Oops! Transit study kills 'we pay more' theory
Staten Island Advance - Sunday, June 18, 2006
For generations of Staten Islanders, it has been
conventional wisdom that borough residents don't get their fair
share of public transit for all the money they pay in fares and
tolls.
Researchers in the city Independent Budget Office may have turned
that assumption on its head, finding in a recent study that the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority subsidizes Island commuters at
a rate higher than passengers anywhere else in the city.
Whether by local or express bus or by train, the analysis, requested
by two local lawmakers, determined that when Islanders swipe their
Metro Cards, their fares cover a substantially smaller portion of
the real cost of their rides.
Transit observers played down the report and the borough's $110 plus
million annual subsidy, saying that the level of per-person
subsidies belie a struggling transit system in need of even greater
resources.
Still, they acknowledge that the report did not turn up fresh
evidence that more MTA funding is warranted here.
"It doesn't give us the ammunition we were seeking to make the
case," said Councilman James Oddo (R-Mid Island/Brooklyn) who called
for the study with Assemblyman Vincent Ignizio (R-South
Shore).
Ignizio said need should be the sole criterion for determining
further investment.
"The issue is that regardless of where you are in the city, if New
York City Transit is responsible for commuting our public into the
city in as fast and as efficient manner as any other borough, then a
service increase is what we need," he said
EXPENSIVE TRAIN RIDE
At the Staten Island Railway, the MTA pays about $8 to move each
fare-paying passenger, according to the report's authors, who
reviewed authority records.
"In percentage terms," the report said. "the Staten Island Railway
is the most heavily subsidized of all MTA subsidiaries," recovering
only 18 percent of its #27.2 million in operating costs last year,
compared with 71 percent recovery for city subways.
On the borough's local and express buses, fare revenues in 2004
totaled about 39 percent of the $148 million spent to operate,
repair and house them in the borough's two depots lat year.
Those buses carry fewer passengers on longer routes owing to the
borough's low density - the lowest in the city - driving down
overall bus efficiency to below half the city average, the report
found.
Notable, the report, which focused on the MTA's New York City
Transit and Railway service, did not account for the $3.66 the city
pays to move each of the appropriately 65,000 daily Staten Island
Ferry passengers, nor the hundreds of millions the city and MTA
invested recently in new ferryboats and rebuilt terminals, and a new
South Ferry subway station.
The report did cite hundreds of millions of dollars in recent and
future capital allocations by the MTA to build a third bus depot,
purchase new buses and railway cars, and other high-cost projects
slated for the coming years.
POOR SERVICE ANYWAY
Despite these indicators, service quality on Staten Island is still
poor by almost every obstacle measure, said Jonathan Peters, a
transportation analyst who teaches at the College of Staten Island.
"If you make the quality of service poorer, a lot of people get out
of the system," Peters said, "and then what happens is then your
ridership performance isn't very good, so they cut back on service.
It's like a downward spiral."
Peters said the percentage of subsidy is only one measure of the
health of a transit system. The MTA spends hundreds of millions of
dollars to subsidize commuter railroads, whose operating costs and
deficits dwarf Staten Island's.
He cited 2003 data amassed by the New York Metropolitan Council to
show that per capita spending on transit was lower here than it was
on Long Island, where population density is even lower.
LESS THAN METRO-NORTH
According to the same data, Staten Islanders cover less of their
fares than Metro-North riders, who paid about 60 percent of the
actual cost of their rides, while Long Island Rail Road passengers
paid 47 percent.
Staten Islanders as a whole also are only half as likely to take
public transit then those in other boroughs, according to census
data, and even the tolls that borough residents pay at the Verrazano-Narrows
Bridge couldn't cover the cost of the local transit system.
The report determined that Islanders in 2004 paid $50.7 million in
tolls at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which is operated by the MTA,
under resident discount programs.
Staten Island's transit reflects its density, meaning it "doesn't
really warrant such a robust transit system that the rest of the
city has," said Jeremy Soffin a spokesman for the independent
Regional Plan Association, who discussed the report's findings.
"If you don't have the density to really support it what you're
going to end up doing is paying a heck of a lot of money for every
ride that's taken," he said. "And I think that's what you see in
this study."
By Seth Solomonow
Reprinted here with permission
from the
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