The case for a fare free transit system: Make TriMet free for everyone
As Portland slowly crawls out of the pandemic, contends with an empty downtown, and attempts to meet ambitious goals to lower carbon emissions, a fare free transit system could be the solution to all of those problems. As fares now make up the smallest precentage of TriMet’s total revenue in its recent history, perhaps it is time for the transit agency to consider creating a fare free system.
Unfortunately, the Portland area transit agency is looking at doing the exact opposite. At its latest board meeting on November 9, TriMet’s board (which is all unelected and appointed solely by the governor) decided to investigate a 30 cent fare increase to take effect in 2024, with final voting approval coming in May 2023. This comes as TriMet ridership still struggles to recover to pre-pandemic levels, service continues to be impacted as a result of a bus and rail operator shortage, and as gas prices continue to be the highest they have ever been.
What if there was another option for the region besides just asking riders to pay more for transit service that is demonstrably worse in all aspects, from frequency to safety, from before the pandemic? What if TriMet’s board took the visionary step of making the system fare free? It would help make the system more fair and equitable, drive up ridership, increase foot traffic downtown, and help the city meet its climate change and emission goals. It’s too bad the board is scaring the public with talks of layoffs and service cuts at a time when it could be instrumental in making Portland the visionary city it was once celebrated as.
Fare Free systems drive up ridership
Corvallis, Ore., home of Oregon State University and seat of Benton County is a really nice college town in the middle of the Willamette Valley. It also has operated a fare free transit system for more than a decade.
When Corvallis switched its transit system to a fare free model, it saw ridership jump 37.9 percent. That’s a significant increase for any transit system, especially when we look at Portland and how transit usage was in a slight decline before the pandemic.
When you eliminate fares, you eliminate one of the biggest barriers to riding the bus, confronting having to pay every time you get on the bus. As Bay Area activist Darrell Owens points out, riding the bus is almost always cheaper than the costs in licensure, purchase, maintenance, insurance, and fuel that we pay when we own a car, but car drivers don’t confront those costs every time they get in the car. When it’s a choice for many people to pay $2.50 for each and everyone in their family to take transit to the Zoo or downtown to the farmers market, or just hop in the car and think about the cost of fuel a week from now when they fill up again, people will take their cars. If suddenly the bus costs nothing, there is no barrier to taking the bus and people will ride the bus more often.
Before I worked for TriMet, I attended PSU downtown for a year. Most of the time I rode my bike to class, but on those rainy and cold days, it was a real annoyance. I would have rode the bus, but I always had to do the math in my head, is this actually worth $2.50 to me, or should I just quit being lazy and ride my bike? Every time I thought about taking transit, I had to think in my head, is this trip worth the cost? Once I started working for TriMet and got my free transit pass, it changed how I used transit. Rather than just using it as a commuter, I could use it for all sorts of little trips here and there. I used it to go shopping, go to the movies, go to a show, visit friends, explore a new neighborhood, go to a restaurant, hide from the rain when walking back from dinner. Once transit is free, it becomes a question of whether the bus is coming soon enough and does it go where I want it to go, not do I have $2.50 in my pocket and is the trip worth the cost.
Free transit makes it more fair and equitable
Sure, $2.50 doesn’t feel like a lot to a lot of people, but if you’re poor, and a lot of transit users are, that $2.50 or $5 a day add up. That money spent on transit is money that isn’t going toward rent, or food, or clothes, or school supplies, and with inflation on rent and food running so high, every extra dollar counts.
I’ve seen how fare effects poor people on the bus. They stack up all their errands and appointments on one day. Next thing they are juggling 8 bags of groceries and worried their ticket is about to expire. Or they are stressed out and exhausted by the end of the day, transferring buses to all the places they needed to go. If cost isn’t a factor, then people can just take the bus when they feel like, not limited by the 2.5 hours or the day they have enough money to buy a day pass.
If TriMet, prodded by local leaders, eliminated fare, that is putting an extra $5 in the pocket of every person who rides the bus everyday. That’s extra money that could get spent in the local economy, its own small form of economic stimulus. Sure it doesn’t seem like much if you have a lot of money, but and extra $100 a month to a poor person could be life changing.
Free transit would increase foot traffic downtown
All transit trips start and end on foot (or in a mobility device or wheelchair) and as Portland struggles with an empty downtown, quiet commercial areas, and many neighborhoods racked with theft and crime, one way to combat all of that is having more people walking around.
People walking around, observing their surroundings are the first line of defense in deterring crime and promoting a safe city. Popular pedestrian areas usually aren’t marred with neglect because they are places where people want to go, where they live, where they want to be seen. Encouraging people to get downtown by making the bus free would do all of that.
In the 1970s as Portland’s downtown struggled with lower foot traffic and a society that became more suburban and car-centric, city and transit leaders responded with Fareless Square. It was popular with long time Portland residents and visitors, including a young me, even though I’ve heard veteran bus operators fuming about how people would sneak on the bus downtown for free and then would ride out of the fareless square without fare. In the first 34 months of its existence, the number of riders in the Central Business District increased by 811 percent from before fareless square.
Fareless square, along with the bus mall, and the arrival of MAX light rail downtown are all cited as reasons Portland’s downtown area emerged from the beginning of the freeway era relatively unscathed when compared to other cities. Local leaders should look at this past example when trying to imagine the Portland of the future as it emerges from the waves of pandemic, protests, crime, and sensationalized media coverage that have left the city’s reputation in tatters. Making the whole city fare free could be the difference that gets people out and about, back downtown, and visiting vibrant commercial districts.
