This Week in the Mercury
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Transportation TriMet Budget Cuts Rundown: Fare Increase, MAX Cuts, Killing Free Rail, Oh My!
Posted by Sarah Mirk on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 12:44 PM
As expected, the budget cuts TriMet's Board formally announced today are a doozy. A $17 million doozy.
Here's the basic rundown of the proposed major cuts and new revenue plans:
Two questions: Why is this all happening? And what are the details of the cuts, exactly? Both answers below the cut.
1) WHY, GOD, WHY?
Portland Afoot has a great breakdown of the worsening problems with TriMet's budget. It basically comes down to four things:
• TriMet is substantially funded by payroll taxes. That's good during boom times but when the economy goes bust—right when people need cheap transit most—TriMet's budget gets busted, too. The lagging economic recovery has kept payroll receipts at about $3 million less than TriMet expected.
• The federal government is likely to cut funding to transit systems nationwide, with TriMet expected to lose $4 million that it usually takes in.
• Expensive expansion projects. After operating costs, construction costs are TriMet's biggest expense. The new light rail bridge for the Orange Line to Milwaukie is going to cost $297 million this coming year, but TriMet is not willing to cut expansion projects that leverage federal funds, expand the system, and are already underway.
EDIT: Sorry! This summary was wrong in several ways. TriMet spokeswoman Mary Fetsch sent me this correction:
This project is not contributing to our budget shortfall this year or any of the past few years. TriMet has not put one dime into the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Project to date. Funding is currently coming from local partners. It actually will be helping our bottom line in the future, as MAX operating costs are lower than operating buses, so as we expand the MAX system, we free up more money for bus operations.
Our shortfall is primarily from our unsustainable cost structure and the health care benefits package for our active and retiree union employees. We are paying more than $21,000 per union employee for health care benefits. The actual cost of the bridge is $134 million. Of the total $1.49 billion project, TriMet’s share is less than 5%, or a maximum of $60 million. We will be issuing debt in FY13 to pay for this over the next 20 years. It’s like how you would pay to buy a house. It will cost about $2.9 million/year.
• Employee healthcare clusterfuck. TriMet's union has secured arguably the best transit employee healthcare coverage in the country. The agency has also failed to set aside money for promised medical and pension benefits, so it's not clear where the money to cover increasing costs will be coming from. TriMet includes this graph of employee healthcare benefits in its literature about the budget cuts:
2) DETAILS, DETAILS!
These are just the proposed cuts, so they're not set in stone yet. But they're very likely to go through, after some haggling.
• Fare Increase: The lowest fare on TriMet is slated to become $2.50. That's a 19 percent jump. The plan also calls for eliminating zones, so that $2.50 will get you anywhere in the city.
• Make Fares One-Way: We discussed the specifics of this last week, but your current 2-hour transfer would be only good one way. So taking the 75 from Irvington to the Fred Meyer on Hawthorne and then back again: not allowed. You'll have to buy a $5 round trip pass.
• Eliminate the Free Rail Zone: The final nail in the coffin of ye olde Fareless Square, MAX would no longer be free to hop on downtown.
• Sell ads on TriMet Tracker: Call TriMet to find out your bus's arrival time, be regaled with the great deals at the Expo Center gem sale.
• Cutting back bus routes: There are a bunch of lines being cut or rerouted, so just check out this pdf to get the download.
• Run MAX every 20 minutes: Except during rush hour, the MAX would now run every 20 minutes.
• Make the Airport MAX Line End at Downtown: Red Line service all the way to the Beaverton transit center would be slashed completely, except during rush hours.
• Cut non-union jobs and benefits: It's not clear how many and how much yet.
• Reduce LIFT service: People with disabilities who can't ride the bus and MAX would see their door-to-door LIFT service offered during fewer hours.
• Give the Portland Streetcar Less Money: TriMet would cut its contribution to the streetcar by $400,000.
BONUS SECTION 3) WHAT CAN I DO?!?!
No promises on whether your outrage will change anything, but TriMet is having a series of open houses this month to discuss the budget. Get out there!
