Megan Smirti Ryerson

Peak Riders "Free Ride" About to End, and Boy Are They Mad

Bay Area BART riders are up in arms about the potential of paying higher fares for riding at the peak. In this article in the Oakland Tribune, riders claim it’s “not fair” for them to have to pay more to ride BART during the peak, because they have to be at work at a certain time, and other similar arguments. What they fail to notice that in the absence of peak-hour price, there is another injustice going on at BART right now: riders in the off-peak are subsidizing their peak commute! It costs BART more to serve a customer in the peak than it does in the off-peak — more trains, more train operators — yet BART does not currently vary the fares based on time. This results in peak riders paying less than the burden they impose on the BART system, and non-peak riders paying more. Interesting how peak riders only speak up about this injustice when the possibility of them paying their fair share is floated by BART. BART should put out a transit economics 101 sheet and borrow heavily from many of Marty Wachs’ publications.

The article also mentions that incentives are better than penalties when it comes to congestion pricing. I have a paper published on this topic as it relates to road pricing in California,which you can access here.