The Confusion Over Transfers
Conceptual confusion has marred the transfer debate ever since SEPTA wrongly justified eliminating transfers by saying that they would not be necessary once an electronic fare system was in place. I spent some time trying to correct the confusion in blogs and my emails. But the politics of saving transfers took precedence over the clarifying the difference senses of “transfers.”
So now is a good time to get some clarity about the multiple meaning of “transfers” and, also, about what moving to an electronic fare system might mean for our fare structure.
Two meanings of “transfers”
We use the word “transfers” to talk about two different things. The first is what, from now on, I’m going to call “paper transfers” that is, the physical mechanism by which SEPTA implements a reduced fare for someone who takes two (or more) different buses or trains on one trip from their starting to ending location. (In transit world, the lingo is two or more links on a single trip.)
The second sense of “transfer” is what I’m going to call “transfer fares” which is the reduced fare itself, not the mechanism by which it is implemented.
The fight about transfers, which I got involved in on May 24, was never really about paper transfers but was about transfer fares. Had SEPTA wanted to adopt a new system for instituting transfer fares, I would not have objected although I might have pointed out that they were being foolish. If, say, SEPTA wanted to replace paper with glass beads, or pottery shards, or cigarettes, as a mechanism for giving people transfer fares, I would have had a good laugh. But I wouldn’t have spent so much time organizing people to stop them.
The fight was about transfer fares. Transfer fares or their equivalent are not going to go away once a new electronic fare system is implemented. Instead the electronic fare system will be the new method of implementing transfer fares.
Why We Need Transfer Fares or Deeply Discounted Day Passes
Transfer fares—or day passes, which serve a similar purpose—shouldn’t go away because they are an essential part of any complicated transit system in a large city, for two reasons.
The first is sensible pricing. If we want to encourage people to use a transit system—and for many reasons economic and environmental, we do—we have to price transit in a sensible way. People who have to pay two or three fares because there is no direct way for them to get to where they want to go without getting on two or three different vehicles are not going to use the transit system without some kind of discount. And since the marginal cost of an additional rider on a train or bus is relatively low, the transit agency has a good reason for the discounted fare. (With an electronic fare system, the marginal cost of an additional rider on a bus or train that would otherwise have empty seats is roughly zero.)
The second reason is fairness. The areas that are badly served by transit systems tend to be poorer. They are less attractive areas and have lower rents, in part, because they are badly served by transit. So without transit fares, the poor will pay far more for transit than the rich. (They already pay more, of course, even with transfer fares.)
For these two reasons, every transit system of any size in the known universe either has transfer fares or steeply discounted day passes. Many cities—New York, Chicago, Boston—do what we do here. They give people a large discount if they take a second ride on the transit system within a short time after they take a first ride. Their assumption is that these two rides are two links in a larger trip. Other cities—London and Denver—do not have transfer prices but have very cheap day passes. In those cities you can ride all day for a fare that is roughly the same as three individual links. Thus those who have to take two links to get to work and two links to get home pay substantially less than the cost of purchasing four individual separately.
SEPTA needs transfers now because its day passes (which are now $6.00) cost much more than the cost of three individual rides.
The Advantages of Inexpensive Day Passes
In some ways, inexpensive day passes are superior to transfers as they encourage casual riders and tourists to use the system. Both casual riders and tourists are typically wary of public transit, especially when they need to use buses to get where they are going. Transit routes are often difficult to figure out, especially in a system with as bad signage as SEPTA has. That is especially a problem for tourists. But complicated routes often deter residents of the region from traveling by public transit to a part of the region they visit infrequently. The disincentive is even greater if people have to travel by bus rather than rail because bus routes are more complicated and sometimes change at different times of the day. Vehicles that ride by rails have a fixed route and every transit map shows you where they go.
Electronic Fare Systems and Creative Fare Structures
Once we move to an electronic fare system, we can be more creative with fares. Many electronic fare systems work in two different modes. Most of them are declining balance card that are loaded by charging a credit card either manually or automatically. Every time a rider uses the card, the balance declines. This works like EZPASS. (Someday, your EZPASS and your transit card will access the same account.) Electronic fare instruments also work as passes and give riders the right to unlimited rides during a day, week, month or year.
If properly programmed, an electronic fare instrument can automatically give riders the best fare. London’s Oyster Card, for example, can be set to work initially as a declining balance card. But if a rider takes enough London Transit trips in a day so that it would have been cheaper to have a day pass rather than to purchase tickets for individual trips, the system automatically charges the rider for the day pass and removes the charges for individually rides.
A system like the Oyster card can also automatically give people discounts if, say, there are reduced fares during certain times of the day, or if there is a special local transit fare—imagine a discount for traveling on the Route 23 as many times a day anywhere between Chestnut Hill and Wayne Junction—or if there is a special holiday fare.
What A Good Electronic Fare System Would Look Like
Imagine having a declining balance transit card that automatically gives riders the best possible fare substituting day, month, week, or year passes for the cost of individual trips. That kind of sophisticated, consumer-friendly fare system is one of the things we should be looking for when SEPTA moves to electronic fare. A second requirement is a card that is read at a short distance without our having to insert it into or swipe it on a device. And, third, we need a true, inter-modal transit card, one that works not only on SEPTA but on PATCO, AMTRAK, EZPASS and at parking meters and parking garages and beyond.
Assuming SEPTA gets its electronic fare system right, transfer fares or their equivalent will always be part of our transit system.