10 Transit Services That Do Huge Numbers At the Farebox
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- Farebox Recovery Ratio is the proportion of operating costs that transit agencies recoup from fares alone. Today we're looking at the ten US transit services (by mode) that perform the best -- and also, the one that does the very worst!
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I've noticed a huge increase in fare evasion since the pandemic in NYC. People now open the emergency exit door and riders just stream in by the dozens. Some people hold the door open asking for spare change, which they usually don't get. At my station, someone keeps breaking the door closer and one of the doors stayed wide open for over two weeks. Stupid me keeps buying the monthly card and swiping.
Indifference and corruption is why New Yorkers can't have anything nice.
Only Hong Kong metro managed to make a profit. and there is a reason for that. 99.9% of metros in the world are subsidized or can only afford the costs of running them. even though it has allowed advertisers to advertise products on walls and inside trains. Metro construction costs cannot be covered.
Hong Kong metro is supported by a cage house in Hong Kong. the impact on population density 2km from the station is very high
I'd be interested in seeing a video comparing the costs of maintaining highways to maintaining various forms of transit networks
That's incomparable.
@@yaroslavkobezskyi Why? They could be compared on a cost per person-mile per year or something.
There is a lot of material online showing the real cost of highway construction and maintenance, and those numbers are not even nearly close to public transportation costs of any kind. The yearly cost of maintaining a highway network in a metro area is usually much higher than a decade-long rail development construction plan. We are talking about transit paying for itself, but there is barely even an option like that for roads. That sort of video will become obvious from the first minute. It's sad that society still needs an education on that.
I agree, we need more honesty in this not less
I'd be interested to see a video or article comparing the maintenance cost of roadways vs. the money brought in by gas taxes, which are meant to cover those costs. Does it come close?
Speaking of subscriber recovery ratio, congrats on 200k! 🎉
Such a good video, nothing gets me excited like farebox recovery ratio discussions!
Least nerdy Public Transit affectionate
Or cross-platform transfers!
LOL for always good north America RM transit channel
Even the fact that transit could recover expenses or even bring profit compared to highways.
Just need to throw in a Vancouver skytrain automation comparison to make it a classic RMTransit video!
I’m unsurprised that the MBTA’s heavy rail topped the list. Now if only the MBTA wasn’t saddled with the debt from the Big Dig that put I-90 underground maybe it could actually improve other services and expand…
The T has a lot of problems right now
@@ecurewitzMBTA heavy rail isn't the T though
@@truedarklander Yes it is. The MBTA's light rail, tram and trolley services are the 'T' too. I used to live from Boston and grew up there so I should know.
you're not from boston. the big dig put 93 under ground not the pike.(90). also the mass pike tolls were installed to "cover the big dig costs" but obviously left in place as the big dig was an absolute sham. mbta debt has nothing to do with the big dig, but everything to do with shit leadership (liberals) and the fact that passenger railroads are not profitable in this country, hence why every passenger rail system is government funded.
The Massachusetts legislature, to its lasting shame, decided to cripple the public transit system and use it to subsidize a highway through downtown Boston. Low-income urban residents are paying to make it easier for suburbanites to drive their SUVs through the city.
It’s interesting to see how high fare box recovery is in systems with “rampant fare dodging.” Really shows money should be invested in improving service and attracting more riders than making sure a few hundred extra people out of hundred of thousands to millions pay their $2 each day
You're absolutely right. Transit is so highly politicized that it can't avoid these issues just by hiring new leadership, either. The moral panic over transit being profitable will always be there.
People want to talk about fare dodging, so better to redirect their attention to the fare dodging that motorists are engaging in by obscuring their license plates in order to avoid paying for automated tolls and traffic offenses.
The irony is that at least in some cities, New York is supposedly one of them, they spend more in fare enforcement than the team brings in in unpaid fares. I could be wrong, but I think San Francisco is the same.
So true. DC is dealing with that right now, with WMATA redesigning Metro faregates and having transit police in most stations to discourage fare evasion. Meanwhile our buses have become defacto shuttles with only about 10% of riders actually paying their fare. WMATA staff (station managers, bus drivers) have been explicitly told not to confront fare evaders because of the possibility of assault, which has happened.
@@anthonydelfino6171 You're right about San Francisco as well. Even when considering fines for not paying a fare, the 10-12 fare enforcement officers cost much more than they bring in.
However, San Francisco's SFMTA/Muni is "weak" example because it has been mostly funded with public tax revenues / grants for decades. The share of revenue from farebox has been 13-18% for the past several decades.
That being said, it's much higher than all other Bay Area county transit agencies. Pre-pandemic, Caltrain and BART "boasted" excellent farebox recovery.
