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Fare-free transit on Whidbey Island is a 20-year success story.
[Editor's note: This is the second in a five-part series funded by you, the readers who donated to a Tyee Fellowship for Solutions-oriented Reporting. To find out more about Tyee Fellowships, click here. To learn more about the series' author, Dave Olsen, go here. Or listen to the audio interview with Olsen by Katherine Gretsinger.]
Have you ever imagined a world where riders of public transit pay no fares, the atmosphere on board every bus is calm and friendly, and all buses not only have bike racks and are wheelchair accessible, but are completely free of advertisements?
Do you want to experience the real thing? Then come along on my visit to Whidbey Island in Northwest Washington State. After all, the journey is half the fun, right?
First, I rode my bike into downtown Vancouver and took TransLink's 351 to White Rock. The fare: $4.50.
Just over an hour later, I got off the bus, got on my bike and rode five kilometres across the border to Blaine's City Hall. Crossing the border was surprisingly easy, despite the non-existent facilities for cyclists (I guess "terrorists" don't ride bikes). After a yummy Mexican-American meal, I was ready for Whatcom County's (WTA) new commuter service.
WTA's 70X bus took me to downtown Bellingham in just less than an hour. The fare: 75 cents.
In Bellingham, I transferred onto a Skagit County bus called the 80X. The fare: 75 cents. Another hour later, I was at Skagit Station in Mt. Vernon, Washington, right beside the train station. Island Transit bus 411W was gleaming in the light as it waited for us to arrive. No advertising anywhere on this immaculately clean shuttle-type bus. The fare: nichts, nada, zilch-o!
Welcome aboard!
The operator was the first of many I would meet who personified Island Transit's philosophy: friendly folks putting people first. Their management team told me that skills such as driving, dispatching, office administering or maintaining vehicles can be learned. But the people skills are the special ones that make their entire system shine.
Island Transit operations manager Frank Vande Werfhorst had alerted the driver that I needed a ride beyond the last stop so Mark became my tour guide as well as the operator of my bus. I had a look at their Harbor Station in Oak Harbor, which is a deluxe passenger waiting area with three spacious shelter/huts that keep the wind and rain out and provide a water fountain and telephone. The station includes a well-equipped office where drivers can eat and rest between runs. I couldn't believe it was 10 years old, it looked so new.
I was dropped right in front of my bed & breakfast and would have felt embarrassed for the service if this evening wasn't so frosty and dark.
The next day, the real fun began. I met their executive director, Martha Rose, and many of her staff while I came to understand the miracle that they've created over the past 20 years. Despite the pressure to conform, the pressure to make users pay, and the pressure from conservative politicians at all levels, Island Transit has been fare-free from day one and is proudly so today.
Here are some numbers to compare what Island Transit did last year to what BC Transit accomplished in the Regional District of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.
| Island Transit (includes vanpool) | BC Transit in Nanaimo | |
|---|---|---|
| Service Population | 79,252 | 92,300 |
| Ridership | 1,101,711 (902,793 for buses; 198,918 for vanpools) | 2,317,763 |
| Service Kilometres | 4,548,706 (2,804,721 for buses; 1,743,984 for vanpools) | 2,263,992 |
| Service Hours | 71,031 (all buses) | 94,333 |
| Vehicles in Service | 56 buses; 101 vans | 31 buses |
| Operating Budget | $8,392,677 ($0 from fares; all from a 0.6% sales tax collected in Island County) | $6,906,910 ($3,065,488 from fares) |
The first thing that sticks out for me is ridership. Every operator I saw in the Island Transit system counted every passenger that boarded and filled out a tracking sheet at the end of every run and shift. I trust their numbers.
Compare this method with the one used in Nanaimo. Steve New, the senior vice president for the Municipal Systems Program of BC Transit, explained the count for Nanaimo this way: "Revenue passengers are those who pay a fare once, do not include transfers, calculated from sample surveys of passengers by fare category, tariff product sales data and reported revenue." I've never seen these surveys being conducted despite riding Nanaimo buses weekly for years. I've never seen a full bus in Nanaimo, either.
Back on Whidbey Island, the Island Transit buses that meet (and wait for) the ferry to and from Everett, Washington were full in the mid afternoon while the commute-hour times packed multiple buses.
