The Consequences of Free Transit, Part 1: The History of Transit Failure

During the two years preceding the emergence of COVID-19, transit ridership declined by roughly 10 percent each year. Keep in kind that the percentage of poor people (most transit riders among them used to be referred to as “transit-dependent”) increased during this period.

Many members of the public transportation community attributed this decline to a “mode-split” (transit industry jargon) to Uber or Lyft. While they likely accounted for a small bit of this decline in transit ridership, attributing all or most of it to Uber and Lyft is preposterous. I have written often about the reasons for transit’s decline (see https://transalt.com/article/making-public-transportation-work-part-1-alternative-work-schedules/; https://transalt.com/article/making-public-transportation-work-part-2-park-and-ride-lots/; https://transalt.com/article/making-public-transportation-work-part-3-feeder-service/, and https://transalt.com/article/making-public-transportation-work-part-4-system-design-and-networks/).

One year before COVID, Kansas City Regional Transit stopped collecting fares: They were covering only eight percent of operating costs. There was talk that the cost of collecting and processing these fares was greater than the amount collected.

In contrast, the industry was shocked when, a month or so ago, The Washington, D.C. transit system (WMATC) – which has the nation’s second-HIGHEST percentage of its operating costs covered by farebox revenue (25 percent) announced that it would eliminate fares beginning on July 1, 2023. Future installments of posts on this theme will explore various consequences. This one will only deal with the ugly history of U.S. transit service.

In the early 1960s, as urban sprawl from the Defense Highway Act of 1956 thinned out the cities and spread-out transit ridership into the suburbs, most transit systems either died altogether or were reduced to a skeleton of cherry-picked routes. They were rescued in 1964 when President Johnson’s Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA) -- part of the Model Cities Program within the former Department of Housing and Urban Development) -- paid for 80 percent of the buses. And they were further rescued when, in 1967, with the creation of the U.S. Department of Transportation, UMTA paid for a significant part of operating costs. By 1977 – a mere decade later – the average American transit system covered only half of its operating costs from farebox revenues. At the present time, while ridership in most cities has not reached its pre-COVID levels, Los Angeles County’s system (LACMTA) covers only nine percent of its operating costs from farebox revenues. San Francisco’s MUNI covers only 13 percent. And both systems operating in the most dense parts of their metropolitan areas:?Los Angeles County has dozens of “municipal” operators serving the less-dense portions of the County. In the Bay Area, A.C. Transit provides much of the transit in the suburbs.

One must also keep in mind that these percentages are for transit. In paratransit – which every transit agency must also provide – the inefficiency, waste and corruption (particularly as brokers like MTM and ModivCare (formerly LogistiCare) operate in all or part of 45 states has translated into a service which, at its best, may cover a few percent of its operating costs. To be fair, some transit systems do even worse: One line in a New Jersey County transports fewer than one passenger per hour.

Clearly, with Federal funds already covering 80 percent of the vehicles (and other capital costs) and much of these systems’ operating costs, it is unlikely that Today’s Congress will come to the rescue once again as one system after another stops charging fares. U.S. taxpayers are already paying for most of transit. Will they accept the responsibility to pay for all of it???