Comment of the Day: Doing the Math on Metro’s Turnstile Program
http://la.streetsblog.org/2012/12/13/comment-of-the-day-doing-the-math-on-metros-turnstile-program/
Thursday, December 13, 2012
by Streetsblog
Streetsblog doesn’t usually do a “comment of the day” post, but Erik Griswold decided to put his excellent cost/benefit analysis of Metro’s turnstile program in a comment thread for a story published before Thanksgiving. We wanted to make sure everyone saw it.
Long time readers may remember that when Metro suggested adding turnstiles to stations in 2008, they originally said it would help prevent terrorist attacks.
After that argument didn’t survive the laugh test, they changed tracks
and argued that the agency was losing out on millions of dollars every
year because of fare evaders. Thanks to an op/ed in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, we have a good idea of what that cost actually is. Take it away Erik:
According to this story LA Metro really only expects to go from 5% fare evasion to 2% fare evasion.
From: http://www.metro.net/news/ride…
October 2012 Ridership on the Subway (Red/Purple Lines) was 4,353,213
Multiply by 12 gives us an estimated annual ridership of 52,238,556
Five percent of that ridership is 2,611,927
Two percent of that ridership is 1,044,770
So, with the turnstiles, 1,567,157 more fares will be collected each year.
(Because of course, none of the current fare-dodgers will try to sneak onto a bus or just stop riding instead…)
Since we know that everyone who travels on LA Metro is required to pay the full fare…
The Grand TOTAL that will be collected each year after “latching” the turnstiles for (1,567,157 passengers at $1.50 each) is:
$2,350,735
Now, that is a lot of money, except if you take notice of how much this turnstile fetish has cost to implement.
Wasn’t it $46 million for the turnstiles alone? More? How long does it take for this to pay itself off? 25 years? That’s about when these turnstiles will be ending their service life. How much is it going to cost to upgrade them to NFC (which is already being installed in many cities right now)? Plus the cameras, plus the speaker-boxes, and the new TVMs for Metrolink, and on, and on, and on. And for what?
Can’t be security because pretty much anyone, nefarious or not, has 12-bits in their wallet.
Wait they don’t even need that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
There will still be over 1 million fare-dodgers on the Subway as admitted above.
The Los Angeles Times Op/Ed Referred to Above:
“Not fair,” I think.
Why am I paying $1.50 every time I want to ride the subway or light-rail lines when clearly, I could be doing this for free and probably get away with it? A $250 ticket is a scary proposition, but on my weekend trips on the Purple and Blue lines, I have yet to see someone get caught for evading the fare. The threat of being caught seems less and less likely with every trip.
But change is on the way. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is going to start locking the turnstiles so you can’t walk through without paying.
The MTA has been operating on the honor system for passengers. Call me a cynic, but that’s like assuming that every car comes to a complete at a stop sign when no one’s looking. They don’t call it a “California roll” for nothing.
The Times reported in May that locked turnstiles were coming to the Purple and Red lines by December. That’s not the case just yet, but it will happen this month or next, said David Sutton, interim deputy executive officer for the TAP program.
Locked turnstiles come with numerous benefits. Sutton said the subways and trains will be safer; though there are fewer passengers, there is increased revenue for the county, which theoretically means better service; and it gives the MTA a better picture of how many people use the system, when they use it and where they’re going.
It’s all part of the service’s evolution. The Los Angeles public transportation system is growing up. It’s moved away from paper tickets and into the electronic age. A greater understanding of how Angelenos use the system can lead to better service.
Some changes are already being considered, Sutton said. The MTA is exploring charging passengers on a distance-based system, similar to Bay Area Rapid Transit in Northern California, where you are charged based on where you get on and where you get off. Another way is to charge based on the window of time a rider might use the system in a given day.
After the MTA gets more data from the Purple and Red lines, it could consider locking gates on the rest of the system, Sutton said.
There will always be some holes, though. At the transfer station at 7th Street and Metro Center, passengers are supposed to pay when they switch lines. But the TAP card validators are so discreetly placed that not many people use them. Transfers there could eventually be free, Sutton said.
Authorities estimate that more than 5% of riders are evading fairs. Transit service bureau Cmdr. Patrick Jordan said deputies have issued more than 28,000 tickets for skipping fares on the Blue Line through October. With fines up to $250, that’s up $7 million off one line alone.
