Put another nickel in
I noticed yesterday the big news
about the Toronto public transit fare hike. This massive hike that
caused such big headlines on the newspaper turned out to be an extra
quarter for the price of a single ticket and an extra dime to the price
of a token when bought in a ten-pack. So the whole big ballyhoo and
hoolaballoo turned out to be much ado about nothing, really.
Even for twice the price, public transit would be a superb deal compared to how much it would cost to drive and maintain a car. Including these raises, the absolute maximum of what my monthly commuting can possibly cost is approximately $165, which is how much the GTA passes (that allow free travel in all Greater Toronto Area transit systems) cost in a month. I doubt that you could even park your car for very long in the city for that price, let alone making car payments, gas, maintenance, insurance and other costs. So I think that we'll continue to live happily carfree for now, thank you, since the monthly rent that we get from our two parking spots almost covers the cost of our monthly commuting. Since my wife works three blocks away from where we live, she doesn't really need to commute at all. Ah, comforts of a big city!
I wonder if anyone out there is more pro-public transit and anti-car as I am, especially on this side of the political aisle. I am a pragmatist, though, and understand that many people like to have a car, especially when you have children. And of course, once you pay the big fixed costs of the automobile ownership, it would be downright stupid not to use your car but take the public transit instead. For this reason, the efforts of increasing the use of public transit have been somewhat misaimed, in my opinion. For example, here in Mississauga some representative of the local transit system explained that a good website somehow makes people take the transit more. I guess you have to defend the cost of upgrading the site somehow. The correct strategy would be to somehow identify and reach the commuters on the margin and try to make them give up their cars, and simultaneously ensure that the people on the other side of the margin do not buy a car.
One sometimes sees complaints of the economic inefficiency of public transit, since even in the biggest and busiest cities the transit systems tend to operate at loss. However, one has to remember the massive savings that the transit system gives both to people living in the city and to the city itself, when people don't need to own cars and the city doesn't need to build as many roads, parking and other requirements of automobility. It is perfectly OK for a city to lose even $100M each year, if by doing so it saves it inhabitants a billion dollars. Besides, some road project doesn't have to be that major to end up costing that $100M.
The bottom line simply is that public transit is necessary for the very existence of the city itself. If you do the math that assumes that everyone uses a car to get around and consider the amount of space that a car needs, you end up with a very low maximum population density. This works in a sprawl, but not in any real city. In fact, I kind of wonder what is the biggest and densest city in the modern industrialized world that doesn't have a public transit system. Does there exist a modern industrialized city that has a population of over one million people but has no public transit system of any kind? I can't think of one.
Even for twice the price, public transit would be a superb deal compared to how much it would cost to drive and maintain a car. Including these raises, the absolute maximum of what my monthly commuting can possibly cost is approximately $165, which is how much the GTA passes (that allow free travel in all Greater Toronto Area transit systems) cost in a month. I doubt that you could even park your car for very long in the city for that price, let alone making car payments, gas, maintenance, insurance and other costs. So I think that we'll continue to live happily carfree for now, thank you, since the monthly rent that we get from our two parking spots almost covers the cost of our monthly commuting. Since my wife works three blocks away from where we live, she doesn't really need to commute at all. Ah, comforts of a big city!
I wonder if anyone out there is more pro-public transit and anti-car as I am, especially on this side of the political aisle. I am a pragmatist, though, and understand that many people like to have a car, especially when you have children. And of course, once you pay the big fixed costs of the automobile ownership, it would be downright stupid not to use your car but take the public transit instead. For this reason, the efforts of increasing the use of public transit have been somewhat misaimed, in my opinion. For example, here in Mississauga some representative of the local transit system explained that a good website somehow makes people take the transit more. I guess you have to defend the cost of upgrading the site somehow. The correct strategy would be to somehow identify and reach the commuters on the margin and try to make them give up their cars, and simultaneously ensure that the people on the other side of the margin do not buy a car.
