Does free transit make sense for BC?

By invitation: this article was written by a transportation professional based in BC.

TL;DR Fare-free transit works best in cases where transit agencies will never be able to generate significant fare revenue. In larger transit systems, a free transit policy boosts ridership mainly by reducing walking trips. This makes transit more crowded and slower without providing meaningful congestion relief. Free transit in cities also takes away a key source of revenue for funding transit expansion.

With the support of the BC Greens and advocates, free transit for all is a hot topic in British Columbia. The motivation behind this advocacy—guaranteeing transit access to everyone—is a noble one, but advocates often gloss over many associated costs. Let’s have a look at the true costs of fare free policy.

Eliminating fares doesn’t just mean replacing revenue with subsidies. The cost of not expanding transit service must also be considered. These include lost fare revenue growth, costs associated with vehicle use (including pollution and lost productivity from congestion), and additional transit service required to address changes in ridership patterns. In short, eliminating fares can make transit service worse while limiting the funds available for transit expansion.

The case for free transit

Activists and journalists continue to question the cost and efficacy of fare enforcement, particularly following recent fare enforcement efforts in the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) and TransLink in Vancouver. Is there another way? Several pilot projects with free transit have at first glance proved highly successful at increasing transit ridership.

Let’s start with the places that have already made transit free. Several cities run fare free systems, including Albuquerque, New Mexico; Kansas City, Missouri; and Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. On introducing free transit, they all saw transit ridership increase by 4-10%. Small towns also have experimented with free transit. One example (discussed in a recent CBC article) is Orangeville, Ontario. Orangeville, a predominantly suburban town with a single main street, launched a fare free pilot in 2023 and saw yearly ridership more than double from 100,000 to more than 220,000. Many places also extend free transit to large sections of the population, such as in Brazil, where municipal and regional programs provide seniors across much of the country with free access to transit, or even here in BC, where transit is free for kids aged 12 and under.

Put simply, any non-zero transit fare incentivizes people to consider alternatives such as walking and cycling for short trips.

The problems with free transit

Looking just at ridership, these examples all seem to make an excellent case for making transit free. But looking deeper, the case is much murkier, particularly for systems with higher ridership (and thus higher fare revenue).

In the case of Tallinn, Estonia, the year following the introduction of free transit saw a year-over-year ridership increase of over 3% (compared to ~1% in the surrounding years). When evaluated in a vacuum, that would suggest success. However, a later review found that the length of the average trip taken on transit had shrunk, indicating that the vast majority of this ridership increase came from passengers that otherwise would have walked a short distance.

Similarly, data from Brazil’s fare-free for seniors program shows that most transit trips from the program replaced walking trips.

Several studies of fare-free systems and pilots from across the globe mirror these results. A City of Burlington study on fare free transit found that “modal shift from auto modes are approximately 50 percent higher with service improvements than from fare reductions”. Analysts found no evidence of a decrease in vehicle mode share in a free fare trial in Santiago, Chile. Even though transit ridership had seen an increase, that growth had come at the expense of active modes of transportation such as walking and cycling. This shift is not beneficial, if not actively harmful, to long-term sustainable mode share targets.

Being jammed into a sardine-packed bus is not a pleasant experience. It is perhaps better only than the feeling of disappointment and helplessness when a bus drives by without stopping, displaying ‘SORRY BUS FULL’.

Put simply, any non-zero transit fare incentivizes people to consider alternatives such as walking and cycling for short trips. Picture this: you’re walking a few blocks down the street, and a bus happens to be at the right place at the right time, and pull up right in front of you. If said bus is free, you’re probably getting on that bus.

Walking and cycling are certainly not the modes that we should be aiming to induce a mode share shift away from. Many transit systems (especially in BC) have faced chronic overcrowding for decades, meaning that converting walking trips to transit trips can further overburden a transit system, making the service worse for everyone through increased overcrowding.

In addition, the real financial cost is far greater than a transit system’s existing fare revenue. We need to count any foregone growth in fare revenue. This is especially important given the service expansion investments we need to sacrifice to facilitate a free transit scheme. Improved services will attract additional ridership, which generates more revenue, ad infinitum.

If we consider the findings of other jurisdictions, where free transit induced ridership from walking and cycling rather than away from automobiles, we find multiple further costs to consider.

As mentioned earlier, ridership increases going from fare-free will exacerbate the chronic challenge of overcrowding (at least in busy transit systems). This has significant ramifications towards how attractive the service is for the user. Being jammed into a sardine-packed bus is not a pleasant experience. It is perhaps better only than the feeling of disappointment and helplessness when a bus drives by without stopping, displaying “SORRY BUS FULL”.

This issue goes beyond user comfort, and impacts the service’s reliability, arguably the most important determinant of how useful the service is to a user. Even the most punctual and frequent service is unreliable if a rider cannot board a bus due to overcrowding.

This overcrowding due to riders choosing the bus over cycling and walking also causes bus service to run more slowly. Congestion is not relieved through the introduction of free fares, but buses now have to spend more time loading and unloading, and have to stop more often. Transit trips become slower as a direct result of a free fare policy. (For agencies that still disproportionately rely on cash payments and single-door boarding, this effect may be less obvious.)

