Searching for a Fair Fare
Originally written for ENGL 468: Journalism. May 2023.
Rob’s got money for the bus. For $1.70—the price of an all-day pass for seniors—he can catch a ride near his home in West Haven, travel down to the New Haven Green, then transfer buses to First Lutheran Church for his weekly AA meeting. On a good day, it’s an hourlong journey each way, and so he likes to makes the most of it. After his meeting, he might shop for some groceries, or swing by the laundromat.
At the midpoint of his journey near the Green, Rob waits beneath a bus stop awning. A steady morning rain pelts the brim of his baseball cap as he pokes his head from the awning, stares out toward Elm Street. Other waiting riders crowd the stop’s roofed bench. A few hardy souls populate the uncovered wooden benches nearby. They stare alongside Rob as each green light begets another onrush of cars. Another bus comes—not Rob’s—and some of the crowd streams out, onto the bus steps. One rider sticks her bus pass into the farebox; another, some coins. The farebox is back for the first time in a year, and old routines are resuming.
On April 1, Connecticut began charging for bus fares again after a year-long suspension. During that year—supported by $40 million in federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act, approximately equal to the state’s annual fare revenue—the Connecticut Department of Transportation saw ridership numbers boom, meeting pre-pandemic levels for the first time since 2020 and, in many cities, going on to exceed them.
As the federal support approached its end, advocates testified to the benefits of free fares. Figures ranging from environmental activists, directors of transit districts, and even the Mayor of New Haven submitted written testimonies demanding the free fares continue. But attempts to write free fares into law proved fruitless: Connecticut House Bill 5974, which would have done just that, died in committee last January. The bill couldn’t have gone far—federal requirements dictate that transit agencies carry out equity studies before altering fares, a requirement which was intended, ironically, to prevent inaccessible fare hikes. House Bill 6743, which would have instated such a study, was raised in February. But some transit officials, including executives in Bridgeport and Middletown, warned that the costs of free fares may necessitate reduction of services—cutting bus routes, shortening hours, and so on. This bill, too, died in committee.
And so, as the one-year anniversary approached, the buses’ LED displays began to warn: “FARES RESUME APRIL 1.” Lines formed and snaked through busy bus stops as riders swarmed to purchase their passes early. Some riders continued to protest. “I hope they keep it going on,” one rider, who uses the buses to access services at the Connecticut Mental Health Center, told me a few days before the resumption. “I think it’s a valuable asset.”
But the bus stop lines continued to grow, and, with little fanfare, the farebox returned.
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Brian Aiken sits against a parking lot fence in downtown New Haven, bundled up in a black coat on an unseasonably chilly May afternoon. He takes small drags from a cigarette as strangers hurry past, and his overfull grocery bag sags on the ground beside him. He’s just returned from a meeting at Fellowship Place, a New Haven nonprofit that provides rehabilitation and career development services for people struggling with mental illness, and he is waiting for a bus to take him to his home, about a mile away.
“You got a dollar for the bus?” he asks, in a relaxed rasp, as I walk by.
On the same day as the fares’ return, Brian’s rent went up by eighty dollars. Fifty-seven years old and recently recovered from a coma that left him unable to work for over a year, Brian relies on disability payments to make ends meet. He had arranged, through a sponsorship program, to have a monthlong bus pass paid for and mailed to him by April. It would have saved him about thirty dollars—but, over a month later, the pass still hasn’t arrived. He has had to resort to the kindness of strangers instead, relying on a spare dollar here and there to get around town.
At home, Brian shares a bedroom and splits his rent with his girlfriend. They’ve chopped small expenses since the rent increase: there is no longer hand soap in their bathroom, and they do their laundry half as often as before. For Brian, who attended church regularly prior to April, the bus fare meant attendance was no longer free. “Nowadays I stay at my home and worship,” he laments.
For Rob, who, like Brian, relies on disability and SNAP benefits to make ends meet, his $1.70 daily fare is a small additional strain on a fixed income. “Things are tight as it is,” he says. Other New Haven residents have voiced similar complaints: one rider, returning to the homeless shelter where he currently stays, described how the return of fares made it difficult for him to pick up a final check from his former workplace. Another rider who receives services from the Connecticut Mental Health Center feared he would soon be unable to make it to his meetings there.
One man, taking the bus to a family member’s home late one night, said that he’s begun walking over a mile to and from work in order to avoid the fares. As he talks, a young lady in the several seats back sings along to a song in Spanish, her earbuds plugged in. A pitch-perfect alto melody floats through the otherwise quiet, half-empty bus.
