In Sunday’s Chronicle, Bill King, the former mayor mayor of Kemah and a pol said to be planning a run for Houston mayor, put forth one of the more entertaining local transit proposals we’ve seen lately:
Just about everyone involved in Houston’s mobility dialogue agrees that an increase in transit ridership would be a good thing. Yet, for years our transit programs have been trapped in the box of a “rail versus freeway” debate that has left motorists facing ever rising congestion and transit riders with few options. I believe that one way out of this box may be to get rid of the fare box.
One need not go much further than this — and certainly one doesn’t need to spend this much time debunking the particulars and then correcting the errors in the original debunking — before dismissing the premise behind this article, which seems to be: The direct, fare-box cost to passengers using transit in Houston significantly dampens utilization.
Until the recent Q-Card “service improvements,” METRO’s fare structure had been flat for years. Yet despite our area’s phenomenal growth, there has been no accompanying growth in system utilization even with fares that have been flat — and extremely low, compared to the base fares charged by many transit systems across the country. We would suggest that it is not the fare structure that is responsible for METRO’s declining transit system utilization (relative to the population), but the fact that the system as currently designed isn’t USEFUL to more potential riders.
But hey, if the former mayor of Kemah is all excited about a transit giveaway, we urge him to think locally (since we’re told all politics is local) — how about talking Tilman and associates (or even Kemah taxpayers!) into giving free train rides at the Boardwalk! The kiddies will love it (which has to be worth something), and we suspect it will have about the same (negligible) impact on mass transit utilization in the METRO service area.
