Is public transportation only for the rich?

It’s a question more people should be asking.



Last week, the Guardian’s Bim Adewunmi kicked off a global firestorm by suggesting that the New York City subway was so filthy and disgusting that it made her nostalgic for the London underground.

New Yorkers bristled. Londoners gloated.

Yet there’s another problem with public transportation: its cost. Public transport is not so public if it excludes large sections of the city, dividing its commuting population on bus and train lines.

New York riders can ride subways and buses with a $112 monthly Metro card, or at $2.50 a ride. London charges £219.70 for an adult pass for all zones.

To put both cities’ fares in perspective, minimum wage in New York is $8 per hour, meaning someone would have to work 13.75 hours a month to earn a monthly Metrocard. In London, where the hourly living wage is £8.80, a worker would have to slog 24.9 hours a month to buy a monthly pass for the Tube. In New York, that monthly pass, bought every month for a year, would add up to 4.2% of the median per capita income for transportation; in London, it’s 9.8% of income.



So before declaring any transportation system “better”, it’s useful to ask whom it’s better for, exactly?

‘One fare from Brooklyn to the Bronx’

Many city transportation systems, such as those of London and Paris, create a hierarchy of fares from the city center: the further away your stop from downtown, the higher the fare price. That’s how trains usually work.



But what works for trains that travel long distances may not suit the economic realities of urban areas. Housing prices are high and rising. Given that lower income people tend to live in the more affordable outskirts of major cities, their jobs require longer travel to get to jobs in city-centers.

Christian Wolmar, a London-based transport commentator, thinks that the Tube needs a fare-system change.



“They could actually make it easier for people in the outer suburbs by not having such premium pricing for people outside [the city center],” he says of the Tube’s ticket prices.



Wolmar argues that London’s buses could adopt a time-based fare and make bus tickets valid for an hour. That way commuters who change buses won’t have to pay more than once for longer commutes.

‘The city orbits around eight million centers of the universe’ writes Billy Collins in his poem Grand Central, featured prominently on New York’s subway cars. Photograph: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images

An urban network operating on distance-based fares becomes pretty expensive for most workers, says Alexis Perrotta, an urban planning researcher.

“New York is very proud that it has one fare from Brooklyn to the Bronx,” she says, referring referring to the subway’s $2.50 distance-agnostic ticket price.

But time is money

Perotta points out that the discussion on affordability of public transport often gets lost in the discussion about the cost of housing. Experts tend to dismiss the pricing of public transport, because compared to the cost of owning a car, what’s $3 for a daily train ticket?

The costs, however, add up. And people don’t pay just with money for daily commutes.

Yingling Fan, a professor at the University of Minnesota teaching regional and transportation policy, says that we need to consider the time commuters spend in travelling around the city.



New Yorkers spend an average of 48 minutes on commutes each day on all modes of transport, including cars. In London, commute times average 75 minutes.

Fan says that commuters who work multiple jobs or shifts during non-peak hours are hit by the high wait times for subway trains. (They can rarely afford cars). Take the case of single mothers. “Time is precious for them,” Fan says. “They not only spend time working to provide for their family, but also commuting to work.”

In her research, Fan came across single mothers for whom commuting delays means one thing: higher costs for childcare or baby sitting. That increases the costs for low-income workers to get to work.

The London Tube is used more often by people who can afford its high fares. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

This is why in London, as in many global cities, the poor take buses. In London, a single-fare bus ticket costs £1.45 – far lower than the £2.20 to £8.90 a commuter might pay for a ticket.

There’s another reason some take the bus. Perrotta found that some New Yorkers prefer the bus because the face-to-face contact reinforces the community aspect of transportation. “You can use change,” Perrotta says. “And if you don’t have enough, sometimes the driver lets you go.”



The price comparison: meet the Farebox Recovery Ratio



An essential index that transport experts use to measure how a transport system makes its budget is the Farebox Recovery Ratio. In simple terms, it measures what portion of operating costs the transport authority recovers through fares from you, the commuter.

The total operating budget of the New York MTA in 2014 is $10.5bn for its average of 7.9 million commuters a day on its subway trains. This puts New York MTA’s Farebox Recovery Ratio at 51.2%.

London’s Tube will rake in £10.9bn in the same year from its 4.2 million daily commuters. London collects a staggering 91% of its operating costs from its commuters.

Below, we take a look at how the transportation systems of various cities stack up where it matters: on the cost.

Washington DC and Virginia

The US capital is home to Metrorail, the second busiest mass transit rail network in the US. It ferries 727,684 daily commuters and charges distance-based fares ranging from $2.15 to $5.90.



Fan says that the socio-economic divide between buses and the Metrorail in DC are particularly striking.

Washington DC’s metro rail is the nation’s second busiest transit rail network. Frank Underwood loves it too. Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon/AP

As in most cities with train systems, neighborhoods with stations are quickly gentrified, pushing poor people out of the trains’ reach. “There’s very limited amount of affordable housing in those neighborhoods,” she says.