I always thought it was funny how public services that charge money will have their profitability questioned, while "free" public services remain unquestioned. Should public transit and USPS, which charge you each time you use it, turn a profit? I don't know, should your local library, park, public school, and freeway, which are all "free", also turn a profit?
EDIT: I see my wording confused a lot of people. I was asking these questions rhetorically, because the answer is clearly *No, public services shouldn't be expected to turn a profit.* But there is this weird societal phenomenon where services that charge a fare or fee, like public transit and the postal service, always have their "profitability" questioned. In contrast, services that are free at the point of use, like freeways and parks, are never questioned. It just shows a deep misunderstanding of what a public service is, and a culture so focused on making profits that we can't have nice things.
For profit schools? The jury came back on that decades ago, they're no better than free schools and oftentimes worse. It's just easier to hide their failures on paper.
I would guess it works in a similar way.
But I pay 3 different types of taxes for using the streets.
So I at least wouldn'T call it free serviceses.
I think in the USA it should make a profit.
In my imagination you are very anti social.
It can't be that something is paid for by the general public.
Just like health care, the users of streets or rail ways should pay for all costs.
There’s a difference between paying general taxes for something and a direct user fee for something. General taxes pay for the libraries, they don’t always pay for transit.
Please stop the free roads BS. It only shows there’s no point in talking to you.
You have a point but conservatives have been trying to gut USPS for years and with the attention libraries have been getting about "woke" books I'm sure their lack of profitability will be the next talking point.
The City of New York owes the residents of Staten Island free service on the Ferry as compensation for as you pointed out lack of connection to the subway and as part of the "One City, One Fare" System it had to go.
Maybe to encourage certain minorities to get out of Manhattan 😏
But the thing is many Staten Islanders particularly those who don’t want certain people in Staten Island, don’t want any direct transit connecting Brooklyn which would be easier. Some go as far as saying they don’t want it connected to Manhattan either. They chose to instead clog the bqe everyday and give all of us in Brooklyn and Manhattan lung cancer with their Ford explorer suvs.
Here in Los Angeles (LA Metro specifically), our farebox recovery ratio is very low. We charge low fares relative to other US cities and have a lot of programs to incentivize ridership through low/no fare. The agency is actually totally cool with that, though. During the pandemic our budget ran into far fewer issues than BART, with a very high farebox recovery ratio, because ridership dipped across the board. There's something to be said for not relying on ridership for funding, at least.
this is the big upside to the "if we build it, they will ride" mindset, which is how all public transit should be
Yeah I was going to say something like this. Transit should be ran as a public service, not a traditional business. Farebox revenue is way too fickle to rely on, not to mention equity issues
That's true. It still has to have some mimimal fare rate to protect itself from poor government decisions.
@@yaroslavkobezskyi a poor government decision is relying on the farebox to determine how you build your system.
@@MrTaxiRob
Can't argue that. Public transit should not be designed to be profitable, but to solve as many commute and logistics challenges as possible. My point was that it should not be completely free and it should not be profitable at the same time, small fare won't hurt. It's an investment for drivers. And if it's something you pay for you will be a more careful user. Certain group of people like children, elderly, disabled, veterans, single parents should use it for free or at least with discount, of course.
Takeaway, it’s crazy that boston hasn’t invested more in its heavy and light rail even though it’s one of the most profitable in the nation. The slow zones over the past few months are ridiculous
lol, it's "profitable" because they neglect to continually invest in the system. I believe the red line still has cars from the 1960s in its fleet?
A lot of this is going to change with the new wage increases they just passed down last month. Drivers and inspectors are going to be getting like a 20% pay increase or something like that, which I'm sure will eat a lot into this.
They really need to invest more though. So many opportunities to expand the red/orange lines, but instead they chose a green line expansion, and are electrifying bus fleets instead of adding additional heavy rail. Capital costs are obviously higher, but they need to think about the long term: heavy rail is faster, cheaper (to operate) and has more demand than bus and light rail.
Seriously. Even the Red Line is one long slow zone these days. In the spring, CBS did a story about the Red Line averaging 35 minutes for 7 stops (6 miles), and it's gotten a lot worse since then. Most people can bike 6 miles in under 35 minutes.
4:21 RE are fares regressive since they're the same - yes, HOWEVER I'd argue that in the US they're less regressive than other countries because they're typically the same price no matter how far you ride. In Australia for example, if you take the train one stop it's much cheaper than if you take the train 10 stops. This sounds great in theory, but in reality it punishes poor people who typically live further from the center of town and have longer commutes.
What you're saying is true, unless you have a good welfare system that helps those who cannot afford it.
If you add to it a healthy urban structure that instead of low density sprawls there are actual higher density mixed use cities and towns less people commute long distances as they have plenty of of opportunities nearby.
The city comparison at the end is absolutely worth watching every minute of this video.
