“Free” Transit Is Anything But
A version of the following commentary appeared in the Examiner.
People don’t appreciate things that are free, for good reason. One of the most famous insults in film history is on point here, when Rodney Dangerfield notices Ted Knight’s ugly golf hat in “Caddyshack” and says, “I bet you get a free bowl of soup with that hat.”
The Kansas City Area Transportation Authority (KCATA) didn’t give out free soup to riders when it made all transit free in 2020, but it might as well have. Free transit is great if your goal is to turn buses into mobile homeless shelters. If your goal is to provide quality, safe, affordable transit, then making it free is the last thing you would want to do. It reduces revenues the system needs while making ridership a worse experience for more people.
KCATA head Frank White III has acknowledged that security problems have increased under the free fare system. The agency addressed those problems by adding more security and police, which is better than doing nothing. But it is spending more money on security to address problems caused by collecting zero money in fares. No wonder there is a funding shortfall. Austin, Texas, instituted free fares on buses in the 1990s, and crime dramatically increased. Reinstating fares addressed that problem quickly.
KCATA is finally moving toward reinstating some fares, but it won’t go nearly far enough. According to plans, numerous groups, including the homeless, will remain exempt from paying fares. Politicians and other free-transit backers will blame the inevitable decrease in ridership on the fares while overlooking that the free rides for some will continue to make the bus experience so unpleasant that others who need it will choose not to use it. That’s basically progressive public policy in a nutshell: Make local government services equally awful for everyone.
On another transit front, Independence, Kansas City, and several other cities have been experimenting with a different option for public transit: outsourcing it to a private company. Independence had been contracting for bus services with Transdev bus company, but increased costs and low demand led the city to end those routes and that contract. Now, Independence and Kansas City are contracting with the private company RideCo to offer their own version of Uber or Lyft. To save money and time, the IRIS program in KC takes riders to a general area rather than an exact address, so some walking is required (which most Americans, including the author, could use). The IRIS program is subsidized by taxpayers, as public transit generally is. But it charges a modest fare, as it should. The baseline fare in Independence is $5. Some type of fare is needed both to fund the service and address the (both literal and figurative) free rider problems.
Will this new program succeed? I hope so. Such an experiment with subsidized ride sharing can only be done with the private sector. If it succeeds, wonderful. If it fails, the program can be ended and taxpayers won’t be on the hook for it anymore. Engaging the private sector avoids the complex politics of hiring and firing new government employees.
Successful public transit moves people who depend on it to where they need to be in a safe, efficient, and timely manner. The louder supporters of transit often confuse actual success with more grandiose aims: convincing well-off suburbanites to use transit, designing flashy but useless pet projects, or creating utopia by making everything free. For a perfect example of that confusion, see how KCATA is cutting its bus route hours while the flashy and useless (yet expensive) KC Streetcar route is being expanded.
Reinstituting some bus fares and contracting with private operators for rideshare service will hopefully give KCATA, Independence transit, and the larger region the resources it needs. The purpose of transit is to move people who need it, not to satisfy the dreams of urban planners or ideologues. Free transit and streetcars do the latter, but all actual transit users want is a safe and affordable way to get to work or school on time.
