We’re all about to get run over by the bus-fare problem.
The eternally embattled Regional Transportation District is asking the metro area what they think about raising or changing bus and light-rail fares.
If we solve this, the answer to the mess in the Mid-East will come easy.
The problem is finding a way to pay for and improve mass transit in the metro area while keeping it cheap enough to lure riders, and keep the public service affordable to people who really need it, rather than choose it.
But that’s the biggest battle RTD must face. It’s a public service, just like police, libraries, snowplowing, and animal control. That’s why it’s subsidized by taxes. And we subsidize RTD in a big way. About 70 percent of RTD’s annual $460 million budget comes from taxes, and mostly sales taxes.
Foolish mass-transit naysayers — and I mean you, Jon Caldera, formerly an RTD director, currently of the libertarian-ish Independence Institute in Golden and, I suspect, still hunting for John Galt — believe that if we must have lumbering buses on public roads, make just the people that ride them pay the cost.
Here’s why that’s a really bad idea:
1. If you think traffic already sucks in metro Aurora-Denver, just wait until you cram more than 300,000 daily riders into cars and get them on I-225, the Valley Highway or I-70 at rush hour.
2. If you wonder whether it’s really worth about $4 to ride the train Downtown or $2 on a bus, you’re going to be jumping off when that price goes to $16 each way or more than $8 for a bus ride. When RTD raises fares, fewer people ride, not more.
3. While you might get aggravated when the tedious buses keep pulling to the right just when you have someplace important to drive,like the gym or the pub, RTD buses are a lifeline to an entire city full of people who couldn’t afford a car if they wanted one. These people, who also pay sales taxes, need the bus to get to work, the doctor, to school, and sometimes out for fun. They depend on the bus. Without it, in a city as un-walkable as Aurora, hundreds of thousands of people would probably lose their jobs, or take jobs that paid far less but were closer to home. And since we haven’t, yet, agree that we’ll just let people starve or freeze to death, they would need a lot more government services, which your taxes pay for.
4. This one comes from Aurora RTD board director Tom Tobiassen. Poor people pay lots of road taxes, too. And they have no way of getting to use the roads they pay for unless they climb aboard an RTD bus.
We need RTD to make lots of improvements to get as many people on board as fast as possible.
Why? Because as a state, and really as a nation, we’re too stupid to understand that if we don’t spend serious money on improving our transportation infrastructure, we’re going to pay for that stupidity in a variety of ways. The man who refuses to pay to fix a leaky roof doesn’t save money in the long run, because he loses his house. Because we refuse to raise gas taxes, which really pay for Colorado roads, gridlock has put the metro area on a national magazine list we don’t want to be on. Eventually, we will have to replace our deteriorating roads and bridges, and it will cost much more later than now. But if we can get more people to ride the bus or light rail, lots more, we will need fewer road dollars. Honest.
But to entice more people to ditch their cars for their daily commutes, we need a much better, more efficient, more sophisticated bus system, and in the chicken-or-egg world of mass transit, metro Aurora-Denver needs more riders to create that improved system.
With fares so high they’re already pushing people off the bus rather than luring them on board, another fare increase is only bad news for everyone.
And if RTD doesn’t raise fares, they’ve got to cut service — a sure way to reduce ridership.
The answer? Do everything to shield the poor from having to pay higher fares, meaning no hike on bus lines, and increase the tax subsidy for what is arguably a public service as critical as police in a region like metro Aurora. While higher fares will only spiral down RTD services and ridership, lower fares can only make it better for everyone.
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Just a heads-up Dave, we don’t live in a Socialist country, but, your remarks make you more than a Socialist, nearly a Communist.
How exactly do the poor people, who “need” to ride the bus rather than “choose” to ride, “pay lots of road taxes too”?
Instead of increasing tax subsidies, I suggest voluntary contributions … Dave Perry should be the first one to make a generous contribution.
“If we solve this, the answer to the mess in the Mid-East will come easy.”– Pundits always seem to have this illusion that massive geo-political problems that go back decades can be resolved with simple panaceas.
Just abolish RTD. Statistically, no one rides it.
On the other hand, it will be dead by 2070 thanks to auto-automobiles.
Maybe they can cut some labor costs at RTD? meaning hire cheaper workers.. So, the “poor” and those that don’t want a car can get a ride for cheap..
It’s the liberal way…take buses to cut down on global warming…it’s irrelevant if you have to be homeless to afford the fare. Your liberal officials will be just fine. You just take that bus and shut up….so what if some drunk throws up on you.