Julia McCarthy: L.A. Metro needs to find ways to cover costs without raising fares

For UCLA students living on the Hill, the cost of getting to class in the morning is a 15-minute walk from the dorms and maybe skipping breakfast. For others, it’s $150 a year and an hour-and-a-half bus ride every day.

Nonetheless, the Los Angeles Metro system is still the most affordable option for many student commuters. But that cost is set to increase in September from $1.50 to $1.75, with UCLA students seeing a proportional increase on their discounted rates.

Even though the fare increase seems like small change, the cost of a bus ride could increase further if the city is unable to find alternative sources of revenue.

At the same meeting that the L.A. Metro Board of Directors voted on the 25-cent increase, it also decided to postpone ruling on fee hikes that would push bus fares to $2 in 2017 and $2.25 in 2020. Instead, it suggested creating a “Transit Ridership Best Practices Task Force,” which will investigate sources of revenue beyond raising rider fees.

Without putting serious effort into this task force, it will be difficult to preserve Metro’s mission of providing affordable transportation to Los Angeles County, particularly its low-income population. The task force needs to be more than a bureaucratic gesture – it needs to engage in a real search for solutions. Taxing the city’s poorest citizens should be taken off the table entirely in favor of actual constructive options for revenue.

For its part, UCLA already takes measures to shelter its student population from Metro fares.

Justin Batalla, a first-year physics student who commutes daily from Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley, purchases a subsidized $50 Metro pass from UCLA Transportation every quarter.

But Metro riders who don’t have access to a subsidized pass will feel the full cost of the increase.

Whether motivated by economic decisions or environmental ones, Metro users shouldn’t be weighed down by fee increases. Given the low socioeconomic backgrounds many Metro riders come from and the benefit to the environment that the Metro system provides, L.A. Metro needs to find a way to cover its costs without punishing its users.

This can be prevented by starting the search now for other funding methods, such as increased fuel taxes, as suggested in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial.

In looking at the costs of Metro passes for those outside of UCLA, it’s easy to see how great a financial burden even minimal fee increases will create. The current cost of a Metro pass for an undergraduate or graduate student in Los Angeles County who doesn’t attend a school that subsidizes Metro passes is $324 for nine months. In other words, they have to pay about twice the amount a UCLA student pays every school year to take the Metro.

Another number to put things in perspective is the average household income of those who use Metro, which is less than $20,000.

These Angelenos deserve real progress and leadership from the city’s transportation bureaucracy. The L.A. Times proposal to impose some of the financial burden on drivers through measures like fuel taxes is a step in the right direction. Not only would it maintain fares at affordable rates, it would also incentivize sustainable transport options beyond traveling in single occupancy vehicles.

UCLA can get behind this idea by offering research support on sustainable transport through involvement of its Department of Urban Planning and Department of Public Policy.

Research should not only include discussion with other transportation agencies, but also discussion with Metro users to understand their needs.

UCLA already has a history of supporting “alternative” forms of commuting, such as biking, taking the Metro and carpooling. UCLA’s 2008 Climate Action Plan, a document outlining ways UCLA could work to improve sustainability, set down a goal to increase the number of employees commuting to campus via “alternative” transport options. Programs like the Bruin Commuter Club reward faculty members with coupons and discounts for pursuing these commuting choices.

More importantly, however, options that put the burden on drivers, such as a fuel tax, would alleviate the financial responsibility from those who have the least change to spare in the first place.

The L.A. Metro website boasts that it “serves as transportation planner and coordinator, designer, builder and operator for one of the country’s largest, most populous counties,” but when the most affordable public transport option starts becoming unaffordable, the Metro is a barrier rather than a tool for the population it seeks to serve.

Email McCarthy at jmccarthy@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to opinion@media.ucla.edu or tweet us @DBOpinion.

Published by Julia McCarthy

Julia McCarthy has been an opinion columnist since 2013. She was an assistant opinion editor from 2014-2015. She writes about national and local politics, sexual assault and harassment prevention and campus resources.

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