I've said it before...

...but roads are at least as subsidized as transit, and a new report from the Pew subsidiary Subsidyscope today demonstrates it nicely. At their height, highways were paid for by around 71% user fees (gas taxes, registration fees, etc.), and today these fees account for less than half of all highway spending. This is a level of subsidy slightly higher than Metrolink (as Metrolink users pay for ~50% of the service through fares, but ~10% of costs are covered by miscellaneous income such as trackage rights).

And let's make sure this is clear- this report is talking only about HIGHWAYS. Most of that gas tax that you (or your less enlightened friends, if you're car-free) pay goes into highways, which leaves surface streets to be taken care of by sales taxes, property taxes, and other outlays from the local government's general fund. The Victoria Transportation Policy Institute estimates that user fees account for less than 4% of local street expenditures. Remember, RTA riders pay a state-mandated 20% of the cost of their ride.

Transit Fallacies, Part 2- "Metrolink Syndrome"

For those of you who missed it, you can find the first part of my "Transit Fallacies" series here.

This second bit I'm calling "Metrolink Syndrome", because Metrolink is one of the most egregious offenders, but it can be applied to nearly any express transit service. The Victor Valley Commuter had a particularly bad case of Metrolink Syndrome. The idea is that express services and local services serve different ridership bases, and so don't necessarily need to be connected, especially in the outlying areas they serve.

When Metrolink and RCTC built the Riverside-Downtown (Marketplace) Metrolink station in 1993, it stood the same six blocks away from the Downtown Terminal that it does now. Yet only now, in 2009, is RTA even considering a move into the vicinity of the station. Metrolink and RCTC, in their infinite wisdom, built 2 bus bays and 710 parking spaces. There is no reason that they should not have constructed a large transit center on the site, immediately in front of the train station, except for the fact that they did not think that local riders would seek to connect to the Metrolink station in large numbers. Even today, only two lines serve the station, and mostly only during weekday peak hours.

The Riverside Metrolink is not the only example. See the Green Line and Metrolink Norwalk stations, separated by several miles, or the El Monte Metrolink and El Monte bus stations. The latter is one of the busiest bus stations in the nation, but Metrolink felt no need to connect the two. At the very least, a frequent, direct shuttle route ought to connect these places, but no such route exists. (RTA tried to implement such a route in Riverside, the 52 Trolley Green Line, but it was weekday peak-only and failed miserably.)

And Metrolink, of course, is not the only example. I mentioned the Victor Valley Commuter. How about the CommuterLink routes at the Promenade Mall in Temecula? Only a half-mile from the main local bus transfer point at County Center Drive, but there's no connection between them except on the rare local routes that serve both destinations. Why? Because it's assumed that commuters will drive to the park-and-ride facility at the mall, rather than ride their local bus.

Transit planners, please learn this lesson, because it's not a difficult one. In fact, it should be obvious. Transit riders are transit riders. Somebody who's willing to ride a bus to work is probably willing to ride a bus all the way to work. It's admirable to try to attract choice riders at the park-and-ride lot, but when doing so, don't forget about the steady base of ridership on the local bus system. When car-free riders want to get somewhere further than their neighbourhood, they need connections to express routes, because they will use those routes. "Choice riders" may desert you, but others won't. To ignore your ridership, when it would be so easy to serve them, is puzzling and inexcusable.

Metrolink Punts, IEOC Weekends Still Vulnerable

The Metrolink Board of Directors met today (and I was sadly unable to attend) and... did nothing. Well, they did a number of important things, awarding contracts for various bits of kit that keep the trains running every day, but they took no action on the fare hikes or service cuts. That's been postponed until January 8th, and by then I'll be able to afford the train ticket in to LA to give them a piece of my mind.

Reading through the meeting documents, it seems that all of the service cuts are still on the table. Especially, apparently, the IE-OC and OC line weekend cuts. Metrolink staff is adamant that all weekend service on these lines be suspended, apparently due to construction for the 30-minute Metrolink service that's been promised in the OC for years. Of course, they promise to bring back the Beach train for Summer 2010. (All well and good, but I'm not a big beach person. I'm a big go-somewhere-other-than-Riverside-on-the-weekend person, but you're not really helping with that.) Metrolink has never before instituted service cuts, and I hope we still don't have to see them, but apparently the overwhelming balance of public comment was against fare hikes at all costs.

