Comment 97541

By Joshua (registered) | Posted February 10, 2014 at 22:51:25 in reply to Comment 97535

Your response to Ryan sent me to discover if any fare-free transit systems exist in the world. They do! There's one in Tallinn, Estonia, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and more information at http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute... If you want ridership to increase, argues the Transit Cooperative Research Programme in http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcr... go fare-free: a 100% decrease in fares, according to the Simpson-Curtin Rule that a 10% increase in fare results in a 3% drop in ridership, can expect a 30% increase in ridership. The report noted Topeka, Kansas, Austin, Texas, Templin, Germany, and Hasselt, Belgium all went fare-free. Finally, some local colour, from the report:

As noted earlier, in 2008, the city of Hamilton reviewed the potential impacts of providing fare-free transit in the ninth-largest city in Canada. Although the report noted there was no Canadian system-wide experience to draw from, it estimated that ridership increases would conservatively reach 20%, but might reach as high as 50% depending largely on the level of congestion and parking policies adopted (13). This same report included an appendix of a case study of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that included a memorandum prepared by the town manager of Chapel Hill in October 2002. In January 2002, Chapel Hill Transit finalized agreements with local universities and townships to offer fare-free public transit service to all passengers in their service area. The town manager’s report noted that ridership on the fixed-route services had increased by 43% from January 2002 through September 2002. Although the city manager’s report also noted that service hours were increased 11%, the primary reason for the increase in ridership was clearly the fare-free policy (27).

scrap, thanks for the comment and the opportunity to do some research.

Weresch

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