The fines weren’t an incentive to allow people to break the rules and catch them afterward, officials said. The honor system was simply a product of relying on paper tickets. Sheriff’s deputies are just doing their jobs.
“We’re socializing 1.5 million people to use rail,” Jordan said. “In New York and Boston, they grew up using rail. We’re retraining a whole population that’s still relatively new to them.”
Studies in Europe and New York showed that subways with tightly regulated entrances brought fare evasion down to 1% or 2%, Jordan said.
If the trade-off for better accountability is fewer scofflaws, increased revenue and hopefully, expanded service, count me in. It’s time to take the training wheels off for Angelenos.
According to this story LA Metro really only expects to go from 5% fare evasion to 2% fare evasion.
From: http://www.metro.net/news/ride…
October 2012 Ridership on the Subway (Red/Purple Lines) was 4,353,213
Multiply by 12 gives us an estimated annual ridership of 52,238,556
Five percent of that ridership is 2,611,927
Two percent of that ridership is 1,044,770
So, with the turnstiles, 1,567,157 more fares will be collected each year.
(Because of course, none of the current fare-dodgers will try to sneak onto a bus or just stop riding instead…)
Since we know that everyone who travels on LA Metro is required to pay the full fare…
The Grand TOTAL that will be collected each year after “latching” the turnstiles for (1,567,157 passengers at $1.50 each) is:
$2,350,735
Now, that is a lot of money, except if you take notice of how much this turnstile fetish has cost to implement.
Wasn’t it $46 million for the turnstiles alone? More? How long does it take for this to pay itself off? 25 years? That’s about when these turnstiles will be ending their service life. How much is it going to cost to upgrade them to NFC (which is already being installed in many cities right now)? Plus the cameras, plus the speaker-boxes, and the new TVMs for Metrolink, and on, and on, and on. And for what?
Can’t be security because pretty much anyone, nefarious or not, has 12-bits in their wallet.
Wait they don’t even need that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
There will still be over 1 million fare-dodgers on the Subway as admitted above.
The Los Angeles Times Op/Ed Referred to Above:
Watch out MTA scofflaws, free rides are coming to an end
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-metro-rail-enforcement-20121210%2C0%2C5246325.story
Every time I see someone walk through the subway turnstiles to board a train without using a Transit Access Pass card, I shake my head.
“Not fair,” I think.
Why am I paying $1.50 every time I want to ride the subway or light-rail lines when clearly, I could be doing this for free and probably get away with it? A $250 ticket is a scary proposition, but on my weekend trips on the Purple and Blue lines, I have yet to see someone get caught for evading the fare. The threat of being caught seems less and less likely with every trip.
But change is on the way. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is going to start locking the turnstiles so you can’t walk through without paying.
The MTA has been operating on the honor system for passengers. Call me a cynic, but that’s like assuming that every car comes to a complete at a stop sign when no one’s looking. They don’t call it a “California roll” for nothing.
The Times reported in May that locked turnstiles were coming to the Purple and Red lines by December. That’s not the case just yet, but it will happen this month or next, said David Sutton, interim deputy executive officer for the TAP program.
Locked turnstiles come with numerous benefits. Sutton said the subways and trains will be safer; though there are fewer passengers, there is increased revenue for the county, which theoretically means better service; and it gives the MTA a better picture of how many people use the system, when they use it and where they’re going.
It’s all part of the service’s evolution. The Los Angeles public transportation system is growing up. It’s moved away from paper tickets and into the electronic age. A greater understanding of how Angelenos use the system can lead to better service.
Some changes are already being considered, Sutton said. The MTA is exploring charging passengers on a distance-based system, similar to Bay Area Rapid Transit in Northern California, where you are charged based on where you get on and where you get off. Another way is to charge based on the window of time a rider might use the system in a given day.
After the MTA gets more data from the Purple and Red lines, it could consider locking gates on the rest of the system, Sutton said.
There will always be some holes, though. At the transfer station at 7th Street and Metro Center, passengers are supposed to pay when they switch lines. But the TAP card validators are so discreetly placed that not many people use them. Transfers there could eventually be free, Sutton said.
Authorities estimate that more than 5% of riders are evading fairs. Transit service bureau Cmdr. Patrick Jordan said deputies have issued more than 28,000 tickets for skipping fares on the Blue Line through October. With fines up to $250, that’s up $7 million off one line alone.
The fines weren’t an incentive to allow people to break the rules and catch them afterward, officials said. The honor system was simply a product of relying on paper tickets. Sheriff’s deputies are just doing their jobs.
