TriMet board considers first adult fare increase since 2012

The TriMet board will soon vote on whether to increase regular bus and rail fares. The proposal would raise adult 2.5-hour fares and LIFT paratransit single tickets from $2.50 to $2.80. Youth and honored citizen fares would increase from $1.25 to $1.40. Monthly Hop Fastpass costs and fare caps would not change.

If approved, this would be TriMet’s first adult fare increase in more than 10 years. The agency says it’s necessary to keep up with rising operation and service costs. However, an equity analysis found that the proposal would impose a “disproportionate burden” on low-income riders.

We’ll hear more about the proposal from TriMet’s Executive Director of Public Affairs JC Vannatta. We’ll also hear from Ellie Gluhosky, campaign organizer for the environmental justice group OPAL, which has been organizing against the fare increase.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: The TriMet board, which oversees public transit in the Portland Metro region, will soon vote on whether to raise fares. There would be a $0.30 increase on adult fares and LIFT paratransit single tickets, meaning from $2.50 to $2.80. Youth and honored citizen fares would increase from $1.25 to $1.40. Meanwhile monthly Hop Fastpass costs and fare caps would not change. This would be TriMet’s first adult fare increase in more than a decade. The agency says the increase is necessary to keep up with rising operation and service costs, but the agency’s own equity analysis found that the proposal would impose a disproportionate burden on low income riders. We’re going to hear from OPAL, Environmental Justice Oregon, about this in a few minutes, but we start with Executive Director of Public Affairs JC Vannatta. JC, welcome back to the show.

JC Vannatta: Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Miller: Thanks for joining us. Why haven’t adult fares increased since 2012?

Vannatta: That’s a very good question and I think that’s one that we have thought a lot about in the past few months, why we actually haven’t increased it. I will say when our strategic financial plan actually maps out that we are supposed to look at it each year if we should raise the fares? And this year we actually did. Our board really dug into our financials and looked at what’s ahead and said to bring forward a proposal around bringing a fair increase to the public. And we’ve been doing a lot of fair outreach around that.

I would say there are a number of reasons why we’re bringing it forward right now because as you can imagine, in the past 10, almost 11 years, the costs for us of our operational costs have gone up 37%. Tires are up, fuel is up, even our parts on our buses and trains are up over 10-25%. And I know that we’re all seeing it when we look at our own water, sewer, gas, electric bills and it’s always one of those things when is the right time to raise fares. But I would note that we’ve been holding off on a fare increase for a long time. It’s been shouldering the increase in our operational costs and it’s only gotten worse because of the pandemic. Luckily we’ve been using one-time only federal funds to kind of backfill those fares, to prevent major cuts, but that money will soon be going away come July 2024.

I would also note that we’re really looking at how to fund our ongoing state of good repair projects. If you think about it, our Max Blue will be 35 years old soon and we have to replace trains and track components. It’s really one of those things that we’re looking at. How do we afford some of the state of good repair projects that we need to help avoid delays across the system and to keep our riders moving?

And one final thing I want to say and then I’ll stop, but one of the things that we keep hearing from our riders is they want more service. We just embarked on this amazing and magnificent planning project we called Forward Together where we involved communities, jurisdictions and all we heard from them was that they wanted more service. And we actually have a plan to bring service closer to 50,000 more residents, bringing weekend service, making it available to 100,000 more residents, providing more frequent service and making it easier to get to jobs in 45 minutes or less. We have said that we would use the value of this fare increase to not only do the things that I’ve made mentioned above just before but to help respond to our riders by expanding the service that they’re asking for.

Miller: What percentage of your revenue comes from fares?

Vannatta: At this point in time, I believe that we are getting about 13 to 14% of our overall revenue from theirs.

Miller: Given that, and given the fact that there obviously has been pushback about increasing this part of your revenue, why not focus on increasing the other 85 or so 87%?

Vannatta: That’s a really good question. And I would say that delaying the fair increase isn’t one that we want to do because when we sell our bonds, our bondholders look at us having a strong diverse revenue source. So relying too much on federal or state funding could hurt our AAA bond rating. We have a AAA bond rating and anything that affects our bond rating could make future loans for capital projects more expensive. So making sure that we have these diverse funds and fair revenue being a piece of it, we want to make sure that it is, it is stable and it is growing. And when you look at our fare increase, we’re only asking for a small increase in the grand scheme of all of our revenue sources.