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Doug Holcomb is the General Manager of Greater Bridgeport Transit (GBT), one of the largest transit districts in the state, and a skeptic of free fares. He’s a firm believer in the maxim that the customer is always right, and he thinks many activists overestimate riders’ desire for free fares. “If you went to the customers and said, “Okay, we have this opportunity to go fare free. Are you good with it?” Probably the response would be unanimous,” he acknowledges. “But if you went out to the public and said, “We have $40 million and we can make the fare free every year. Or we can add $40 million worth of service to the state,” that’s [the equivalent of] two Bridgeport transits,” he says ($40 million is approximately twice the budget of the GBT). “That’s a bus transit renaissance for us.”
What would $40 million worth of service look like? For Holcomb, expanded service means more buses, more routes, and longer service hours. It could also mean the addition of express bus routes and bus-only lanes, both of which would speed up travel times. Other improvements utilize technologies like Automatic Vehicle Location devices to give riders real-time updates on bus locations (several Connecticut cities have already implemented this technology), and Transit Signal Priority tools, which detect buses at stop lights and give them right-of-way when possible. And in Connecticut, which has one of the most robust statewide public transit systems in the country, improvements in service often focus on developing intercity connections.
Holcomb, a twenty-two year veteran of the GBT, speaks with the confidence of a politician and the numerical expertise of an analyst. His concern for the logistics of funding is at the surface of every surface he speaks. Connecticut has money—it reaped a $1.35 billion surplus last year—but public transit in the state is drawn from the Special Transportation Fund (STF), a long-ailing fund which has only recently begun to operate in the black. In 2018, a proposed state budget would have slashed Holcomb’s district’s budget by fifteen percent. As recently as 2021, the STF’s future was imperiled by a $50 million deficit and grim financial projections.
Holcomb’s district recovers about a third of its operating expenses from fares, the highest recovery rate in Connecticut and well above the nationwide average of about twenty-five percent (the rest of GBT’s funding comes from a combination of municipal, STF, and federal sources). Instead of cutting that income source by abolishing fares, Holcomb believes, Bridgeport and other cities should talk to riders directly and expand services according to their needs. “The customers need to be engaged,” he says. “And in that engagement, we probably would find some hybrid solution that helped with equity.”
This “hybrid solution” could take the form of a more limited fare reduction system based on need. A version of this was rolled out last year through the state’s new CTpass program, which allows employers, job training programs, and other organizations to cover its members’ rides at a reduced rate. But this solution has no way of helping those perhaps most in need of it. All transit districts in the state offer fare reductions, per federal regulations, for seniors, people with disabilities, and Medicare cardholders. But in most of the state, people without the ability to pay the reduced fare, who are statistically unlikely to be affiliated with organizations eligible for CTPass funding, are left without a ride.
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Rob’s biggest complaint isn’t the fare—it’s the bus schedule. The journey from his home in West Haven to his AA meetings is only two miles, seven minutes by car. But Rob hasn’t driven since the eighties, and there are no bus routes directly connecting the two locations. Instead, the journey involves two river crossings, a bus transfer, and around an hour of travel time—that’s if the bus isn’t late.
“Sometimes I’m down here for a half hour,” Rob says of his wait at the transfer stop. “It jams me up and it’s inconvenient.”
Today, his bus rolls in about fifteen minutes behind schedule. Before leaving the comfort of the bus stop, Rob tells me he’s been on a waitlist for a senior living apartment downtown which, while technically further from his meetings and appointments, would slash his travel times in half.
Some riders said the return of fares was, in a word, fair. “It is what it is,” Donnell laughs as he waits for his bus, a few blocks away from Rob. “You gotta pay one way or the other,” adds Anna, sitting on a bench nearby. “If you drive, you gotta pay for gas.”
“They gave us quite a break by making the fare free,” says Anthony, walking roadside late one night. He’s fine with the fares resuming—but he wishes the buses would operate later at night. New Haven’s buses currently cease operations at 12:45 a.m., and Anthony described being stranded in downtown New Haven several times after the last bus. Without a ride, he would walk about a mile-and-a-half to his home in The Hill, a working-class neighborhood in the southwestern corner of the city.
Several other riders expressed frustration with late buses, and a few had other suggestions for improvements: buses could add charging ports, for instance, and wi-fi connectivity could be made universal (some buses in the state already have wi-fi, but this feature is still being rolled out). Making public transit accessible is more than a simple matter of making fares free—it’s also a matter of reach, of service hours, and of onboard amenities. And all of these things cost money.
