Is Free Bus Fare a Good Idea?
Someone should remind Michael Bloomberg that free does not always mean free lunches.
In order to speed up the pace of Manhattan’s famously slow crosstown buses, mayor Bloomberg suggested eliminating the $2.25 fare on a few of the buses, as it would put an end to all the time passengers spend fumbling for their MetroCard and cash at the bus door. It would mean free bus rides for all, but without much additional cost to the city, he reasoned, since the majority of crosstown passengers are already riding for free, using their MetroCards to transfer from the subway. If we aren’t charging folks anyway, it’s not a big money loss, is the gist of his claim.
In short: win-win.
Except, there’s a flaw to his argument. If bus fare falls to zero, it’s likely that more people (many more people) will start riding the bus, which will lead to even worse congestion and potentially require the city to spend on introducing more buses.
In other words, mayor Bloomberg is harboring under the assumption that demand for the cross town bus will not change as the price drops. In all likelihood, however, the number of bus-riders will go up dramatically because free is exciting. In fact, according to our research on free, such a change will cause many people who now walk a few blocks, to switch their ways and hop on the free bus.
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I should say that it has already hapened, and not for a single bus line, in Belgium.
A whole city, decided to make the complete public transportation system free. More information in the following link:
http://postcarboncities.net/node/415
I remember that this was tried once in Rome, Italy, and it did not work well, exactly for the reason you brought.
But if ridership increases, won’t that pull cars/taxis off the street? I imagine a bus can put more people in a given length of street that the equivalent car/taxi. Fewer vehicles operating should increase the traffic flow as long as the buses don’t have to wait too long before continuing to move.
Because of the increased ridership more buses will be added giving a further incentive to use the bus: more buses mean lower wait times between buses and it is free too (free is good)!
However, I think you might end up with a Braess’s Paradox problem as the less congested road, because of the buses, becomes a better option for the others who are still driving. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess's_paradox)
In most of Europe, there are machines selling tickets outside the buses, by the sidewalk. And you can get into the bus in any door, making it faster to get in and get out from buses.
Although major Bloomberg likes to say it won’t cost extra, that’s not the real criteria: a better balanced city budget is.
More riders mean more bus, hence more frequent buses and a far more efficient system; including the delay saved by not paying, that should have a visible impact.
Given how expensive lkeeping a car in NY is, I doubt any car owner would feel like taking the bus, even less so when homeless people hop in. I’m not sure all taxi-hopers would value the savings, although more frequent bus might encourage a lower adoption for the lower end of taxi-users. From the driver point of view though, investing in a taxi is a long term decision, while spending extra hours roaming to find some work is a daily attempt: less customers would mean more taxis looking for them — all in all, I’m seeing more buses, more cabs and more congestion.
Some tube riders might consider canceling their Metrocard, too, so the city would loose there (private operators even out their revenues thanks to City subsidies). Both ends of the budget seem to go in the wrong direction.
I do beleive it is a good idea, but if congestion is the issue, lowering privates cars and cabs is the relevant measure, i.e. allowing helicopters or luxury cabs would be more efficient.
If the issue is to have fitter NYers, then convenient, cheap bike rentals would help. Allowing biker to hang their bikes on hooks the end of buses would encourage them to bike even when they have a long commute. Impaling bike thieves and careless car drivers would be the most efficient policy, but might not go so well with international relations.
The issue here is that Major Bloomberg hates waiting behind a clumsy granny who can’t find her Metrocard: strong(er) RFID pass might solve that — but I like his low-tech solution too, in spite of all the likely negative consequence. It simply needs to come with stronger measures to prevent retiring taxi drivers to sell their licence.
Consider that there will be an initial increase in demand due to the excitement of something for nothing, however over time, as people realize little utility from “free” due to increased travel time, over crowding and the like, they will revert to previous efficient mode of transportation, creating a new equilibrium not far from the previous.
There is also no allowance for the “New York mindset”…that is a preference for cabs over buses if you are to believe the media.
Portland OR already does this. All forms of travel within the central city zone are free. It means more patronage of the businesses and less money spent on things like car parks.
This involves the assumption that there is some great untapped pool of people who never go anywhere, except on foot or by cab/towncar, would start using the bus crosstown if the cost fell to zero. It is kind of hard to get to that part of manhattan in the first place without either coming via transit or being the kind of person who would not be caught dead on the bus.
If you got there you pretty much have a transfer to get away from there.
