My daughter attends college on the north side of Chicago; I live on the south side. When an opportunity arises to visit her, I have two options: hop in my 2001 Toyota Prius (yes, they definitely last this long) or use public transportation. The driving option costs approximately $9.50 for the 40 mile roundtrip (my Prius still gets around 40 miles to the gallon, and this includes all of the lifetime costs of ownership), then another $10-15 for parking on the north side depending on what we do. The roundtrip travel time can be one hour on a non-peak travel time up to two hours during peak travel. For the public transportation option, I lose some flexibility with when I can travel, but assuming I schedule it right, I have a 5 minute walk to my nearest Metra station, then a half-hour train downtown, followed by a 5 minute walk to the CTA platform, and depending on the wait, a 15 minute to 25 minute CTA ride/wait to the stop nearest her school, then another 5 minute walk. This roundtrip travel time of two-hours to two-hours and twenty minutes comes at a cost of $13 dollars. It also requires me to have two payment cards, one for Metra and one for CTA.
My choice is between freedom of departure at a cost of up to $25 and at best one hour, and set times of departure at a cost of $13 and at best two hours. Public transportation costs less as long as I value an hour of my life at $12 or less.
But that's if I travel alone.
If I bring my family of two adults, two teenagers, and one toddler along with me, the price for car travel remains essentially the same, while the cost of public transportation quadruples to $52. The message this sends to me as a consumer? Use public transportation to get to work, but not to enjoy the city. Add to this the complexity associated with taking bikes on trains (not allowed during rush hour, and not on Metra during holiday or "busy" weekends), the need to have multiple forms of payment to use Metra, CTA/PACE, car share, and bike share, and the decision becomes even more apparent: public transportation requires a greater investment of my time, costs more than car travel if I have more than a single occupant in the vehicle, and is much more of a hassle than owning a vehicle.
On the environmental side, as the fuel efficiency of cars increases past 40 mpg up to maybe 70 or 100 mpg, if commuter rail lines continue to rely on outdated engines, if buses remain dependent on fossil fuels, and subways continue to be powered by electricity from coal, nuclear, and natural gas, the per occupant emissions from public transportation travel could far exceed the environmental impact of a family of four taking their family car around town. All of the benefits of public transportation: timeliness, ease of use, cost, environmental impact...go out the window unless you are a workday commuter traveling from the suburbs into the city whose only other options is a ride in a single-occupancy vehicle.
And this analysis is from a fan of public transportation.
This exemplifies a couple of the challenges RTA faces as it tries to become relevant in a modern world and to maintain fiscal balance. The agency needs more fare-paying riders, and must now compete for them with the looming increase in car sharing that could render traditional public transportation systems nearly irrelevant. The Chicago metropolitan public transportation system grew large on the backs of suburban sprawl and gentrification of the near loop and north side neighborhoods, but as that growth has slowed, so has the base for commuter travel. Add to this a growing change in the workplace from the "city center" to more opportunities for working from home, free lancing, and job share, and large, regional systems of public transportation infrastructure faces a possibility of extinction.
So how can RTA improve?
That question has no simple answer, and will require RTA to rethink its business model over the next decade. A couple of basic ideas come to mind:
1. Diversify
Public transportation capacity needs to meet the largest crowd on the busiest times of year, which normally coincide with rush hour travel and major city events. The system and pricing structure compete well for the commuter dollar: cheaper than parking all day and usually faster than rush hour driving, but do not compete at most other times of day against standard travel options. RTA needs to court the weekend traveller, the daytime traveller, the tourist, and the family traveller much better than it currently does. This will require some coordination in scheduling, creativity in routes, and adjustments to its fare policies, which leads us to...
2. Price fares against the market
The flat fare structure of the CTA/PACE - equal ticket price wherever and whenever you travel, or the distance-based price of Metra - price based upon zones of travel regardless of when you travel, do not reflect that supply and demand (as well as competition) change from weekday to weekend or from weekday rush to weekday non-rush. People travel alone on weekday rush trips, but travel with family or friends non-rush and on weekends. Just as riders who use the system every day for commuting get a break with a monthly pass, provide the same opportunity to a non-rush traveler who might use the system just as much, only on different times. Baseball teams are now pricing their seats based upon the demand for them on a game-by-game basis, and RTA can do the same. Traveling on a half-empty train on Saturday afternoon should not cost as much as a ride at 5:05 pm on Thursday eventing. Or better yet, provide the reward of lower price only to those who share their riding information with you through a card that they use when they ride. If you know when your riders are traveling, how often they are traveling, with whom, and for what, that has value to the agency, and the RTA should reward the rider accordingly. This only happens if....
3. The system moves into the twentieth century
The current fare taking system on CTA and PACE has adopted modern technology, but Metra has not yet left the 1950s (to give some credit, the system started taking debit/credit cards for purchase in 2010, so it has reached the 1980s...in one way). From recent statements, Metra has taken a conservative approach to the changing roles of the conductors and their associated fare-taking system. Even within that system, all tickets printed by Metra can have a code printed on them that a conductor scans to verify usage, that is if a conductor or trainman has a portable scanner. My iPhone has the technology to scan tickets and accept credit card payments with the addition of under $100 in technology. Metra can adapt its processes to accept the new Ventra card (that will link CTA, PACE, and hopefully car/bike share programs) by adding a small kiosk to the handicap accessible cars. Passengers who have the card can swipe it at the kiosk, receive a scannable ticket, and then present it to the conductor. With the addition of this type of technology, Metra can now have a better profile of their ridership, make adjustments to scheduling and sizing of trains, and even plan station improvements based upon detailed ridership information. In a note to riders in January, Metra CEO Alex Gifford referred to any adjustment to the fare taking system that Illinois law might require as an "unfunded mandate". If Metra quantified the value of ridership frequency and duration information, and accounted for the lost ticket revenue from special event trains and missed ticket-taking opportunities, plus the lost opportunity cost of adding riders who currently have a CTA card and would never think to take Metra because they have to buy a ticket but could now just "jump on", it makes financial sense to outfit a limited number of cars that already have the infrastructure with kiosks and convert the ticket puncher currently carried by the conductors to a portable electronic device with scan and print capability. As these move forward, it would help to have significant environmental improvements so that the engines do not pollute the neighborhoods adjacent to the rail lines (a single occupant in a vehicle that gets better than thirty-three miles per gallon has lower per-occupant emissions than the current Metra fleet, and is almost better than CTA rail pending new electricity procurement), and to add recycling to each car as most refuse is paper or containers. In 1985, RTA was the cleaner, faster "way to really fly" (as Metra liked to say), but as other modes of travel have improved, RTA has remained constant.
As an avid user and fan of alternative transportation, I have been excited to see how many former rail lines now stand as long-range bicycle paths. I would imagine this would scare CTA Rail and Metra management. Over about thirty years, we have seen a consolidation in rail as development needs more flexibility, and other forms of freight hauling have emerged. We will see a similar change in personal transportation over the coming twenty-five years, with car share and driverless vehicles that could pose a huge challenge to CTA buses and PACE. RTA can either lead the way in coordinating how this change affects the citizens of northeastern Illinois, or fade to irrelevancy. My hope is that RTA, CTA, PACE, and Metra will meet the challenge, but that cannot happen by clinging to the technology and politics of the past.
You have an advocate and supporter in me...now let me know how you plan to make the system work for me today and for years to come.
And do it before I join a coop that buys a fleet of driverless, electric Audis to meet my transportation needs.
Enjoy the journey,
Joseph F. Clair, P.E.
Advocate, Activist, Advisor
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