Median per capita income: $45,004



Cost of Monthly pass: $237

Farebox recovery ratio: 62.1%

Los Angeles, California

LA’s 24 year-old Metro Rail heaves a total of 362,904 daily journeys on its six lines. It uses a combination of subway and light rail lines connected by buses. LA has a flat rate of $1.75 for single journeys, without charging its commuters for distances.

The subway in LA. Photograph: Timothy Tolle/<a href="https://flic.kr/p/6MREJ1">Flickr</a>

Median per capita income: $28,111

Cost of monthly pass: $100

Farebox recovery ratio: 30.6%

Minneapolis, MN

Metro Transit in Minneapolis uses a combination of rail and bus in its public transport system. It added a light-rail link between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St Paul in mid-2014 . An average of 267,700 riders hop on board on weekdays.



Streetcar in Minneapolis. Photograph: Mulad/<a href="https://flic.kr/p/nYnzfH">Flickr</a>

While it charges a flat rate regardless of distance, Minneapolis charges a higher fare of $2.25 during rush hours, compared to regular off-peak fares of $1.75.

Median per capita income: $30,734

Cost of monthly pass: $76

Farebox recovery ratio (portion of operating budget from fares): 31.4%

Portland, Oregon

Portland’s Trimet charges a flat fare of $2.50 to riders for riding an assortment of their buses, light rail, commuter rail and streetcars.

Their fare system also includes a time limit on all tickets, with basic tickets offering commuters the freedom to travel on all modes of transport for two hours.

Portland’s transportation system is one of the most envied in the US. Photograph: Ian Sane/<a href="https://flic.kr/p/iiMkfu">Flickr</a>

Median per capita income: $31,249

Cost of monthly pass: $100

Farebox recovery ratio (portion of budget from fares): 22%

Chicago, Illinois

The Chicago Transit Authority charges a flat $2.00 to all of its commuters.

The CTA reaches 1.7 million riders on buses and trains each weekday. Its trains alone are used by around 750,000 commuters each day, according to CTA data.



CTA workers work on the Milwaukee elevated track as part Your New Blue project improvements. Photograph: cta web/<a href="https://flic.kr/p/oSysSd">Flickr</a>

Median per capita income: $28,202

Cost of monthly pass: $100

Farebox recovery ratio (portion of budget from fares): 55.2%

Paris, France

The much-photographed Métropolitain in Paris uses a number of fare systems to cater equally to its city dwellers as well as the millions of tourist who pack into its arrondissements every year. The Paris metro uses a zone-based ticketing system, transporting nearly 4.2 million commuters each weekday.

A Parisian at the Gare de Lyon train station. Paris’ metro is connected with the train network ferrying passengers into the city. Photograph: YOAN VALAT/EPA

Average per capita income: $56,980

Cost of monthly pass: $85.30

Farebox recovery ratio (portion of budget from fares): 39.8%

Stockholm, Sweden

Storstockholms Lokaltrafik operates a combination of buses and trains, charging its commuters fares based on zones. Roughly 898,630 riders took Stockholm’s art-ardorned subway stations to use the Tunnelbana train service each weekday.

The T-Centralen station in Stockholm Photograph: Nenyaki/<a href="https://flic.kr/p/6Dv5MX">Flickr</a>

Median per capita income: $48,511.27

Cost of monthly pass: $109 a month, or approximately $1308 a year



Farebox recovery ratio (portion of budget from fares): 37%

Hong Kong, China

At 186% Hong Kong’s MTR has the highest Farebox ratio in the world. The transport authority has used a unique manner of clubbing its metro stations with places of consumption such as malls, with a system of mutual profit. The MTR also owns malls and shopping centres in a manner of diversifying income.

A Hong Kong MTR Metro train arrives at a downtown station Photograph: VINCENT YU/AP

Gross national income, divided per person: $54,260

Cost of monthly pass: approx. $75, or $900 a year



Farebox recovery ratio (portion of budget from fares): 186%

In cities like New York and London, the discussion about fares always means raising them – never lowering them. Wolmar, the transport expert, is campaigning for a Labour nomination for the 2016 London mayoral race. He has made appeals for more affordable transport to bridge London’s economic divide – a fact that even Sir Peter Hendy, TfL’s Transport Commissioner agrees is a problem.



The city’s transport budget saw a recent 25% cut, which likely means an increased burden on its commuters. Hendy makes the case not only for affordability but for access, recommending that the transport authority build more lines in more distant areas of the city. London is already facing a spike in city population and expects an additional 6m rides in the next decade, according to the Guardian’s Gwyn Topham.



There’s another reason to take a close look at fares. The London transport commissioner admits that if the inequality in public transport isn’t addressed, there could be “social unrest”.