By slowing down transit further, transit becomes less attractive an option, especially when compared to driving, when we want to encourage a shift in the opposite direction.

It is important to repeat that these findings come from larger metro areas. The most promising findings from free transit implementations come from systems with lower existing ridership, where fare revenue is a negligible percentage of transit revenue (we’re talking a low enough revenue, where the cost of fare collection approaches or exceeds it), and where overcrowding is rare or non-existent. Even when busses replace walking trips, this does not cause overcrowding.

Is Fare Free Transit really the most equitable solution?

Ultimately, the fundamental motivation to provide free transit for all is sound: everyone should be able to access fast, frequent, and reliable transit. Removing financial barriers doesn’t make transit faster, more frequent, or more reliable. After decades of underinvestment and rapid population growth, our transit services simply are not able to keep up.

Fast, frequent, and reliable transit services are not available at all in many areas, whether one is able to pay a fare or not. We are already years, if not decades behind on desperately needed service expansions, ranging from big-ticket capital expenditures such as new bus depots and new rail lines, to ongoing operational funding to pay for service hours to improve service span, frequency, coverage – and everything in between.

If someone is living in an area where transit ends service by 8 or 9 PM, that excludes a large number of restaurant and retail job opportunities that require employees to work until late in the evening, unless they can cycle or drive.

The estimated cost of replacing fares in BC sits around $700 million annually (which, given the earlier discussion, is an underestimate of what the actual long term costs are). We should be asking: what would be the most equitable way we can leverage $700 million in transit funding?

Advocates often cite the cost of a transit fare as a barrier against some of the most vulnerable within our community – and there isn’t likely to be much disagreement there. Amidst multiple, intersecting crises, ranging from a lack of housing, to an ongoing affordability crunch, our most vulnerable are in a position where they have to choose between paying fares or feeding themselves. This is not something that should be happening anywhere, let alone a country as wealthy as Canada.

Furthermore, the use of policing to crack down on those not paying their fare due to real financial hardship is not a reasonable response, no matter how vital fare revenue is for transit agencies. Especially in systems with faregates and electronic fare readers, those who don’t pay are most likely unable to pay at all, and shouldn’t be excluded from riding transit. Transit should remain a service available to everyone, and no one should be punished for not being able to pay.

Canadian politicians talk a lot about the climate crisis and the need to induce a shift away from the private automobile to address emissions. They usually pass over the actual investments required to achieve this.

Transit should absolutely be made more accessible for those that need it. Perhaps this could be through an expansion of the BC Bus Pass program, which currently provides transit passes to low income seniors and people with disabilities. Or perhaps we could back service providers, such as food banks and community centres, to give out transit tickets as needed. Or perhaps the provincial government could offer a transit pass for low-income taxpayers.

That said, transit should not just be a service for those that can’t afford to drive – a stigma which decades of car-centric culture has created. What transit should be, is a service that provides an efficient and effective means of mobility for everyone.

Canadian politicians talk a lot about the climate crisis and the need to induce a shift away from the private automobile to address emissions. They usually pass over the actual investments required to achieve this. Getting people out of cars and onto transit comes down to a very simple truth: people are not going to consider taking transit if their commute is going to take four times longer. A few bucks a day is not going to make them reconsider that choice. However, when a transit commute is made competitive with driving, many people reconsider their choice to drive, especially given transit is already a vastly cheaper option than driving.

There are also equity considerations outside of transit fares. Bad transit service limits access to services and opportunities for some of our most vulnerable. In more remote communities, those with chronic health conditions have to plan their entire routines around getting to a medical appointment on a bus that only runs twice a week, or instead rely on hitchhiking or getting rides from family members.

Even in larger urban areas, many shift workers and part-time student workers are locked out of valuable job opportunities. If someone is living in an area where transit ends service by 8 or 9 PM, that excludes a large number of restaurant and retail job opportunities that require employees to work until late in the evening, unless they can cycle or drive. This lack of access to opportunities is something that only investing in service will be able to address. A free fare policy only harms service in larger systems..

In short, a focus on universal free fares does not improve access for many disadvantaged groups who might need it, yet perpetuates transit as a service only for the poor. Investing in service improvements, meanwhile, directly improves transit as a service for everyone.

If not free transit, what else can funding provide?

We’ve considered direct operational issues, but the largest cost of free transit might very well be opportunity cost. What could the funding towards fare-free transit otherwise provide?

A look at Victoria:

Let’s start off small(er), in Victoria. The 2023 budget currently provides approximately 900,000 annual service hours. The budgeted cost per service hour for the current fiscal year is $108.37, and the budgeted fare revenue is $42,575,000. Based on those, fares bring in revenue representing an equivalent of almost 400,000 out of 900,000 annual service hours, or approximately 45% of current service.

