Mass transit runs better if riders pay fare
Jay Evensen
User fees for the light-rail and bus "infrastructure," as the senator convincingly puts it, took a hike last week along the Wasatch Front. And along with that came an interesting question.
If people pay once for transit through sales taxes and then again when they pay to get on board, is that a form of double taxation?
Or, put another way, why isn't mass transit free for everyone?
That very question was posed last Monday by a handful of advocates for the poor who rallied against the fare increases in front of the Salt Lake City Library. They offered one compelling argument: For riders on fixed incomes, any fare increase at all is a major adjustment.
But the question is particularly intriguing because transit here receives about 70 percent of its support from sales taxes, and in Utah sales taxes apply to many things, including groceries, which means they hit the poor unusually hard. You can cut out a lot of nonessentials. Food isn't one of them.
First, it isn't necessarily true that all people, regardless of income or circumstances, have to pay the same to ride. The Utah Transit Authority already provides discounts for people who can least afford to pay. UTA spokesman Justin Jones told me the authority works with a number of social service agencies to identify the people who are in the greatest need. Those people can qualify for huge discounts, up to 50 percent, on ticket prices. Homeless shelters offer free transit tokens.
Obviously, UTA itself can't be in the position of deciding who qualifies and who pays full price — not unless officials there want to start examining the tax returns of their riders.
Second, the idea of a totally free transit system is not new, nor is it untested. About 30 years ago, voters along the Wasatch Front rejected the idea when they decided to set up UTA, but the idea keeps popping up every now and then like a whack-a-mole. In fact, 11 years ago Randy Horiuchi and Brent Overson, both Salt Lake County commissioners at the time, asked the Legislature to consider a tax increase that would have made the system free. Lawmakers promptly ignored them.
The problem with free is that it often translates into neglect. For some strange reason, humans put a greater value on things they have to pay for out of pocket. The fact that they pay through sales taxes doesn't seem to do the trick.
Back in 1994, I wrote about Austin, Texas, which decided in 1989 to offer free transit. In short, ridership jumped a whopping 87 percent, but the number of complaints about crimes, vandalism and abuse almost tripled. A school truancy problem developed as kids jumped on and off city buses. After two years, Austin relented. The transit board decided to begin charging 50 cents per ride.
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