Despite cuts to service and a systemwide fare increase that took effect in July, ridership on the T grew in August, according to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which released the monthly figures Sunday.
On an average weekday, 1.256 million trips were recorded during the month, or roughly 1.2 percent more than were recorded in August 2011. The spike bucked analysts’ forecasts that ridership would decline by as much as 5.5 percent following the fare hikes, according to the MBTA.
Comments
Who wants to pay more for less? I think the more relevant question is "Who wants to end up with nothing?"
Fare increases are always hardest on those with limited and/or fixed incomes. And service reductions always hit those with the fewest options more profoundly. But if a service provider cannot stay on top of rising operating costs, the next step is a complete shutdown! Take it from a native Bostonian and lifelong straphanger now stuck in a mid-western city with a mass transit system that, compared to the T offers, offers bubkis — and for fares that are on par with much more robust systems. The T is still the hottest bargain on town!
I recently read elsewhere that Amtrak too has been enjoying ridership increases over the past 18 months or so.
$4 a gallon gasoline and high-priced diesel and jet fuel are slowly turning around the US' love affair with the automobile and the jetliner (though the incredibly brutish and thieving TSA has had a hand in getting people off of the latter as well.)
Curious to know how the fare increases have impacted RIDE users.
So, how does this ridership change afftect revenues?
A few things that bear mentioning in this discussion:
First, fare increases are a de facto tax increase that mainly impacts the poorest half of the population. The fact that ridership did not decrease could mean that we already squeezed out all of the people who can't afford to ride with the last fare increase.
Second, and this is *very* apparent to anyone who rides the T to Cambridge, there has been a 33% increase in ridership on the red line since the last new train car rolled into service in 1994 (18 years ago now!). During this time Kendall Square has been vastly redeveloped and a ton of new transit oriented development has been added. What's interesting here is that when a developer wants to build a new condo building--even in Cambridge--they're required to pay for traffic mitigation efforts and parking expansion OR seek a variance from the city. And they're required to prove they will do this BEFORE they build anything! Developers in Kendall Square managed to achieve a vast expansion of living area without a proportional increase in traffic or parking usage. But of course they did this by shifting the burden onto the T.
Now, don't get me wrong, transit oriented development is a GOOD thing, but the state needs to pick up its end of the bargain and expand the transit service to meet demand. Not doing this has so far meant that people doing the RIGHT THING and commuting on the Red Line during rush hour are subjected to significant overcrowding on trains with broken air conditioning, stairways that are too narrow for the size of the crowds, and an experience that is becoming comperable to sitting in the rush hour traffic they'd hoped to avoid in the first place.
Just a thought: Buildings that are located near transit tend to command a significant premium. Perhaps the state should charge an "MBTA Tax" in lieu of (but comparable to the cost of) requiring them to build additional parking and widen the local roads. This money could be used to improve the local transit service which would, in turn, make the development more appealing. Just a thought.