I think I read once that Hong Kong's subway turns a profit. A lot of it has to do with ridership. They zone things to have density at the stations, and so it's much more convenient to ride transit than drive. Additionally, everything works (elevators, escalators, the rolling stock, etc), and it super clean and well maintained.
MTR is more of a real estate company than a transit operator, which is why it turns a profit
It specifically doesn't come from FBRR that's the whole point
Only Hong Kong metro managed to make a profit. and there is a reason for that. 99.9% of metros in the world are subsidized or can only afford the costs of running them. even though it has allowed advertisers to advertise products on walls and inside trains. Metro construction costs cannot be covered.
Hong Kong metro is supported by a cage house in Hong Kong. the impact on population density 2km from the station is very high
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa A lot of of metros around the world have a farebox recovery above one, especially in Asia but also e.g. London. But yes, capital expenses are usually subsidized.
While it does help that a transit agency can recover most of its operating costs through fares, it can lead to issues when ridership decreases, like we have seen post-COVID. One example is BART and CalTrain, which have not come close to pre-COVID levels as many businesses moved out of San Francisco during COVID (or at least had a higher percentage of remote workers), and some other factors too. The agencies needed extra funding from the State of California as COVID relief money expired and they were not able to recoup their costs through fare revenue compared to pre-COVID, and without it they were in danger of having to reduce service significantly. I'm not sure if other agencies in California (like LA Metro and Metrolink) were facing similar dangers since they are not as dependent on fare revenue.
Obviously, we shouldn't expect them to make a profit since they are a public good, and there should be funding from the local governments anyway. But that is one downside of depending heavily on fare revenue to support your operations.
To be fair here, the businesses that moved out of the Bay Area weren't San Francisco based, many were further south in Silicon Valley, so Muni Metro wasn't AS impacted by it. What did impact us here was the change of many jobs to permanent work from home, the reduction of service (leading more people to rely on ridesharing) and that one of the major light rail into subway lines being taken offline for renovation in 2020, and isn't scheduled to resume service until 2025.
That said, though, I think last I saw San Francisco spends more on fare enforcement than the department brings in in revenue, and their efforts seem to be mostly centralized around only a few blocks of the city. So making Muni free to ride and paid for through other means, such as business taxation (since the businesses definitely benefit from having mass transit bring customers to them) and maybe a small tax on residents would be better for the system overall.
You SHOULD make a video about outliers of farebox recovery, especially of routes or agencies that have valuable lessons they can teach larger agencies.
I did get a YT video suggested to me from Bianca Graulau looking at how the same US car centrism took over Puerto Rico, and touching on a little bit of bike and transit service. Well worth a watch.
Her video was fantastic but some of the comments are awful!
@@discocycle I am not surprised, but it's still always disappointing when people leave terrible comments
I was really surprised San Diego is on this list because of a topic that wasn't really covered in this video, fare evasion. In my experience living in SD, most light rail stations don't have fare gates or people enforcing people swiping on to the trolley, so tons of people just ride for free. I'd be curious as to your thoughts on fare evasion and enforcement in general, although that might need a whole separate video
IRRC pre-pandemic the unpaid fare rate was around 3%.
The vast majority of light rail systems in the US do not have faregates, so yes, San Diego struggles with fare evasion, but it's not alone in this regard.
Fare enforcement is a tricky one since the "solutions" don't fully stop it, slow down service, and cost money. For stops without a full station, the only real option is having everyone scan/pay on entry at the door, which means the train has to stop while people fumble through their pockets and wallets. For rail networks with dedicated stations, turnstyles and cameras do a decent job and getting the majority of people to pay without slowing down the train's schedule, but for street service you have to weigh the pros and cons.
Fare beating is a non issue. It generally costs more to police and enforce fares than to do nothing. And involving the cops necessarily leads to unnecessary violence, so just no
I agree. Fare evasion is a big problem. Maybe that's why bart is so high on the list because they have a really good system to pay before you board and the system requires you to verify your destination as you leave the station. Los Angeles "on your honor" system just encourage fare evasion. Homeless and mental patients are riding the system just to get out of the weather.
Hey Mr Nerd,
I recently saw your tweet comparing the size of the Midwest/ Great Lakes region to Spain and arguing for HSR within that region. As a Chicagoan and Spanish-American, I would be really interested in seeing a series that compares Spain HSR city pair scores to the Midwest. I know you did a video already on Chicago's HSR scores with other Midwest cities, but I would be interested to see how they compare to Spain's city pairs.
Also congrats on 200K! Keep up the good work, you're one of my favorite content creators.
Woah this is a really good idea!
