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GTHA Transit Fare Integration

aquateam said:
So, I'm just going to give my 2 cents on the whole fare integration scheme:

What exactly is Metrolinx trying to accomplish with the fare by distance? In general, eliminating cross-subsidies is a good thing if it is able to influence behaviour and consequently reduce costs. For example, airlines charging for luggage. By charging for luggage, they are able to charge less for the people who don't have luggage and maintain the same profit margins. But by adding a penalty for those who bring luggage, fliers respond to the economic disincentive by bringing less luggage, which reduces fuel consumption and the amount of baggage handling required, resulting in a cost reduction. Thus airlines are able to reduce the average cost of fares (because their costs are lesser).

With fare by distance, are we really incentivizing shorter trips? People take public transit to get from A to B, so unless people are being priced out of taking public transit altogether (switching to bikes or cars) the amount of vehicle kilometers should be fairly inelastic with respect to price. The only way that this would reduce vehicle kilometers is if people respond to the increased price by moving closer to their destinations, which is unlikely given the overhead involved.

Instead of costing with respect to distance traveled, transit agencies would be much better served by charging with respect to time of day. Peak hour demand is what determines fleet size and required capacity of the system, and concomitantly the maintenance and capital costs of the system. The marginal cost of adding off-peak demand is fractions of what it costs to add to peak demand, since there is no required increase in fleet/staffing. Wouldn't it then be more effective to incentivize the shifting of demand from peak to off peak? People are unlikely to change residence to save a small amount of money monthly, but if their hours are flexible they may be willing to wake up early/work late regularly to save money.

Adding the capability to track distance traveled is complicated and requires expensive capacity-reducing fare gates to stations that were never designed for them, and introduces demand for parallel bus service when people would be better served travelling on the higher capacity modes. Charging by time of day is easy to implement, and Presto is already capable of performing this.
Click to expand...

There will be winners and losers in fare integration (assuming net subsidies remain the same). The question is who the winners should be and who the losers should be.

Let's remove the low income/senior/student question. If a government wishes to subsidize a special group this should be from a different revenue pool and hopefully increases subsidies if this is decided.

Here is what I think we should incentivize:
- off-peak transit use on the core routes to maximize revenue. Subways and LRT where we can break-even on costs (i.e. capital intensive, non-operating cost intensive).
- medium length trips (1 km to 5 km) to run to a store or go for a doctors appointment that is currently heavily served by cars outside of the Core.
- long length trips to work/play

And dis-incentivize:
- short trips (<1 km) that should mainly be served by walking (they take away space in the Core for the people that are travelling longer distances and result in under-use of the bus at the extremities of the line)
- use of routes that are overcrowded (i.e. from Liberty Village use the bus to get to Bloor, not the King Streetcar and then the Yonge Line

The question is how do you do this? You need a base fare that is high enough to stop people from jumping on the subway at King to get to Queen. You also can't have to high of a percentage of users on a fixed payment plan. As well, distance has to be adequately priced but not so high that people would rather drive to get to work. Finally you do need peak pricing (and non-peak incentives) where capacity is maxed out.

This is how I would price fixed rail (subways, GO, RER, LRT, streetcars)...and they all would be priced the same.

- a fixed fee to board ($2)
- during the time of day where usage is less than 80% a nominal charge for usage
- during the time of day where usage is between 80-110% a normal charge
- during the time of day where usage is over 110% there is a premium charge

This usage would be monitored and the prices would change on a quarterly basis (based on predictions). And the usage is per track segment, not on the line as a whole.

Say I'm travelling from Kipling to Union at peak time. I would have to pay the normal charge from Kipling to Dundas West. From Dundas West inwards it would be peak charge. But I know if I get of at St George and go South it's back to the normal charge whereas if I transfer at Yonge its a premium charge (the computer will assume the most expensive unless I tap a Presto Reader on the platform at St George).

Alternatively I can pay the premium charge to hop on the GO Train.

The premium rate would equate to the current price of a GO ticket. The normal rate would be calculated to make sure the revenue remains neutral.