A multi-modal paradise
All of Island Transit's buses are bike rack equipped and wheelchair accessible and have been for many years. TransLink in Vancouver promised that all buses would be bike-rack equipped by 2005, but many still operate without racks today (the new trolleys don't allow bikes on their racks at night!).
"Free transit changed the [Amherst, Massachusetts] region for the better. Students, teens, and the elderly were able to move much more freely through the region. Some ascribed the resurgence of Northampton, Massachusetts, at least in part, to the availability of free transit. Fares in that region would have provided such a small percentage of capital and operating costs that their loss was made up for by contributions by the major institutions to benefit: the five colleges in the region.
"In our region the process has already, in its way, begun with the success of the U-Pass system for UBC and SFU. Other large institutions can and should negotiate inclusion. In this way we can have a step-wise process to fare free (as distinct from totally free) transit."
--Professor Patrick M. Condon, UBC James Taylor chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments, Design Centre for Sustainability at UBC
For folks with disabilities, Island Transit also offers a Para-transit service with door-to-door service. This is often achieved by using their regular buses which can deviate up to 3/4 of a mile from the regular route.
Their bike-and-ride lots even feature beautifully-roofed racks for locking your bike, and are located at the entrance of every one of their car park-and-ride lots.
Recently, Island Transit replaced their two-bike racks to racks holding three. TransLink claims three-bike racks are unsafe and told me they won't use them. On Island Transit buses as well as WTA and Skagit County buses, I put my bike in all three positions and didn't experience any problems.
Even better, if the racks get full on Island Transit, the operator will allow the fourth or more bike to come on board, as long as there is room. Operators aren't allowed to do this in the Lower Mainland or Nanaimo.
I've been passed up too many times to count, both in Vancouver and in Nanaimo, when there were two bikes already in the rack. Once, in Nanaimo, a driver tried to drive away with my bike after refusing to allow me to get my panniers from the bus stop. He even looped around after that, passing me by without a single bike on his bus rack. I reported this immediately and followed up with repeated requests, but a year later the driver's supervisor finally responded that the matter was closed. No explanation and no promise to prevent a similar event in the future.
Getting around is definitely better on Whidbey Island.
Safe space on wheels
One of the many side-benefits to fare-free systems is that they create another safe public space. Martha Rose, Island Transit's Executive Director since 1988, told me about how a book club was formed on one of their buses.
That runs counter to the prejudices some people have about fare-free transit. On my trip down to Whidbey Island, the WTA bus operator kept telling me how homeless people would sleep on fare-free buses and how the unwashed would drive away the regular riders. (I guess he assumed homeless folks or people who don't shower as often as he does don't qualify as regular riders.)
Listen to audio: Kathryn Gretsinger interviews Dave Olsen about the reasons for making transit free.
That operator's pessimism is not uncommon among transit officials clinging to the status quo. "If there is no fare charged, vandalism might be unmanageable. I believe there must be some payment, no matter how low, so that there is respect for the service, the system, and our fellow passengers." So stated a staff person for GO Transit in Toronto. The problem is his view is based on pure conjecture, and fear of the unknown.
Such warnings certainly didn't pan out on my trip to Whidbey Island.
Island Transit has developed a simple and seemingly effective policy around dealing with behaviour that is unruly, or disturbing to others: "The operator is the captain of their own ship." This is backed up by a state law regarding unlawful bus conduct. A bothersome rider first gets a written warning. The next time, his or her riding privileges are revoked. These privileges are only restored after completing a Rider Privilege Agreement. Although this procedure is undoubtedly more easily implemented in a smaller system, its fairness was obvious and its effectiveness seemed irrefutable.
And unlike the transit systems in Nanaimo and Vancouver, Island Transit has further protected their employees by installing a camera system in every vehicle. The big brotherness of it is acknowledged, but the safety of their operators simply takes priority.
"Show me another transit system in Washington State," said Island Transit operator Odis D. Jenkins, "where the teenagers more often than not say 'thank you' when they get off."
Penny pinching
Island Transit is not immune from funding struggles. In 1999, State Initiative 695 eliminated the motor vehicle excise tax as a source of revenue for transit systems, taking away 60 per cent of Island Transit's funding at the time. They've since more than doubled their 1999 operating budget by doubling the local sales tax collected (60 cents, up from 30 cents, for every $100 spent in Island County). The district could legally increase the sales tax by another 0.3 per cent, or 30 cent per $100 spent, if and when local voters are asked to approve it.