So there are a couple of old videos from him that are similar to this concept still! Also holy cow his recording quality has gotten so much better... Good work @City Nerd. In descending relevance to your idea:
Comparing rail in US vs Spain in general: th-cam.com/video/wfxJhX8Y4QI/w-d-xo.html
Comparing various transportation options between city pairs in the US and in a variety of other countries: th-cam.com/video/HKcWCV9WbYI/w-d-xo.html
Best pairs for HSR in the US: th-cam.com/video/pwgZfZxzuQU/w-d-xo.html
Agree that it would be a cool video, just highlighting ones I remember watching that were variations on that theme!
If you're going to have public transit compete with vehicles, it should be free to users. Here in Oakland, CA everyone is waiting for the next shoe to drop with BART's fare deficit threatening to crater their operations. Caltrans never said all roads and freeways to be shut down because pandemic meant fewer cars on the road.
Well then it would need to be fully tax subsidized to make a fair comparison, not run by subcontractors etc. I mean, eventually I use all the gas in my tank, I don't pocket the value of unburned gas which is what transit subcontractors like Veolia are essentially doing.
I agree. A fareless transit system would help entice people to choose transit over driving. There have been whispers and rumors of making the LA Metro free to all passengers. I don't know how accurate the number is, but I heard that fares only account for about 10% of their operating costs.
@@MrTaxiRobthe only reason subcontractors are needed in the first place is we demand it be run like a business
@@BastiatC you can leave me out of that "we" thank you very much. And frankly I don't agree, I think it's politicians specifically; and they're not just telling their base what they want to hear, but telling their base what they should want to begin with. The masses are fairly spineless.
if you want to be left out of that "we" it's your local rep you need to be talking to, not me.@@MrTaxiRob
The best farebox recovery ratio is the one that produces the highest ridership. It's hard to know what that is, though.
Low-income riders who truly need it can get subsidies, as they do in NYC, the Bay, and (I assume) other cities as well.
It also seems to be higher with higher rider capacity. In Boston and Philadelphia he showed that heavy rail > light rail > bus, which makes sense because you're able to take more and more people per trip.
In a rational world it would be free at the point of service, because it would be clean, efficient, safe, frequent, timely, well maintained, and go to most of the places that most of the people want to go most of the time. In addition to all the money it would save, more money would be saved by not having to collecting transit fares.
It would also give many people the dignity of not having to receive a government subsidy to meet their daily transportation needs.
@@barryrobbins7694 Cutting fares to zero means you get less service, lower quality service, and smaller networks than you would with some farebox recovery. Arguing that fare revenue can be replaced with subsidy misses the point. If you can get the local government(s) to subsidize transit to the tune of $x per year, then your choice is to either set the fare at zero and provide exactly as much service and network expansion as $x per year will buy you, or set the fare above zero, collect $y per year at the farebox, and provide as much service as $x+$y per year will buy you.
This is why the best, most expansive networks in the world (London, NY, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow, Mexico City) all charge fares, while the Kansas City streetcar is free.
As of this week, BART is attempting to only run 6 car trains for efficiency.
Would have loved to have seen a discussion of what is happening to different high fare box ratio agencies with the mass move to work from home, and a larger discussion of the future of transit funding. Outside a few examples, states are largely refusing to step in and fill operating gaps, and the US faces a mass loss of public transit unless something changes.
Lmao love BART ranked #2 on the list with the $0.72 recoup but still being perpetually on the edge of financial crisis
For politicians trying to fully privatize it, everything is a crisis.
@@dylanwinn3 Makes sense, but in a better world that shouldn't have to be an issue for public transit. As a wise commenter on this video said, "The best farebox recovery ratio is the one that produces the highest ridership"!
This also reminds me again of the Hong Kong Metro and their funding method. They just get to be landlords. Which I know is kind of a contentious issue, but the fact that they get to charge rent for all of the prime real estate they create by existing in their own stations is a pretty clever way to make your transit agency profitable, even if it is basically just feudalism again. Honestly, I'd rather have feudalism paying for trains than knights, but what do I know?
Honestly, I’d love for NY to experiment with this policy. But knowing the grip landlords have on this city, that’ll never happen.
a) not feudalism.
b) it's largely commercial developments not residential.
c) I'd rather have a long time metro service landlord that will give you a 5-10 year lease on a set inflation linked index to increase rents than some dodgy buy to let chancer who will price gouge you or chuck you out.
@@mytimetravellingdog Right, rather than stores paying rent to the landlord who owns the mall, and landlord paying property taxes to the government, you have stores paying rent to the government agency who owns the mall. Not feudalism.
Which means unpopular fares and taxes for transit can be lower, and the voters don't even think about the funding. Seems great. We should do it everywhere.
Can you do a video talking about the urbanism of the few car-free/mostly car free areas of the US and how they can act as blueprints for other US towns and cities? (Mackinac Island, Fire Island, Catalina, etc.)
