Paying for Transit

 Just to be clear what this post is about: I'm not talking about whether we ought to pay for transit, or whether transit should be free. Go to Luxembourg if you want to try that. But generally speaking, others have done more on that than I'm prepared to do here. 

Rather, I'm talking about how we actually pay for transit, as transit users: how we go about providing our fare, proving it, etc. 

Because while I think generally there are some basic approaches that are standardized (fare gates/paid fare zones/conductor inspectors, for example, on trains, or pay at the front/pay before boarding for buses), there are nevertheless a lot of minor variations in how different cities and transit agencies do it that I think are worth highlighting, especially when seemingly minor changes make a big difference.

1. Make Your App Useable Or Ditch It

If you are going to have an app for your transit, please for the love of God make it work. While I'm glad to report that Milwaukee's app worked a lot better the last time I was there (as opposed to that post from Jan. 2025), it was still a barrier to use when it didn't work.

More broadly, though, there are small ways an app can be substantially less useful. I was just in Montréal, and Chrono would be dandy if I have an OPUS card already. But it can't sell you one, even a virtual one: it will only let you top up or add things to an existing card.

Yes, that may seem like a minor barrier; there are a lot of places to buy an OPUS card, plus if you're traveling temporarily you can buy "occasional" cards that don't require an OPUS at all--but then can't be on the app either. 

But those all require physical presence in Montréal; the defining feature (or at least one set of defining features) of an app is that it's something a hypothetical user of your system can download or access in advance of visiting and from a distance, precisely because of how apps and the internet work.

If your app isn't letting me do anything without having physically been there, or if it's seriously limited without that, then it's not only a missed opportunity, but it's going to give a (potentially false) negative signal to anyone from elsewhere trying to pay for transit. 

Let me be clear: paying for transit in Montréal was a breeze, for reasons I'll discuss more below. But Chrono gave a (fortunately misleading) major signal in the other direction when I realized that despite downloading it I still couldn't actually do much paying for transit without a machine in the city itself.

In fact, the one payment it could do is one that would have ended up costing me unnecessary money: I could buy a 747 ticket from the airport, which comes with a 1-day Zone A pass. But since I arrived Friday evening, my better bet (which the service person at the airport realized, which I appreciate) was a weekend pass, costing $5 CAD more but covering all the way to 5am Monday, thus saving the additional $11.25 CAD for both Saturday and Sunday.

So the app was actively making it harder to make correct and optimal payment choices.

Not a good look.

2. Mo' Ticket Machines, Mo' Ease of Use

Here's where I will compliment STM and the REM to the stars: it was never, ever difficult in Montréal to figure out how to pay for a ticket at a station or anywhere near a train.

Go down, find payment station, buy ticket. Merci beaucoup, c'est facile. 

This contrasts with, oh, let me just pick a system I'm familiar with at random, the absolute ridiculousness of trying to find a ticket machine near a Chicago Metra train.

Pictured: the only place I could get to let me buy a Metra ticket in Joliet: on the train itself, from the conductor.

I've encountered closed ticket offices, non-functional ticket machines, and ticket machines hidden a five minute walk through a busy station away from the actual trains themselves (looking at you, Chicago Union Station: why is there not a single ticket machine in the very obviously empty space right next to the departing trains?) or on only one side of a long island platform (come on 57th St. Station).

Entertainingly, due to the fairly reasonable Ventra app that Chicago has incorporated a variety of services on Pace, Metra, and the CTA into, it's much easier to buy a ticket on your phone than physically on the Metra--though God help you if you switch phones and don't have the physical Ventra card for future reference. 

Make it easier to buy a ticket, I'm begging you: I just want to pay you for my ride.

3. A Simpler Fare Is A Friendly Fare

Look, I get why WMATA has a complex, distance-based fare system. 

This above is in a different tax authority than this below:

And I didn't even take any Virginian pictures last time I was there, so even that understates the complexity of how DC as a metropolitan area has to figure out how to get its public transit funded. I get it.

But the easier it is for me to figure out what my fare will be, the easier it is for me to use the public transit, and therefore the more likely it is that I will actually pay that fare.

The same goes for transit modes: if I know that the light rail, the subway, and the bus will all charge me different amounts of money to go at different speeds to the same place, it becomes a tax on my mind to figure out which to take when and how.

