L.A.'s transit coverage. All that dark blue? Transit access. Click for interactive map.
A study from the Brookings Institute (PDF here) reveals that Angelenos without a car have the best access to public transportation in the nation – even beating out the New York City metropolitan area. We mentioned the report last week in Thursday’s Transportation Headlines post, since then stories have popped up in the major media outlets, here’s some choice headlines and quotes:
Car-loving L.A. may actually be a public-transit paradise (L.A. Times):
The car-loving L.A region -– whose public transit system is often treated like Rodney Dangerfield — ranked second to Honolulu as offering transit-dependent residents the best access to buses and trains, according to a report by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Los Angeles Public Transit Access Top Among Major Metropolitan Areas, Besting Even New York (Huffington Post):
Adie Tomer, the author of the report, said he wasn’t surprised by the findings, despite “that classic archetype L.A. residents have to deal with all the time — that L.A. is the capital of car culture.”
“The reality is, it’s also really good transit culture too when it comes to the ability to get on a bus,” Tomer said.
Mapping The Urban Places Where No Transit Goes (Fast Company):
Some regions are worse than others. In the Atlanta area, for example, there are 37,634 people without access to a car or nearby public transportation, and only 68.5% of the population is covered by public transportation services. But in the Los Angeles area, 99.1% of residents have access to public transportation (though judging by the city’s clogged highways, it seems that not enough people take advantage of it).
Of course, the report is not without its critics. The Huffington Post notes that the Bus Riders Union (BRU) disagree with the findings, claiming that car-free Angelenos may have access to buses but that service changes have created lines that don’t meet their needs. The BRU also cites recent fare increases as a reason to doubt L.A.’s transit accessibility.
We’d like note a few things:
Metro allocates bus service where it’s needed the most. There are 53 routes on our 15-minute map that provide that provide frequent service in addition to accessibility. It’s important to remember that service levels are not arbitrarily determined but based on ridership data and community input that Metro’s planners take into consideration when developing service.
Metro has some of the cheapest fares in the nation.
Additionally, Metro has only raised fares three times in the last 16 years and our fares remain some of the lowest in the country despite the reach of the system. Check out these fare comparison charts from a post we made last year (at the time of the last fare increase). At $1.50 Metro’s base fare is the lowest among seven of the top transit agencies that use a flat rate. Last year, a Metro day pass cost $6 and was more affordable than day passes in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Atlanta. This summer’s day pass price drop to $5 makes Metro cheaper than Chicago ($5.75) and ties us with Portland (whose day pass rises to $5 in September).
The Brookings study brought up another interesting data point: despite L.A.’s transit accessibility, only 36% of non-vehicle households get to work in 90 minutes or less. Sounds pretty bad, right?
Well, consider this: in Los Angeles only 24% of households with vehicles get to work in 90 minutes or less. That number goes up to 29% nationwide. So it turns out transit dependent commuters in L.A. actually have better commutes than drivers.
What do you think? Does the Brookings report show that transit in L.A. isn’t as bad as it’s conventionally assumed to be, or do you feel there’s something missing from the study?
Regarding the pricing, I also agree that Metro should switch to a higher base fare of $2 and allow for unlimited transfers for a given time period. Since Metro has a grid system that facilitates transfers, this makes sense. Most people hate transferring but as the Human Transit blog points out, it actually increases the accessibility of your system.
@ IT in Guy in Irivne
1) Flat fare make more sense for buses than they do for rail. Bus riders on the local lines typically travel shorter distance than they do on express and rail lines so a single fare can be tailored around those travel patterns. Flat fares also speeds up bus boarding since you could implement all door boarding with TAP readers at each door and have passengers only TAP to board the bus and quickly disembark when they need to. Distance fares on Local buses will only slow them down since you’d have lines waiting to get and off busy buses creating two choke points which is one of the reason why Tokyo and London did away with distance fares on their urban bus lines.
2) Metro Rail, Liner, and Rapids with bus only lanes are different and should be priced by distance since the off vehicle payment does not slow passenger loadings and passengers on those lines typically travel farther.
3) All cities that have excellent public transportation system usually have excellent pedestrian and bicycle amenities as well. So those short distance riders have many options to get from point A to point B. In my opinion unless your elderly, disabled, or a child I don’t see anything wrong with expecting people to walk 1/2 mile to 1 mile or biking from 2 to 3 miles if they don’t want to pay “high” flat fare buses. During my time in the Bay Area I happily walked a mile or two to get where I wanted to go.
One thing that does bug me is the transfer penalty. I do believe Metro should reinstate transfers either in the fare itself or as a small extra fare buying a full fare again to complete a trip seems kinda of stupid.
@Mospeada
Tokyo and London did away with distance fares on buses only after they built a network of rail systems from the revenue earned from distance based bus fares.
We are nowhere near the rail network of Tokyo and London; we have neither a network of subways or overground rail system that contemplates the existing bus network.
Disembarking passengers slowing down the bus system is a moot point; tap-out upon disembarking takes less than a half second.
Besides, we already have passengers taking up lot of time paying for their fares with multitude of coins and wrinkly one dollar bills. In this day and age, the flat rate fare system actually slows down the process because of this because there’s no incentive for anyone to use cash value added TAP.
These can be easily done away with a simple tap-in/tap-out system on buses using TAP on a distance fare.
