Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) customers pass through a fare gate at the Embarcadero station in San Francisco, California. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
American Public Media’s “Marketplace” quotes Steve Schlickman, executive director of the Urban Transportation Center, on rising transit fares in cities around the country. Schlickman says fare increases can backfire, resulting in no increase in revenue.
“When you increase fairs, it tends to discourage ridership,” says Steve Schlickman is with the Urban Transportation Center at University of Illinois at Chicago. “If you increase fares too much, you discourage so much ridership that you really don’t have an increase in revenue.”
It falls to cities and states make their transit systems’ deficits. But the Department of Transportation is warning that without intervention from Congress, a critical source federal funds for many transit and highway projects will run out of money later this summer.