This is sort of an obvious idea that...I didn't have on my topic list at all. Wild. Thanks!
@@CityNerd I took a vacation on Mackinac Island just to get away from cars and ride a bicycle and walk. Everywhere on Mackinac Island Its is very expensive so I stayed in a hotel on the mainland and just walked to where I took the ferry to the island since I didn’t want the expense to rent a car, most people don’t do that though, but I value my health to walk and it’s less stressful for me to figure out.
Your Philly/Boston fan comparison killed me, great video as always!
Just a tad off-topic but I live in the DC region and grew up in Boston. What amazes me about the DC metro is how extravagant it is. Huge long trains with few riders in beautiful and lavish specialized subway stations, a far cry from, for instance, Boston's C line with center street stops, shorter trains with more riders. DC must be so inefficient. I'd like to see a comparison of the "fairbox" efficiency of various subway systems.
Caltrain is kinda crazy because it completes the ring around the SF Bay area vs. BART, but there are some pretty significant differences though. If you ask any regular Caltrain rider, they much prefer it to BART (and with the new electric train sets coming next year, it will be even nicer) because it isn't filled with people defecating/urinating on the seats or who look like they'll mug you. A big difference though is that it costs significantly more to go an equivalent amount of distance, which is why its farebox recovery is so high.
The question then becomes: who are you actually building transit for, and why are you building it? Is it for mobility of people who couldn't normally afford a car? Is it to alleviate congestion on the freeways? Both points of view are pretty car-centric.
I live in Boston area, and yeah, MBTA is falling apart. They are putting way more money into it this year with a new tax, and more transportation oriented state government. But yeah the system was probably affordable under last administration (Charlie Baker) but it also fell into incredible disrepair. The data from this year would probably show a lot more money being put into the system, even though it is still slow and ugly from past decisions
I think a lot of systems across the country could be accused of the same things. For the past several decades, our society has been loath to spend money on infrastructure or public works. Transit agencies are notoriously underfunded. Sure, we can get into the debate out mismanagement of funds, but it's disingenuous not to consider both sides of that equation.
I wonder where Canadian systems would fare on this list? They tend to have higher ridership per capita and I thought GO and TTC were the least subsidized transit agencies in North America.
Farebox Recovery Ratio is *politically* good for sure, as in much of the country most arguments against transit are really just yells of "socialism" and a high farebox ratio will quell that a bit, but I'd say it is even more good to set fares so as to maximize, or at least optimize, ridership. I'm sure Ayn Rand with spin in her grave for me saying it, but turning a profit shouldn't be the goal of everything in the world.
Your usual great posting. But kudos for the "paw de deux" at the end.
NY is a surprise! A public service shouldn't be necessarily profitable mostly if it has other benefits to the public like transit clearly has, in addition to the environmental benefits.
Given the amount of complaining regarding fare evasion in NYC, I would’ve expected it to be lower on the least.
@@Jorge-lh6px the irony is, at least the last time I looked into it, NYC fare enforcement brings in less revenue than it takes to run the department. So making the transit free, or free for residents of the city, would be better than trying to force people to pay. The system could easily be supported on a small tax on businesses who benefit the most from having customers brought to them, or maybe a small income tax on the residents.
As other comments have pointed out I would've loved to see how these numbers compare with farebox recovery ratios of transit systems in other parts of the world. Perhaps another video where you do a ranking of the biggest transit systems globally? I say this because in Toronto where I'm from I hardly see people pay fares on streetcars or buses but in Seoul where I visited I haven't seen a single person not pay the fares. I even saw a stumbling drunk person who didn't know where they were still remember to pay the bus fare. I suspect a mix of cultural pressures and fare pricing ($3.00+ vs. $1.00+) make up some of the differences between the number of fare dodgers in East Asia and NA.
but Toronto also has the strongest farebox recovery ratio of any city in NA
I saw where you compared all modes of transit in other cities like New York. However, Chicago's El is the only one on this list when you have CTA for city bus, Pace for Suburban Bus, and Metra for regional rail. I am curious as to the Farebox Recovery Ratio for Metra and Pace. With Metra, I know certain lines get more traffic than others.
Metra Ridership Data: metra.com/sites/default/files/inline-files/July%202023%20Ridership%20Trends%20Memo.pdf
CTA, Metra and Pace all have to adhere to the 50% ratio or higher because of state law
BART is a heavy rail system with commuter rail pricing. Unfortunately, it does not accept transfers from the other transit systems in the Bay Area while those systems absorb discounts for passengers which are transferring from BART.
Congratulations on your TH-cam award. Thank you for the engaging topics.
Idea for a video: a full discussion on free public transit and when it might or might not work
It should be noted that, as of this week, Bart will be reducing its train car lengths to 6, and it’s time table from 30 minutes to 20 minutes.
