make our transit system much easier to use, entice people to take transit over driving, and benefit people who struggle to pay for transportation.

[Nick]

Do you take the train a lot here?

[DanPatchToget]

Occasionally I use the Blue Line, rarely the Green Line, and I haven't used Northstar in a long time.

[Silophant]

In 2019, Metro Transit took in about 26% of its operating budget in fares. I haven't seen a breakdown on how much it costs to maintain TVMs, etc, but I'm reasonably sure it's not anywhere near $110M a year. Hard to see how losing a quarter of their operating budget wouldn't result in pretty severe service cuts.

Anecdotally (I'm not a regular rider, I just live nearby), the Rt. 32 going fare-free has not led to the buses being noticeably fuller. No doubt it's a benefit for regular riders, and I'll be interested to see actual ridership data from this pilot, but it doesn't seem like it's enticing all that many people onto the bus.

[DanPatchToget]

This shows fare revenue covered 9.8% of operating expenses in 2022. https://www.metrotransit.org/metro-transit-facts

I don't think there will be a noticeable uptick in ridership when only two routes are offered fare-free, whereas in autumn 2021 when Metro Transit and the opt-outs reduced fares to just $1 for all local, express, Metro, and Northstar service there was a noticeable uptick in ridership.

[Vagueperson]

I agree that two routes being fare free is hard to notice. It's when it's system-wide that it would cause a significant shift in behavior.
It's funny to read this right after reading a MnPost article on increasing fare checks: https://www.minnpost.com/metro/2023/09/ ... forcement/

One possibility is that this would cause our system to be even more of a homeless shelter.
Another possibility is that there is a sea change and increased ridership counterbalances the bad behavior.

Increased ridership, however, would not cause increased revenue. In contrast, I would expect it to increase various costs. Where is the political will to increase costs without increasing revenue? If positive public opinion would lead to that political will it seems like a chicken and egg thing. Right now it appears public opinion is very low.

[twincitizen]

In 2019, Metro Transit took in about 26% of its operating budget in fares. I haven't seen a breakdown on how much it costs to maintain TVMs, etc, but I'm reasonably sure it's not anywhere near $110M a year. Hard to see how losing a quarter of their operating budget wouldn't result in pretty severe service cuts.

Anecdotally (I'm not a regular rider, I just live nearby), the Rt. 32 going fare-free has not led to the buses being noticeably fuller. No doubt it's a benefit for regular riders, and I'll be interested to see actual ridership data from this pilot, but it doesn't seem like it's enticing all that many people onto the bus.

With the 32 being a crosstown route, I'd guess it has a very high percentage of its riders transferring to/from other routes that still require a fare. Unless they somehow worked it out that by tapping your GoTo card on a 32 bus results in free transfers within 2.5 hours, which would be a smart thing to do as part of the study.

[Silophant]

That's a good point. Looked it up, and it appears that they specifically do not provide transfers. Maybe that's part of the study, to see how it affects the crosstown 32 vs the downtown-bound 62?

[J. Mc]

Routes 120, 121, 122, 123, 124 are fare free as well FWIW

As a regular transit rider I have no issue paying fares, in my case it's a better deal than driving, and riding the bus to work vs driving only adds about 5 minutes to the trip typically. If the fare was free but that meant buses were regularly full and more delayed/unreliable due to heavier ridership then I would likely drive instead.

Melbourne has their free tram zone in the city centre and one common issue brought up with that is it slows service down and leads to delays. The typical rider in the centre zone is just going a stop or two because it's free. They could just walk instead but why not save a few steps.

Kansas City ATA made service fare free through 2023. According to some KCMO fellow transit nerds however their systemwide service is dismal compared to pre-C-19. This is in part due to chronic driver shortages. Very hard to attract and keep drivers as they don't want to deal with the abuse, disrespect, etc. from riders who can just hop on for free and behave like animals. They have also majorly trimmed back service over the last few years. ProspectMAX runs a 15 minute frequency M-Sa. The other rapid bus services run 20 minute frequency. (MainMAX service ends at 7pm too) The remaining local routes are every 30 or every 45 or 60. This is a major improvement however over 2022 when most service ran every 60 minutes. Overall ridership appears to be down compared to 2019 when fares were charged, however it has been on an upswing year over year. Monthly ridership and performance data reports can be viewed here:
https://ridekc.org/planning/dashboard
It will be interesting to see if they continue to operate fare free after this year or resume charging fares in 2024.