One sometimes sees complaints of the economic inefficiency of public transit, since even in the biggest and busiest cities the transit systems tend to operate at loss. However, one has to remember the massive savings that the transit system gives both to people living in the city and to the city itself, when people don't need to own cars and the city doesn't need to build as many roads, parking and other requirements of automobility. It is perfectly OK for a city to lose even $100M each year, if by doing so it saves it inhabitants a billion dollars. Besides, some road project doesn't have to be that major to end up costing that $100M.
The bottom line simply is that public transit is necessary for the very existence of the city itself. If you do the math that assumes that everyone uses a car to get around and consider the amount of space that a car needs, you end up with a very low maximum population density. This works in a sprawl, but not in any real city. In fact, I kind of wonder what is the biggest and densest city in the modern industrialized world that doesn't have a public transit system. Does there exist a modern industrialized city that has a population of over one million people but has no public transit system of any kind? I can't think of one.
About the bus and websites.
I haven't learned to read the timetables, so when thinking of transporting myself, my mind lacks the tool of reading bus schedules. A website[1] can do the thinking for me and therefore I can take bus traffic into consideration.
There are others who have likewise failed to learn the reading of bus schedules, but are enabled to take advantage of it by that website, thus making bus transportation more popular.
[1] http://www.linjakas.fi/
Posted by Anonymous | 3:41 PM
Oh come on. If you can't read a bus schedule you probably shouldn't leave your house unattended.
Posted by Anonymous | 5:08 PM
big fixed costs of the automobile ownership
Mind the overuse of the definitive article.
Posted by Anonymous | 5:49 PM
A couple of transit advocates way over on the other side of the political aisle are Paul Weyrich and William S. Lind. They run the Free Congress Foundation which is always taking the Bush Administration to task for its leftism, but often makes room for their pro-transit articles.
One point the libertarians always miss is that while rail lines may require great gobs of stolen money, highways need even greater gobs of stolen land. And of course, young progressives rail (excuse the pun) about how transit was dismantled for freeways, without 'fessing up that it was the old progressives who did that!
In Minneapolis/St Paul, a bus-and-rail pass costs $76 for a month, and only $50 if, like me, you don't use it during rush hour. (Actually, I've learned to activate it at 2:59 at the off-peak price, giving me a free transfer until 5:29, or 86% of the afternoon peak time. Sneaky, eh?) US$76 is today Cdn$87, so the Twin Cities are half as costly as Toronto.
Posted by Reg Cæsar | 2:13 AM
"Oh come on. If you can't read a bus schedule you probably shouldn't leave your house unattended."
You do not use public transport very much, do you? It's not so much about reding bus schedules per se, but about knowing all your options on getting from place A (street address, bus stop etc.) to B (street address, bus stop etc.) at a given time. Biological computation just isn't fast enough for that.
Of course, it is possible to learn the most common options along a frequently travelled route by heart, but since a public transport user by definition does not have a car, it makes sense to have an application at your disposal that does the thinking for you for all your transportation needs. You input the start and end location and the departure or arrival time, and the application displays a list of routes, including any transfers, and also tells how long the journey takes on average.
Without an application like that, I too would probably own a car. In fact, I did own one some years ago, but I sold the car and went back to using public transport, because it is so much cheaper and more convenient. In Helsinki, Finland, that is.
Posted by Dyro | 8:25 AM
Ilkka does not offer any sound explanation why it would be efficient for public transport to make losses. If the passengers save so much by using public transport, why cannot they pay for it by fares?
reg says that two wrongs (stolen money for rail lines and highways) make a right. That does not make sense.
Posted by Matti | 9:50 AM
A couple of transit advocates way over on the other side of the political aisle are Paul Weyrich and William S. Lind.
Interesting. I have heard of Weyrich but wouldn't have expected that. On the other hand, many Christians and arch-conservatives often do have a surprisingly left-wing attitude in many economic issues such as transit, aid to third world, personal consumption, protecting the environment etc.
US$76 is today Cdn$87, so the Twin Cities are half as costly as Toronto.