“We’re socializing 1.5 million people to use rail,” Jordan said. “In New York and Boston, they grew up using rail. We’re retraining a whole population that’s still relatively new to them.”
Studies in Europe and New York showed that subways with tightly regulated entrances brought fare evasion down to 1% or 2%, Jordan said.
If the trade-off for better accountability is fewer scofflaws, increased revenue and hopefully, expanded service, count me in. It’s time to take the training wheels off for Angelenos.
My opinion is that LACMTA should impalement toll roads on the 405 to help cover the cost of the initial segment of the HRT tunnel. That initial rail segment will miss its chance to be a real ‘game changer’ just as the red line stopping in North Hollywood failed to be a driving alternative to most people commuting into Downtown. But just like the red line, it is a start and we can expand it as funds become available. It could one day be the invaluable transportation backbone of West Los Angeles.
The last thing we need is to build another a bus lane that will eliminate all hope of having a driving alternative. The Orange Bus has taught us that buses cannot meet the demand of a 2 million person community, with hundreds of thousands of those people commuting through bottlenecks each day/
Steven White (@StevenMWhite) on said:
in the valley on said:
If there was a rail component it would start at the Van Nuys Metrolink station. Also, if there is rail, it would not connect to either the Orange line or the potential East San Fernando Valley Transit Corridor.
Another option in Metro’s November report is that the 405 freeway be expanded at Victory Blvd, a tunnel built to connect the freeway to the Big Dig Tunnel and then it could be connected to the Orange line so that the buses could run with traffic through the tunnel.
Here is the report:
http://www.metro.net/board/Items/2012/11_November/20121114P&PItem21.pdf
Concept 4 Tolled Highway Tunnel with BRT is projected to cost 10 Billion Dollars for Sepulveda Pass only (10 miles) and up to 13 Billion Dollars for a full corridor (28 miles). Concept 6 Combined Highway and Rail Tunnels with Demand Pricing is estimated between 20 Billion Dollars (10 miles) or between 30-38 Billion Dollars (21 miles).
A SIMPLE subway tunnel linking LA through the mountain would be faster, cheaper and more environmentally friendly.
Page ES-18 of the report states that LRT would have over 90,000 boardings a day.
Page ES-26 (concept 5) has the cost of the LRT Sepulveda Pass rail tunnel at 5 Billion dollars and running 10 miles or 7-8 Billion for a 28 mile corridor. If this was combined with the ESFTC this number should be reduced because the amount of tunneling would decline.
This is a mess. We have seen the fiasco that is the 710 Freeway extension. The LA Times reports this week that the State of California has doubts about the financial survivability of the Orange County toll roads (no mention of that on the Source).
And now a proposal to do a huge tunnel through the San Fernando Valley. We don’t need more freeways. How does a project cost 20 Billion Dollars for 10 miles of work but cost 30-38 Billion Dollars for 21 miles of work??
Taxpayers are ultimately going to be responsible for any toll roads and the fares on this will not be cheap. Traffic is going to continue to stay on the “Old 405″.
A simple subway tunnel is all that is needed. Engineers are told to remember the KISS principle but it seems the Metro planners didn’t get the message. Metro and Mr. Katz should read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle
(From Wikipedia:
KISS is an acronym for the design principle articulated by Kelly Johnson, Keep it simple, stupid!.The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are kept simple rather than made complex, therefore simplicity should be a key goal in design and unnecessary complexity should be avoided. Variations on the phrase include "keep it stupid simple", "keep it short and simple", "keep it simple sir", "keep it super simple", "keep it simple or be stupid", "keep it simple and stupid", "keep it simple and straightforward" and "keep it simple and sincere.")
AD on said:
A big cost for construction is “mobilization” or setting-up. That is why construction cost are front loaded. It’s like pharmaceuticals, each pill cost pennies to make, but the first pill cost millions to develop.
The one thing to consider is that car tunnels can come with heavy tolls. Imagine having 8 toll lanes: 4 each way with half them in the tunnel. With the 405 being the 3rd worst commute in America, there will be a lot of people willing to pay a lot of money to use those extra lanes. That is also why they can consider charging more for a train ride on this line then every other line.
Hopefully people don’t allow the exploitation to happen. But if the Lankershim bridge idea and the bus picture on the Metro website are any indication of the future, the Valley will continue to receive pennies in services for every dollar they give to Metro.
Warren on said: