Here’s the news release from Metrolink:
LOS ANGELES – After skipping a fare increase last year, the Metrolink Board of Directors approved a seven percent average systemwide fare increase to go into effect on or after July 1, 2012. Funds generated from the increase will be used exclusively to help close a $13 million funding gap for the fiscal year 2012-13 budget.
“This is a last resort to be able to continue to offer the safe transportation options the region needs without cutting service. We’ve streamlined our operations and continue to keep the majority of our costs and headcount flat, despite a nine percent increase in ridership,” said Metrolink Board Chairman Richard Katz. “Last year, we were able to delay an increase to passenger fares and member agency subsidies while increasing train service by 14 percent. This year, despite continued efficient management practices, our costs have increased in large part because of an increase in our operations contracts due to a sweeping nationwide labor negotiation settlement and a 56 percent increase in fuel costs over the past two years.”
Of the $13 million funding gap, the fare increase will only generate $4.5 million dollars. Increased subsidy from Metrolink’s five member agencies will cover the remainder of the funding gap.
Specific cost increases include:
•$4.2 million increase in major contractor costs including but not limited to the rise in Amtrak’s contract to reflect their nationwide labor settlement
•$4 million increase in fuel costs (in the past two years, Metrolink’s fuel costs have increased by 56 percent)
•$1.3 million in connecting transit transfer costs for Metrolink riders
•$2.5 million for post-employment benefits, which weren’t previously budgeted for. (This is not a new cost or an increase in benefits. It’s being included in the budget for the first time this year.)
This proposed fare increase is independent from the 2004 Board adopted policy to restructure fares from zone-based to mileage-based fares over a 10-year period. The phased restructuring is not meant to generate additional revenue for Metrolink, but was implemented to ensure a fair and equitable fare policy. When combined with the 7 percent increase, the Metrolink Monthly Pass will cost approximately $20.00 more beginning on or after July 1, 2012. However, the impact of the fare increase varies depending on the type of ticket, distance traveled and where the trip begins and ends.
As a recipient of Federal Transit Administration (FTA) funding, Metrolink is required to comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and to carry out the United States Department of Transportation’s Title VI regulations, in addition to federal and state law that requires a public hearing before fares can be modified. Public comments and suggestions on the proposed fare increase and Title VI Service Delivery Policy were collected beginning April 27, 2012. Metrolink conducted additional public meetings across its five-county service area to allow the public to weigh-in on the board’s pending action. Approximately 159 individuals – about .7 percent of Metrolink’s daily riders – submitted comments regarding the fare increase. Seventeen individuals provided comments on the service delivery policy.
ABOUT METROLINK (www.metrolinktrains.com)
Metrolink is Southern California’s regional commuter rail service in its 19th year of operation. The Southern California Regional Rail Authority (SCRRA), a joint powers authority made up of an 11-member board representing the transportation commissions of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, governs the service. Metrolink operates over seven routes through a six-county, 512 route-mile network. Metrolink is the third largest commuter rail agency in the United States based on directional route miles and the seventh largest based on annual ridership.
“I’d say easily 1/3 of the people riding the trains don’t pay at all.”
The actual reports that use large sample sizes say that, at most, 1 out of 20 riding the trains don’t pay. At times, fare evasion, with large saturation rates (meaning 1 out of 10 are checked), has been measured at 1%.
“The Metrolink Board will end up reconsidering their ways if ridership plummets by double digits.”
If ridership plummets by double digits, there won’t be much they can do. They can either raise fares or make service cuts. Or they can try to convince the member agencies to increase the subsidy.
Caltrain has a similar problem in the Bay Area. They keep kicking the can down the road every year before the inevitable service cuts are carried out.
“Essentially, it’s like Wal-Mart Railways, Costo Bus Company, or Target Transit Corporation. They need customers to come to their stores, so they build railways and bus lines that direct the people into their stores.”
Some of the Mexican markets around here operate shuttle buses to and from their stores. That’s the closest thing we have to your example, haha.
Actually a good (bad?) example of the closest thing to a private transit company in the US would be something like the Las Vegas Monorail Company or the Detroit Transit Corporation.
Both of them are costly and inefficient monorails. The former links multiple casinos near the Strip and eventually will link up with McCarran Int’l Airport. The latter makes a loop around major areas in Downtown Detroit.
