Comment 50347

By Tartan Triton (anonymous) | Posted October 25, 2010 at 14:51:31

Tracking, measuring and studying fares would be a big start. Seems like they only have a lot of really basic numbers on the go right now – X number of people used the HSR last year – but can't break things down much further. And yet I can track arrivals and departures through Google Maps. Go figure.

What I often stick on is the matter of the real costs associated with services like the HSR. Inflation tends to edge upwards at about 2% a year, unionized labour rarely accepts wage freezes, and peak oil continues to make all gasoline dependent motors more expensive to operate: A barrel of oil might cost 2-4 times as much as it did at the turn of the century.

If we want better service, more frequent service and fewer sardine cans, it would seem that the money for that is either coming out of the user, the taxpayer or both. I honestly have no idea how fares have increased vis-a-vis the Consumer Price Index, but obviously something has to give. (Especially once the Baby Boom cohort becomes eligible for free transit.) But since the suburbs generally enjoy crappy HSR service, they tend not to use the bus as much, which in turn makes it less relevant to the daily lives of the electorate, which robs the transit issue of its political muscle since it's easily painted as a lower-city perk.

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