Rising Fuel Prices Make Mass Transit More Cost Effective
Not surprising is the fact that as fuel prices increase we see an increase in riders on St. Louis’ light rail – MetroLink. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
Ever since gas topped $2 and stayed there, the Metro public transportation agency says, more Missouri and Illinois commuters have opted for public transit. Ridership on the light rail MetroLink line topped 1 million passengers in February, compared to slightly more than 897,000 in February 2004, an 11 percent increase.
Increased ridership, of course, is great news. More ridership will mean greater support for mass transit. But a downside does exist as well.
First, the cost to the system will increase even though the MetroLink cars are electric. Increased fuel costs will result in higher costs on nearly every good and service in the country. More directly, the cost of the electricity to run MetroLink will increase as well as diesel fuel for the buses. This increase in costs will put additional pressure on the agency to maintain service. It is estimated increased revenues from more riders will not offset higher operating expenses. Some will call for ending public subsidy of mass transit.
For decades the public has been subsidizing transit in a much different form – sprawl. From efforts to keep fuel costs down to paying for highways society has been footing the bill for the privilege of driving a private car. Nothing is more subsidized than the private automobile on a public street or highway.
With a monthly ridership of over a million passengers just think if we didn’t have MetroLink. That is over 35,000 riders per day on average. Without MetroLink we’d have many more cars on our roads for those that could afford a car. The costs of additional wear and tear on roads must be taken into account. The environmental impact of additional cars adding to our region’s smog would also add to the costs. Plus where would all the cars go? Would we tear down more of our historic architecture for yet more parking garages? The price of not having good mass transit would just be too high. We must support and use our mass transit systems.
For me MetroLink just isn’t between my normal A-B routes. I would love to see a street car come down South Broadway to connect downtown to Carondelet. It would be great to walk the few blocks from my home to Broadway to catch a street car. Maybe someday?
In the meantime, I’m going to look at bus routes to get me downtown for the occasional lunch at Curry In A Hurry, public meeting or First Friday gallery walk. It is not going to hurt me to take the bus on occasion. Getting on my bike for trips offers even greater benefits.
Citizens for Modern Transit
Metro – bus & light rail service
St. Louis Regional Bike Federation
– Steve
We took mass transit fairly frequently during our last visit, despite all the negatives we’d heard–principally, about the bus system.
We used it on arriving and departing. We used it to get from our hotel to get from place to place.
We kept waiting for delays, breakdowns, overcrowding–something negative–but nothing. I think we may have waited five minutes at the most for a bus to come; and we transferred effortlessly between MetroLink and MetroBus, again and again.
Why are St. Louisans so reluctant to use mass transit?, we wondered. What did they see that we didn’t? But on reflection, we’ve begun to think maybe the question should be inverted: Why don’t more St. Louisans see what we saw? I think it’s because they criticize the system but never use it. If they did, they’d become advocates rather than critics.
People with family roots in St. Louis talk about their parents’ and grandparents’ recollections of riding the trollies. What has been lost is exactly that–a civic culture in which various modes of public transit are at the center of city life.
But what has been lost can be recaptured. And Steve, I thank you for making that happen by getting out of your car and onto the bus.
A little over a year ago my husband and I only had one car. I picked up the Carondelet bus, took it to Soulard then walked about four blocks to my office. While there were some negatives (standing in the cold/rain waiting for the bus and the amount of time it took to get from point A- point B compared to a car), I also found many positives to riding the bus. I met lots of really nice people during my commute, caught up on some reading, saved money and reduced my contribution to environmental degredation. While I have a car now, it is nice to know that should I want or need to use the transit system again it’s there for me. What a blessing.
You know what else? If there was no MetroLink and there were no busses, I would probably not have a job. Or I might have one, but it would be lower paying, and it certainly wouldn’t be related to anything I’m interested in. The men who scrap the appliances (nearly every single one) thrown out in the alley behind our building can tell you that jobs are hard to come by in this neighborhood.
I also ought to mention that when I saw a listing today for another job I want to apply for (I need a second one.), the first thing I did before copying the information down was to take my Metro map out of my bag and see how easily I could get there on public transit.
Getting people to jobs is one of public transit’s most important features, and one that’s often overlooked in the discussion on how transit can benefit a city. I suppose I’m particularly sensitive to that because I lived in Chicago. Even though two extant CTA train lines (including one I took for years) did not run at night or on the weekends, even though certain busses already ran very infrequently, even though massive service cuts and job cuts loomed, the CTA plugged on ahead working on its plan to develop another train line which would connect major tourist attractions in Chicago, the Gold Line. Because, you know, people who visit the city for three days and then leave are much more important than actual longtime residents. But I digress.
A lot of us can’t drive. I never learned, but like many other people, I could not have afforded a car even if I could have driven it. Some people are too young to drive. Some people have had their licenses revoked. Some people have impaired vision, or are otherwise physically disabled. What would life be like for us without public transit? How would we be able to get out and have a life, and more basically, how would we be able to earn a living?