I’m seeing a growing number of people against 15 minutes cities and high density, high walkability area. I’d like to see a video on why that might be
10:53 “MBTA light rail” presumably also includes the Red Line Mattapan trolley in addition to the green line. Interesting to see that get differentiated since, locally, people group them together as the “T” (and they use the same fare system), and the commuter rail is the only rail service that gets properly differentiated.
What a difference a century makes! Toronto's plans for a Subway started as early as 1900's but due to the Great Depression & WWII. The TTC's profits largely allowed Toronto to pay for the first leg of the Yonge St. subway with a small amount from Ontario & nothing from the Canadian Government. It was the fare box that largely paid for the subway.
Ok, I LOLed at "just asking questions" about the MBTA Red Line.
The Staten Island Ferry fare was 5c until 1975, long after the subway fare had risen several times. It was 25c round trip until 1990, then 50c round trip until 1997, then free to this day.
LOL on "MBTA could spend some of this extremely high fare recovery on Red Line maintenance?". That could apply to Orange line too.
Would love to see my metro trains not catch on fire.
i just can't believe that NY/NJ lawyer advertising on the train bites dogs. What a commitment to his clients.
Whether anyone else recognized this is irrelevant to my comment, because seeing Sir Mix-a-Lot Beepers in the background was so Swass. When I moved to Seattle in 2005, went to Broadway, and realized I was at the spot, Dick’s Drive-in. Anyway, enjoying your videos!
I went to that place in the first shot in Ft Lauderdale (unless its a similar place in Miami). Going on the canals is truly a lovely experience.
The MBTA Commuter Rail is also stupidly expensive to ride. A trip from Boston's South Station to Providence on the Commuter Rail is $12.25 one-way. Amtrak travels along the same route and you can get Northeast Regional tickets often under $10 if you book ahead. NER is much faster too.
Yeah it really sucks that it's so expensive AND it doesn't run late. I can't tell you the # of times I went to a concert in Boston and HAD to drive because round trip for 4 people costs $100 AND the last train leaves at 11:30!! Of course we'd all rather take the train and be able to drink, etc but we get shoehorned into driving.
Major changes coming to BART, including new gates to cut down on fare evasion. They have discontinued ten car trains as of this Monday 09/11/23. They also have discontinued the old cars that were responsible for the majority of breakdowns and expense to maintain. BART has also increased their hours and frequency. I got a video from last Sunday of one of the last trains with those old cars which I suddenly miss now with their dirty upholstery and unsettling smell, as I exited my train from the East Bay into the 16/ Mission station
The final scene suspense... is overwhelming!
I used to live in Staten Island and took the ferry every day. It's the only way I could get to work in the city without a car. There were also busses, but they had to go over the Verazano bridge to Brooklyn, rather than straight to Manhattan. The ferry is only 30 mins.
mind. boggled. It takes the red line 22 minutes to go 4 miles with a frequency of 11 minutes at rush hour (next trains being 20 and 22 minutes away). To see it at the top of this makes it look and feel even more hopeless. Thanks for another great video!
Congrats on 200K!
Toronto Calling! TTC (bus, trolley, light rail and heavy rail clmbined) approx 80% and GO Transit regional rail 82%. And we’re the ones paying all the HiGh TaXeS.
Watching your videos continues to be a great use of MY time! Thanks for all your hard work. A PR trip is definitely in order.
If you included Japan on the list, you'd be looking at >2x recovery ratios. Meaning they make double in fares compared to their costs, and it works well and is affordable.
Honestly pretty surprising. I would think NYC metro area systems would all be dishonorable mentions since fare evasion and operating costs are such political flashpoints, but I guess half a billion to run the PATH, for example, is barely anything compared to such a huge revenue.
That said, low farebox recovery on the MBTA and NJT light rails makes so much sense. There is basically no collection mechanism at any street level stops to the point where you might be forgiven for thinking theyre free services at first glance. I'm surprised the Green Line isn't even lower tbh.
Same with Cleveland RTA Rapid Transit. I now ride it regularly to the airport after living in San Diego for 20+ years, and there is basically zero fare enforcement to the point that it is a de facto free service.
Proud to be from Massachusetts, a great state.
as a NYC tourist i went on the staten island ferry and it was very nice indeed.
I've seen some groups say that here in LA the maintenance of the tap machines and fare systems is a eats a large part of the fares themselves, I wonder how true that is
Interesting to see that for q few of the cities (Boston and Philly, maybe others) the opex is above the nominal fare cost. Don’t know if the data exists but would be cool to analyze the factors the go into the actual fare per trip (transfers, evasion, discounts, monthly passes, etc.)
