Hacker News Reader

Comment by lonelappde | Hacker News Reader

MTA operates near capacity during peak time. It doesn't need more riders then. But NYC lacks peak pricing.

Emm how about increasing the capacity? For gods sake why would do such a thing like “peak procing” to a public transportation system :). Not everything is a optimization honework assignment. This is real life some unfortunate people who have less income than you have go to places too. Number of people during peak hours is enough deterrent itself. You dont need to introduce extra cost.

Shall we introduce peak pricing to fire trucks as well?

Then the best thing to do is increase that capacity! Every rider on the subway is a bit less pollution in the city air

Peak pricing is an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me. Seems like a good way to increase rates in a somewhat progressive way. Presumably rush hour commuters could afford more than others.

Peak pricing is also a market approach that embraces supply and demand. It’s a good idea.

Except it will wildly harm the poor who rely on the subway

Market approaches work when demand is elastic.

It's pretty easy to deduce that there is an anticorrelation between ability to adjust riding schedules and ability to pay increased fees.

Why, shifts can change - especially when it works out for everyone.

Restaurants aren't going to change their hours, hospitals aren't going to change their shifts, what motivation does an employer have to make changes? It doesn't cost employers anything so they are unlikely to care and jobs aren't exactly elastic goods either.

Restaurants don't need to change their hours - they need their employees in before the rush hour and working during it because that is when people are going to be there. You 7:45 coffee on the way to work was made by someone who got in at 6:00 am to setup the coffee pot. Hospitals aren't going to change their shifts (unless staff demands it - they might), but a large number of people going in at rush hour are not doing shift work where they need to be in at a particular time. I can adjust my schedule a lot if I want, fares (and traffic) can be motivation to doso.

> Seems like a good way to increase rates in a somewhat progressive way.

how is it progressive, exactly? seems like it’s just another tax on the poor who have to get to jobs at exact times.

Because professionals working full-time jobs and commuting at rush hour can typically afford the higher fare, while people working part-time/odd jobs/commuting to interviews/not working at all probably aren't the ones taking the rush hour trains.

Sure, there are some working poor who need to be in the office 9-5, but the majority of people working full time regular hours aren't poor. And for people who can't afford the increase, you just introduce an exception (if you make under $40,000 per year you don't pay the increased fare, or something like that)

You realise there’s a lot of people between wealthy professionals and part-time/odd job workers right? A secretary has to be on time, so does a cashier. I’m not sure what good peak pricing would do, apart from push them to less carbon-efficient forms of transport?

As long as the lines are still running at max capacity, you are still taking the same number of vehicles off the road. If you extend the period of max-capacity, you taking more cars off the road.

The question is if the benefit of more revenue and environmental savings warrants making the secretaries an cashiers adapt to less efficient schedules (eg come in earlier, stay later)

It's sad that making lower earners' lives even more difficult would even be a consideration in the first place.

Increasing capacity would also result in taking more vehicles off the road.

Increasing capacity can only be done with money, which needs to come from somewhere - most likely a tax increase elsewhere that will hit not only those same poor people, but also their neighbors who walk to work.

Peak fares to encourage people to work non-peak hours if possible can shift demand enough to mean you don't need build more transit now saving a lot of money now. Eventually there is no substitution for building more, but better utilization can ease that somewhat.

I agree that it is sad, but it is a real consideration. Nearly every environmental proposal has the potential increase hardship on low earners. Most commonly, this comes in the form of higher costs for consumer products, utilities, and housing.

There are are a lot of similarities with road congestion pricing going into effect in San Diego and NYC, and planned for LA and SF. Who will bear the greater burden, high earners who can easily pay the fee or low earners with rigid schedules.

>how is it progressive, exactly?

Presumably rush hour commuters could afford more than others.

Maybe that's an incorrect assumption but if all we can do is time slice, I would expect rush hour commuters to have the most means.

MTA doesn’t even have variable pricing for distance. It’s a pretty poorly designed system qua system. It has good coverage. Everything else is substandard internationally.

Peak and especially distance based pricing are fundamentally regressive and unjust tax schemes that penalize the poor. Subway fares are already regressive in that they represent a larger share of income in poorer people than in the rich, making it distance based so that people who can't afford to live in the core are charged more makes the problem 10x worse.

