Herbie,Fare box recovery is a function of fares collected against cost. Metro has performed well over the years at controlling costs. Go to this website to see how your St. Louis Transit system is viewed nationally in that area: < . cityobservatory.org The other element is ridership and fares collected, and in that area there has been some decline. This is a function of two basic issues, lower overall ridership, and lower average fare as people who are riders are moving over to discounted fare media such as multi-ride passes.We are aware of the fare box recovery statistic, but that isn’t an overarching element in our system. It would be easy to manage to fare box recovery by simply running only the routes that produce higher ridership. That is not the mission we have been given by the community. We have been asked to connect 90% of the people to 90% of the regional jobs, and as wide as possible a net for the disabled community in the region. To do this we design the system with the goal of providing as large a footprint as possible. We increase the frequency of service on those routes that generate higher levels of ridership. Operating buses on lower use routes in areas of the community with lower density denies the system fare box recovery opportunities, but ensures that majority of the communities within our service area remain accessible to each other through transit.