I noticed you had Boston light rail (Green Line) as 2x the operating cost of heavy. I'm not sure how many staff ride a T train, but even 3 (which I'd heard) would be one person per 2 cars; 2 (1 per 3) would be more reasonable (driver and door conductor.)
The Green Line runs with one staff per car! Even when it's two cars linked together, each one has someone sitting in front to collect fares and open the doors.
Oo portland! Are you thinking of doing a meetup in PDX?
Irrelevant, I really like your content, but love the glimpses into some of my cities LA & PDX. What's always surprised me is how your videos seem to come directly from the questions in my head. Thanks for doing all this work!!
I would be interested in seeing a comparison of costs for a high speed rail project in TX or CA compared to the highway projects / maintenance projects that state DOTs justify every year. It’s really crazy we don’t have HSR in the US and it can’t actually be that more expensive than the current system of car dependency.
In the 1940s st Louis didn't close down for snow due to street cars. Some lines also operated 24/7.
If staff costs are big part of operating costs how does the Vancouver Skytrain system (driverless cars) compare
Staff costs include line and car maintenance. Driverless doesn't mean labor-less..
Would be interesting to see video of deeper look into how cities are using Aerial lifts as a mode of transportation. (Toulouse,, Medellin etc.). They used to be mostly before for skiing centers, but now they are popularizing year by year. Would be nice to know where this is really working well and where not. Also cities like vigo and hongkong using long outdoor escalators to move around hilly cities much easier. That would be also interesting
There are some individual bus routes out there that do run a profit, but they end up subsidizing coverage and policy headway routes
10:46 I was absolutely STUNNED!!!! If they can get this level of farebox recovery, then perhaps they can, you know, hire construction companies that aren’t Credit Mobilier II: Electric Boogaloo that, you know, actually fix the track so the trains aren’t limited to 25 and 10 on curves.
I remember back in the 1990's BART was subsidized to the tune of $250 million a year. It's never been self sufficient.
I'm just here to give props to the framed Sir Mix-A-Lot record in the back.
Topic I'd enjoy hearing about
Cities that were designed with transit oriented development but then got the transit removed.
The specific case I'm thinking of is Pittsburgh but it would apply elsewhere as well.
Pittsburgh used to have an amazing rail system with trolleys/streetcars.
But most of it got ripped out for cars post ww2.
This has resulted in the city having distinct neighborhoods evenly spaced from each other. My guess is these correlate to the transit pickups.
While there were definitely some routes that were lost or suffered from the removal of street cars, much have them have been replaced by buses that serve the same route. And considering that most of the street cars were in mixed traffic, they weren’t offering that much more than a bus.
And Pittsburgh neighborhoods are more about geography. You have plenty of neighborhoods that are just a particular hill or valley.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the various ferry transit around Seattle/Puget Sound. I've been Seattle -adjacent (to the west) for ~5 years and it's definitely been an experience that's hard to describe to friends/family form more land-focused places.
BART (for me) is an axcellent way to bypass (SF or just downtown), rush hour, bridge traffic that gets pretty bad often enough, fly by small communities stretched out through the bay area to get to the one where I'm going to, etc. It's not cheap but can be extremely handy, well worth my time, especially in a pinch.
Bought Nebula Lifetime *purely* because of you. I watch all your videos on YT Premium on multiple accounts. And now Nebula.
You're great. Always want more!
Thanks for creating content.
thank you for making this. The push for free and reduced fares on the T is growing, too. Does the Mattapan High Speed Line count as light rail too if it uses PCCs?
I'll also mention it's so sad how poor the system is right now, despite the T being the backbone of MA's new TOD zoning law (MBTA Communities Act)
Was not expecting to see two of the Bay Area's major transit systems on this list! I don't know how this is playing out in other cities, but I know that in the Bay our transit agencies are facing massive budget shortfalls in the coming years due to decreased ridership post-pandemic. While being a mostly self-sufficient agency from a budget perspective definitely looks good politically, it means that if ridership drops, so does a large portion of the budget, potentially leading to a death spiral as service is reduced. I wonder if there's an "ideal" farebox recovery ratio--it's not clear to me that higher is necessarily better.
I had #1 spoiled for me from a comment on Twitter, but it still surprises me. I haven't been back there for like 4 years, and I heard service has gotten a lot more unreliable, but in my time there I noted how the cars were awfully squeaky cars, and a lot of stations were dingy looking. Service was alright, there were occasional delays but it seemed to be operating normally 90% of the time. I always had the feeling that the fare was unusually expensive, but I had no comparison to make since I had never used another subway/metro before. So it surprises me that they can recover so much operating cost, yet it doesn't feel any more premium than other subways featured on your channel
This video feels like CityNerds transition from Entertainment to Education
Hello CityNerd! Montreal's $7 billion REM train system is run by the Quebec's fund pension agency in the hopes of pulling off a fare recovery ratio exceeding 100%. Everyone there is snickering and asking themselves what business a pension fund agency has in running rail transit in the hopes of achieving full-blown profitability. For many stations, they will attempt to integrate a high-capacity daycare, apartment/condo complexes, a full grocery store, dry cleaning service and fast food restaurants all to rake in generous rent revenue. Large shopping malls, the underground city and the airport will also have direct access.
