Zones vs Flat Fares: What’s the Better Transit Fare Scheme?

public transit has its age-old debates trams versus buses elevated and underground but perhaps no debate is quite as contentious even among people who don't watch Transit YouTube videos as the one between Zone fairs and flat fairs so let's talk about the facts and how these different Fair models stack up as well as how we can drive towards the ideal Fair system for a Transit Network hi my name is Rees and I make videos about Transit and the tickets you use to ride it so what is a flat versus a Zone Fair well it's all in the name a flat Fair system is one where you pay a single price to go as far as you want within a system it's flat the best example of a flat Fair system is the New York City subway where once you tap into the system you don't have to tap again and you can go as far as you want there is no tap out at the other end of your journey when you're exiting the station because the length of your your journey doesn't matter contrast this with a zone-based fair system like the one used in London in London you tap in both when you enter the station at the beginning of your journey and at the end of your journey when you exit the station and then your fair is calculated based on how many concentric zones you cross during your trip the difference between these systems is perhaps most Stark when you look at long Journeys in New York you can ride over 50 km from Far Rockway to the north of the Bronx for just $29 90 the same price as to go a couple blocks in Manhattan whereas riding the entire length of the Picadilly line from Heath Ro Terminal 5 to the other Station cost significantly more and you're not even going quite as far once you recognize the difference between these two Fair models the New York system feels very freeing travel as far as you want with no premiums meanwhile in London you probably consider the distance of your journey before you set out because a longer journey is going to cost you significantly more money traditionally speaking the New York flat Fair model has been seen as more Equitable since people traveling from far-flung destinations don't have to pay more to travel on public transportation unfortunately though this assumes that every city has the exact same wealth distribution where people who are less affluent are living further away from the city which often isn't the case but it's not quite so simple if you take transit a lot having to pay the exact same Fair every time you travel might not actually be very Fair especially since most trips people take aren't going to be spanning the entire city New York's model actually seems very well adapted for the 9 to5 commuter who heads into the city in the morning and out in the evening and has to pay a flat Fair two times compare this to someone who might go into the city in the morning for school and then go to a gym and then go to work and then go out with friends and then go back home this person might not travel as long as that commuter making two trips but they're going to pay way more fairs and flat fairs can be kind of sneaky as well for example Paris has flat fairs on the Metro which mostly serves the affluent City Center but the second you want to travel into the suburbs on the rear there's a zonal fair system that means people who mostly travel by Metro get to travel as much as they want on a single Fair while people traveling out into these Suburban zones need to pay more and more to go further and further truth be told the real difference isn't between flat and zonal systems but between flat and pure distance-based fairs a purely distance-based Fair system is one where the fair is calculated based on a complex table that looks at the distance between any given pair of stations traveling between any two stations is often going to cost a different amount based on the different distances between the different stations and that means as you travel along every station you go incrementally increases the fair price a little bit so as it turns out the zone system is really a hybrid between flat fairs and a purely distance-based system with a zone system you effectively have a local flat Fair area which is your Zone and then distance-based fairs over longer distances but in bigger increments because you have zones rather than individual stations put another way a fully distance-based Fair system is effectively like a zone system where every station gets its own zone now to many myself included fully distance-based fairs seem like a good system you pay for exactly how far you travel the same way that someone with a car pays for exactly how much fuel or electricity they use but the problem here is this system can make using Transit and buying a ticket quite challenging since it needs to be between two particular destinations this system is particularly challenging because a lot of people have a couple stations that might be near them and so if you want to travel between these stations around you to various other stations you might have to calculate tons of different Fair combinations to figure out how much you're actually going to have to pay a complexity that wouldn't exist with a zonal fair system so because of the complexity and sort of sort of personnic of an entirely distance-based Fair system if you want to do battle with cars a zonal fair system seems like the more simple option but zones aren't perfect at least not vanilla zones and that's for reasons that you realize almost immediately if you start living in a city that has Fair zones you see in a zone-based system there's frequently people who end up losing out because they live near the edge of a fair Zone and thus to travel a short distance they might have to pay an incrementally much higher fair this can create a lot of of problems with the logic of the fair system because sometimes someone can pay less to travel in One Direction than another because One Direction is within a Zone and One Direction crosses a boundary this can be fixed in some cities where there are strong natural divides like in Montreal for example where there is a river around the island that