Digging into this further, another point is that transit coverage is only half the issue. The other half is job accessibility as pointed out here:
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0512_transit_access_berube.aspx
Los Angeles ranks 24th out of 100 in the “combined access” rating. Not bad, way better than Chicago at 46th. But it should strive to be in the top 20 like other ‘transit paradises’ (NY is 13th, SF is 16th, DC is 17th and Fresno is…5th! Who knew?).
@IT in Guy in Irvine
1) London encouraged smart card transit by overcharging non oyster card owners. Metro could do the same if they can increase the TAP card outlets.
2) Im not sure if you ever exited a crowded bus but it takes time to move through a crowd of people. Adding tapping out will probably complicate that procedure and will slow disembarking, cash fares aside.
3) Aside from Metro Rail, Liner and Express. Metro’s Rapid Bus Lines are a good candidate to implement distance based fares. They have a wider stop spacing, and with bus only lanes, off vehicle payment at marked Rapid stations like those on Wilshire people I think would willingly hand over extra fare for the signal priority and faster ride. Keep the flat fares for the slow moving local lines.
4) I also don’t get where people think distance fares makes transit cheaper for short distance users. All transit operators in cities with a relatively high cost of living that have distance based fares charge more for distance with a base fare that is comparable to price like ours. The ones that are cheaper are usually in cities with a lower cost of living or cities with extremely high densities like Hong Kong.
http://www.priceoftravel.com/595/public-transportation-prices-in-80-worldwide-cities/
RE: the claim that people riding the bus have a better commute than people who drive:
Yes, in terms of time, it appears that more bus riders than drivers get to work in under 90 minutes.
BUT, they are probably also going a much shorter distance. 90 minutes to go, say, 10 or 15 miles on the bus vs. 90 minutes to go maybe 30 in a car. If the people who rode the bus drove, their commute would be shorter. If the people who drive rode the bus, their commute would be longer.
This does not make the bus faster than a car.
I encourage everyone who has followed the fare policy debate on the comments section to read Human Transit’s “do we really want fares to be “fair”? ”
http://www.humantransit.org/2009/05/in-search-of-fair-fares.html
Its a good read on the subject matter.
To IT Guy in Irvine:
Maybe your scenario doesn’t make sense … unless you add in what it costs to park at Point C in your scenario (and also possibly Point A). Moreover, depending on what per-mile automobile cost you use, even a 10 mile round trip adds up to more than the $5 Day Pass (AAA’s current cost is 54.1 cents per mile, according to Metro, which equates to $5.41). Finally, if you’re going to propose a fare that includes free transfers, then that fare is going to have to be higher for everyone, including those people who ride just one bus or train. The bottom line is still the bottom line.
@Mospeada
1) Alternatively, Metro can also encourage cash value TAP by promoting a “pay cheaper for shorter rides” concept using TAP, while cash fare riders still pay a flat rate of $1.50.
2) Getting off the bus with a tap-out process is not difficult nor does it take extra time. People go out from that exit, there’s nothing slowing down the process of tapping out as one steps off the bus.
Besides, while people are disembarking, there are people getting on the bus at the same time. The time it takes to get people on the bus by tapping in is the same as the time people get off the bus via tapping out.
3) A closed loop tap-in/tap-out system on the bus also enables Metro to collect real transit data to further improve their bus system. It will benefit Metro to see where they need to add more frequencies, where to focus the coordination of transfer points, and see where the major stops are where limited and express routes makes sense.
4) Distance fares can be read both ways “pay more for longer rides” as well as “pay less for shorter rides.” But saying “paying more for longer rides” isn’t a great way to sell this from a marketing perspective. Instead, you market it from “pay less for shorter rides” perspective. It sounds better. It’s like why everyone sells at prices marked $2.99; it sounds much more cheaper than $3.00 even if it’s one cent difference.
After you do that, get people used to the tap-in/tap-out distance based fare concept, changing the fares to from $0.10/mi with $1.50 cap to $X/mi with $Y cap is just a simple software upgrade. You have to market it as beneficial for TAP riders first (pay only $0.10/mi and pay no more than $1.50) before implementing a fare rate that makes more sense (we need to raise fares, but it’ll only be $0.50/mi and pay no more than $5.00 now). That’s much more fair than saying “screw you all, we’re charging everyone $5.00 now, deal with it.”
The flexibility to change fares on a distance based model is more dynamic; when a fare increase is needed, riders are more willing to accept it as a fair price on each individual transit riders’ needs.
In contrast, when jacking up fares across the board on a flat rate model, it just pisses everyone off to seek alternate methods of travel.
Nate Silver of NYTimes’ 538 blog had a really good analysis of a previous Brookings Institute study that said that Modesto and Tucson had transit systems better than NYC’s.
The conclusion here that transit riders tend to have shorter commutes seems to suffer a similar fallacy because it doesn’t take into account whether those commutes are along similar routes. Two hours in a car may get you from one side of L.A. County to another, but not anywhere as far in a Metro bus or even rail.
The fact is that most people do what makes sense for them, which is a combination of speed, cost, and convenience. Just pointing out that transit is highly accessible and that transit trips are shorter than car trips does not equal the conclusion that L.A. is a “transit paradise.” It just further highlights the shortcomings of the study.
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/thinktanks-gone-wild-on-the-economics-of-mass-transit-and-the-value-of-common-sense/