Victoria’s current service hours per capita, a rough measure of transit quality, is sitting at about 2.25. If we simply increased Victoria’s funding by ~$40 million instead of making transit free, that measure could be increased to around 3.25. This is comparable to that of the Toronto Transit Commission in the City of Toronto, a would be a transformational improvement.

So what does 400,000 annual hours actually look like? Here are some conservative high-level estimates, ignoring the costs of purchasing new vehicles and other necessary capital investments. Of course the procurement of additional vehicles, building new yards, and improving infrastructure is an essential part of service expansion. But for transit to succeed, operational funding to pay for the cost of actually running service is critical and often overlooked by senior governments.

*Project*	*Service Hours Cost*
Expanding FTN Standards	100,000
24/7 service on frequent routes	60,000
McKenzie and Peninsula RapidBus	90,000
Airport bus	20,000
Two new FTN 24/7 routes	120,000
*Total*	390,000

Restoring and expanding Frequent Transit Network (FTN) service standards: 100,000 annual hours.

When BC Transit launched Route 95 with much fanfare, it did not actually travel any faster over the Route 50 that it replaced (no matter how much orange paint BC Transit splashed around). There’s a whole other discussion to be had on that (which we’re working on!), but arguably the biggest improvement was the introduction of a “15-for-15” service standard – 15 minute service, for 15 hours a day (7 AM to 10 PM), 7 days a week. With 100,000 hours, we can expand that service standard to all other frequent routes in the Victoria transit system, which would place 40% of Victoria’s population within a 5 min walk of a 15-for -15 route.

24/7 service, operating every 30 minutes, on all frequent routes: 60,000 annual hours. Of course there are some nuances here around increased cost per service hour due to overnight staffing requirements and labour contract rules, but for the purposes of this estimation we are just focusing on the service hour requirements themselves.

BC Transit’s proposed Peninsula and McKenzie RapidBus projects, operating 24/7: Approximately 90,000 annual hours total between the two.

This assumes minimum service standards of 15 min service during the daytime and 30 min service overnight, and does not include potential resource reallocation or other network changes that may occur as part of this expansion.

A direct Airport-to-Downtown Express service: 20,000 annual hours.

Introduce a brand new frequent route, with the above standards, from scratch: 60,000 annual hours.

Have you ever wondered why there’s an area with no transit service or wished that a frequent service existed where you live? For a fraction of the cost of what fare free transit would require, you can create a brand new frequent service route, completely from scratch. How about a route that already exists, but didn’t run frequently enough? You can get it up to a frequent service standard for an even smaller amount. Combined with the above improvements, we could implement two more new 15-for-15 routes with 24/7 service and still have 10,000 hours left over.

These are just some possible expansion initiatives. 400,000 service hours, or $42 million annually, is an absolutely transformational investment for a transit system the size of Victoria. In conjunction with other investments to improve bus speed and reliability, including bus lanes and transit signal priority, transit would become a much more appealing and equitable option for many people.

A large(r) system: Vancouver

For a larger system like TransLink that has an even greater dependency on fare revenue, the opportunity cost to provide universal free fares is even more stark. According to TransLink’s 2024 Investment Plan, they expect fare revenues to bring in approximately $654 million in 2024. This is now a much larger sum, and could similarly represent an otherwise transformational amount of investment. If applied to BC Transit, $654 million would be over 4 times the current annual provincial operating subsidy for the entire province! Under the same 2024 Investment Plan, TransLink’ expects their bus operations to cost $940 million annually. What could be done if they could increase their bus service hours by $650 million, or 70%?

As a refresher to the plans currently in TransLink’s Transport 2050’s 10 Year Priorities:

More than doubling bus service, including
- An improvement to FTN service standards from every 15 minutes to every 10
- A general frequency improvement on many routes to at least every 15 minutes, up from 30, 60, or longer
- Introducing 24/7 service on up to a third of all routes in the region, as well as major service span improvements to many other routes
- Introducing new service to areas currently not served by transit
Dozens of new BRT, RapidBus, and express services
A substantial increase in SkyTrain service, including extensions
A 25% increase in SeaBus service
24/7 HandyDART service

TransLink estimates their ongoing operational cost to all of the above priorities at about $1.2 billion annually. Using a $650 million budget just to implement universal free fares means ignoring existing chronic overcrowding issues, and forgoing expansion that covers a majority of Transport 2050’s 10 Year Priorities.

This also does not account for further fare revenue increases driven by new ridership. Analysts often talk about the “death spiral” of transit a lot, where a cut in service triggers a reduction in ridership, which translates to reduced fare revenue, which causes a further service reduction. The inverse is also true.

Service improvements drive increases in ridership, which increase fare revenue, which then can be used to invest in further expansion. Any demand created for transit in this way is likely to come from less sustainable modes of transport such as driving. This better aligns with policy objectives towards sustainable mode share targets.

Everyone should be able to afford transit fares. No one should ever have to choose between transportation and other basic human needs. However, universal free fares is not an effective way to make transit more equitable in BC’s expanding urban transit systems. Transit should be a service that is for everyone, and not just a last resort for those with low-incomes. To get people on transit, make it better, not free.

—