Also, keep your eye on local group OPAL Environmental Justice, which has been hosting a series of bus stop actions this winter.
1
I hope they eliminate all the overlap between the various max lines. It's ridiculous that red, yellow and blue all share the same track in the downtown area.
2
How is that ridiculous? All four MAX lines go dt - which is obviously important to tens of thousands of people. And ofcourse they're going to use the same tracks.
3
Why?!
Because that's how the laws of economics work.
Government by and large does not provide services or products and must rely on revenue generated by others, so it is inherently dysfunctional on attempting to work on an economic budget model of income and spending.
This applies up to the federal level as well, although those in charge of Oregon and the U.S. do not understand the concept.
Because that's how the laws of economics work.
Government by and large does not provide services or products and must rely on revenue generated by others, so it is inherently dysfunctional on attempting to work on an economic budget model of income and spending.
This applies up to the federal level as well, although those in charge of Oregon and the U.S. do not understand the concept.
4
Clueless. Increase early morning start time for the airport Red MAX to match flight startup. Keep Westside airport Red MAX direct. Downtown fairless, let the PBA pay for it. Advertising on Transit Tracker and ANY website that uses Trimet data - 10-1000X(+) their proposed revenues. Obvious.
6
If the city want downtown to be the vibrant shopping district they're always trying to brand it as, it seems to me that cutting free rail is a terrible idea, particularly for tourists...Plus, honestly, I always thought the fareless square rail model hinged on the difficulty of fare regulation with such regular stops.
7
BOOOO!!! Surely some intrepid activist group will organize a tranist strike to allow the riders of MAX and the buses to express a collective displeasure with these proposals? Maybe a walk/bike/car share to work day on February 29 with a pledge to not ride or pay Trimet that day?
8
DamosA: All those max lines don't need to go downtown. Yellow should stop at the rose quarter, red shold stop where it meets the blue line. Here's why: a person who works downtown and needs to catch a blue train to get home out east inevitably has to watch a red, then a yellow, and then maybe another red pass him by (empty, mind you) before a standing-room only blue train finally shows up. If you've ever worked downtown and commuted by train during rush hour, you know this is true. The majority of riders are waiting for a blue train, and since they are so few and far between, every blue train is packed like a sardine can.
Remove the yellow and red from downtown, make all the east/west trains blue, and you relieve a lot of congestion. The idea of being able to ride from beaverton to the airport without having to make a single transfer is a little ridiculous. There's no reason for the red or yellow lines to be that long. Just make people transfer more.
Remove the yellow and red from downtown, make all the east/west trains blue, and you relieve a lot of congestion. The idea of being able to ride from beaverton to the airport without having to make a single transfer is a little ridiculous. There's no reason for the red or yellow lines to be that long. Just make people transfer more.
9
(My comment should read "transit riders strike" not a transit strike. I suspect the Trimet union members are quite happy with their heaping buckets of healthcare.)
10
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? Yellow doesn't share the same track with Red and Blue downtown.
Stopping the yellow line at Rose Quarter would make people transfer more (not less) because many riders are going between N Portland and Downtown. Some overlap Downtown is a way of providing more frequent service.
I wish TriMet had a dollar for every person who thinks they know how to solve all of TriMet's problems without paying the actual cost of public transit.
Stopping the yellow line at Rose Quarter would make people transfer more (not less) because many riders are going between N Portland and Downtown. Some overlap Downtown is a way of providing more frequent service.
I wish TriMet had a dollar for every person who thinks they know how to solve all of TriMet's problems without paying the actual cost of public transit.
12
"Government by and large does not provide services or products and must rely on revenue generated by others, so it is inherently dysfunctional on attempting to work on an economic budget model of income and spending."
No. That's how capitalism FAILS to work. Public services are payed for by payroll tax because they're mutually beneficial. Hundreds of thousands of people out of the 2.1 million residents of the Portland metropolitan area rely on public transit for business and pleasure. Obviously, students and the unemployed who need it most can't afford to pay a full representative portion of the operating cost. Those who are gainfully employed are thus expected to make a small contribution from their earnings to keep this important service available.
