In a city obsessed with its cars, the public transportation system has to work overtime to attract riders. Instead, MTA proposes grand fare hikes of up to 500 percent.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in dire need of a boost, and something even more drastic than a five-fold fare increase may be in order.
Many UCLA students depend on public transportation to get around the city because of the high price of having a parking spot in the dorms or the neighborhood.
In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom asked the city’s transportation agency in March to look at whether fare-free public transit could work.
So let’s add everything up. In San Francisco, the Municipal Transportation Agency plans to earn $138 million in fares next fiscal year. While this may seem like a lot, it makes up a paltry 22 percent of their budget, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Now let’s look at Los Angeles. MTA expects to earn about $279 million in fares next fiscal year. This may seem like an even bigger hurdle to fare-free transit than San Francisco’s, but the amount makes up an even smaller nine percent of their budget.
In comparison, MTA takes in about $587 million from federal and state grants and about $1.4 billion from city sales taxes. In fact, covering the revenue lost from eliminating bus fares would only require a county sales tax of a quarter of a percent, according to a Los Angeles Times opinion piece from February.
Since the bus system is already funded by public money, it’s really only a question of how much the public wants to spend on it. So the plan looks surprisingly feasible for Los Angeles and a lot less radical than it sounds. And it would offer a whole array of benefits.
The transportation agency could cut out the cost of purchasing and maintaining the fare collection boxes on buses and do away with collecting and counting fares.
In terms of efficiency, buses could stop and go faster, since people could enter and leave the buses without waiting to pay. And bus drivers would be free to focus on actually driving rather than policing the money.
On top of that, the extra riders attracted by the free transit would reduce car traffic, thus relieving congestion and curbing pollution.
Not to mention, free fares probably look a lot better than a several-fold increase to the many poor whose only travel option is public transit.
Instead, what MTA has proposed are sweeping fare hikes. The basic fare would go from $1.25 to $2, and bus or rail passes (which make up 87 percent of all riders) would increase even more sharply. A college student monthly pass would go from $30 to $84, and a senior monthly pass would go from $12 to $60 by 2009.
Clearly, these fare hikes aren’t going to attract any new riders, instead pushing people out of buses and into cars on the already overcrowded streets of Los Angeles.
A fare-free public transportation system in Los Angeles wouldn’t be Earth-shattering. The 405 Freeway would probably still be unbearable during rush hour, and if anything, there would probably be even more crazy people on the buses.
What it does offer is a possibility that could be far more effective than the proposed fare increases.
So which is better ““ an expensive and unpopular bus system or one that people would actually enjoy riding?
Tell MTA your answer by May 24 by sending an e-mail to fares@metro.net or attending the public hearing downtown on the same day.