[DanPatchToget]

I suppose service could be delayed by high ridership, though to be honest that seems like a nice problem to have compared to lack of ridership that we and pretty much every other American city deal with. I feel like it would need to be crush loads for service to be delayed, and delays are more likely to happen from people paying the fare whether it's trying to find exact change, the card reader isn't working (that's happened to me several times), or someone will argue that their ticket should be honored even though it's expired or trying to avoid paying extra for the rush hour fare.

[Tom H.]

The political problem with fare-free seems to be: it incurs additional *direct* operational costs to accommodate increased demand, while all of its offsetting benefits are largely intangible or are recognized in other travel modes (e.g., reduced car traffic, reduced need for expensive car infrastructure, improved mobility for low-income persons, reduced emissions, improved safety). When viewed from a global/societal perspective, I'm sure it's a net positive, but it is a net negative on the transit system P&L, which anti-transit types would surely jump on to argue against it.

[thespeedmccool]

My biggest concern is that free fare eliminates the one barrier to entry for our transit system. Not that I'm obsessed with excluding lower-income people or something, but there's something to be said for the fact that systems with fare gates tend to, at a minimum, make people feel safer and therefore more willing to take transit. Anecdotally, I can't help but feel that systems with fare gates are also actually safer, but I don't know how large that effect might be.

On the other hand, I think there's a legitimate imperative to get as many people taking transit as possible, and to lower the barriers of entry for low-income people. I favor a system where riders might buy/renew a "transit license" annually for $30-$50, possibly as a check mark or otherwise on driver's licenses, an individual pass, or both. This lowers the cost of riding transit overall without completely eliminating the pro-social effects of having a fee system, plus it gives transit ambassadors something to revoke for bad behavior. Basically, think a Metro card but with an ID photo and a 20-question test to acquire it.

[Korh]

I'm not against fare free transit in some cases but I think it would only have a marginal increase in ridership if metro transit implemented it system wide in its current state.
I don't think the main barrier preventing people from hoping on the bus is the price of a ticket, heck I think it's rather low tbh. but rather:
Lack of service; we really should have more 15 min routes by now
Unreliability: being 5 minutes late is usually fine unless it causes you to miss a transfer or 3
Awkward stops; getting better but some stops are still a bit of a walk from anything
Clumsy payment methods; people have already complained when the card reader and ticket machine breaks but the app isn't really that much better
"Unsafe" environment; over blown fear mongering or not if there is even a slight perception of this normies will avoid it.

A good question for everyone here is should something like that state fair shuttle busses be free instead of costing 5 bucks a person. I personally would say no cause it can already be a pain with overcrowding, I can only imagine how bad it would be if it was free.

[Vagueperson]

Lack of service; we really should have more 15 min routes by now
Unreliability: being 5 minutes late is usually fine unless it causes you to miss a transfer or 3
Awkward stops; getting better but some stops are still a bit of a walk from anything
Clumsy payment methods; people have already complained when the card reader and ticket machine breaks but the app isn't really that much better
"Unsafe" environment; over blown fear mongering or not if there is even a slight perception of this normies will avoid it.

I think free transit would make it worse for most of these issues.
There's no reason to think we would get higher frequency because higher ridership does not lead to higher revenue to pay for drivers and buses.
Unreliability would be increased with more unpredictable behaviors.
Even for the awkward stops - most riders means more stops.
Unsafe environment would be increased in theory if not in practice.

The only thing improved is the clumsy payment method.

[xandrex]

A good question for everyone here is should something like that state fair shuttle busses be free instead of costing 5 bucks a person. I personally would say no cause it can already be a pain with overcrowding, I can only imagine how bad it would be if it was free.

I don't think fare-free transit is the panacea to our transit woes - I think it would probably make many aspects worse. But specifically with state fair buses - we already have a fare-free model in place for that. The state fair runs 30ish park and rides with free parking and a free ride to the fair. Are those any more crowded than the A Line or 3? My experience with the A Line was that it was crush load. When I've taken the park and rides, they load them until they're full and then go.