Which brings me to the next point. It looks like a 3% fare hike is also probably coming in February 2010. It's still a rather minor increase, but I find myself looking back longingly at the old fare system, which went for several years without a fare increase. We've had one yearly pretty much ever since. After a while, it does get pretty ridiculous. I'd like to note here that Metrolink has an absurdly high farebox recovery ratio, which approaches 50% and is among the highest in the nation. Staff appears poised to ask the member agencies for more in subsidies, and I hope they ask for a lot more. Even a 30% recovery ratio is phenomenal for American transport operators, and think of the kind of system Metrolink could be for that extra 20%.

One last thing... if Metrolink does insist upon cutting IE-OC service, is there any way they could do something to mitigate the loss? I'd love to see the SB line officially extended to Riverside for either most or all runs on weekends, and increased service on the 149 as well. It'd go a long way towards making up for all that lost weekend mobility. Or maybe a Metrolink bus to replace the train? It has to be cheaper, and probably time-competitive on the weekends.

The Trouble with the Victor Valley Commuter

The Victor Valley Transit Authority used to run a bus line up and down the I-15 between various points in the Victor Valley and San Bernardino and Rancho Cucamonga/Ontario. The line provided timed transfers to Metrolink, as well as connections to Omnitrans at Ontario Mills and San Bernardino (and MARTA at San Bernardino, and RTA at Ontario Mills). The agency started the service in 2002, and provided generous schedules on both lines, and fares that were reasonable ($75/month, though a single round trip ran $9) and provided a half-off discount for Metrolink riders. The buses were large, comfortable Neoplan Metroliners with on-board restrooms and 110V AC outlets for laptops or other electronic devices. The service was funded on a two-year federal exploratory grant to study the feasability of such services.

Despite all of the advantages I listed above, especially when compared to a daily drive down the I-15 through Cajon Pass (seriously, I don't know how those people do it every day), the service didn't garner enough ridership to balance VVTA's budget and it suffered drastic cuts when the federal grant ran out in 2004. The service was finally discontinued entirely in 2005. So what went wrong? I leave that up to you.

Just kidding. This is a blog, of course, and so you know I must have an opinion on the matter.

The major problem with the Commuter was the routing on the High Desert side. The VVTA apparently conceived of this service as a sort of Metrolink Victor Valley Line, a transit service that was apt to attract what planners often call "choice riders"- the folks who have a car and can choose whether to drive or not. They were so certain of this aspect of their service, in fact, that the connections between the Commuter lines and the local bus system in the Victor Valley were few and far between. The primary stops for the bus line were the Park-And-Ride facilities at the Victor Valley Transportation Center (the Greyhound/Amtrak station, but mostly devoid of local bus service), Bear Valley Rd. and 395/Joshua Tree. When I rode the bus (as I was stuck up in Wrightwood for much of the summer of 2004), I would have my father drop me off at the Joshua Tree park-and-ride in the morning, and in the evening I would get off at the Bear Valley park-and-ride and walk the mile between there and VVTA's major transfer point at the Victor Valley Mall, where I could catch the 21 back home. A few off-peak services, mostly heading down the hill in the early afternoon, stopped at the transfer point at Victor Valley College, but they were the exception rather than the rule. The monthly passes sold on the Commuter were good on the local buses, and Commuter riders were entitled to free transfers on the local system even if they didn't have passes, but the actual buses rarely allowed transfers.

