METRO doing better...in that it should lower fares? Well...no.
METRO, HouTran, and all of HouTran's manifestations going back to Houston Electric and even before that have had a grand tradition of low fares. In today's $1.25 base fare for a single local bus/light rail ride (with a 3-hour transfer if using a Q-Card), it is evident that tradition continues today. In the interest of keeping ridership along with being altruistic regarding low-income ridership (who still are the majority of METRO's local bus ridership), may that grand tradition continue indefinitely.
Prior to 1995 my memory is not so good, especially in the light of my not riding mass-transit until 1998. I do know that prior to 1995, base fare for a single local bus ride was $0.85. At least one person has told me that the burden on bus operators regarding their needed interactions with fare items was somewhat trying at times.
Even with the ca. 1995 advent of the time-stamp-generating fare-boxes (someone, correct me if needed) and the accompanying fare-rise to $1.00 for single local bus rides, our bus operators still had a lot to keep up with in that they still had to check time-stamps by hand if the machines were out of whack or if the magnetic strips on the fare-items had gone haywire.
This fare system was in operation from ca. 1995 (with its $35.00 monthly pass - $35.00!!!) and for the next thirteen years with no changes in fares - an incredibly-long time for such a thing. When light rail came online in 2004, this fare system was retained. Along with consistency in the high competence and courtesy of its non-contract bus operators, the way METRO has kept fares low have been for me the high-points in the way the agency has done business.
By the mid-2000s or earlier, the technical aspects of stored-value cards with embedded microchips and with the same dimensions and thickness and materials of credit cards had evolved to where a switch to such a system had for METRO become practical. In 2008, the 'Q-Card' system went into operation along with a fare-hike (much-needed, I think) to $1.25 for base local bus/rail fare (I know nothing of Park & Ride fares through the years).
But along with the messiness of tokens and the magnetic-strip-time-stamped-paper fare items, METRO threw the baby out with the bathwater. Gone was the DayPass. Gone was the Weekly Pass. Gone was the Monthly Pass. And gone was the Annual Pass. Students, seniors, and the disabled rightly kept their special discounts, but for the average workaday rider, it was a nasty shock, especially for those like I using the Monthly Pass.
With the Q-Card, METRO did put in a multi-ride discount: for every fifty paid taps of the Q-Card, one gets five extra would-be-paid taps. This equates to fifty-five paid taps of $1.13 each. It's not the intuitive and easy-to-remember system that was the DayPass, etc., but it existed and exists today in the Q-Card, though not in the DayPass.
METRO's Q-Card and Fare information page from 2009
Due to public demand, in 2012, METRO brought back the DayPass, but not in the same, elegant way as was the DayPass of old.
METRO's current DayPass page
Fitting the way in which the old DayPass was done, had METRO enacted this new DayPass as such, we would see a paid tap of $2.50 with unlimited local bus and light rail rides for literally twenty-four hours from the moment of that paid tap. A DayPass tapped at 4:37pm expires at 4:37pm the following day.
With the DayPass as it actually works today, the first paid tap is the $1.25 base fare with the second paid tap being the same price. The third paid tap is $0.50 with unlimited local bus and rail rides until 2:00am the following morning. A DayPass tapped at 4:37pm would not last twenty-four hours, but would last only until 2:00am - eleven hours and twenty-three minutes.
METRO wants people to use the DayPass. It is advertising this DayPass as being the best thing for every local bus and rail rider since sliced bread.
In its current three-tap iteration, it is not. For the normal workaday rider with one trip to work and one trip back home, the DayPass is pointless. With three-hour transfers, getting that third paid tap would be for a lot of schedules impractical. And for those workaday people who would get that third and fourth tap, they are going to lunch on the bus and would get that fourth tap in the transfer window of the third tap!
That third paid tap is a precedent for future METRO Boards to enact even-more janked-up fare schemes. I've railed against this DayPass on the fact its price does not just double that of base fare and have done done with it. But really, why couldn't METRO have just priced the DayPass like that?
As currently iterated, I do not use the DayPass and never will. I don't want to add to METRO's skewed statistics saying everyone just luuuvz the DayPass. Ridership, I submit, has simply not done the numbers and its memories of the DayPass of old are at best fleeting.
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What would I love to see enacted? How about this?
Base fare (cash, one-way, no transfer): $1.50 - Yes, raise this base fare to better-incentivize people toward the Q-Card
The Q-Card
Q-Card 1st paid tap (3-hour transfer): $1.25
Q-Card 2nd paid tap (3-hour transfer): $1.25
Q-Card 3rd paid tap and all paid taps thereafter for 24 hours following the first paid tap: Free
The Q-Card replaces both the present Q-Card and the present DayPass as the Q-Card becomes an effective DayPass. Assuming seven days a week with two paid taps, this comes to fourteen paid taps per week and a total customer outlay of $17.50 per week with the Q-Card.
The W-Card
A weekly pass...a card separate from the Q-Card, loadable in increments of $15.00 and priced at $15.00 for a full 168 hours (seven days in succession) from what would be on a Q-Card the first paid tap.
The M-Card
Let's have this card expire at 31 days. This gives us 744 hours from the time the card is tapped through expiration. Loadable in increments of $65.00, let's price this card at $65.00.
The A-Card (or 'Y-Card')
'A' as in 'Annual Pass'. (or 'Y' as in 'Yearly Pass) Price this bad boy at $750.00, but make it non-reloadable. There is too much risk of a card going bad on someone, and make quite sure people have their cards registered. If your A-Card breaks and at the time it becomes non-usable it is not registered, too bad - so sad for the hapless patron who was well-warned to register, but didn't.
Having the A-Card gives METRO a further precedent for reasonable discounts, and gives the public yet another club with which they can browbeat a future Wolff-esque METRO Board who elects to try to throw the baby out with the bathwater and scuttle all the regular-rider discounted fares.
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Finally, with all these cards, if we are within a transfer window or a before a card's expiration time, why do we need to tap every time we board a train? We need to tap every time we board a bus to prove to the operator we have a fare item, but having to tap at rail stations means a chance for us to forget, the fare inspectors to ticket us, and METRO to make an extra $75.00 off the absent-mindedness of innocent passengers with valid fare items.
Jeff Ragsdale's musings on all-things mass-transit in the greater Houston-Galveston area
You're missing a critical piece: what service would you cut to make up for the lost fare revenue from all these discounted passes?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't think a passenger with a valid Q Card transfer has ever been ticketed. They just ask them to tap.
ReplyDeleteThe theory is the discounted fares would bring in even more ridership, thereby saving the budget. As to what service would be cut from the re-imagined plan, I say the 48 Weslayan for starters and then the 34 Kirkwood.
ReplyDeleteIf needed, I would not mind a slight fare hike. What I am saying is that the numbers could be adjusted, but the way the DayPass was done years ago was pretty cool, as was the presence of biggie multi-ride discounts.
Discount it, and they will come.