Since bus service is more elastic (it's easier to buy a bus) and has higher opex there would need to be a different system in place
 
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ShonTron said:
GO Transit's fare integration with suburban transit agencies is actually very good - the trouble, of course, remains the TTC.
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GO subsidized the other suburban agencies for the number of connecting GO trips they carry. GO doesn't subsidize TTC. The trouble remains the lack of a significant provincial subsidy of TTC.
 
aquateam said:
Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about integration in general, I was talking about fare-by-distance specifically. Comparing fare-by-distance to time-based, flat-fares, etc.

Not having to worry about which transit provider's turf you're in is a positive of fare integration, but the hard part is figuring out a scheme that is a) simple to understand b) fairly distributes fares to the transit agency that provides the service c) is easy to collect and enforce and ideally d) has some relationship to the cost of providing the service. There are so many different ways that this could work, and they all have their own challenges and built-in subsidies.
Click to expand...

That's the Catch 22 isn't it? It's even more complicated when you look at it from a socio-economic standpoint as well. The meshing of Transportation trends with Land-use development trends. It's a question that's been difficult for transportation planners to deal with since the beginning. Are people living further from where they work because of financial means? Are wealthier people living closer to where they work because they can afford it? How would potentially giving a huge discount to shorter trips that might disproportionately favour one socio-economic group that potentially doesn't need a discount affect the entire system?

Transportation has a positive correlation with land prices and valuations. It's always going to be more desirable to live on a subway or GO line, whether you need to use it or not, the entire fare integration, especially when you look at it by a fare-by-distance system requires much more thought than even the rudimentary cost/benefits to the transit services that will be providing the transit.

TL;DR there will be winners and losers it's a matter of balancing how much the losers lose and the winners win

edit: Muller87 explains it beautifully above
 
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muller877 said:
There will be winners and losers in fare integration (assuming net subsidies remain the same). The question is who the winners should be and who the losers should be.

Let's remove the low income/senior/student question. If a government wishes to subsidize a special group this should be from a different revenue pool and hopefully increases subsidies if this is decided.

Here is what I think we should incentivize:
- off-peak transit use on the core routes to maximize revenue. Subways and LRT where we can break-even on costs (i.e. capital intensive, non-operating cost intensive).
- medium length trips (1 km to 5 km) to run to a store or go for a doctors appointment that is currently heavily served by cars outside of the Core.
- long length trips to work/play

And dis-incentivize:
- short trips (<1 km) that should mainly be served by walking (they take away space in the Core for the people that are travelling longer distances and result in under-use of the bus at the extremities of the line)
- use of routes that are overcrowded (i.e. from Liberty Village use the bus to get to Bloor, not the King Streetcar and then the Yonge Line

The question is how do you do this? You need a base fare that is high enough to stop people from jumping on the subway at King to get to Queen. You also can't have to high of a percentage of users on a fixed payment plan. As well, distance has to be adequately priced but not so high that people would rather drive to get to work. Finally you do need peak pricing (and non-peak incentives) where capacity is maxed out.

This is how I would price fixed rail (subways, GO, RER, LRT, streetcars)...and they all would be priced the same.

- a fixed fee to board ($2)
- during the time of day where usage is less than 80% a nominal charge for usage
- during the time of day where usage is between 80-110% a normal charge
- during the time of day where usage is over 110% there is a premium charge

This usage would be monitored and the prices would change on a quarterly basis (based on predictions). And the usage is per track segment, not on the line as a whole.

Say I'm travelling from Kipling to Union at peak time. I would have to pay the normal charge from Kipling to Dundas West. From Dundas West inwards it would be peak charge. But I know if I get of at St George and go South it's back to the normal charge whereas if I transfer at Yonge its a premium charge (the computer will assume the most expensive unless I tap a Presto Reader on the platform at St George).

Alternatively I can pay the premium charge to hop on the GO Train.

The premium rate would equate to the current price of a GO ticket. The normal rate would be calculated to make sure the revenue remains neutral.

Since bus service is more elastic (it's easier to buy a bus) and has higher opex there would need to be a different system in place
Click to expand...

