Fares revenues make up half of WMATA’s operating budget, which is on the low side. The London Tube fully covers its operating costs.

Where did you get that from? WMATA’s farebox recovery ratio is 24%, as of 2020[1].

Edit: And from a quick look, that’s high for the US. The average seems closer to 10-15%.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

fwiw, Caltrain's farebox recovery rate going into COVID was among the highest in the US at around 73%. Bart around 72%. WMATA was about 33%. [1]

[1] https://www.enotrans.org/article/the-mass-transit-fiscal-cli...

> Nobody talks about how much the army loses.

I mean, I do. But that boils mostly down to me perceiving more value in a robust public transit network than in a bloated MIC.

The average spend on a new car per year is not the same thing as what the 'average American' actually buys. Lots of people keep the same car for many years, or buy used, or even don't have a car.

Used cars cost roughly what new cars cost still, interest rates are higher than ever - insurance, gas, maintenance, car payments, parking, tickets, tolls, registration, license, etc, etc, it adds up really fast. Since it's so diffuse people aren't as sensitive. Not to mention with a used car w/o warranty you're on the hook for the whole cost if something goes wrong.

Of course there will be outliers, but owning a car is a massive money sinkhole and a disproportionate burden on the poor.

The average car insurance payment alone is $136 (and significantly more for those with 'bad credit' - i.e. the poor). The average monthly transit pass in the US is $83. [1, 2]

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/990891/us-average-monthl...

[2] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/how-much-is-car...

2020 data is totally wrecked because of Covid. Check the 2019 data for comparison. Average is 39%. NY was 54%, WMATA was 39%.

https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/2020-11/...

That 39% is for all transit Bus is 19.7% Nationally and 13.6% for WMATA.

Nationally in millions, Bus: (Fare Revenues 3,778) / (Operating expenses 16,110.4 + Use of capital funds 3,0444.7) = 19.7%. They also break out Bus Rapid Transit which is much worse 16.1 / (166.1 + 51.7) = 7.4% as is Commuter Bus 57.9 / (597.7 + 170.7) = 7.5%

Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, Bus: $124,011,141 / ( $731,946,008 + $182,850,687 ) = 13.6%

So for WMATA forgoing Bus revenue wouldn’t move the needle very much.

PS: And that’s ignoring the overhead of collecting fairs. Skip that step and busses can move faster.

* * *

The driver or buss still needs to verify your ticket.

Compare a line of 20 people all try to get on and swipe a metro card vs a line of 20 people all trying to get on. Even collage busses where all people need to do is show school ID you still get people in line who suddenly can’t find their ID.

A public transport bus usually has several entrances, you can have a machine inside the bus at each entrance. Not everyone will play nice and pay if the bus driver doesn't check the ticket, but you could have random controls on the bus from time to time. In practice you of course have to weigh the costs of these different approaches.

Thanks! I’ll note that that’s still a far cry from half, but it’s certainly more favorable than 24%.

(NY’s 54% number is probably because of mixing of different fareboxes: recovery is much higher on the LIRR and MNRR than it is on the city buses and subways.)

Incidentally broken out at [1], the 2019 MTA recovery rates were:

- MTA heavy rail was 70%.

- Commuter rail was 55%.

- Commuter bus was 32%.

- BRT and Bus was 30%.

[1] https://www.enotrans.org/article/the-mass-transit-fiscal-cli...

Tube fares are extremely expensive compared with other European transit systems.

And yet people happily use it, even in parts of London where it's feasible to go by car. One of the biggest reasons is probably that the tube has high frequency on all lines, much higher than most other cities.

arguably fuel tax is that fare

If fuel tax is enough why do we keep passing trillion dollar infra bills and allocating majority of it to road repair?

The current fuel tax (in the USA) not enough. Federal fuel taxes have not been raised in 30 years and not adjusted for inflation/cost of living. I’m sure it would be a political death wish to try to raise it again.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_Sta...