I take cabs across town because the bus is so damn slow. I’d gladly pay $4.00 for the bus if it didn’t take 5 minutes at every stop for people to dip their metro cards. Yes, crosstown ridership will increase, but not because of the price reduction, but rather the speed increase. Making the cross-town buses faster make the whole system better, and could result in more total revenue.
Why not just make it free during peak periods.
I’ve wondered about this myself. The cost of public transport, like many things, is around handling peak loads. Bus service must be built to provide decent service at the peak commute times of 7-9am and 4-6pm.
Outside of peak hours, the buses still exist, bus drivers are still on shift, and the buses still run. But those costs would have to be endured anyway. At non-peak time, the marginal cost of taking on a rider is near zero (perhaps a very small increase in fuel consumption from higher weight).
So, what would seem to make sense is charging a nominal fee for bus service during non-peak times (e.g. $0.25) and a high fee for bus service during peak times (e.g. $3.00).
Does anyone know of any city doing this? And, if so, their experience with it?
Hello everyone!
this post reminds me of the case of the public transportation system in Curitiba, Brazil. You can find an interesting description of it in the chapter of Natural Capitalism. Basically the mayor (who happened to be an ex-architect) treated the city as one giant design problem thus avoiding falling into the “Law of unintended consequence” trap.
This way he was able to redesign a fairly dense urban area and make the transit system self-sustainable. Does anyone know if any U.S. cities have a self-sustained transit system (no subsidies or any other forms of outside funding)?
http://www.natcap.org/sitepages/pid67.php
What you call a flaw is actually a bonus. As one comment points out, more people on the bus means fewer on the street. As for Braess’ paradox, as drivers come to the crosstown streets, simply respond by making more bus routes free.
The reason everyone has a “problem” with fare-free buses is the dirty secret that the auto system, [a private profit based system] is heavily subsidized. The road-fuel taxes don’t even scratch the surface of the $trillions in externalities of the auto system, not the least of which is the cost to commerce of congestion.
There’s a substantial body of empirical evidence that allows for fairly robust predictions of the extent to which free buses will (i) attract riders because of fare savings, (ii) attract riders because of time saving, and (iii) operate faster because card-fumbling and -swiping have been eliminated.
I’ve assembled this evidence as part of an intricate but user-friendly (and downloadable) spreadsheet called the Balanced Transportation Analyzer. I summarized it last week in a post on Streetsblog. My conclusion is that the improvement in bus speeds will slightly more than offset the increased ridership, thus allowing “today”‘s buses to carry the increased load.
This argument seems very rational.
There was this debate also about wether Mosquito Net should be given for free or sold at an affordable price.
many economist argued that if it where for free, people would not care about the net, or use it for different usages.
Though, this has been proven false:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2007/pr43/en/index.html
His argument is a false dichotomy: he assumes there are two alternatives to choose from, namely 1) check every passenger at the door 2) free. There are numerous other solutions, of which the most obvious one is to transition to an honor system. This would make it essentially free (since no one will check the fare), but keep some or much of the social effect of non-free.
My perception of buses: crowded, full of sweaty, smelly people, slow, cheap.So for all the above reasons, I prefer the taxi or just walking if thats doable. If the bus fare is zero or not, I dont care. I would not want to ride the bus no matter what.
In Porto Alegre, Brasil, the buses are set up as follows:
* You can only enter through the front door
* you can only exit through the rear door
* the pay station (with a turnstile) is located in the middle of the bus
So at the stop, everyone just gets on, and the bus is moving again quickly. The payment process takes place while the bus is moving and people move from the front of the bus to the back.
I recently moved to Vienna, Austria, and I discovered that the public transportation system is operated on an honor system. Has any research been done on this? The fine for not having a valid ticket far exceeds the cost of a monthly pass, but it seems that one could travel for weeks without encountering a checkpoint. I wonder how many people ride without tickets? Does the money made from the fines exceed the amount lost from people cheating the system? How many of the fines are given to tourists who honestly don’t know they have to validate their purchased tickets?
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In Perth, Western Australia, public transport (bus, train, ferry) is free for seniors (over 65) only during off peak times. I think this is a good balance as those over 65 are also likely not to be able to work very far due to reduced mobility.
Online tickets booking enables people to do a quick reservation if there is an emergency. Since bus tickets booking can be done online from any place and at any time, many bus tickets booking portals have come up and they offer various options and great deals on the ticket rates.
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