How do you feel about roads? Bridges? What about fire rescue and police services? I'm an anarchist on an idealistic level, but even I understand the importance of these tax-paid services in keeping our city afloat, and why it's important that these services don't collect a service revenue.
You're trying to argue from an economic standpoint, from which your view is also flawed. When a single entity holds monopoly, quality drops and price rises. Trimet is the only major transit system in Portland; they've adjusted their service to have almost no overlap with even Vancouver's C-Tran system. If Trimet were NOT paid for almost entirely by taxes, we'd see much more drastic budget cuts, including massive employee healthcare cuts, and pretty much no max line expansion whatsoever during recession.
No. That's how capitalism FAILS to work. Public services are payed for by payroll tax because they're mutually beneficial. Hundreds of thousands of people out of the 2.1 million residents of the Portland metropolitan area rely on public transit for business and pleasure. Obviously, students and the unemployed who need it most can't afford to pay a full representative portion of the operating cost. Those who are gainfully employed are thus expected to make a small contribution from their earnings to keep this important service available.
How do you feel about roads? Bridges? What about fire rescue and police services? I'm an anarchist on an idealistic level, but even I understand the importance of these tax-paid services in keeping our city afloat, and why it's important that these services don't collect a service revenue.
You're trying to argue from an economic standpoint, from which your view is also flawed. When a single entity holds monopoly, quality drops and price rises. Trimet is the only major transit system in Portland; they've adjusted their service to have almost no overlap with even Vancouver's C-Tran system. If Trimet were NOT paid for almost entirely by taxes, we'd see much more drastic budget cuts, including massive employee healthcare cuts, and pretty much no max line expansion whatsoever during recession.
13
Quick thought on TriMet's comparison of union costs: I think those are distorted a fair amount by TriMet's choice to compare to all transit employees rather than transit employees in large cities, where driving a bus requires a fair amount more skill and a lot more tolerance for bad stuff.
I ran the numbers a couple years ago on TriMet's labor costs per service-hour, and they weren't out of line compared to other big agencies. What's weird about their costs are that they've been growing faster (twice as fast as the average large agency's since 1994), and that their medical benefits, especially for retirees, are unusually generous.
I ran the numbers a couple years ago on TriMet's labor costs per service-hour, and they weren't out of line compared to other big agencies. What's weird about their costs are that they've been growing faster (twice as fast as the average large agency's since 1994), and that their medical benefits, especially for retirees, are unusually generous.
14
geyser (10): It's been a while since I've worked downtown. Did they move the yellow line to the green line track? If so, that was a good move. My point about terminating the lines so they don't overlap was that I think people SHOULD have to transfer more. Overlapping bus and train lines are an uneccessary luxury.
15
Im greatly concerned with this concept of one way fares. This basically means that to use TRIMET at all for a roundtrip is now $5.00? They're proposing the increase of a standard trip "to and from" a single location to the price of a full day ticket!? That's ridiculous. I'm a daily tri met user and and have found the current convenience good for not only work but appointments and errands. But if these new rules go through It's less expensive to just drive. I'm certainly not using 5 dollars in gas a day. (I fortunately don't have parking concerns with my job). And how in the world do they plan on keeping track of where a rider buys a ticket and what direction that ticket is valid for? Is every bus driver expected to eventually have a complete knowledge of multiple points of purchase and valid/invalid directions for every stop. What if I go from say SE to Downtown on one line and then back on another? I'm technically not going "back the way I came". Its just strikes me that whatever new technology they'd need to implement for every bus to keep track of all this plus the revenue decrease from fares could possibly invalidate it.
17
Thanks for scheduling public meetings during times I, a working person who relies in your increasingly failing "service", to attend, Tri-met.
18
I meant to say, can't attend. Also thanks for scheduling those meetings in inaccessible far-flung locations that would require a $5 fare to access.
19
They need to start selling ad space in the trains and buses. As much as I hate to look at advertising, it has to generate some revenue. EVERY other transit system I have used has had advertisements in all of the available spaces. Why is Trimet not attempting to increase revenue with advertising?
20
The most important thing to do is build another money-sucking MAX line to Milwaukie right now! No time for prudence or logic, we must do it now!!!