Currently, the maintenance/administrative "barn" Island Transit uses is stretched beyond thin. There is one washroom for over 90 employees. There are two maintenance bays for 56 buses and over 100 vans. The desperate need for a new maintenance facility is made more urgent by their new, soon-to-be delivered 40 foot buses, which won't fit into the existing bays. These new buses are needed because their 35 foot buses are filled to capacity.
The brain trust behind Island Transit really looks at the big picture. They were the first in Washington State to reuse their oil by installing a waste oil burner and in so doing, reduced their heating costs dramatically. They recycle all of the water they use to clean their vehicles, which is a critical resource on any island in the Pacific Northwest. And recently, many of their bus shelters were outfitted with solar-powered lighting systems.
One of the many things we could learn from Island Transit is how they've worked with the Washington State Ferry system to prioritize walk-on, cycling, and vanpool travelers. Buses meet every ferry (at a half hour frequency from 4:40 a.m. to 11 p.m.), drop their passengers within steps of the ferry, load ferry travelers and depart the terminal before any car traffic starts to unload. Vanpools load and offload the ferry first and are guaranteed never to wait even one sailing.
Blessedly ad-free
Not one Island Transit bus, shelter, or van had advertising on it. Not inside, not outside. Although they could be promoting themselves in these spaces, it was refreshing and liberating to not have this public space consumed by private corporations. I couldn't remember the last time I was able to lift my head up while traveling on any public transit vehicle without closing my eyes. And I knew instantly when an Island Transit bus was coming!
Actually, why do transit systems anywhere allow advertisements for cars and trucks? BC Transit and TransLink both claim they make money from advertising, but how many customers/clients/riders have they lost because of it? If you bought a car, would you allow the manufacturer to plaster the inside with ads? Do you think grocery stores would accept ads on their grocery carts from other grocery stores?
Returning home was as easy as getting down to Whidbey Island except now I was used to stepping off and on buses at will with no worries about fares or transfers. It simply seemed archaic to see fare boxes, and worse, to try to find the correct change. The operator on the Island Transit bus that took me -- for free -- to Mt. Vernon didn't know I was a reporter but chatted with me the entire way, nonetheless.
This transit island definitely has a different approach to life, and it's one I'd like to live.
Tomorrow, we'll look at Belgium to explore the fare-free system that has changed the face of transit in many European cities and towns.
Related Tyee stories:
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fpass
5 years ago
Great article! I'm glad I
Great article! I'm glad I donated to the fund.
On a tangential note, why doesn't Translink operate a bus across the border to connect with Whatcom Transit? It is possible from a legal standpoint, as Windsor Transit in Ontario runs a bus into downtown Detroit. Imagine being able to get from downtown Vancouver (or Nanaimo, Victoria, or Sechelt, if you add a ferry) to Seattle or Tacoma entirely on public transit!
Grumpy
5 years ago
Garbage in, garbage out
The notion of free transit has been around almost as long as transit itself. The problem is simple, a grand arrogance of public transit.
Here are some of the problems suffered by transit operators.
- Buses do not attract ridership.
- One can loose upwards of 70% of ridership per transfer.
- Elevated and underground transit systems have a poor record in attracting ridership.
- Once a potential transit customer gets in his car, there is only a very slim chance that he will use a park and ride.
If anyone wnats to try to understand moder public transit philiosophy, please read Prof. of Urban Transport, Carmen Hass-Klaus' "Bus or Light Rail, making the right choice." Vols, 1 and 2 and Future of Urban Transport.
There is much more, sadly the science of public transport is not practiced here and the region is left with an alchemy of charlatans turning transit lead into transit gold; free transit is transit lead.
Mr. Olsen 'free' bus views are just a result of poor research and a lack of knowledge of public transport. Whitby Island is home to a very large naval air-station, which feeds its free bus system, if the air station goes, so would the free buses.
In Europe, the cities that have become the hallmark of good public transport is Grenoble and Karlsruhe. Please also remember that most European cities have an Environmental (an annual, transferable, universal) transit pass. This means each household has a free transit pass, which anyone in the household can use.
I tried to get TransLink interested in the concept but was rebuffed at every instance.
