Raising Bus Fares Would Make Them Less Fair : Transit: Train subsidies help the wealthy few.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority staff’s fare-increase proposal shows lack of creativity and the crisis-management approach of the MTA’s predecessor agencies: It raises revenue without regard to who pays and who benefits.

Management wants the base fare to go from $1.10 to $1.35 and for all passes to be abolished, except for the elderly, handicapped and elementary and high school students. The core of today’s regressive fare structure stays in place: The poor are penalized, the rich subsidized.

Most MTA local bus rides are under four miles. The same seat may be occupied by consecutive riders, and several $1.10 fares collected, for one bus trip. The lowest-income riders on crowded routes--such as the 204 Vermont Avenue service--pay almost the entire cost of their transportation and travel in the worst conditions.

While the subsidy to the 204-line rider is pennies, express-bus users draw several dollars a trip from the public purse. The freeway surcharge is only 40 cents per four miles. With everyone headed downtown, each seat brings in only one fare per trip. Management wants an increase of just 10 cents, to 50 cents per express zone, even though riders are generally higher in income than local-bus riders. To correct this, the base fare should be reduced to $1 per ride, while the express charge should go up 20 cents, to 60 cents per zone.

Typical Blue Line riders travel twice as far as local-bus riders for the same price, and at more than four times the subsidy per mile provided to the average bus rider. This reduces money to maintain local buses, on which those who lack an alternative depend. Management proposes supplementary fares for journeys over seven miles, but rail would remain cheaper than freeway buses. The same fare structure should be adopted for both express bus and Metrorail systems.

Metrolink riders, meanwhile, get a subsidy of more than $20 per trip. Meanwhile, management is talking of bus service cutbacks as well as fare increases, ignoring the ethical problem of maintaining high-cost Metrolink for the wealthy few at the expense of local buses for the many poor. Metrolink should be replaced with lower-cost express buses, which would serve a wider variety of destinations than does the commuter-rail service.

Eliminating passes is a mistake, especially as MTA police believe their recent anti-fraud campaign has eliminated organized forgeries. Boarding time will be slowed, while the incentive to leave the car at home once a bus pass is purchased will be lost. Some low-income people, for whom transit is their only mobility, make heavy use of local passes. Removing passes would restrict their mobility. Passes should stay, but at higher prices relative to one-way fares. Discount coupons might be offered as another incentive. Lower automobile-insurance rates for those who choose to commute with monthly passes might be particularly popular.

A one-week local pass, priced proportionately to a monthly pass ($11.25 if a monthly costs $50) should also be available. More affordable to the poor, the weekly passes could be sold through newsstands and convenience stores.

If the MTA really wants to take people out of cars, it must review its spending priorities. The Proposition A bus-fare reduction to 50 cents between 1982 and 1985 saw ridership expand by 143.1 million annual passengers over the three years. Two fare increases then shot it down by 96.1 million annual passengers over the next five years. The Blue Line, in contrast, is expected to achieve only 20 million annual passengers in the year 2000. Far more people would ride public transport now if the resources spent on rail had been kept on the buses.

If the MTA curtails its wasteful rail-expansion plans, bus service can be improved and fares kept low. We must avoid the tendency to haggle over the size of the fare increase while ignoring public service and equity. To simply provide a proportional fare increase for all would be fair to none. To make fares fairer, we need to better relate what each passenger pays to the cost of providing the service each uses.