Both of them makes no profit as again, it relies on a dumb flat rate system as with other failures in the US (DPM spends $3.00 per mi in running it but only charges $0.75 per ride. Duh!) but at least they are operational from corporate sponsorships (casinos, hotels, sporting venues) they receives.
That’s not the only reason the Las Vegas Monorail failed as a private enterprise. It was just a bad route. Having experienced it, it was very difficult to access the stations and required long walks. If it were on the Strip, I think it would have been more successful. It also failed to hit the airport.
Also, the problem with subsidized driving rears its ugly head as well. How does a privately operated monorail compete with the Strip’s subsidized roads?
Y Fukuzawa,
You are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts. Saying Japan has comparable gas prices to Canada is blatantly false. A gallon of gas in Canada costs roughly a little less than $5 a gallon. In Japan it is near $7 a gallon. I wouldn’t say a $2 a difference is similar would you? Making up your own conversion rate is nice. I suppose when I go to Japan in a few weeks when I convert my dollars to yen, I will cite your rate as a source and they will give me that?
“Both of them makes no profit as again, it relies on a dumb flat rate system as with other failures in the US”
Given you said this, I assume you think moving to a distance based fare system like Metrolink would make them profitable even though Metrolink is not?
Matt,
Rebuttal #1:
The Japanese yen is 25% overvalued to the US Dollar and has been repeatedly been analyzed many times by financial advisors both internationally and in Japan.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/japans-noda-yen-still-relatively-022859219.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-17/westpac-s-franulovich-says-japanese-yen-overvalued-audio-.html
Considering that and other factors such as purchase price parity, the more generally accepted rate is 100 JPY = 1 USD. Using overpriced currency exchange rate as a base figure that in Japan it costs $7/gal is not a fair way to judge the true price of oil in Japan. From the average Japanese person, the 100 JPY coin is used more like $1 bill instead of a $1.33.
The average price of gas in Tokyo is approx 136 JPY / 1 liter for regular octane gas. The source of this is from http://www.mantannet.com/market/ if you can read Japanese. I expect a source that is directly in Japanese and is a Japanese equivalent of GasBuddy.com would be the most accurate figure than citing English sources.
Converting that to USD/gal in the generally accepted 100 JPY = 1 USD exchange rate adjusted for PPP, the cost of gas is $5.17/gal, which is comparable to that of Canada.
Besides, the point doesn’t even matter. Transit agencies in Japan don’t even use the higher price of gas nor taxes from gas to fund their mass transit systems as they are all private enterprise.
Rebuttal #2:
In the case of Metrolink, their distance based fares are way too overpriced for the poor service it provides for the distance they travel.
How do you make any sense that Metrolink charges $5.25 for an one-way fare and takes 24 minutes to travel a measly 6.0 mi of track from Glendale Station to LA Union Station on Metrolink? Who’s going to ride it? No one. It’s cheaper, faster, and more efficient to travel by car, motorcycle, scooter, or bicycle than pay $5.25 for 6 miles that takes 24 minutes to get there, not including wait time for the train.
OTOH, you have Metro running the Expo Line all the way from Culver City to 7th/Metro, almost 10 miles of track for $1.50. What is this disparity? You have one agency ripping off people for poor service to travel 6.0 miles for $5.25 one-way, and another which gives you a steal for traveling 10 miles for $1.50 one-way. There is absolutely no consensus or organization going on between any agency in LA to provide a true market value of how much it costs to travel a mile on transit.
Compare that with Japan. JR, subway, private rail lines, the difference to travel the a similar distance is consistent. Private rail is on average, only 10 yen more expensive than JR. The cost to travel JR on their local, limited or express trains for the exact same distance between stations, it’s same price.
The whole fare system in LA is a joke. There is absolutely no consensus on any of the agencies on fares. They practically make it up as they go along. Culver City Bus charges $1.00, DASH charges 50 cents, Metrolink’s shortest route costs $5.25, and Metro charges $1.50. And you wonder why people don’t use transit, the whole thing is so confusing because there’s absolutely no consensus on what the true value of transit cost per mile is.
“How do you make any sense that Metrolink charges $5.25 for an one-way fare and takes 24 minutes to travel a measly 6.0 mi of track from Glendale Station to LA Union Station on Metrolink? Who’s going to ride it? No one.”
To be fair, it was designed that way. The fares on Metrolink are meant to encourage long-distance commuters to use the service while simultaneously discouraging short-distance commuters from using the service. Those users would theoretically be better served by local bus or train service. Amtrak is even more extreme in that sense. The idea is to keep shorter-distance commuters from taking space from the longer-distance commuters. Rush hour Metrolink trains are quite full.