The concept of free fares on buses is an 'old saw', which surfaces from time to time. It has been tried and the results are the same, it doesn't attract the motorist from the car and that my friends is the mantra of transit planners in the 21st century - To be viable, a transit system must attract the motorist from the car. It can be done and it is called Light Rail Transit.
Grumpy
5 years ago
Want to learn about modern public transport?
If anyone wants to learn about modern public transport philosophy. please read Prof. of Urban Transport, Carmen Haas-Klau's Bus or Light Rail. making the right choice, Vols. 1 & 2 and Future of Urban Transport. Only after these internationally acclaimed studies, will one get a grip of the problems and solution for public transport.
I strongly recommend Mr. Olsen and Mr. Beers read these studies and refrain from the 'free fare' debates, until they begin to understand the problems.
The main concern of transit planners in Europe is to design a new transit system that will attract the motorist from the car and buses have proven not to be a solution. Nor are metro's like SkyTrain.
Stephen Rees
5 years ago
a bus across the border
Translink did study this for quite a while. The easiest way to do it would have been to have the buses loop either side of the border crossing and have passengers walk across. This is simply because of complex jurisdictional issues. But that means space being set aside for bus loops and the border authorities have much more pressing and important issues to worry about than a short walk for bus passengers. And for Translink, there are much higher priorities for additional service than people who live or work "abroad" - and therefore do not pay taxes to support the system.
Dave2
5 years ago
Good Question
"how many customers/clients/riders have they lost because of [advertising]?
Honestly, how many potential customers are there that _could_ take the bus/sktyrain to work but would rather drive just because of the advertising? That number must be statistically insignificant.
Grumpy
5 years ago
Looser cruisers
One item not addressed is that, for many, buses are 'loose cruisers' and the vast majority of people will not take a bus!
All free transit would do is give current riders a free ride, not attract new ridership. Sad fact is we have career bureaucrats and career academics pontification on transit, yet very few understand the problems involved.
Providing better transit is not an engineering nor a planning problem, it is a transit problem. We do not give degrees in urban transportation, nor is there a faculty of urban transportation.
Here lies the problem, a lot of well meaning people, who think they know the solutions fail to solve the ongoing transit debacle. The notion of 'free' transit would not attract the motorist from the car, thus a 'free' transit system would slowly deteriorate from lack of competitive forces; it would indeed be a 'looser cruiser' of huge proportions.
Question:
What do you want your transit to accomplish?
werdnagreb
5 years ago
Expensive
Great article! Really enjoying this series so far, but there's something that you neglected to discuss.
The Island Transit seems very expensive. It has less than half the number of riders than BC transit does and yet its budget is 1.5 million more. Why does it cost so much more to operate?
snert
5 years ago
You're missing the point Grumpy
Free transit is all about providing incentive to use the systems available. There is nothing to indicate that "light rail/bus" would do that all by itself. It may be a more cost effective system but if I am not going to ride a bus or take the WCE or Skytrain then why the hell would I ride light rail.
From Wiki on Grenoble
"The city center is famous for its complex system of one-way streets, the grid-lock on which adds to the local air pollution. The motorway system into the city is particularly poorly designed, with backups many miles long occurring frequently. In summer, pollution alerts further increase congestion by reducing speed limits."
Looks like the transit system really works well.
rac
5 years ago
Agreeing with Grumpy
I'll do something unusual here and concur with Grumpy at least for now.
While certainly fares are a bit high and the increase does not make much sense, the issue in this region is lack of buses and trains because of on-going provincial underfunding of transit. Getting rid of fares right now would create havoc. Look what is happening on the B-line.
Lets double or trip the number of buses, create an LRT network in the Valley and then look at free fares.
While the u-pass did increase transit ridership, it only decreased car use by around 3% (I think). Most of the increase came from people who were walking, cycling and car-pooling switching to transit. If this is the case for free fares, the GHG emissions aren't going to be reduced by that much.
Fares generate around $250 million dollars (I think). If this money was available from the government, I'm not sure if free transit would be my first choice. How about free (or cheaper) housing or free food. Both housing and food are more essential to life than transit. Not sure if the sales tax in Whitby is on food but if it was it would be ironic that food is subsidizing transit.
Michael
5 years ago
More deregulation instead
Instead of shoveling more money at transit, why don't we deregulate? We should allow private contractors to bid on bus lines and compete on efficiency and customer focus.