21
Here's another revenue generating idea. Sell all of them fancy flat screen monitors installed in the stops and replace them with paper schedules. Considering, that visually speaking, bus schedules are not much to look at, even in 1080p.
22
@15, if you are a "daily tri met user," you should buy a monthly pass. It will pay for itself in no time if you really ride every day. The only people this will hurt are casual riders who want to run to the store nearby. More and more people are walking and biking for short trips, and that is a good thing! Transit isn't really well-suited to the milk run sort of trips. Anyway, if someone is really in that situation, one solution is to run lots of errands in one day, making the day pass more worth it.
23
People need to make more transfers?!? I make two transfers each way on lines that run twenty minutes apart. That's potentially two hours of my day spent just waiting for transit to come while being fully exposed to the elements. Too many transfers makes tri-met unridable, and cutting back red lines isn't going to increase blues.
24
i stopped riding tri-met a long time ago. i turns out that if you decrease service and increase prices, people will stop using your service, and you will continue to loose money. someday, TriMet might realize that they need to make their product more attractive to customers if they want to be successful. Until then, expect more budget cuts, more fare increases, and more losses at the ballot box
25
there is nothing that the union gets that trimet did not give to them. trimet management fumbled the current contract negotiations: http://t.co/8q9ZmERu
trimet management missed the change in the law where fare penalties aren't coming back to trimet: http://t.co/zIQ7vFXP
trimet has over 70 people with salaries above $100K: http://t.co/7w0p97JR
but the trimet management "sacrifice" to balance the $17 million budget hole that has been created via bad contract negotiations and dedicating funds to rail project (service on which keeps getting cut)? $500 K in "internal efficiencies" savings.
anybody effected by this proposal either in increased cost of service or losing more service because of cuts needs to push back on this as hard as possible.
trimet management is great at passing the buck - it's the economy! it's the union! it's the federal government - and lousy at taking any responsibility or laying out any action that isn't a burden on the public they are suppose to be serving.
do fares and service need to be cut? probably yes to some degree but they can't find say $5 million in "internal efficiencies" or $3 million or something that represents a real commitment from trimet to serving the public not hurting it?
call them, write them, protest them. contact every board member. don't buy the bull, demand better solutions:
http://trimet.org/about/board.htm
trimet management missed the change in the law where fare penalties aren't coming back to trimet: http://t.co/zIQ7vFXP
trimet has over 70 people with salaries above $100K: http://t.co/7w0p97JR
but the trimet management "sacrifice" to balance the $17 million budget hole that has been created via bad contract negotiations and dedicating funds to rail project (service on which keeps getting cut)? $500 K in "internal efficiencies" savings.
anybody effected by this proposal either in increased cost of service or losing more service because of cuts needs to push back on this as hard as possible.
trimet management is great at passing the buck - it's the economy! it's the union! it's the federal government - and lousy at taking any responsibility or laying out any action that isn't a burden on the public they are suppose to be serving.
do fares and service need to be cut? probably yes to some degree but they can't find say $5 million in "internal efficiencies" or $3 million or something that represents a real commitment from trimet to serving the public not hurting it?
call them, write them, protest them. contact every board member. don't buy the bull, demand better solutions:
http://trimet.org/about/board.htm
26
I pay higher rent to live next to a MAX line that is within fareless square, because I work downtown. Will increasing fare/removing fareless square lower rental rates? Probably not.
This is going to increase my cost of living substantially. Although I don't know how loudly I should complain when I have essentially been getting a free ride for years now.
Meh. Probably need to start biking more anyway.
This is going to increase my cost of living substantially. Although I don't know how loudly I should complain when I have essentially been getting a free ride for years now.
Meh. Probably need to start biking more anyway.
27
@10....precisely. @22, agree. This is what I (and Im sure many others do). I don't have a real problem with eliminating free rail, but that is a personal (logistics involved) view. I think it may impact the city economy negatively though. The one way fare (higher at that ) is a bad idea.
28
@20 agree, but its far enough along that they can't back off. Number Six, I like your idea but it assumes they would be bright enough to notice
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