Beating the Fare Hike Blues

Eighty-one bucks is a lot for me. Despite what you may have heard, journalists’ salaries aren’t in the six figures, and the beginning of the month is also when I pay my rent. Others have already started to gripe about the fare increase, and not without reason: Even as agencies are making service more expensive, they’re reducing its quality and frequency. Over the next two years, Metro says it will cut 200,000 hours, of which a little less than half will be cuts perceivable to riders (the rest will be made up with “schedule efficiencies,” which I’m hoping doesn’t translate to “late buses.”) Metro has also started expanding the number of days it’s on a reduced schedule—cutting service to “holiday” levels, for example, between December 24 and the end of the year. Meanwhile, Sound Transit is now saying they can no longer build out the entire Sound Transit 2 plan that voters approved in 2008.

So what’s the good news? Riding the bus is still a great deal compared to owning a car. According to AAA, the true cost of owning a car—including gas, maintenance, tires, insurance, license, registration, taxes, depreciation, and finance charges—ranges from $6,496 a year ($541 a month) for a small car like a Nissan Sentra to $11,085 a year ($924 a month) for a four-wheel-drive SUV like a Jeep Grand Cherokee. With prices that high, I’ll take a $9 monthly fare increase over car ownership any day. Incidentally, according to the New York Times, the average annual cost of owning a bike is $390, meaning that my total transportation costs—augmented a couple of times a year by a Zipcar or a rental—are less than $1,500 a year.