That's why it's bad policy to think about transit in terms of making a profit. It's a public service, that's the profit, and we all get it.
this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Isn't it weird that public transit 'needs to be profitable', but roads and the infrastructure it drive on doesn't?
It is profitable. To car manufacturers. Without upgrades to infrastructure like roads and parking structures, congestion would eventually get so bad people would be more likely to stop buying cars and move to alternate transportation options.
Those other options actually have to exist for the shift to happen, otherwise other significant hurdles exist like having to move closer to work or change jobs to accommodate ditching car dependancy.
I charge a significant tax for in-office work located more than 10min from a train -- and it's less like the 3% 'dumb comms stack' tax I charge for having to use Teams and more like a "if your office is there, the baseline you need to pay based on today's rent for a 2-bedroom flat within 15 min walk to the office is..." number (hint: fresh grads should be able to afford a 1-bedroom flat within walking of their day job and still have money for food; and experienced staff should get more than that).
Transit is profitable, though. Second-order and third-order effects make transit extremely profitable even by the most pessimistic estimates.
Part of what resists this in North America is their sprawling developments. It often increases travel distance, time, and cost while also being poorly connected to other modes of transit/walkability. Quality transit and denser, mixed use urban fabric go hand in hand. A single bus stop brings less value to a neighbourhood of large lot SFH than a single bus stop brings to a mixed use street, an apartment building, or neighbourhood of townhomes.
Public transit should never be treated as an investment that should produce a return. It's an service provided for people to use. It should be cheap or free. I'll never understand why people get confused about this stuff, it's like the dip shits here in the US that'll complain that the USPS doesn't make money. It's not supposed to
The return it produces is not immediate cash flow, but the return is vast and on many fronts.
Certainly; however, most people don't seem to think that far. All they can do is add and subtract.
All it requires to be able to understand is the ability to add and subtract. Apparently many don't even have that capability.
And if they can't do that, their voting pattern is clear.
It should be cheap or free.
We learned this on the west coast when all those user fees dropped and they couldn't afford to maintain minimum service levels, even when dipping into the completely unused maintenance fund ... oh, wait: that went out as bonuses.
Public transit should never be treated as an investment that should produce a return
It absolutely needs to produce a return. There are real lives involved in building and operating transit. Without returns, that is a life wasted that could have been used to do something useful for society.
It should be cheap or free.
Quite possibly. The returns need not come from fares. The fare is for rider management β ensuring that the buses and trains aren't overcrowded. The fare needs to only be as high as is required to ensure that there isn't someone not able to fit on the train when it stops.
If you have 100 people waiting on the platform and the train can only hold 50 people, the fare is too low. If the train has room for 100 people, but only 50 are waiting on the platform, the fare is too high.
But there has to be returns. Asking someone to metaphorically dig a hole in your backyard for no reason other than to watch them sweat is gravely detrimental to society.
You know what matters a lot more than balancing budgets? Defining public transit as a true public service and making sure the people who depend on it the most, those who have few other options to get to where they need to be, have transit available to them when they need it at a cost they can afford.
This is the problem. Public transit is seen as a service used by poor people. In Europe public transit is used by everyone because it is the best, fastest option to get to where you are going. When I travel to London I take the train from the airport to Victoria station them walk to my hotel. Everywhere else I go is by tube or by train. I have never rented a car and only hired a van when I had a group of people and a bunch of luggage to move a long distance.
If public transit worked (Ottawa LRT anyone?) and we stopped making traveling by car convenient, people would use public transit.
The new train in Ottawa was built to be rebuilt.
The guy who built it - apparently fired from Translink/BC and failing upward - built warm weather trains for ottawa; that's only useful for like 4-5 months of the year. The rest of the time, though, the power shoes - which aren't inverted and can't get through the snowpack - start failing and I guess the trains brown out.
The platforms, built without a better idea in mind - Edmonton is a place, guys! - are also warm-weather platforms. Comparing Tunney's Pasture with Sapperton or VCC shows how one influenced the other. They're designed like Vancouver stations, they look like Vancouver stations, and I'm gonna need convincing they didn't source from the same suppliers or use leftovers from Vancouver stations.
But SNC-Lavalin - or whether they skilly rebranded to because no normies will remember - delivered on time for their bonus.
Now it leverages a Sunk Cost fallacy to actually become stations that work. We can't toss them out, but they're going to require a huge investment to retro-fit them for modern Capitol weather.
But this train is also 1/4 built. It needs to get down to baseline, run past hazelden, and turn up TerryFox for Centrum and the tech park. This bullshit of running near the river makes half of it useless as fish don't take transit and do don't need to be in the direct catchment for a station. Where the hell is barrhaven's representation and a link to Fallowfield or a similar station on the way to the airport? Where's the connection to any other mode of travel, for that matter?
They have a lot of building to do, and not a little bit of 'splaining.
Looking at this picture from wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCC%E2%80%93Clark_station#/media/File%3AVCC-Clark_Station_Platform.jpg
I absolutely agree with your statement.
From this wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCC%E2%80%93Clark_station
Who is the guy you're talking about?