Public Transit

Who Runs the Transit System?

|

Who Runs the Transit System?

Once upon a time in the Great City, Hugh L. Carey, one of New York’s best modern governors, and certainly its most underrated, pledged not to raise the 50 cent fare on the subways and buses. Swiftly, the man Carey had picked to chair the system, Richard Ravitch, contradicted him.

The fare, Ravitch explained, was the difference between how much money was needed to properly maintain and operate the system and how much the state, the city and others put in. Math, in other words, not politics.

Afterward, Carey, raised in the gentle arts of Brooklyn politics, summoned Ravitch to dinner at one of the Governor’s favorite midtown watering holes. In the hardball of New York, the menu would be expected to include a dressing down. Which is why to this day Ravitch loves to repeat what the governor actually said next: “Dick, thanks for getting me off the hook. Don’t pay any attention to what I say.”

That was then.

This is now. “Train Daddy” Andy Byford came and went faster than a speeding A train, the casualty of Governor Cuomo’s penchant to “micro-manage” a system he is bound by state law to keep his hands off of.

The 400 kWh a day city electric buses

|

The 400 kWh a day city electric buses. ⚡

The new all electric city buses (well excluding the seasonally uses diesel cabin heaters) that CDTA has bought use 488 KWh battery packs to provide roughly 200 miles of range in city traffic for a 10 or 12 hours of operating service. City buses are heavy, they do a lot of stop and go driving, they burn a lot of energy. Diesel buses get 3.5 mpg or burn roughly 55 gallons of diesel for a 200 mile day.

The thing about it is that 400 kWh a day (save 88 kWh to avoid over depletion) or two megawatt hours worth of electricity for a five day service week is an incredible amount of energy when you’re trying to get it from any renewable source. A week operating a single bus is equivalent to burning one ton of coal or the output of 9,000 250 watt solar panels operating for one hour, assuming a real world output of 200 watts on the panels. The energy math of powering a whole urban fleet of buses on solar power or even wind is pretty insane when you think of all the other energy demands of the economy.

I do think electrifying the bus fleet makes environmental sense and provides long term cost savings and flexibility. It is more energy efficient to use electric motors and batteries in city buses as diesel motors pale in efficiency to large power plants and energy efficient electric motors. But the idea that electric buses are going to be powered by renewable anytime soon is pretty silly in my book.

Should Public Transit Be Free? More Cities Say, Why Not? – The New York Times

|

Should Public Transit Be Free? More Cities Say, Why Not? – The New York Times

Fare box recoveries are so low, they might as well make it free.

It costs a lot of money to collect money, while most transit systems are heavily reliant on state and federal subsidies -- CDTA relies on 85 percent of it's revenue from sources besides fare boxes. Smaller systems recover even less from the fare box.

KUOW – ‘Get on and go!’ No bus fare needed anymore on Olympia transit system

|

KUOW – ‘Get on and go!’ No bus fare needed anymore on Olympia transit system

If you could get buses to run more miles in an hour, by speeding up boarding without fare collection, plus eliminating cash and credit card processing costs, it would cost the authority zero dollars -- but it would mean job losses -- and lead to schedule alterations that might be unpopular due to faster buses.

Make NYC’s Trains & Buses Free | The Indypendent

|

How to Stop Fare Evasion: Make NYC’s Trains & Buses Free | The Indypendent

Imagine a transit system where there are no turnstiles, where the police presence is minimal because cops aren’t lurking around to enforce fares. Picture a subway and bus network that is free, open and functional because those who profit most from it pay for it.

Lawmakers in Kansas City, Missouri took a step in just this direction earlier in December, passing a bill that directed the city’s manager to set aside $8 million a year to cover the fare of $1.50 for every rider. It is expected to save frequent bus users in the city of 490,000 people about $1,000 a year.

Tweeting his admiration, New York City Councilmember Brad Lander (D-Park Slope) called the step “visionary,” adding in parentheses that it “might take NYC a while, but this really is where we all need to aim.”

The push for free mass transit is part of a large democratic socialist (or social-democratic) resurgence — Medicare for All, free public college, a Green New Deal — in which demands for free, universally available public goods are rising and finding receptive ears.

Here in New York, we already have an example of free public transit: the Staten Island Ferry. In 1997, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani lifted the ferry’s already minimal 50-cent charge as a gesture of gratitude to the city’s only majority-white borough, whose voters had helped nudge him to a narrow victory four years earlier.

I think there is even a better case for making transit free in upstate cities -- they collect so little revenue from it -- it's almost a moot point. If you could have faster boarding and exiting from the buses, the savings of not collecting and processing fare payments would mean the whole system would actually be cheaper for taxpayers to operate.

U.S. Electric Bus Demand Outpaces Production as Cities Add to Their Fleets | InsideClimate News

|

U.S. Electric Bus Demand Outpaces Production as Cities Add to Their Fleets | InsideClimate News

In the coastal city of Gulfport, Mississippi, the state's first fully-electric bus will soon be cruising through the city's downtown streets.

The same goes for Portland, Maine—it just received a grant to buy that state's first two e-buses, which are set to roll out in 2021. And Wichita expects to have Kansas' first operating electric bus picking up passengers as early as this month after receiving a federal grant.

As cities and states across the country set ambitious mid-century climate change goals for the first time and as prices for lithium-ion batteries plummet, a growing number of transit agencies are stepping up efforts to replace dirtier diesel buses with electric ones.

Nearly every state has a transit agency that now owns—or will soon own—at least one electric bus, according to a recent report from CALSTART, a clean transportation advocacy group.