I'm crying at the sports fans comparison 😂 that got me can't lie
I can’t wait until you come back to PR. There are so many missed opportunities for good transit on the island that it’s calling out for a video of its own.
Could you do a video on the rail systems of Dallas or the full Dallas Ft Worth metroplex please? A bunch of us watch you and would not mind getting lightly roasted.
Betting the only reason the T comes out on top is the literal decades of deferred maintenance keeping operating costs artificially low.
Most of the systems here in Australia does not recover the cost through the farebox as it's seen as a service like the fire, police or highways, though eventually people pay through the tax to make up for it. There' still a price signal fare though. Where I am, the overall fare cap has been brought down recently so it costs $5 one way to get anywhere in the state, or $10 for the entire day. I'm kinda hoping our system can cope with the extra demand.
I'm not surprised at BART 2019 numbers. It is highly dependent on movement in and out of SF and Oakland from white collar workers. The distance based fare really adds up when people are coming from all over the bay area. But the emphasis on white collar workers became an impediment in the wake of the pandemic when most of the tech workers now only go into the office 0-3 times a week. It was a model of fare box recovery before the pandemic, but now it is a warning to other agencies of what happens when you depend too heavily on one type of user.
I think I need an explainer on light-rail/heavy-rail/regional rail differences
Hi in Seattle! If you want to see urban development done right, pop over to the East Side (gasp). Downtown Redmond is almost unrecognizable
I would like a calculation where the public pays directly for base connectivity, so that the agencies can make a profit and have a real incentive to improve the service.
how do you define the base?
So, the train is free, but there are a few cars where you can pay to enter to avoid the riffraff?
I'd be interested in a video discussing planned communities that follow the "new urbanist" school, like Seaside, FL.
A top 10 ferry services video would be a slam dunk. Or a video explaining the rationale for running ferries vs building bridges, tunnels or rail.
While it might be difficult to calculate total cost of highways, here might be an approach: calculate the amount of public dollars plus socialized costs and determine the per passenger mile cost. You might even have different categories: land use cost, construction cost amortized over 20 years, operating cost per year, and so on. I bet streets are significantly more expensive, but let's see.
Also interesting would be to factor in the utility of time spent: if you drive you can't do anything, but if you take the train the are a few things you can do. But those costs are not externalized and everyone should be free to waste their time as they see fit.
In england the uk government is forcing Transport for London to pay for itself- its so bad. It can costs 12$ to just take the train home!
Idea (and thanks for the shoutout in the last video):
A two-way top-10 video looking at three NTD fixed guideway statistics.
NTD has statics for fixed guideway miles for each system as well as "train hours" operated. So you don't get a bonus for operating longer trains: a 4-car train every 5 minutes is the same as an 8-car train every 10 in "vehicle hours" but twice as good in "train hours." So one metric is "train hours per fixed guideway mile" or "what agency uses its guideways most intensely." Since most costs are fixed, operating more shorter trains is just the cost of additional labor, the rest remains the same, but agencies definitely take different strategies here.
Then you can also take train miles per train hours to get an idea of average speed of services. There are some surprises here!
Both metrics are good to break out by mode, perhaps a top 10 overall and then three modal honorable mentions if applicable, or something. And there are definitely some dishonorable mentions! The slowest light rail systems would be a particularly depressing list.
I have crunched these numbers and happy to share, shoot me a PM somewhere (I even check twitter DMs every so often).
Can you do a video about potentially underdeveloped regional rail transit stops in terms of urbanization?
Potentially focusing in on a regional transit system such as NJ Transit?
Having lived in NJ, there are some stops that do this well with apartment buildings (see Ridgewood) and others that simply have parking lots by the train stations (see New Bridge Landing)?
Ideally, more should be trending towards the former but they aren’t
Also if rail has a better farebox recovery ratio, then why are so many places wanting to build BRT lines?
less capital intensive means easier to sell politically
cheaper capital costs?
@@dalehalliday3578 I would think that makes sense. The us powers that be tend to shy away from massive capital investment, which is why mainline rail services refuse to electrify
You honestly need a competition where people do voiceovers of that cat video! 😆
iirc correctly WMATA was closer to .6 in the early 2010s, but has been steadily declining both from increased costs and lower ridership.
Congrats on 200K subs!