Miller: You did find in your own equity analysis that this proposed increase, which as you’re calling modest, nevertheless would have a disparate impact on People of Color and low income riders. How do you plan to mitigate that?

Vannatta: So we actually have a number of mitigations planned and they’re actually part of our proposal. You had made mention in your opening comments about not increasing our monthly passes or fair caps for our honored citizens, youth and adults. And I think that people don’t realize that our fare increase will actually affect mostly our infrequent riders. If there is someone who’s using it every day, they will actually reach that fair cap every month.

I don’t necessarily know if you or your listeners know how our system works, but essentially if you’re a frequent rider, you’re paying for your monthly pass per tap. So when you walk up and you pay $1.25, let’s say you’re an honored citizen, you tap once in the morning, tap twice in the afternoon, you’ve paid $2.50 toward your monthly pass. And if you continue to use it every day, once you’ve reached $28 for an honored citizen fare, you’re capped out and the rest of your rides are free after that for the rest of the month. And so with us even increasing it to $1.40 for a single fare for an honored citizen, you’ll actually reach that $28 cap sooner in the month, and you’ll actually get more rides. So that’s actually one of the mitigations is holding our monthly caps perhaps where they’re at so we do not hurt our most vulnerable people and frequent riders the most. We continue to provide a 50% discount for our LIFT paratransit rides. So we’re staying there. We plan on expanding access and registration for our honored citizen reduced fare. That’s getting people aware of our low income fare program and really extending the honored citizen reduced fare registration for new and renewing participants to three years, which is huge for us.

Miller: I should tell people, because this phrase probably should be defined, honored citizen, the reduced fare, it’s for seniors, aged 65 over, people on Medicare, people with disabilities and people who qualify based on income.

Vannatta: You are absolutely correct.

Miller: I want to go back to the broader point you’re making about the financial situation and one of the big pieces here is the federal pandemic support, the one-time support that is evaporating pretty soon. If this increase does go through, is there still a chance that there’s going to be an operating deficit in three years?

Vannatta: I would say no, there will not. And what it does is it pushes our operating deficit out. And I believe at this point in time that our operating deficit is around 2029. This buys us time. Our board is really looking at doing their fiduciary responsibility when it comes to making these decisions now so that we can have more time to address that financial operating loss in the year 2029. So I think that what’s important for your listeners to understand is this small fare increase does help essentially put off that financial operating deficit till 2029.

Miller: And finally, it’s been more than three years now since the start of the pandemic when ridership dropped dramatically, but ridership is still down. Is it something like 40% below pre pandemic levels?

Vannatta: That’s correct. We are,

Miller: How do you plan to increase that?

Vannatta: There’s a number of ways and we’re actually about 62% of pandemic ridership and it continues to grow and we are really focusing on three things. We’re focusing on our safety and security and we are doing a lot around our safety and security. We have added more people and we’ve actually doubled our non-police and unarmed presence. We are doing welfare checks on board our trains and buses through a multidisciplinary team. And we’re seeing results in growing ridership because there are people on board buses and trains with some inappropriate behavior and we’re working to curb that.

We’re working on cleanliness and we’re working on bringing our system back to a state of cleanliness that people have asked for and that they deserve. And I would also note reliability. We’ve actually had some buses pass over some of our riders and we apologize for that because some of our buses were too full or some buses never arrived. And that really had to do with our operator shortage, which I know that you’re very familiar with and that we are doing very well in hiring our operators. We’re bringing on more operators every three weeks. We are putting out a reliable service that people can depend on. And all three of those factors working in tandem, I think people are starting to see it because we’re seeing it in the ridership results.

Miller: JC Vannatta, thanks very much.

Vannatta: Thank you so much.

Miller: For another perspective on this, we’re joined now by Ellie Gluhosky. She is a campaign organizer for OPAL, Environmental Justice Oregon, which has been organizing against the fare increase. Ellie Gluhosky, welcome.

Ellie Gluhosky: Thank you so much for having me.

Miller: What have you heard from community members about this proposed increase?

Gluhosky: It’s not really just what I’ve heard, it’s what TriMet has been heard through their own community outreach including community members giving testimony at the board of directors meetings. What we’ve heard, by and large, is that the community, especially folks who are transit-dependent, are not in favor of this fare increase. We think it sets a dangerous precedent for the environment that we’re in right now, we’re facing a climate catastrophe. We know that the transportation sector is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions and the decisions we make right now at a policy level have really long term impacts and by making transit less accessible, it just sets a dangerous precedent for the future and health of our community.