The fact of the matter is that transit-dependent riders are just that: transit-dependent. If you offer them a service, they will ride it. When the Commuter service did connect to the local bus system, there were plenty of eager riders to take advantage of it. Even Metrolink, which does attract choice riders, still sees approximately 17% of their ridership from the transit-dependent. That may not sound like a lot, but an extra 20% to a given route's ridership can make a very big budgetary difference. The sad bit is that it would not have been terribly difficult to make these connections. Instead of routing the bus up I-15 between the Transportation Center and the Bear Valley Park-and-Ride, it could have run up 7th street and stopped at the major Victorville transfer point at Lorene. At Bear Valley, the bus could have made a short loop around to the bus loop at the mall. These simple changes would connect the Commuter service directly to 10 of the 18 bus routes in the VVTA system, and put it within one transfer of every single bus stop in the Victor Valley. Suddenly, the car-free denizens of the area have a real opportunity to access jobs and services down the hill, and the VV Commuter has a loyal and productive ridership base.

The second problem with the Victor Valley Commuter was its practice of deadheading up the hill after morning service. On several of the evening runs, it stopped at Victor Valley College (just a few blocks from VVTA's yard) before barreling down the I-15 to pick up returning commuters. However, after dropping them off in the morning, on most runs the bus went out of service for the entire 60 miles back up to the desert. Want to go visit family in Victorville or Hesperia without driving I-15? Tough. After such a substantial drive, there is no reason that a vehicle shouldn't even be given the opportunity to haul some passengers in revenue service. Combine this with the fact that two of VVTA's transfer points, the Victor Valley Mall and Victor Valley College, are both on the way back to the yard, and you get a policy that is nothing short of ridiculous. An opportunity to haul passengers in revenue service shouldn't be denied, especially when the vehicle is traveling such a long way. Could it have saved the service? It couldn't have made it any worse.

Finally, when the service was cut in 2004, the cuts were made in a poor way. VVTA chose to preserve the earliest trips in the morning, and the latest trips at night, in an admirable attempt to ensure access to jobs in the L.A. area. The thinking was that, if you were taking the bus in to get to work at 8am, you could take the bus an hour earlier and still be able to keep your job, and likewise with the bus an hour later at night. Obviously, the agency forgot that they were trying to cater to "choice" riders, and that those riders were happy to exercise their choice when the service became inconvenient for them. Add two extra hours to my commute every day, and I'll be looking very carefully at my options as well. And, of course, these cuts made it even more difficult for transit-dependent riders to access the Commuter- you had to get up even earlier to make that long walk to the park-and-ride, and for some trips, there simply was no local bus service. In making these cuts, VVTA managed to alienate both choice riders and transit-dependent riders all at once, and the service predictably failed a few months later.

They did do one smart thing when they made the 2004 service changes, however. They added a stop at CSU San Bernardino. Not only is this a major trip generator in and of itself, as CSUSB is the nearest public university to the high desert, but it's also a major bus hub for Omnitrans routes in northern San Bernardino.

Anyway, I bring this up now because VVTA, SANBAG and the various desert cities are studying new I-15 transit service options. I plan on sending all of these observations to them, along with my thoughts on what that corridor needs. What we don't need is another Victor Valley Commuter. The residents and transit riders of the Victor Valley deserve better.

Transit Fallacies, Part 1- The "Commuter" fallacy

I want to do a series of posts on how we think about public transit, especially in Southern California. Of course, most of this applies to pretty much everywhere in the country aside from New York City. J.H. Crawford, author of the book Carfree Cities, says on his web site that most Americans think of public transit as a "second-class service for second-class citizens." I think that most I.E. residents expect second-class citizens to buy cheap cars. So I've got my work cut out for me.

The first misunderstanding about transit service, and this is a worryingly common one, is that transit service exists for people traveling to work and back. Essentially all transit service is often referred to as "commuter" service. Here's an example from the Press-Enterprise, calling the upcoming E St. BRT a "commuter line". And here's the Los Angeles Times calling the Metro Blue Line passengers "commuters", and they should know better. Now, granted, many people who do use transit are commuters. Work trips are a significant portion of the trips that any of us make on a day-to-day basis. However, they're not the only trips we make. In fact, I rarely make my commute trips on transit. I bike the two miles to school, where I also work. I use transit for other trips entirely. And think about it- We would never say that the only people who use our streets are commuters, nor our freeways. Even cycling doesn't have this problem- nobody calls the Santa Ana River Trail a "commuter" facility, even though many do use it to commute.