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A 2012 study on outcomes of fare-free programs, sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration, concluded that “the elimination of fares essentially places transit in the same category of services as schools, libraries, and most community parks. Although these services are paid for with community taxes, people usually do not pay a service charge to use them. They are regarded as essential elements of what a community deems important and why it is worth living in.” The study surveyed thirty-nine fare-free programs throughout the United States, and it concluded that, in cities and towns where they are implemented, the benefits outweigh the costs.
At the time of the study, the largest fare-free program in the world was located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where about 7.5 million free rides were taken per year (ridership levels remained about constant until the pandemic struck). This program draws its funding from the University of North Carolina, in collaboration with the Towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Other programs surveyed had similar backgrounds—they included college towns, resort communities, and a few small towns where the costs of collecting fares outweighed revenue. For the most part, these programs served small, higher-income communities where fares were more inconvenient than they were inaccessible. But why were free fares restricted to these towns?
The answer may lie in Austin. Starting in the 1960s, cities across the country began experimenting with free fares. The hopes were that free fares would ease traffic congestion and expand accessibility. East Chicago, Indiana implemented a universal fare-free program in 1973 which continues to this day. Similar, limited experiments followed in cities including Trenton and Denver, but with less fortuitous results. In these larger cities, buses became overcrowded and began to consistently run late. Budgets sank deep into the red. Authorities were overwhelmed, and each of these programs ended after a year. Riders complained of increased criminal activity (though transit officials then and now have been quick to note that the largest sources of crime aboard buses are fare disputes between riders and drivers, a problem solved by free fares). The problem seemed to be one of scale: while East Chicago’s fleet of fives buses could deal with individual problems as they arose, dealing with ridership booms in a city the size of Denver was a trickier matter.
Austin was the nail in the coffin. In 1989, the city began its experiment with totally free fares. Ridership exploded, rising by 70 percent. But, like Denver and Trenton, Austin soon dealt with busy buses and passenger unrest. Revenue loss sharply exceeded expectations; passengers complained about “youth gang members” on buses; and, by the end of the experiment, the city’s bus drivers were reported to be on the verge of “insurrection.” To top it off, congestion remained as bad as before; drivers with their own cars weren’t willing to abandon them for a chaotic, unreliable bus. The end of the program was celebrated, and it sent a message to transit authorities across the nation: fare-free public transit is more trouble than it’s worth. For years afterward, fare-free experiments were mostly limited to small towns, where fare revenue was negligible in the first place.
The Northeastern Connecticut Transit District (NECTD) has had de facto free fares since the early 2000s. While there is a nominal $1.00 fare, the District also has an official “no rides denied” policy—those who can’t pay can still hop on a bus, or call for one. It’s a different scene from the state’s big cities: rural highways and former mill towns populate the NECTD’s service region, which is more than one-and-a-half times that of Bridgeport’s. Some of the system’s ten buses chug along twenty-mile routes during daylight hours, stopping at 5:30p.m. on weekdays, while others meet riders on-demand in the district’s various towns.
John Filchak is Executive Director of the Northeastern Council of Governments, which oversees the NECTD. He’s held the position since 1995; like Holcomb, he’s a veteran of Connecticut transit. Unlike Holcomb, he finds the math of free fares easy: The NECTD recovers only about three percent from its operating expenses from fares, compared to Bridgeport’s thirty, so they represent a negligible income source. Filchak supports free fares, arguing their limited impact on transit finances is outweighed by their benefits to riders. He acknowledges his district’s concerns are different from Hartford’s or New Haven’s: “the impact is a little different on us, being a small district,” he says. “The benefit to our riders is, I think, significant, so it wasn’t hard for us to take that position.”
But he also notes recent fare-free experiments in larger cities, such as Boston, and asks: “if the fare is an impediment, why not get rid of it?”
Filchak believes the benefits of buses extend beyond the practical matter of getting to a destination. In a district where riders skew older than the state average, and where underemployment carries across generations, the bus holds value as a social space. “While we only do two, three hundred rides a day,” Filchak says, “that’s the only way they [riders] get to a store to buy groceries, to the pharmacy, to the doctor, and just to have some social interaction. In many cases, they’re living alone, and they talk to our driver, they talk to other people. So it’s an important public service.”
Forty years ago, Filchak was a college student studying historical geography at the University of Montana. He’s kept his Missoula license plate from those years with him, and it rests on a shelf behind him as he speaks. In 2015, Missoula rolled out its own fare-free program; in 2021, voters approved funding to turn the experimental program into permanent policy. Fare-free programs, in recent years, have once again rolled into the limelight.