Miller: There has been a more than 30% increase in consumer prices in the US since 2012, wages have gone up broadly a similar amount on average. Why should the price of transit stay the same?

Gluhosky: Transit is, by and large, a public utility. It’s a human right. It is something that in my opinion, in OPAL’s opinion, something that we shouldn’t have to pay for in general. The ability to move around freely in our town is a basic human need and a basic human, right? We also already pay for TriMet, regardless of, if we pay fares, we pay through our taxes. So when TriMet we ask for a fare when we get on the bus, they’re essentially double dipping into our pockets. So the fact that fares exist at all, I think is problematic but in this case, increasing fares is definitely the wrong direction for what we need to do to protect our community.

Miller: What do you make of JC Vannatta’s argument that the vast majority of riders, he says, are not actually going to be paying more in the end anyway? Because once they get to the same monthly cap, they are not paying any more than they’re currently paying.

Gluhosky: I, of course, think it’s great that the monthly fare capping is not increasing. I think that’s great. However, I think that relies heavily on the understanding that the majority of riders use a Hop card to pay for fare, which is not necessarily true. We know there’s a large portion of folks who are commuting and using the bus and taking the MAX who either have never been able to access the hot pass system because it is an inaccessible system. It’s primarily in English so that leaves out a lot of non-English speakers from even getting access to the Hop pass system and just  the barriers for getting a Hop card make it difficult for some folks to even get on that system.

So this argument that the monthly fare cap is like the be all, end all, fix it strategy for this fare increase is not. It’s a flawed argument because it’s assuming that everyone who pays for fare uses a Hop card and that’s just not true. And also again, it does not get at the root cause of harm of why a fair increase is just again, a dangerous precedent to set in general. And so, yeah, that’s how I would respond to that argument.

Miller: And it’s worth saying that not only is OPAL saying now is not the right time to increase fares, but for a long time, your group has said transit should simply be free, right?

Gluhosky: Yeah, that’s correct.

Miller: So where do you think the rest of the money should come from? And as we’re talking about, we’re talking about 13% of the current revenue, that’s what fairs contribute, but we’re looking at a deficit in something like three years, they say if there isn’t much of an increase in overall revenue. Where do you think that needed revenue for the increase in costs should come from?

Gluhosky: Yeah, I mean, we absolutely recognize that TriMet is facing really uncertain financial circumstances in the future and I don’t want to see a decrease in service. I understand the implications of a deficit and I do not want that to happen. So I think that’s an important thing to just say that we would definitely recognize that TriMet is in a sticky situation here with their finances.

What I think is like the main point here though is that a fair increase is in no way a solution to that deficit. JC mentioned that briefly, but I think it’s important to just reiterate that at best, this fare increase is going to stave off this deficit for one to three years, which is just a band aid on a bigger issue. What we’re recommending and what I think needs to be done is seriously considering external funding sources that maybe are not things that have been funded with before. JC also mentioned wanting to really diversify the funding sources that TriMet relies on and if they’re going to do that, they need to look, again, to these external funding sources that maybe have not been explored.  If they are not able to do…

Miller: What do you have in mind when you say an external funding source?

Gluhosky: So right now, the Portland Clean Energy Fund is up for review right now, which is like a big chunk of money that’s gonna be going to projects and departments in the Portland metro area that will help to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. I’ve been at those public hearings, I haven’t heard from a TriMet staff person at those meetings of whether or not TriMet is going for those funds and if they are. What are they going to use those for? So that’s an example.

Another example would be exploring getting access to tolling revenue. I know we’ve had a lot of big conversations at the state level of what a tolling strategy or a pricing strategy looks like in the next three to five years. And I would be curious to hear if TriMet is willing to go for those fundings. I know there’s some legalities in the Oregon Constitution, but the point is, it has a government affairs office and they need to be really flexing that lobbying power at the state level. And in the meantime, we’ve identified the payroll tax which TriMet is primarily funded through, if that payroll tax was increased on very high salaries, that would not only make that tax more equitable, but it would also bring in a massive amount of revenue that could not only subsidize fares but would also leave extra money for labor and electrification of the bus fleet. I’m just curious why that has not been a strategy that’s being explored at TriMet. We just think like the strategy to solve this financial issue, TriMet not only needs to secure long term sustainable funding, but they also need to be exploring funding that is not at the direct expense of rider accessibility.

Miller: Ellie Gluhosky, thanks very much.

Gluhosky: Thank you.

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