You might think that I'm getting worked up about a slight difference in nomenclature. That is the sort of thing that I'm famous for- ask my family and friends. However, this actually makes a difference. If we think that transit service is only for commuters, we tend to provision transit service only for commuters. This means express buses that run only during rush hour, or that run out in one direction and then go out-of-service, only to repeat the same route to pick up more passengers at their origin. (RTA keeps this to a minimum, but still manages to do it on the 210 to Banning/Beaumont. VVTA was really bad at this.) It means that local bus systems shut down at 8 pm because most people are home from work by then. It means limited weekend service, and no weekend express service at all. It means no weekend service at all in some areas. It means Metrolink can justify providing a skeleton network on the weekends, and then cut that when it becomes monetarily inconvenient.

The fact of the matter is that people ride transit for all sorts of trips, not just work-related ones. And they would ride it more often for non-work-related trips if the systems were not designed around 9-5 jobs, Monday-Friday. Even worse, many jobs these days aren't 9-5 Monday-Friday, and so those who have odd work schedules end up going to great lengths to get to their jobs without a car. I met a man one night on one of the last Omni 90 buses (now 215). He was going to his job in San Bernardino. His shift started at 8 or 9 pm, and ended at 2 in the morning. He brought his bike, because he had to ride it the 20 miles back home. He did this 5 days a week.

No, transit passengers aren't always commuters. And commuters aren't always who you think they are. Our transit system should be designed for everybody.

Metrolink Proposes Slashing Pretty Much Everything

Metrolink has apparently been in pretty dire financial straits- the drop in oil prices and the continued increase in fares has led many to conclude that driving is a better choice for their commute. (It still isn't, but they're *just* thinking about gas prices.) The decline in ridership means a decline in fare revenue, and the spiral continues.

Anyway, the board recently proposed another 6% fare increase, which would be the second this year alone. After angry protests from the ridership, they postponed action on the matter- and came back with this. The board has proposed cuts to over 50 trains, most of them of the preciously rare off-peak, reverse-peak and weekend variety. Here in the IE, the most major cut would be the suspension of ALL Inland Empire-Orange County Line service on Saturday and Sunday. This would mean that the only trains to serve Riverside on weekends would be the random San Bernardino Line trains that extend south one stop to Downtown. There are two of these in each direction on Saturday and Sunday, and they are peak-direction only- into LA in the morning, out of LA at night. There would be no service in Corona or at Riverside-La Sierra. Also, if you think you can just take the 149 through the canyon and pick up the Orange County Line? Yeah, that's being cut too. All weekend service on the OC line will also be suspended. Essentially, if you're car-free in the IE, you're staying out here for the weekend.

My constant critique on this blog of Metrolink's service and value in connecting this region is its rush-hour peak-direction focus. Metrolink offers quick, reliable, safe service all over its service area, but it offers very little of that if you're not working a regular, 9-5 job. The car-free people of Southern California are very much in need of a way to get around our freeway-centric region that's faster than local buses, and Metrolink often falls short of doing that. Budget crises are understandable, but Metrolink's Board needs to get beyond the paradigm of "cut service or raise fares" for funding troubles. There has to be another way.

Incidentally, I hope that all of you will write to the Metrolink Board and tell them that a 6% fare hike is better than losing all of our weekend train service. In the short-term, if that's what the Board feels they have to do, it's better than these draconian service reductions. In the long term, however, Metrolink needs to find more sustainable sources of funding, and the Board should be expected to approve this fare hike with the understanding that it ought to be the last one for a long while. (For my idea for Metrolink funding, see here.)

High Desert Call to Action

I'm not sure if I have any readers that are even remotely associated with the Victor Valley. (Perhaps if my wife ever starts reading this blog, that'd be one.) However, if any of you know anybody up there, especially anyone who commutes over the disaster that is the I-15 every morning, SANBAG and VVTA are conducting a study on commuter alternatives for that corridor, and they want people to take their survey. So, if you're part of the intended audience, visit VictorValleyCommute.com and let them know that you support public transit between the Victor Valley and the rest of the world.

I also plan on writing them a letter with thoughts on their proposals, and I'll detail that in a later blog post. Promise.