Metrobus ridership takes a beating post-fare increase

[Scrabbleship]

Metro says the economy is to blame, plus unemployment, broken fareboxes, and even losing riders to Circulator.

I personally call shenanigans because it doesn't seem like ridership is down. Maybe on routes where people pay cash, but it doesn't seem like it elsewhere. I also call shenanigans on this GGW comment about why ridership may be down.

Per the lower bus ridership, it's not the $.25 fare increase that has  me using the bus less these days; it's the reduction from three hours  to two for free bus-to-bus transfers.

Before I could just squeeze in under three hours a roundtrip bus  ride to the grocery store or other shopping. But when faced with the  prospect of doubling my bus fare because I can't get there, shop and  get back in two hours, I instead bum rides from friends. I know it's  only an extra $1.50, but it adds up.

So we now have a subculture of people who use Smartrip but refuse to realize a bus pass is their best option on top of a subculture of people who use cash and won't migrate to Smartrip. Wonderful. I'm sure people in any city with higher fares or restricted-by-route transfers would sign up for that in a heartbeat.
After all this, I think any fare increases for FY2012 should be off the table. Though we all know it was really one fare increase and an "emergency" increase, the minds of the average commuter sees it differently. This comes from a post on a Capitals message board regarding ticket price hikes, the poster is middle aged, lives in Arlington, and has season tickets to the Caps, Wizards, Redskins, Nats, Mystics, and DC United.

something else that's making my Six-Pack increasingly untenable is  these Metrorail/bus fare increases - three in less than two years,  combined with increasingly undependable service (notably track-work at  weekends such as the Caps opener, Redskins weekends, heavy-attendance  Nats series etc) - this nickling-and-diming-to-death by Metro is, in  the long run, even more of a drain than ticket price increases. I'm  already dropping the Redskins after this season (too many prime-time  home matches, with accompanying logistical headaches) and will probably  drop DC United as well (unless they renounce the blowing-town  option)...if Metro raises fares again next February (four increases in  about two years flat!) I may just chuck the lot.

Broke or not, a FY2012 or another "emergency" increase would be playing with fire. They really should be trying to renegotiate their contracts with ATU 689 or trying to get some ad revenue (better than none) or something else. What we see as 1.5 fare increases everyone else sees as 4 fare increases and this is a big problem.

[Tritransit Area]

Fares seem to be two expensive no matter what the city is.  The cost of the trip the lady is talking about in your quote in three hours on SEPTA would cost at least $4, and in New York at least $4.50.  Much more than the $3.

Honestly, Metro has been going through A LOT of bad publicity lately, and it's no surprise that people have stopped riding with them.  They've been doing a terrible job implementing and marketing the fare increases, and while we can sit her and argue what was on the table and what people "knew" was going to happen, it came across as nickel and diming the passengers.

Metrobus is likely suffering because of failing Smartrip boxes, drivers in the news in a negative way, reduced service in some corridors, as well as the long standing problems such as a confusing route network and lack of reliable, on-time service.  I truly hope that this time, they can take a deep look into the existing bus routes and ridership patterns on the routes so that they can better streamline the services and maximize efficiency.  That may also mean that some routes need to not simply end at a train station.

They also need to be MORE transparent with funding issues and to get stakeholders (and board members) more involved with various processes.  They CAN improve their image, but they have a long road ahead of them. 

It's a long road, but they NEED to address many of these critical issues.  It's not enough to have fancy stuff anymore if they don't adequate perform the basic tasks that they were designed for.

[WayneNYC]

My two cents: While fare increases may cause a drop in ridership, I don't think this and bad press will necessarily cause a sigificant drop in ridership.  In the case of Metrobus, I think reliability is probably a major factor in ridership dropping.  I think the amount of time it takes to get from point A to point B is also playing a major role.

This leads me to the thread about rapid buses.  http://forums.dctransit.info/index.php?topic=1713.msg16956;topicseen#msg16956.  For me one of the most frustrating things is that buses must compete too much with cars.  In my opinion if buses had their own right-of-way (like busways in Pittsburgh and Ottawa) and/or dedicated bus lanes (like those on Madison Ave) in NYC, they would move along much faster and more people would be open to riding the buses.   

[79MetroExtraMD]

My two cents: While fare increases may cause a drop in ridership, I don't think this and bad press will necessarily cause a sigificant drop in ridership.  In the case of Metrobus, I think reliability is probably a major factor in ridership dropping.  I think the amount of time it takes to get from point A to point B is also playing a major role.

This leads me to the thread about rapid buses.  http://forums.dctransit.info/index.php?topic=1713.msg16956;topicseen#msg16956.  For me one of the most frustrating things is that buses must compete too much with cars.  In my opinion if buses had their own right-of-way (like busways in Pittsburgh and Ottawa) and/or dedicated bus lanes (like those on Madison Ave) in NYC, they would move along much faster and more people would be open to riding the buses.   

People don't seem to follow the rule about the bus lane on 9th Street, but it might be generally difficult to implement more bus lanes in the city due to the unique matter of DC traffic being from three jurisdictions. Rapid bus service seems to be the general thing to improving reliability but even that is still subject to car traffic as well. Everything has its quirks, it all a matter of getting people out of cars and onto mass transit.

[WayneNYC]

My two cents: While fare increases may cause a drop in ridership, I don't think this and bad press will necessarily cause a sigificant drop in ridership.  In the case of Metrobus, I think reliability is probably a major factor in ridership dropping.  I think the amount of time it takes to get from point A to point B is also playing a major role.

This leads me to the thread about rapid buses.  http://forums.dctransit.info/index.php?topic=1713.msg16956;topicseen#msg16956.  For me one of the most frustrating things is that buses must compete too much with cars.  In my opinion if buses had their own right-of-way (like busways in Pittsburgh and Ottawa) and/or dedicated bus lanes (like those on Madison Ave) in NYC, they would move along much faster and more people would be open to riding the buses.   

People don't seem to follow the rule about the bus lane on 9th Street, but it might be generally difficult to implement more bus lanes in the city due to the unique matter of DC traffic being from three jurisdictions. Rapid bus service seems to be the general thing to improving reliability but even that is still subject to car traffic as well. Everything has its quirks, it all a matter of getting people out of cars and onto mass transit.

Not saying it's easy, but in my mind if you have bus lanes that are enforced, the buses should move along at a nice pace.  I'm not sure how traffic from various jurisdictions would matter.  Yes, a solution is to get people out of their cars.  The problem is that with the current situation there's little in the way of incentives to get people out of their cars.  In fact, (in my opinion) for many people it pretty much pushes them into their cars.

I'll give you my scenario.  I commute from Gaithersburg to Georgetown.  It costs me more to park at Shady Grove and use Metrorail than it does to pay for parking at work and gas.  The downside is that I'm not doing my part to reduce my carbon footprint as well as contributing to already overcrowded highways. 

I don't believe the fare itself is a big issue with Metrobus as it's very low even with the recent increase.  Metrorail: I think the fare is very much an issue, as it can be incredibly expensive.

[Perry]

Unfortunately you have to look at the revenue vs. cost to run the operations.  Yes cutting service and raising fares is difficult, but if it gets you to your desired goal, then it served it's purpose.  We have been cutting trips that averaged over 15 passengers per trip, but the loss of that revenue if we were to lose all 15 passengers is still a lot less than what it cost to run that trip.  It's sad to be like this, but in desperate times, you look at the greater gains and that means it's better to cut the service and save the cost to run it than the 30% farebox recovery from running it.