Bus riding isn’t free. If you want to ride a bus, you have to pay the fare.
By Steve Geller
Published: May, 2001
Bus riding isn’t free. If you want to ride a bus, you have to pay the fare.
The classic way to pay is cash; drop your money into the fare box. Regular bus riders like me carry a monthly pass, and wave it jauntily at the driver. The driver sometimes nods and smiles; possession of the pass means I’m a steady user of the bus service.
To a new bus rider, the process of paying the fare can be a bit intimidating. The amount of the fare may not be displayed on the outside of the bus. Among the group of people boarding a bus, everyone except the new guy knows what the fare is. One doesn’t find out until faced with the fare box, with the bus driver looming behind it. The sign on the fare box may be a bureaucratic bunch of rows and columns, showing all the different fare options. Of course, the simple solution for the confused new rider is to just ask the driver what the fare is; there’s no shame in that.
You will definitely get spotted as a new bus rider if you ask for change. Once upon a time, back in the streetcar days, the driver just drove, and there was a conductor who carried a change-maker. The two-man crew survives only on archaic transit like the San Francisco cable cars. These days, the bus driver doesn’t handle money at all. Exact change, please.
Most riders know what the fare is, have it ready when they get on, and quickly deposit it in the fare box.
The occasional rider is a bit absent minded. These folks become aware of the need for the fare only after they get into the bus. They stand at the fare box, blocking other boarders, while they fiddle with purse, pocket or knapsack. While this is going on, the bus is falling behind schedule, and other passengers may be standing in line outside, with cold rain running down their necks.
Adult fare on AC Transit is $1.35. Your ferry ticket includes free transfer stubs to AC Transit buses. BART has a similar deal.
If you’re over 65, under 12, or disabled, bus fare is 65 cents. Kids under 5 ride free, up to 2 kids per fare-paying passenger – I guess that’s AC Transit’s contribution to zero population growth. The best deal by far is the monthly pass for seniors – for $13 you can ride wherever and whenever you like, all month long.
Bus fares aren’t as complicated as airline fares, but there still are a lot of options. The well-trained bus driver must be prepared to accept cash, transfers, tickets from a discount book, monthly passes, regional senior/disabled discount cards, BART-plus cards (for the current half-month), the UC "Class Pass" and passes and transfers from Muni, SamTrans and others.
Besides this, there are the people who don’t have quite enough money to ride, or sadly offer a long-expired transfer. I’ve seen a kid just stand there, sullenly listening to a lecture on fiscal responsibility from the driver, until he is allowed on for free.
As might be expected, the bus drivers vary widely in their vigilance and enforcement of the fare rules.
On Muni, the basic fare is still only $1, seniors and youth (up to age 17) pay 35 cents, and all kids ride free. SamTrans charges $1.10, but VTA (Santa Clara County) wants $1.25.
Such bus fare anarchy has brought calls for a common bus fare for the Bay Area. There is a plan afoot to introduce a regional "smart card". This is a high-tech thing like a credit card, which can store a money balance, and other information about the rider. One waves the magic card near the reader on the fare box, and the fare is deducted. It’s a step up from the present BART ticket. The smart card would work for all the transit systems, probably the ferries too, and be able to deal with all the various fares and pass plans. It might be used for non-transit purchases too.
For most people, bus fare is a bargain. You can board a #72 bus in downtown Oakland, deposit your dollar, quarter and dime, and ride all the way to the Hilltop Mall in Richmond. AC Transit offers such a deal only because it’s too much trouble to keep track of where people get on and off. On other bus systems, you may pay a higher fare if you cross a zone boundary. AC Transit does this only on the transbay lines.
Like any price, people see bus fare as high or low depending on financial situation and psychological attitude. Bus fare is big money if you haven’t got it. A one-way fare is about the same as a cheap fast-food meal.
To middle class people, bus fare is spare change, but middle class people tend not to be bus riders. A disproportionate number of AC Transit’s riders are low-income people, who try hard to economize on bus fares. This has kept fares low.
The most popular way to save on bus fare is to squeeze all you can from a transfer.
Many people have to use transfers, because they must ride more than one bus to get where they are going, and don’t want to pay the fare twice. One could argue that an extra fare is fair, because it gives the bus company a way to charge for distance traveled. But this rewards one rider who goes Oakland-to-Richmond for one fare on the #72, and penalizes another rider who must use two (or more) buses to make a much shorter trip.
It’s not really clear what a bus fare should buy. Is it distance? Time? Maybe just permission to board?
Transfers used to be free, and still are on many other bus systems. But there was a lot of cheating on AC Transit; one popular practice: pay a fare and get a transfer, then hand the transfer out the bus window to your buddy, who is still in the boarding line. In downtown Oakland, several times, people offering cut-rate transfers have approached me.
There have been some confrontations over transfers. In October 1999, AC Transit decided to tighten up their rules on transfers. Under a policy adopted in 1995, a transfer cost 25 cents extra, and was valid for two uses within 90 minutes of issuance. But in practice, out there on the buses, transfers were being accepted up to 2 1/2 hours after issuance. The proposed policy was a 2 1/2 hour limit, and 2 uses, but to limit travel to the same direction as the issuing bus.
This proposal was wildly unpopular. Transfers are very important for cutting the cost of bus fare. A lot of people objected to the proposed ban on round-trips. Many people pay a bus fare, buy a transfer, then go to the grocery store for a few items. After that, they want to use the transfer to get back home. One lady said that she has to make a lot of connections, and that without transfers, a morning run to a class she attends, with a stop for groceries on the way back can add up to $5.40 in bus fares.
A public meeting made it clear that transfers are more important than the bus fare itself (the fare had recently been increased). The transfer issue was settled by leaving the 2 ½ hour limit, and allowing travel in either direction.
Transfers are easier to manage today on AC Transit. New fare boxes have been installed on all the buses, with a transfer reader/printer attached. When the driver pushes a button, the box prints a little card, stamped with the time and also records the time on a magnetic strip. When the rider boards the second or subsequent bus, he sticks the transfer into the machine and it tells whether the transfer is still within the time limit.
We could totally forget about transfers if everyone had a monthly pass. But there are a lot of people who are dependent on bus transportation, yet always pay a cash fare. Some say that they cannot afford a pass, that $49 is to big a hit, especially near rent time. Others claim that they don’t ride the bus enough. The monthly pass breaks-even after 18 round-trips. Anyone who makes one round-trip every weekday will go over that.
Some bus systems offer a day-pass, which lets you ride all day, for one day. However, the day-pass usually costs at least two regular fares. This is fine for a tourist, or someone who has several errands to run, but the person who takes a short round-trip to the grocery store, just once a day, still pays two fares.
Well, couldn’t we make the buses free?
We’re most of the way to free fares right now. Fare box revenue falls far short of the bus operating costs. For AC Transit, only about 22% is covered by fares. About 11% more is covered by sales of advertising on the buses. So that’s 33% of operating costs covered; the rest is subsidized from taxes.
And that was just the operating costs. The capital costs – buying the buses – are entirely funded by Federal Grants (i.e. the Federal Income Tax).
Of course, taxes of all kinds are disproportionately drawn from the middle class. So the middle class is paying more than pocket change, for a service that some of them never use. The bottom line politically seems to be that taxes are quite high enough, and that transit should pay some of its own way.
If most people used transit, there would not be a need for such subsidies. In Hong Kong, public transit fares are a little higher than in the Bay Area, but nearly everyone rides public transit there, so there is no subsidy. The fares pay for it all, even buying the buses.
Here in the Bay Area, it looks like bus fare will be with us for a long time yet.
