Free Ride Zone
In addition to proposing a small sales tax increase to expand bus service, King County is also proposing to raise bus fares by an average of 75 cents over the next decade. That got me scratching my head about the bizarre way that we price bus rides. The incentives are precisely the reverse of what they should be.
Leaving aside discounts for children, seniors, and the disabled, the fare structure is pretty simple. You pay $1.25 for a ride anywhere in King County. But if you ride during peak hours--i.e. commuting hours--then you pay $1.50 if you stay in one zone (within the city of Seattle, say) and $2.00 if you travel through two zones (like from downtown to Redmond). But why on earth should riders pay more during commuting hours? If anything, riding the bus during the commute should be cheaper.
The Cost of Congestion
Traffic congestion--and the lost fuel and time that comes with it--costs billions of dollars each year in the US. That much is clear.
How many billions, though, is a bit of a mystery. According to this book, Street Smart, the total annual cost of congestion in the United States is about $108 billion. Or perhaps $63.2 billion. Or maybe it was just $12 billion.
It depends, apparently, on what you're looking at.