I am sure some of the readers remember the seventies when long distance call cost an arm and leg and service levels were non-existent. Deregulation has brought us a vibrant telecommunications industry of unimaginable service levels. The same with the airline industry before the introduction of blue sky legislation. Prices have tumbled and safety levels have stayed the same and even improved. Why can't we do the same for mass transit?
Much of the author's complaints about our bus system are the result of bureaucratic inertia: it is safer and easier to do nothing than to do something. Competing private bus operators would provide more customer focus instead of protecting-your-butt focus.
Grumpy
5 years ago
Grenoble
'snert' - Grenoble has been a great success and a show case for modern light rail. It was the endemic auto congestion that compelled city politicians to built LRT, as a metro (SkyTrain/RAV)was much too little for much too much cost.
Grenoble proved the concept of the low-floor car (a LRV with a floor height 350 mm above the rails), bringing a high standard of public transit to the mobility impaired.
Carrying only 50,000 persons a day when it first opened in 1987, the Grenoble LRT now carries well over 230,000 passengers per day on two lines. A third line is now under construction. The modal shift from car to transit is well over 50%! The problem with Grenoble, as with most R/T systems is that ridership comes from about 300 metres radius around each station or stop (TransLink claims 1 km radius for RAV!) and the trick is to affordably build more and more lines.
Remember, LRT is not a panacea, unlike claims for RAV and SkyTrain, but with a proven modal shift, unlike SkyTrain, Grenoble's LRT is a hallmark of a successful LRT system.
Grumpy
5 years ago
What do you want your transit to do?
Here is the mistake that Olsen, et al, make about urban transit: Fares alone will not attract the motorist from the car. Higher fares only discourage the transit dependent from using transit.
Free transit in Vancouver would be a disaster and hugely expensive. Trick is to provide a high quality of public transport at an affordable price.
Free transit may encourage more use of the transit system by existing transit users, but it will not attract the all important motorist from the car. So why bother.
Again I stress, the free fares issue is a none issue, presented by people with little or no knowledge of the subject. You want to to improve public transit here are some ideas that were shot down:
1) Making our bus lines conform to European bus-stop distances 500 to 700 metres instead of 200 to 300 metres.
2) Instead of a $2.4 billion RAV, extend the Oak street trolley service to #3 Rd. & Steveston Hwy. Cost $300 million.
3) LRT from Downtown Vancouver to Steveston, via Arbutus. Cost $800 million.
4) LRT from UBC to BCIT via Broadway. This would replace completely all bus services on Broadway. I was told by someone in the 'trade' that this could run at a profit! Cost $800 million, could be built with private funds.
5) Extend the Hastings trolleys to SFU. Cost $200 million
6) Extend the Kingsway trolley to New West minster. Cost 200 million.
The previous transit improvements, in total costing as much as RAV, would probably attract many more new customers than RAV.
Michael
5 years ago
Why does LRT make sense?
With a 70 percent pop growth forecast for Vanouver and a 100 percent pop growth forecast for Richmond, how does LRT between the two city centres make sense? With agricultural land reserve to one side and water to the other, we don't have the room. We are not Calgary, thank god. How about this. If we really wanted to save money on RAV, we could have reversed the heritage designation for Cambie boulevard and built on top.
Moosebeer
5 years ago
Pay for Public Transit...are you kidding?
The one thing that motivates most people is money. Heck, it is evident in some of the posts. Many of you don't want to see people getting a "free-ride". Do you know that most of the people who take transit are poor, elderly, or handicapped? I think it is disgusting that we ask these unfortunately individuals to pay a fare to get to their doctor's appointment or to their minimum wage job.
Grumpy
5 years ago
??????????????????
A posting by Michael makes it crystal clear that the NDP/Socred/Liberal politicos have absolutely mislead the public on rail mode; LRT and metro.
We have a hierarchy of public transport; bus, light rail, and metro. Each mode is operated to suit various ridership loads per route.
Bus - 0 to about 5,000 passengers per hour per direction.
LRT 2,000 to about 20,000 pphpd.
Metro - 12,000 to 15,000 pphpd+
As one can see there is overlap.
Now look at RAV, $2.4 billion for about 20 km. of metro to move an estimated 100,000 (TransLink estimate) a day.