defines one of the fair zones but those divides don't always exist and with a purely distance-based Fair system if you travel less far you pay less money that being said this issue with Zone based fairs can be fixed fixed fairly easily by giving people a higher than one zone base fair so instead of having the option to buy a fair that is just a single zone everyone has to pay for a minimum of two zones and that means people living near a boundary can always travel at least a little while in any direction without crossing the second barrier and having to pay incrementally more but I imagine you come here because Reese just tell us the best system but the reality is there isn't a best system there are many options every Fair system has benefits and tradeoffs as I said earlier I think it's often touted that flat Fair systems are more Equitable or fair but I think that's rarely the case the reality is that traveling over long distances on a flat Fair never makes sense because the difference in trip length between one person and another is going to be so great and so in a lot of places with flat fairs like Toronto and New York what you really end up getting is a flat Urban fair and then drastically higher fairs for Suburban trips and often much less organization because it's a deao zonal system not an actual zonal system with predefined zones instead of being able to say hey this is a trip from Zone 1 to Zone 4 it's hey this is a trip from the New York subway to the Long Island Railroad to a local transport operator and it just becomes extremely confusing on the other hand fully distance-based Fair systems fall prey to making Transit a bit too complex and costly to use it isn't a bad idea to give people a little more flexibility with their travels allowing them to go from anywhere within one zone to anywhere within another Zone traveling from one general area to another and so I think I and a lot of other people have landed on the idea that big zones low fairs and a strong incentive to buy a pass are the best system for Transit fairs such a system is basically what exists in Berlin where everything within the ring Bond and the ring Bond itself are the inner Zone everything on the inner suburbs is the second Zone and the third Zone makes out the outer suburbs and the airport this system does a ton of things right it allows you to travel on any Transit mode Within These zones you've paid for except for highpe speed trains from any operator it also incentivizes local trips while making longer trips incrementally more expensive and probably most importantly it provides affordable passes so most people are on a pass and don't really have to think about where they can travel or where they can't travel on a day-to-day basis Montreal has actually adopted a similar zonal Fair system to Berlin in recent years it's just implemented in a much Messier way and that's a good reminder that zonal fair systems can often act a lot like flat Fair systems Montreal feels like a flat Fair system for a lot of people because the island of Montreal where a lot of people live is entirely within one zone in cities like London or Toronto monthly passes effectively don't exist which means everyone generally gets charged for every single trip kind of the same issue that divides distance-based and a zonal fair system in both a zonal fair system and in a transit system that focuses on passes rather than single fairs you sort of give something for free to the Riders extra trips to encourage them to use public transit because we acknowledge that's a good thing that's why the model used in Berlin and so many other cities around the world is so good it encourages a predictable flow of revenue for the transport operator because people are encouraged to buy passes but it also encourages people to use Transit lot because once you have the pass you you might as well get your money's worth of course this system only works because the passes aren't too expensive the second you have to start calculating whether a pass is worth it or not people stop getting passes and that predictability is completely gone at the same time by not completely abandoning the zonal system Berlin's Fair system means that people think about how far they're traveling and try to live closer to their destination well in London it's used to try to control congestion in the dense City Center by encouraging travelers to avoid Zone one the city center by giving them orbital Transit options like the overground and lower fairs essentially the fair models in Berlin and London are a bit more honest about the transport capacity and the density of the Cities it costs more to build infrastructure in the city center and it cost more for Transit operators to run trains out into the suburbs and so passengers paying a little more for these Journeys does make sense and I think the effect that these Zone systems have on people's mental perception of the city is helpful as well it encourag urges people to think twice about living in some farf fling suburb because they'll have to pay more on the train to get into the city because of this people in London and Berlin often think about the city in terms of what Transit Fair Zone they're in for example in Berlin being inside the ring Bond and being kind of in the city center in zone a and in London being in central areas is being in zones one or two of course ultimately no fair system is perfect but understanding the inherent flaws and trade-offs of different systems can help you push for better in your own own City it's really valuable to understand how fairs in Berlin both encourage density but don't punish people for using Transit a lot and that can help us create transit systems which are more usable and more attractive for Riders thanks for [Music] watching [Music] n

Channel: RMTransit

Views: 64,594

Keywords: transit, transportation, rail, railway, railfan, public transit, public transport, public transportation, train, subway, metro, underground, rail transport, urban planning, berlin, montreal

Id: zkWiFfnLd3w

Length: 11min 37sec (697 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 05 2023