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Originally Posted by YOWetal
That's some wonky math. It ignores capital costs. Which matter. Three is no evidence a 5% budget cut will see a 5% ridership drop but that doesn't drop their operating revenues by 10% that is super wonky math.
I take the bus all the time and it's discretionary. The bad service often means I take an Uber instead or just walk down bank street. Do I want to pay $100 more in property taxes to make the 7 run more often. No? My neighbours all have 2 cars and never take the bus and you can bet they don't want to.
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Capital costs do matter, and while we have spent a ton more on transit expansion, the end result is service cuts, over and over again since 2019.
While you claim the weird math, just think about. The loss in ridership is most likely those who are paying full fares. The remainder are those who receive a discount, seniors, those with low incomes, students, those who are considered captive riders. This is how your loss in revenue is greater than the loss of ridership.
Recently, we have heard comments of the loss of so many monthly pass holders, which are the ones paying full fares. The loss of pass holders easily leads to dropping transit ridership. Those who used to pay for a pass, might have used transit a few more times per month, because it cost no more. It might be a stop on the way home to do some shopping, whereas without a pass, you might have to pay another fare. Every trip becomes monetized without a pass, so if you go downtown to the office twice a week, you might think that one Uber trip, or one day of parking which doesn't cost that much more than transit along with giving you more convenience. I know when I quit buying a pass, my use transit gradually declined. You develop different habits and make trips that are not transit friendly. Gradually, car convenience takes over.
Regarding those with 2 cars, that is a fair comment, however, not all 2 car households are managing that well financially. It costs a lot of money to operate a car, and some will switch, if transit served their purposes. While we are spending billions on Transitway to rail conversion, how does that really improve overall transit mobility? We have not really expanded our segregated transit system much in recent years. New enhanced routes, even if is just bus lanes, may convince a few people to switch to transit.
The other problem is that we are investing in more or less fixed cost transit. Rail ridership is running at 50% to 60% of pre-pandemic and bus ridership is running at 70% to 80%. Long-term contracts don't give us that much leeway in reducing operating costs with rail, so most cost savings have to come from buses as we are now seeing. But, if ridership recovery is best on buses, don't we risk more by bus service cuts?
Also, segregated busways or even bus lanes, without complicated electrical and signaling systems, can give us good bang for our buck. Buses running more quickly mean that we can run fewer buses to offer the same service on a particular route, or you can offer more service with the same number of buses.