In Massachusetts, one of our regional transit providers found that eliminating fares:
• Saved time and maintenance
• Lowered rider complaints
• Eliminated conflict between drivers and riders
• Led to 60% higher ridership than pre-pandemic
This is while the nearby MBTA's ridership is down 36%.
@madness832 Fares are often a tiny amount of a transit system's cost. With the MBTA, fare revenue is around 15%, but some of that is lost to the cost of collecting fares (the cost of the machines, electricity to run them, credit card fees, the cost of producing fare cards, the cost of maintaining all those systems working, the cost of staff for technical support, etc).
When fare recovery is such a tiny fraction of revenue and you want to encourage additional ridership (which will lower pollution, congestion, parking demands, road maintenance, etc), fares might not be the best policy.
And fares have hidden costs. If people drive more because of fares, that means more road maintenance costs. If there's more traffic from more drivers, that's people losing time from their lives. Collecting fares can slow boarding on busses requiring more fuel idling and more busses/drivers to service the routes.
In this case, they were getting $1.5M in fares, but got $2M in benefits from eliminating fares so it was a net win.
@madness832 @becomethewaifu In MeVa's case, fare revenue was 9% of their budget and 27% of fare revenue was lost to the cost of collecting the fares.
At that point, fares feel a bit ridiculous. It's such a tiny amount of money while making the system a lot worse for users.
Collecting fares meant passenger boarding time was twice as long making the bus trips worse for customers. The fares were a tiny part of the budget, but a meaningful amount to riders.
And, of course, eliminating fares offered $2M in financial benefits against $1.5M in fares so it was a net win to get rid of them.
The MBTA's fare recovery on busses is actually worse at 6%. We're making the busses slow and charging riders to cover 6%? That feels like such a waste of time and effort - especially since a large portion of that 6% might be lost to the cost of collecting the fares.
@madness832 @becomethewaifu I think one big thing is on the bus-driver side of things. It's hugely improved their morale.
They no longer have to be the fare police. They don't have to hear arguments from riders who don't have the fare or whose transfer didn't work correctly.
It means the MeVa can focus on driver training and safety rather than pushing drivers on fares. It also means that drivers can focus on driving and being happy to passengers.
There's serious benefits in there on the labor side of things where drivers reported vastly improved happiness about their jobs - at a time when it's hard to recruit bus drivers.
Shoshana 🏳️⚧️
Madness832