I live close to the Franconia-Springfield metro station here in Fairfax County, Virginia. Last year, I calculated what it would cost to ride Metro to work every day. Turned out, that with the recent fare increases, it wasn’t really much cheaper than driving. Now Metro is considering raising the fares further. Rob of the Raising Kaine blog points out that Metro’s fare increases is tantamount to system suicide. He does the math for my favorite station and points out that if you want to solve a budget shortfall caused by slumping ridership, don’t increase the fares on your existing customers:
Consider this scenario - a rider that parks at Franconia-Springfield to ride to Metro Center (using SmarTrip for all transactions). That rider pays $3.75 to park and $3.60 per trip - $10.95 per day or $219 for 20 days (about 4 work weeks). With the increases quoted above, that same rider would pay $4.50 to park and $4.05 per trip - now paying $12.60 per day or $252 for 20 days.
So, for these commuters that the region is begging to keep off the highways - Metro wants to sock them with a $30+ price increase, pushing their overall costs much closer to the costs of simply driving and parking downtown. Sure they’d be switching to traffic gridlock, but most people would prefer their comfortable cars to crowded mass transit - especially if costs are equalized.
Metro wants to get me on the train, improve the bus service to the station. Right now, it’s unreliable and only comes twice an hour. There’s no way I’m going to pay $4.50/day to drive and park there.
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