A Chilean study found that people who had a free transit pass took more trips than those who paid, and that many of those trips were for leisure, to go shopping or to restaurants. So fare free transit could help get people out shopping, dining, and supporting local businesses, which would be a boon for the local economy.
A fare free system would also be a boon for visitors who could hop on buses and trains to visit other parts of the city to spend money, and take a free ride from the airport to downtown hotels. Imagine visiting a city and just being able to hop on and off buses and trains without having to worry about how to buy a ticket or which one to buy.
More people on buses, less people in cars
The region wants to lower its carbon emissions and do its part to stop global warming, the biggest way it can do this is getting more people out of cars and into buses.
Traffic is back to prepandemic levels and a free bus system could encourage people to ride the bus who might otherwise not. Eliminating the first and biggest barrier for getting on the bus, is the first step to getting more people out of their cars. Sure, making it free will not eliminate all car trips, people may still look at a trip that is two hours by bus or 30 minutes by car and choose the car, but eliminating that barrier will help some make that first step toward using transit for at least some of their trips.
Fewer people took trips by car in Tallinn, Estonia once the city instituted fare free transit, although opponents of fare free transit point out that making fare free also lowered the number of pedestrian and bike trips. Super low cost transport tickets in Germany and Spain this year appear to have lowered the number of cars on the road for the time period those tickets were in effect.
Fare free makes the bus faster
One of the biggest things slowing down buses is people not prepared to pay fare when they board. We’ve all seen the person who waits until they are standing in the doorway to finally log into their app to pay the fare, or the person searching all their pockets or bags to find their cash or pass. In a fare free system, everybody simply gets on and sits down as fast as they can. Additionally trips aren’t delayed becasue of fare enforcement.
Fare Free makes the bus safer
In bus training they told me that 4 out of 5 assaults on operators on TriMet were because of arguments over the fare. Arguments over fare is still a major reason bus operators get assaulted. If the bus is free, there is no fare to enforce, then there is less reason to assault an operator. The times TriMet is free, I just get to smile and greet people when they get on the bus, rather than asking for $2.50 from people, if nothing else it makes it a more pleasant day.
Transit should be better and not free, but why can’t it be both?
Many opponents of free transit argue that money spent on making transit free could be better used for improving frequency and area of service for transit. They say the biggest thing holding people back from using transit is infrequent or slow service. They argue if we are to attract “choice riders” from their cars, the money collected from fares is needed to expand service, make buses faster and more frequent.
Why can’t the bus be free and more frequent though? Cities that have made transit free have seen an increase in ridership, more people riding the bus mean more folks advocating for better service, better service that agencies aren’t adding now because the riders of transit are already viewed as other. If counting on ever fluctuating fare revenue is removed from the equation, and is replaced with more stable tax revenue of one kind or another, it could give agencies the stability with which to plan and add more service.
I don’t need fare free transit, why should I pay for it for others?
Plenty of things are public services that are already free and heavily subsidized by the state, why not make transit, which is already heavily subsidized, completely free? Sure you might not want to use transit, but there are plenty of people who would use it, or use it more if it were free.
Plenty of roads are paved and maintained by municipalities that I will never drive down, and are used by maybe a dozen people, yet we have decided having well maintained roads is better for us as a society. We can also decide that fully funding transit is a priority for our region too.
My taxes fund libraries full of books that I will never read, and while I still visit the library, I don’t go nearly as much as I did as a 12 year old, yet I still like having libraries, knowing that having books everyone wants to read and not just the books I want to read is good for everyone.
The bus scares me, make it free and I still wouldn’t ride it
The rate of incidents of scary stuff happening on the bus is still up compared to pre pandemic, but most trips on public transit continue to happen without incident. I’ve rode and driven the 6, 72, 57, 20, 75, 4, and most other bus lines in the system at night at least once, and 99 percent of the time it’s a quiet ride.
Since the bus is mostly a safe place to be most of the time, the people who hold these thoughts are usually people who never ride the bus, have a lot of preconceived ideas about the people who do ride the bus, and are people who rarely interact with those that are different from themselves.
The bus is one of the last places in our society where everyone is on the same bus, from the unwashed and unfed, to the well-paid office worker going to their cubicle downtown. The elderly, the disabled, young, old, rich, poor, ride the bus. It’s a truly beautiful place sometimes. There have been times I’ve heard at least five different languages spoken on the bus at the same time, friends who haven’t seen each other in months have serendipitous reunions, people have found out about jobs, housing, and food who needed them. It’s a messy, moving town square trundling through the city.
There are some people who aren’t used to all this though. Seeing poor people or anyone different from them scares them, and because of this they consider the bus unsafe. Spend time on the bus and you realize it mostly is safe, there is an adult in charge who you can tell if you see something unsafe, who has the tools and resources to handle the situation. You are infinitely more likely to die in a car than on a bus.
Make the bus free now
Fare free transit could be the visionary step Portland needs as it tries to recapture the magic it used to have. Portland was magical because city leaders were innovative and willing to try novel ideas, and attracted folks who liked a place trying to make a better world. Instead of doubling down on bad ideas, why not invest in new, good ideas? Now is the perfect time, with gas prices high, inflation eating into pockets, and a city looking for new ideas to cut down congestion. Make the bus free now!