Fuel tax is complicated by the fact that poorer families tend to live further away from work and thus drive more, both because housing is cheaper the further away from a city you get, but also because non-skilled labor doesn't aggregate along transit corridors the same way it does for office workers. So a low fuel tax is in effect a subsidy to the poor, notwithstanding that it also benefits corporations which maintain the infrastructure. You can see this in every part of the world--cheap fuel is the easiest way to placate the working class.

> Public transit can be a remedy, but outside Manhattan I don't think any locale in the U.S. has remotely the density to make it truly viable at scale for the poor and working classes.

Chicken and egg. Density is built along transit because transit supports dense houses. Build transit, get density. Fail to build transit, get sprawl.

> Build transit, get density.

Building transit does not guarantee you get density. There are regulatory hurdles at play. In California, for example, cities will often be forced to up-zone the immediate couple of blocks around a station, but then everything else beyond that remains zoned for single-family housing, or at least zoned for far less density than the market could support.

Moreover, there's a time gap between when housing is built and when it becomes economically accessible lower down the income ladder. New housing is expensive, even absent regulatory hurdles, and affordability mandates can't magically change financial viability. New housing can have immediate effects on housing costs, but indirectly on the costs of older housing; and on a regional scale it takes awhile to incentivize people at the periphery to move inward.

Long-story short, to get from the current equilibrium to a more optimal equilibrium requires careful, coordinated policy management across decades. We could and should start, but we live in an age where if people don't see results in 6 weeks, they complain; and even when there are results, they still complain. They complain, vote people out, and vote in new people that promise more immediate results, but invariably can't deliver meaningful results.[1] I mean, this is how democracy has always worked, but the public reactions are far more compressed, while the necessary time spans for effective change are no shorter than they were before.

[1] Case in point: rather than improving public transit, the popular panacea du jure is free fares. Free fares will not improve public transit in any way shape or form; if anything, they'll hasten its degradation. They'll make it cheaper for some, but for the most part not those at the bottom of the ladder, who already enjoy free transit. These gimmicks are popular because they're immediate.

I didn’t say it was enough, I was just pointing out that it’s analogous to a transit fare.

Car culture is massively subsidized in America. Why are we subsidizing (overwhelmingly wealthy) owners of EVs? Can I get a tax credit for an e-bike?

Yes you can! Here's just a few of the rebate programs.

https://electrek.co/2022/04/28/denvers-electric-bike-rebates...

https://electrek.co/2022/05/03/vermont-launches-the-first-st...

https://electrek.co/2022/11/29/another-us-state-adds-electri...

https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/home/showpublisheddocumen...

https://www.peninsulacleanenergy.com/ebikes/

https://www.alamedamp.com/407/Rebates-and-Incentives

Not quite true… A few years ago, the district of Columbia decriminalized fare evasion. So many people stopped paying the subway fare that the gap in the budget became very significant on the order of millions of dollars.

What you see as a small component of transit systems budgets, they seem to see as a quite significant part of their budget.

I think this is going to lead to worst outcomes, and a worse funded system.

"Metro estimates it lost $40 million due to fair evasion in the 2022 fiscal year."

$40 million is not "quite small"

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/transportation/metr...

Fare evasion is now de facto legal in nyc as well as the DAs refuse to prosecute. The MTA estimates it’ll cost $500 million a year.

I don’t trust those “lost revenue” figures. What are they based on? My city used to not have fare gates. They made up insane estimates for how much adding fare gates would increase revenue - when the gates went in it ended up costing far more per year than it earned in increased revenue.

And 40 million is not a small number for a person, but for a city with a budget of about 20 billion it’s not a very large number at all - especially when viewed in comparison with spending on roads and bridges. You don’t have to spend billions on another road bridge if everyone is taking the train

I can't really do your research for you, but I guess if you looked at the budgets which are publicly available for the Washington metro area, transportation authority, you might find out.

Also, WMATA's budget is separate from the city...

I'm not sure that it's just funding. Collecting fares also creates capitalist incentives which is ultimately good for an end user, since the transit system is incentivized to do things (increase frequencies during rush hour, create more reliable systems) in order to collect additional fare revenue.

You could argue that it's all "just funding," but fares can help to prioritize work which will help collect the most future fares, creating the largest positive impact for end users.