[Tom H.]

It is interesting to me how many of these arguments can be directly translated from the "is fare-free transit a good idea?" debate to the "are toll-free highways a good idea?" debate. I imagine that most of our knee-jerk reactions (including myself) would put us on a different side of each debate, despite the logic being nearly identical.

[amiller92]

It is interesting to me how many of these arguments can be directly translated from the "is fare-free transit a good idea?" debate to the "are toll-free highways a good idea?" debate. I imagine that most of our knee-jerk reactions (including myself) would put us on a different side of each debate, despite the logic being nearly identical.

I don't follow. Subsidizing car travel has significant negative externalities. What are the negative externalities of subsidizing transit use?

[Tom H.]

That's a fair point - I was more arguing from the perspective of quality of service / rationing of scarce resources. The externalities of each clearly point in opposite directions.

My point was that in the absence of pricing mechanisms, public goods (be it highway lanes, parking spaces, or transit capacity) will be allocated via rationing instead. This is the same phenomenon that leads to car users to clamor for "more parking" and "add highway lanes". Applying it to transit would result in a similar pressure to increase transit capacity. I'm obviously in support of that, and adding transit capacity is hugely preferable to adding lanes and parking lots, but I'm not sure we have the funding or political capital to follow up on that increased transit capacity demand.

I guess my point is that the real benefits of free transit can't be realized without a corresponding significant investment in increased transit capacity. You need both *simultaneously* for fare-free transit to be a success. (This is the same reason that free highways are so "successful" - the firehose of funds that support unlimited highway expansion.)

[BoredAgain]

I think the counter argument is that highway users do pay fees in the form of fuel taxes. They (actually we) also pay for cars and trucks to access the facility. Cars aren't free and neither is operating them. We just aren't paying for direct access. Free transit also wouldn't be free, it would just be payed for in other ways.

This argument of course does not deal with the negative externalities mentioned above.

[DanPatchToget]

My biggest concern is that free fare eliminates the one barrier to entry for our transit system. Not that I'm obsessed with excluding lower-income people or something, but there's something to be said for the fact that systems with fare gates tend to, at a minimum, make people feel safer and therefore more willing to take transit. Anecdotally, I can't help but feel that systems with fare gates are also actually safer, but I don't know how large that effect might be.

On the other hand, I think there's a legitimate imperative to get as many people taking transit as possible, and to lower the barriers of entry for low-income people. I favor a system where riders might buy/renew a "transit license" annually for $30-$50, possibly as a check mark or otherwise on driver's licenses, an individual pass, or both. This lowers the cost of riding transit overall without completely eliminating the pro-social effects of having a fee system, plus it gives transit ambassadors something to revoke for bad behavior. Basically, think a Metro card but with an ID photo and a 20-question test to acquire it.

Having used NYC's subway, San Francisco's BART, and the two subway lines in Los Angeles, I don't think turnstiles make a transit system safer. Turnstiles just make transit more difficult to use, and I strongly oppose trying it anywhere in the Twin Cities.

I'll try to keep this philosophical rant short, but what makes a transit system safe is a healthy (mentally, physically, financially, etc.) society, which in my honest opinion the USA severely lacks compared to what I've seen in other countries. That's not to say other countries are perfect, but there's more importance on being respectful whereas in the USA we lean much more towards selfishness, which I think has gotten much worse since the pandemic. This also applies to other aspects of everyday life. To make transit safer in the USA will require changes to our culture that for now I don't think we're capable of doing.

Getting back more on topic, eliminating fares would of course require a lot of studying to see the potential impacts to service and how revenue would be generated to offset the loss of fare revenue. I'd like to visit more places where some or all of the transit system is fare-free, as well as read up on what positive and negative impacts there have been. Pre-pandemic I used to be against fare-free transit in the Twin Cities because I believed service would be even worse than it already was, and after the fare increase in 2017(?) I assumed/hoped service would get better, but in reality I don't think it has (yes the ABRT/BRT system is expanding, but it seems to be robbing Peter to pay Paul in the form of bus drivers). There's several factors that caused this like the pandemic, but to me the main issue is funding. I'm stating the obvious but our transit system needs more funding from reliable sources to get better, and I question partly relying on fare revenue to make our transit system better.