Your idea would make more sense in the off-hours and weekends, but that would complicate the fare system beyond what the powers that be are comfortable with. There have been proposals to institute a dollar per station charge for shorter trips, but that went nowhere. I’m not even sure I could call it a proposal but more like rumors.
Y Fukuzawa,
You really think a person who uses or might use Metro in Central LA cares or even knows what the cost of a Metrolink ticket is? It has no bearing on whether he will ride Metro. Besides, you are the one that takes over every other Source post comment board going on about distanced based fares. If people don’t use transit in LA because it is too complex and varies too much as you state, don’t you think a distance based system would deter even more people since it is much more complex for people to understand rather than a set amount? You are contradicting yourself. I think we have established that while distance based fares might be a positive in the long run, they are certainly no panacea as you often imply. Metrolink (which is what this post is really on) is example #1.
On the Japanese cost of gas, you are using a theoretical argument that can be applied all over the place. Just the same, one could say many economists think the Canadian currency is overvalued by 25% as well. Try explaining to people that $4.00 a gallon gas is really not that much in the US because we have an overvalued currency compared to the Euro and Yuan. Even if you take your 25% overvalued theory to heart, it still doesn’t fly, because oil is priced in dollars, so if the yen suddenly devalued by 25% the Japanese would just have to pay 25% more in yen to purchase the oil on the world market.
If every transit system in LA used a common fare structure it would be so much easier for me to figure this entire system out. As it stands now, I rarely use public transit because it’s so confusing.
Santa Monica Big Blue Bus is $1.00 but it doesn’t use TAP. Metro is $1.50 and also issues passes and TAP, except for the Silver Line which is $2.45, but it honors the Day Pass, but is $0.95 additional when using a 7 or 30 day pass. Then there’s the Culver City Bus which also uses TAP but is $1.00 and it only accepts cash value portion of TAP since it issues no passes. Now DASH is also going to be on TAP too, but that one is only 50 cents. Then there’s Metrolink which starts off at $5.25.
It’s like you need an instruction manual published for all the different transit systems in LA just to figure out how to use them! And good luck trying to explain this to first time visitors to LA. Usually my relatives end up saying “forget it, let’s just rent a car.”
The car is just simple. I just hop in, turn the ignition, and off I go. If it runs out of gas, fill it up. Simple as that. There’s no need for me to memorize that “in Santa Monica, it’s $1.00 but you can’t use TAP. In Culver City, it’s also a $1.00 but they accept TAP. Oh but within Downtown LA, if you use Metro you might be better off with 30 day pass, but becareful if you plan on using the Silver Line as that’ll cost extra and the bus doesn’t give change. Using DASH might be an option, if you don’t have money on TAP, make sure you have two quarters on hand.”
It may sound like they’re making things simple, but in reality, with no standardization going on between them, it just makes everything so confusing. And the truth is, no one in LA just sticks around in place. They cross different boundaries. We go to Culver City. We go to Santa Monica. And we go to Downtown LA and we also go to outlying suburbs.
Isn’t there anyway we can just standardize the whole fare structure?
“You really think a person who uses or might use Metro in Central LA cares or even knows what the cost of a Metrolink ticket is?”
Yes, we do. Or what, are you implying that inner city people living in “Central LA” shouldn’t be allowed to use Metrolink because we’re not “rich” or “classy” enough to ride it and that we should stick to “dealing with the slower, cheaper, Metro” if we want to go watch an Angels game in Anaheim or visit Disneyland?
It’s not that hard to google up Metrolink fares. Or what, are you implying that us people in Central LA can’t afford computers or have the intelligence to use the internet?
Are you saying that people living in Central LA should be stuck living and working in Central LA and not have the equal opportunity to find work in Orange County? Do you want Metrolink fares to remain so expensive that only the rich, classy white people living in the suburbs can afford to commute to Downtown LA and at the same time, restrict the poor, uncouth, black and Hispanic people from ever coming into the suburbs to seek equal opportunity jobs at venues like Angels Stadium, Orange County Fairgrounds, Anaheim Convetion Center, Disneyland and Knotts Berry Farm? Or would you like us to just deal with it by commuting to those places with four hours of commuting on Metro or just deal with high gas prices to drive there?
Me thinks you’re the one who’s being elitist and a hypocrite.