With LRT we could build up to five 20km. LRT lines. So if $2.4 billion is spent to move 100,000 people, then five LRT lines could move 100,000 plus the customers on the other 4 routes (could be Arbutus, Cambie, Fraser, etc.)
This nonsense is further exacerbated by pure deception as RAV is designed to have a maximum capacity of only 15,000 pphpd, yet 3 to 5 LRT lines would have a potential of 60,000 to 100,000 pphpd.
Question: Why then people think 1 metro line is better than 3 to 5 LRT lines?
Is it not interesting that major conurbations such as Paris, London, Los Angeles are building with light rail, yet somehow Vancouver deems itself worthy of a metro.
Now comes a hard fact, because metro cost more to build and operate than LRT, yet carries passenger flows easily handled by LRT, means that higher fares must be paid.
Simple economics.
Grumpy
5 years ago
From the Seattle PI - free bus fares
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/322858_freebus07.html
zalm
5 years ago
Grumpy
Metro is heavy rail and serves loads of 20,000-150,000 pphpd. I'm not sure what Toytrain is but you might want to refer to it when you quote 12,000-15,000 pphpd.
Grumpy
5 years ago
Zalm very wrong......again
The 12,000 to 15,000 figure referred too is the minimum ridership needed to justify a metro. Such a metro would be a SkyTrain or VAL type system. So the toy train you refer to is SkyTrain.
No metro in the world carries 150,000 pphpd; it is a silly figure. The Paris 'Meteor' metro is reputed to carry 45,000 pphpd.
To carry 150,000 pphpd you would need 50 trains an hour carrying 3000 passengers each (by comparison, a rake of 4 SkyTrain Mk.1 cars has a capacity of 300 persons) or a train every 1.2 minutes! The problem would be station congestion, or the time needed to clear passengers from the platform in time for the next train!
Be very careful Zalm, for the toy train you mention is indeed your beloved SkyTrain.
Also this is why mini-metro transit systems have failed to gain a market share, modern LRT can carry the same amount of passengers a whole lot cheaper!
Moosebeer
5 years ago
We must start using public transportation
I believe this thread is a little off topic. Rather than discussing the merits of fare-free public transportation which is to increase ridership, it has shifted towards costs and who is going to pay for it.
We need to find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately and getting people to use public transportation is one of the ways to acheive those goals.
It is not a question of whether we can afford it, it is a question of can we afford not to do it?
snert
5 years ago
Moosebeer
It's not off topic. Grumpy's SeattlePI article seems to point to significant taxpayer resistance that prevents more long lasting experiments in free transit. Grumpy himself is actually providing us with all the reason's why those silly taxpayers are wrong in their assessment.
Unfortunately Grumpy has not provided us with any actual new incentives to increase ridership of any new systems whatever they may be.
Grumpy
5 years ago
Incentives to get people onboard transit
There is no evidence that 'free' fares actually increases the percentage of ridership population using transit. 'Free' fares may increase the number of trips present transit users take and this should be no confused with modal shift.
This subject has been studied to death and all I can say is modern LRT has proven to create the modal shift (car driver to transit) so sought after by transit planners.
Our problem here is that we do not have real transit experts planning for transit, rather career bureaucrats, engineers and planners who have little or no experience in the field.
The evidence in the GVRD is that our transit planning is very 1950's'ish', metro over light rail and rubber on asphalt transit solutions.
Buses do not attract ridership and evidence is fast growing that buses just cannot do it alone. Even the head of Curitiba's much exalted busway & bus system has said in a speech that, "he needs LRT to compete with the car."
As i said before, there is no easy solution but 'simpleton' type solutions like 'free' fares just isn't going to work.
The answer is there but I'm afraid we are not mature enough to accept that LRT is part of the solution and metros like SkyTrain only exacerbates the problem.
The answers are there, it is just that we ignore them.
Grumpy
5 years ago
Influences on success for LRT
From Bus or Light Rail, making the right House
- population density in 300m light rail corridors following the lines,
- monthly fare relative to the country’s GDP/Capita,
- pedestrian street length per city population,
- % of passengers using travel cards,
- average rail speed,
- percentage of new light rail vehicles,
- peak headway in minutes of light rail service,
- park and ride spaces per light rail track-km.,
- light rail network density (track-km. per population,
- number of parking spaces in the city centre according to city centre size,
other suburban rail provision.