Here are my thoughts on bus fares:

We want to encourage:
- density and shopping along avenues
- connections to higher-order transit for long trips
- commuting to work in areas where there is no transit
- fewer very short trips

I would divide up bus routes between "feeders" and "avenues". All Avenues should have high-order transit eventually so you create a network that is set for that eventual outcome.

For Avenues I would again have a fixed price to board to discourage short trips ($2). This would be refunded if you connect to another form of transit (subway, LRT, GO, bus, etc) ONLY IF you travelled on the bus for greater than 500m (again...busses are full near higher order transit so that person is taking a seat from a longer-distance traveller).

Avenues would have similar pricing by distance as fixed rail. However, since there is a higher operating cost there is no nominal charge band. Only normal and premium. Since there is some elasticity in the supply of busses the premium charge would be slightly less than the surcharge on rail.

Over time Avenues would receive incremental transit development (skipping lanes at lights, BRT, then LRT/subway)

Feeders are for residential/commercial/industrial connections. They normally will only have 1 major stop and a bunch of stops in a residential area or in an industrial park. Very important to get people to higher order transit but no other purpose. As such there will be a fixed charge regardless of the miles that you have travelled. We want to encourage density around higher-order transit so there has to be a slight punitive charge ($4 at peak, $3 off-peak). This is reduced by:
- $1 upon entering a higher-order transit
- $1 if you travel 5 km or more on the higher-order transit
- $1 if you travel another 5 km

The net fixed fee off-peak after 10 km would be:
$3 for the bus
$2 for the higher order transit
-$1 on entrance
-$1 after 5 km
-$1 after 10 km
= $2 (i.e. the bus was free)

Connections from one feeder to another would not be eligible for any fare reductions (if you just use 2 it would cost you $6)
 
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I think Munro summarized this fare by distance issue nicely:

Queen’s Park loves to stage press conferences to tell people they are getting more stuff – new trains, new highways, new buildings, new services – but the government shies away from saying “you will pay more”. Will Metrolinx honestly tell transit riders what the effect of a new fare structure will be and detail the winners and losers in the grand shuffle? Will Queen’s Park recognize that local revenue and the service it funds, especially in Toronto, comes overwhelmingly from riders’ fares and local taxes, and this should not be plundered to advance political aims at the regional level.

http://stevemunro.ca/2015/09/20/metrolinx-fare-integration-study-foregone-conclusion/
 
First things first, no matter what they come up with they to have bring in COMPLETE fare integration between GO and the local systems. If you have paid a fare getting to a GO station then that price is automatically 100% deducted from your GO fare.

As fare as integration beyond that which both the local systems and GO will cost them a fortune...............what about all these endless reports on revenue generation? I think gas/parking etc increases would be a hard sell at all and some may even see it as a bargain including many drivers. Many drive because for the distances they travel GO is no bargain.

If, for example, they raised the gas tax in Toronto by 2 cents a litre but then their TTC fare would be 100% deducted from their GO fare..........effectively dropping the price by $2.50 a ticket then many would see that as a win situation. What they must do however is to bring in the tax increase the exact same day as the GO/TTC fare integration takes place.
 
The hardest thing to account for is the disparity between the different subsidies offered by each municipality tied with the difference in fare pricing. I'd almost just get Metrolinx to step in and add a "fare-integration" subsidy to account for lost revenues across the board and tag it onto the Big Move as one of the ticket items of a yearly $2B investment.
 
BMO said:
The hardest thing to account for is the disparity between the different subsidies offered by each municipality tied with the difference in fare pricing. I'd almost just get Metrolinx to step in and add a "fare-integration" subsidy to account for lost revenues across the board and tag it onto the Big Move as one of the ticket items of a yearly $2B investment.
Click to expand...

I doubt that would, nay, could ever happen. I believe they can't afford even a fraction of their planned Big Move, even though a lot of projects/promises have been dropped entirely. All the while other projects have been delayed so long their costs have ballooned. I wouldn't put it past the Prov to promise some kind of major subsidy prior to an election, but I think it will be an undeliverable one just as much of the Big Move and its $2bn/yr funding turned out to be.
 
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