Quote:
Originally Posted by accord1999
For the typical American system outside of a few cities, their operating costs already are almost completely funded by taxes. Dallas for example has a terrible farebox recovery ratio:
But frankly, I don't think the question is whether transit systems should go free. The real question is why do so many American systems spend so much money to get so little ridership. Is it just that Americans will do almost anything not to take transit or is there systematic flaws in how routes and services are setup?
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Cost recovery ratio doesn't tell the whole story. The $741M subsidy that DART gets might be the same or even lower per capita than what other systems get. In Toronto, the TTC's cost recovery ratio of 67% is one of the highest in US and Canada, but that remaining 33% means a $622M CAD subsidy, and for a system serving less than half the population that DART does, that means higher spending per capita than DART. $741M subsidy is probably not unusual for a system serving such a large population. The question is how that $741M is spent.
DART ridership did see a major increase in 2019 after they expanded the bus service. I think that highlights the real problem with transit in the US: it is based too much on the idea that people are unwilling to use buses, or that rail systems can be successful without buses (Dallas has the largest light rail system in the USA). The idea that high ridership is the result of building lots of rail, instead of large rail networks being the result of high ridership, is too common the USA, and so often rail becomes the focus and bus systems become neglected, and do those rail lines become isolated. That is what distinguishes US transit from Canadian transit: US cities build rail to solve the problem of too low ridership, while Canadian cities build rail to solve the problem of too high ridership.
Even just looking at the USA, you can see successful transit systems with little or no rail such as Seattle, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Baltimore. Even in Portland, the poster child for successful light rail in the USA, most of the ridership is actually on buses, not light rail.