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The fare-free experiments of yesteryear were plagued by a lack of planning and experience. Transit directors estimated ridership using a statistical method known as the Simpson-Curtin rule, which postulated that fare abolition would lead to only around a thirty percent increase. When ridership in fact ballooned by fifty, sixty, seventy percent, there was no plan in place. But today’s transit directors have learned from the experiments and mistakes of their predecessors; and the potential benefits of fare-free transit have become existential.
The impending threat of climate change has led many activists and governments to consider fare-free transit and transit-oriented developments as ways to combat emissions. Past experiments provide cause to doubt that free transit can get cars off the roads—car owners are more likely to have disposable income and unlikely to jump ship for a shaky, crowded bus. But, by combining fare-free transit with other improvements, such as rezoning areas near bus stops to encourage mixed-use developments and the addition of bus-only lanes on major thoroughfares, planners can create cities where buses are the fastest, most reliable, and most accessible option. And the drive to do this has been growing.
Connecticut’s own fare-free program came amidst a surge of fare-free enthusiasm in the United States. Kansas City led the charge, in 2019 voting to become the largest city in the country to make public transit free. Boston made three of its busiest lines for two years beginning in March of last year. And, in what looks to be the most significant sign of a fare-free renaissance, Washington, D.C. has voted to abolish fares in perpetuity, beginning in July. In cities where fare-free transit has been implemented, reception has been overwhelmingly positive: Kansas City riders report, four years later, that they feel the city government has listened to their needs, and that their commutes have become easier.
The money exists in Connecticut to sustain free fares. The Special Transportation Fund reported a surplus of $250 million last year, and increased income from sales taxes may portend even greater surpluses in future years. Making fares free would cost less than a sixth of this surplus. But lawmakers and transit directors may be deterred by their memories of an STF which, just a few years ago, was bleeding money and failing to fund even necessary road repairs. They may also be deterred by Washington D.C.’s example; a recent report from the District’s Chief Financial Officer forecasted severe financial troubles for D.C.’s budget, casting doubt over its ability to pay for the $32-million-per-year program.
Public transit agencies have been expected, for most of their histories, to take in farebox revenue to help meet costs. But since the 1960s, it has universally been an unprofitable enterprise; even in Bridgeport, with its outstanding farebox recovery rate, seventy percent of expenses must be paid for through government subsidies. The argument goes like this: if public transit is unprofitable no matter how you slice it, and it’s propped up by governments across the country, then why continue treating it like a market product? Why not call it a public service and fund it as such?
“It doesn’t sound like a lot,” Filchak says of the one-dollar fare charged to his riders. “But these folks are living on social security from an income from years ago. They don’t have a lot… This is why we make sure people know that we will give them a free ride if they can’t pay.”
Angel Serrano, a Hartford environmental justice activist who has experienced homelessness in the past, stresses that public transit holds intrinsic value simply by virtue of being public space. “When it was cold, I didn’t have any money to just ride the bus,” he recalls. “But homeless people do rely on using the bus to sometimes keep warm.” Buses are temperature-controlled indoor spaces; they are also opportunities to sit down, which Serrano claims are valuable in an age of hostile architecture and shrinking public spaces.
In the summer of 2022, as heat waves swept across the country, buses in Philadelphia parked in four locations. They weren’t heading anywhere; their purpose was simply to run A/C on full blast during the hottest hours of the day. Overheated pedestrians could hop on the bus for free, drink water provided on-board, sit down until they felt cool, and step back outside when they felt ready. That summer, other cities across the country—including San Antonio, Austin, and Stockton—offered free bus connections to cooling centers. In the months that followed, advocates in Austin began to call for permanent free fares for the city’s unhoused population. As of May 2023, Austin has not implemented a fare-free program. But, as similar programs hit the ground across the nation, it may not be too far off the horizon.
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For now, fare collection in Connecticut will continue as usual. Holcomb reported a 20% ridership decrease in the month after fares were re-implemented, but he expects it to recover. The Special Transportation Fund surplus will have to be spent somewhere; perhaps the state will resume the process of electrifying its bus fleet, a process which it suspended last year following a battery fire. Perhaps it will develop more intercity connections between districts, facilitating easier statewide travel. And, perhaps, some of that money will be used to ensure that no person is denied a ride. Public transit is currently experiencing an influx of cash and political will not seen in decades, motivated by concerns over accessibility and climate change. The future, it seems, may be bright.
I’m sitting on a curb with Brian as he waits for his bus, when a bee lands on my hand. A woman stands near us, keeping her gaze solidly fixed on the road. A signal, to show alertness and prevent a rushing bus from skipping her stop. “I appreciated the free bus rides,” Brian says, and allows himself a small sigh. “I’m doing the best I can.”