The first four factors are those which, on first analysis, seem to have statically significant effect on the overall indicator of success on their own, before considering their combined effect with other variables.”
The study also found that the most successful light rail systems, of the 24 light rail systems studied (including Calgary, Portland, Sacramento, and San Diego), tended to be slower than less successful transit systems, do to heavy patronage slowing down the service!
Grumpy
5 years ago
OOPS! Not house - Choice
OOps, typo, see above.
snert
5 years ago
Free LRT
Free public transit is free public transit. It doesn't have to be restricted to buses. They just happen to be the most flexible.
Moosebeer
5 years ago
Free transit really does increase ridership
In 2003 the City of Windsor offered free transit on smog alert days. Here are the results of that project:
"...On the very first day of free service, transit ridership increased by 36% over the previous Thursday, 28% over the system's average weekday ridership, and 45% over the equivalent day of the previous year. Over the four smog days that free transit was offered, the typical year-over-year increase was in the order of 50%...These ridership increases exceeded the expectations of planners, who had informally anticipated a jump of perhaps 5%."
http://www.tc.gc.ca/programs/environment/UTSP/docs/casestudiesPDF/11EFreetransitonsmogdays.pdf
This proves that free transit increases ridership!
snert
5 years ago
Comparing apples with pommes
Unfortunately Grumpy has only managed to compare apples a pommes und Äpfel. Anyplace in NA that might show where LRT relly draws the numbers?
Grumpy
5 years ago
Why then...........
Why then are knowledgeable transit planners building with LRT? Coz it works. No rah, rah, sis - boom - bah for LRT, it just quietly does its job in over 500 cities around the world.
Free transit is noting more than a pipe dream of those who do not understand the science of modern public transport.
Grumpy
5 years ago
What cities?
What cities in N.A. that LRT has shown a modal shift (car to transit)? LA, Portland, Denver, Salt Lake City, Houston, St. Louis all have shown good modal shifts, so much so that more lines are being built.
snert
5 years ago
Nobody has said it doesn't work.
The only suggestion here is that it will probably not be the panacea that is being looked for any more than anything else.
Momentary relief then back to square one.
Jay Currie
5 years ago
Great idea and workable
Grumpy is right about people in cars: they are not going to get out of their cars unless and until they begin to bear the full cost of their road use, traffic congestion, pollution and, if you believe in this sort of thing, CO2 emissions. Of course, actually pricing car travel correctly would lead to a revolution in the burbs which, while amusing to contemplate, would strike horror in any politician hoping for election and a shot at government.
However, it would make great sense to take those costs and give them to the carless in the form of free or radically reduced transit passes. One way to do this is to send every British Columbian who does not have a car registered to his or her address a yearly transit pass. (And, yes, some people will cheat and yes this is rough justice for folks who live in East Elbow and need a car to live - I can live with that.)
People who chose not to own a car - a group of which I am a proud member - or who cannot afford to own a car - a group whose membership I enter and exit depending on the month - receive no benefit but pay for roads and the like just the same. They breathe the pollution and, if they are riding the bus, have to put up with the traffic congestion. They deserve a break.
paddy74
5 years ago
lower fares would increase the appeal..
I must say, I am first and foremost a driver. I travel for work, I am all over the city. On my days off I try to look for opportunity to park the car, but even driving a full size truck the cost of a two zone transit pass is not very economically appealing. At $4.50 I can pretty much drive my truck for the same price, and let's face it, your own vehicle is almost always more convenient. I am only factoring gas, not insurance and maintenance, but for me the added convenience of having a vehicle to stow belongings, have complete freedom of schedule (the transit schedule can often be limiting as well, especially when unplanned adventures arise) makes transit far less appealing. As far as I'm concerned the only attractive option is the skytrain, since it is not limited to roads and the usual traffic congestion. Although, the LRT system rarley links up to my destination, and still involves the most unappealing bus service previously mentioned.
snert
5 years ago
Don't pat yourself on the back too hard.
Jay Currie
People who chose not to own a car - a group of which I am a proud member - or who cannot afford to own a car - a group whose membership I enter and exit depending on the month - receive no benefit but pay for roads and the like just the same. They breathe the pollution and, if they are riding the bus, have to put up with the traffic congestion. They deserve a break.
You might hurt yourself.
Car owners pay their way, more than their way, they probably contribute significantly to your way as well.