Actually the difference is not quite that dire, since I was talking about the GTA pass, since I live in Mississauga, a city of 600K people sitting next to Toronto, and thus need to use the transit systems in both cities.
In Toronto, the monthly Metropass costs about $90 (CAD) if I remember correctly, and in Mississauga, a weekly pass costs $21.
Posted by Ilkka | 9:56 AM
Ilkka does not offer any sound explanation why it would be efficient for public transport to make losses. If the passengers save so much by using public transport, why cannot they pay for it by fares?
They could, and perhaps indeed they should. But I also believe that if the users of public transit have to pay for all its costs, then the automobile users should similarly pay all of their costs.
The economic argument for an economically efficient public transit system operating at a loss (since the marginal cost of adding the next passenger is so low compared to the benefit of doing so) comes from Osmo Soininvaara, of all people, from one of his earlier books.
(And of course, this implication doesn't work the other way around so that by making the transit system operate at a bigger loss would make it more efficient, in case anybody wants to claim that I am proposing something that absurd.)
Posted by Ilkka | 10:04 AM
Forgot to add: by having an extensive public transit system, the city saves money on road and parking spot and other automobile infrastructure construction. In a big city, I would bet that the money "lost" on transit comes back a couple of times over in savings from not needing to build as much automobile infrastructure.
One of the best left-wing editorial cartoons that I have ever seen had two pictures. In the first picture, there was one bus, and the title "Needless subsidy". In the second picture, there was a big road with lots of cars, and the title said "Necessary investment". Indeed.
Posted by Ilkka | 10:12 AM
GTA = Grand Theft Auto
Posted by Anonymous | 1:23 PM
GTA = Grand Theft Auto
Heh, never noticed that myself. I guess it's been a bit like that with all the gang shootings and street racing going on.
Posted by Ilkka | 1:28 PM
Matti says I endorse two wrongs, but I was merely pointing out an inconsistency in the argument of certain libertarians (who are known to take funds from rent-seeking road builders). Whatever the deficiencies of rail transit, it can boast a century of private-sector operation around the world. Can roads do that, anywhere? This is true not only of North America, but of much of Britain and Europe as well-- though, sorry, I don't have a copy of Jane's handy to check individual cities' cases. In many cases, such as outer-borough New York and suburban London, the railroads built the housing-- or did the developers build the railroad? It's a chicken-and-egg question. (Incidentally, I once dated someone named Matti, and took her on her first city bus ride.)
When I lived in Finland 20 years ago (where I attended a seminar including an Osmo, who I believe was Soininvaara), they joked that Helsinki had only a single rail line so no one could get lost. That's the situation in Minneapolis today.
Missisauga has 600,000 people?! I'm always shocked at these gigantic-yet-invisible US suburbs with a quarter million, such as Torrance, Calif., Aurora Colo., or Warren, Mich. But Missisauga takes the cake-- it's almost as big as Boston, Milwaukee, and Kansas City, or Minneapolis and St Paul together. But the latter is about 2/3 Toronto's metro area, and long ago discarded zone surcharges and unidirectional limits. But maybe you can't do that once you pop three or four million.
Posted by Reg Cæsar | 3:06 PM
I apologize to Mississaugans for mispelling their city. But it does show they need a higher profile-- or at least an easier name, such as Oakville.
For some reason I was not permitted to post the previous with Safari or Internet Explorer, and had to switch to Opera.
Posted by Reg Cæsar | 3:13 PM
Missisauga has 600,000 people?!
Actually, according to Wikipedia page "Mississauga", it is 695,000 these days. Living here, this is easy to believe.
("A bedroom city to Toronto in the truest sense, Mississauga is virtually unknown outside of Ontario." So true.)
Posted by Ilkka | 5:23 PM
Osmo Soininvaara does not see that taxation can cause more inefficiency than his supposed efficient public transport. He and Ilkka only guess that public transport is so efficient that it warrants tax money.
It is not inconsistent for some libertarians to prefer highways that they see as more efficient to railroads. Consistent libertarians can do it and still prefer no tax money being used to transport.
Posted by Matti | 6:58 AM