I always liked the social implications of flat fares - poor people tend to have to live farther away so distance pricing, and especially peak pricing, basically makes life harder for people who already have a hard life.
I think that the whole narrative around trains needing to justify their cost based on fares is ridiculous. Few people ride trains for the experience of riding a train. They ride to go somewhere, and do something, and the real value of the fate exists outside the transportation system.
I think Japan, and HK got it right by letting train companies act as real estate developers and build out the areas around stations. That gives them enormous profitability since they can charge rent, commissions for the stuff that people actually care about - what’s at the destination - and literally funnel people in the millions to their shopping centers, office complexes, and apartments.
People are probably reading too much into flat vs. variable fares. Historically, you probably tended to have flat fares on transit systems in no small part because it was so much simpler when people mostly paid using tokens (or transit passes, in which case flat or variable didn't matter).
This is becoming less relevant with the increased prevalence of contactless pay as you go systems. (Although the newer systems tend to be more complex for irregular users like tourists.)
Yes! With modern systems, if you want to give poor riders reduced fares you can… give poor riders reduced fares. It's not hard. Just program the contactless system to do it. There are no real arguments for using flat fares in NYC besides tradition (which is not nothing). No one designing a system today would choose it for a system the size of NYC's.
Flat fares are much better for customers who need to understand what they will pay. The ability to automatically change me an extra fare where I go on is nice only when I know and have budgeted for that fare. Flat fare, pay $x and go it easy to understand. Every time I need to pay I need to decide if the transit system is really worth it for the trip.
Now in a system the size of NYC you probably should do something, the person only riding a couple miles shouldn't pay as much as the person riding many miles (I'm not sure how you can get in NYC). However a simple easy to understand system of fares is important and very hard to design. Part of that needs to be a guaranteed maximum you will pay in a month - with the idea that a significant portion of users will hit that maximum - when you know you will hit the maximum you are more likely to take transit in off-peak times even though you have a perfectly good car.
Eh, but identifying the poor riders opens a door to a system to game, a sprawling bureaucracy to manage all that, and the social stigma/hit to dignity of being seen in such a program... I like the simplicity of a flat fare since the overhead of doing so is so low.
I think that the whole narrative around trains needing to justify their cost based on fares is ridiculous. Few people ride trains for the experience of riding a train. They ride to go somewhere, and do something, and the real value of the fate exists outside the transportation system.
I think Japan, and HK got it right by letting train companies act as real estate developers and build out the areas around stations. That gives them enormous profitability since they can charge rent, commissions for the stuff that people actually care about - what’s at the destination - and literally funnel people in the millions to their shopping centers, office complexes, and apartments.
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