Christian Science Monitor: Fuel costs strain U.S. mass transit, too

[marmar]

Cross-posted in the GRRREAT Public transportation/smart growth forum: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=398




Fuel costs strain U.S. mass transit, too
With ridership up, L.A.'s Metro raises fares and pushes for new tax revenue.

By Michael B. Farrell | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the July 18, 2008 edition




Los Angeles - At 8:34 a.m. the sleek Metrolink train from Oceanside, Calif., swept into Los Angeles's historic Union Station, disgorging a rush of commuters. Some pulled briefcases on wheels, others hefted backpacks, blending seamlessly with bus and subway passengers pressing through the terminal's sunlit corridor.

"To see this," says Marc Littman, spokesman for the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or Metro, "dispels any kind of notion that no one uses public transportation in Los Angeles."

With West Coast gasoline prices averaging $4.41 per gallon, even car-crazed southern Californians are joining the nation's slow move away from the automobile and toward public transportation. But even as more Americans pile onto city buses, subways, and suburban trains, the increase at the pump is also hitting transit agencies hard.

"High gas prices are really a double-edge sword," says Virginia Miller, spokeswoman for the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). "While they are bringing more people to ride buses and trains all across the country, public transit agencies are facing challenges to meet their costs."

In many cases this means fare hikes and service cuts. So far this year, nearly half of metropolitan bus operators surveyed by the APTA said they had increased prices to address the strains of rising fuel costs; 19 percent said they had reduced service.

Such fare hikes are hurting the poor disproportionately. While more of the country's suburbanites are choosing mass transit, many of the nation's poorest urban dwellers, whose only option is often public transportation, aren't riding at all because of fare hikes and the downturn in the economy, transportation experts say. Some no longer have a job to commute to, they add.

Los Angeles is in the thick of the quandary. While LA Metro's subways saw a 7.13 percent increase in ridership from April to June compared with a year ago, bus ridership was down 1.9 percent in the same period. Mr. Littman, the Metro spokesman, blamed the drop on a fare hike that raised monthly passes by $10 to $62.

"That fare increase had a huge impact," says Tom Rubin, a Los Angeles-area surface transportation consultant and critic of the LA Metro. "Los Angeles has one of the most transit-dependent riderships in the United States." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0718/p01s02-usgn.html

[DCKit]

1. I'm confused.....

If ridership has gone up so dramatically, then the expenses of the transit agencies should be:

Increased Utility/Fuel Costs - Increased Ridership Revenue.

Personally, I think they're using the USPS model here - bitch, moan and whine until you get what you want, then raise prices every nine months.