Just because you may have a larger income than others doesn't mean you should pay more money to equal a lower income person's cost percentage of income wise, that's unjust in itself.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't, either. There's nuance to every situation, particularly when we're discussing the means by which some people quite literally survive, vs. luxury or leisure goods and services.

Distance pricing seems to work just fine here in Japan, although I did't dig into the data on public transit, just based on my personal experience.

Fares in Osaka or Tokyo are ~$2 per 3-4 stations from your departure point. Riding to Kyoto from downtown Osaka (40km) is ~$8 and 8 stops across two lines. The prices overall are low (IMO), and Japan has lower wage inequality than the US (IIRC).

It’s not an unjust or regressive tax scheme to charge more for greater service. This is incorrectly repurposing the language of taxation to the reality of transit fares.

It is certainly correct that having fixed fares across time and distance is a government subsidy which arguably may even effectively target poor riders.

The lack of a subsidy is fundamentally not the same as a tax.

But when a subsidy distorts the market to the point where it causes inefficiencies in the market, those inefficiencies can undermine the value or effectiveness of the subsidy, sometimes altogether.

I.e. lack of peek pricing causing massive ridership spikes at specific hours overloading the system and making it break down.

A theoretically better system might be one with a fixed monthly fare credit for low income riders, while also having peek pricing. This shifts demand to keep the system running more smoothly while also making transit more affordable for lower income riders.

But then, why not ask the question, if we’re giving money to low income riders, why give rebates only to low income people who ride the train? Why have a low income subsidy specifically for subway ridership versus any of a dozen other things people fundamentally need. Why micromanage to that level?

I'm not against welfare agencies subsidizing the poor. If we are subsidizing the poor that should be from a different budget: as far as the transit system is concerned rich or poor use the same resources so the income to the transit system should be the same even if it comes from a different pot.

I always liked the social implications of flat fares - poor people tend to have to live farther away so distance pricing, and especially peak pricing, basically makes life harder for people who already have a hard life.

I think that the whole narrative around trains needing to justify their cost based on fares is ridiculous. Few people ride trains for the experience of riding a train. They ride to go somewhere, and do something, and the real value of the fate exists outside the transportation system.

I think Japan, and HK got it right by letting train companies act as real estate developers and build out the areas around stations. That gives them enormous profitability since they can charge rent, commissions for the stuff that people actually care about - what’s at the destination - and literally funnel people in the millions to their shopping centers, office complexes, and apartments.

Last bit about operators in Japan etc, fantastic idea. Thanks for pointing out.

People are probably reading too much into flat vs. variable fares. Historically, you probably tended to have flat fares on transit systems in no small part because it was so much simpler when people mostly paid using tokens (or transit passes, in which case flat or variable didn't matter).

This is becoming less relevant with the increased prevalence of contactless pay as you go systems. (Although the newer systems tend to be more complex for irregular users like tourists.)

Yes! With modern systems, if you want to give poor riders reduced fares you can… give poor riders reduced fares. It's not hard. Just program the contactless system to do it. There are no real arguments for using flat fares in NYC besides tradition (which is not nothing). No one designing a system today would choose it for a system the size of NYC's.

Flat fares are much better for customers who need to understand what they will pay. The ability to automatically change me an extra fare where I go on is nice only when I know and have budgeted for that fare. Flat fare, pay $x and go it easy to understand. Every time I need to pay I need to decide if the transit system is really worth it for the trip.

Now in a system the size of NYC you probably should do something, the person only riding a couple miles shouldn't pay as much as the person riding many miles (I'm not sure how you can get in NYC). However a simple easy to understand system of fares is important and very hard to design. Part of that needs to be a guaranteed maximum you will pay in a month - with the idea that a significant portion of users will hit that maximum - when you know you will hit the maximum you are more likely to take transit in off-peak times even though you have a perfectly good car.

Every metro system everywhere supports pre-paid value cards.

If you find different prices for different services confusing, how do you grocery shop?

Eh, but identifying the poor riders opens a door to a system to game, a sprawling bureaucracy to manage all that, and the social stigma/hit to dignity of being seen in such a program... I like the simplicity of a flat fare since the overhead of doing so is so low.

Your comment assumes that this does not exist: https://new.mta.info/fares-and-tolls/subway-bus-and-staten-i...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com