Now, this can be balanced: a good day-pass, weekend pass, weekly pass, monthly pass, annual pass, etc. can help simplify things even if the occasional single trip is more complex. And that can be a good balance if you want your system to capture the difference between a long frequent trip that's costing you a lot of train time and personnel and the occasional tourist who is just taking in the touristy areas--or conversely between rewarding someone who is taking your system all the time while soaking the rich tourist trade. 

But at the core: the simpler the system of fares is to figure out, the more likely I'll bother, and thus the more likely you'll actually see that money.

What do you think? What does the place you use transit the most do right or wrong when it comes to payments? What would you like to see changed?

True Costs of Living

 The last section in this article on Tacoma made me think more about how cost of living estimates often misstate the "real" cost of living in a place.

Specifically, it made me think about how the "fifteen minute city" (which is the ostensible topic of the article as a whole) is fundamentally about reducing cost of living in invisible or semi-visible ways.

1. Commutes

The most obvious (and semi-visible) way in which a 15-minute city reduces costs of living is by reducing how far the average person has to commute. This is a cost in time (of course) but also a cost in, well, cost: with rare exceptions, the further you have to commute, the more you have to pay, whether in train fare, gas, or wear and tear on vehicles. Obviously these scale differently and may vary on the particular fare structure of a system or the difference in available routings, but at the very least shorter trips are not usually more expensive than long ones, and often much cheaper--even before you factor in lost time.

And of course you should do that. That time is valuable.

The other way in which a 15-minute city reduces commute costs is the one we briefly talked about with congestion charges: even if you yourself still work more than 15 minutes away, the more of your neighbors who work less, the less traffic you face, and the easier your commute is even if it stays the same distance.

If you live in the Loop, you don't need to go as far--but if you don't, it's still better for you to have your neighbors not also commuting to the Loop with you.

This doesn't change a traditional cost of living calculation, because the cost of moving a given distance (held steady to compare) doesn't necessarily change. But if you can reduce the distance you're commuting or increase the speed, the act of commuting becomes less costly, even if the per mile cost of a standardized commute doesn't.

2. Maintenance and Readiness

Another big cost of living that is hard to calculate changes in is the cost of needing to be ready to use multiple forms of transit, most notably the number of cars your household might need. Again, a traditional cost of living calculator is likely to give you the cost of a car, or of gas, or of both, held steady to make the comparison apples to apples. But a good 15-minute city reduces the need for an apple at all: if you can not have the car, then it doesn't matter if the car is more or less expensive to own or operate. Or if you can one car instead of two, or a fuel-efficient car instead of a behemoth, or any other way of reducing that car cost.

Even in semi-suburban Indiana, the bus is the cheaper option if you can use it.

This even goes for transit costs as well: if I can walk places, I don't need to expect to pay as much for transit. If I can pay by the trip because I'm using transit less rather than buying a monthly pass, my costs go down. If I can buy a single monthly pass instead of cobbling together three rides on three separate transit agencies because they weren't designed to operate together....you get the picture.

Good, integrated urban design means you don't need to have a car every day, which might mean you don't even need to keep a car in readiness for most days, which can create a virtuous cycle of cheapness without changing the actual cost of a car at all.

And don't get me started on the cost of maintaining and storing those vehicles--which is a separate cost not usually calculated in CoL calculations but definitely exists.

3. Time Is Money

I don't mean this in the above sense that saving time means saving money because your time is valuable, though that's true.

I mean that saving time in the rest of your life allows you the time to save money in it as well. Less takeout because you have time to cook; fewer doctors' visits because you have time to exercise (or build it into active lifestyles); less stress because you have the time to do things you enjoy or to make sure you get done the things you were squeezing out of your life.

If you have the time to sit here, you have the time not to worry about sitting here, and you'll feel better about yourself and your life.

So the cost of living can't just be calculated by looking at a basket of goods and comparing their prices (though that is certainly a useful exercise). Rather, it has to include what the city around you actually allows you to do--and how much of that basket (at what price point) you're actually using.

Costs and Cars

 This study from Forbes suggests that car ownership costs a lot of money, relative to using bikes in particular. I think this is correct, but also more correct in large cities like London (which it focuses on) and less true in places like the Quad Cities. And I want to talk a bit about why.

1. Increased Car Costs

Big cities tend to have big car costs: higher insurance costs (for many reasons), higher gas costs (often due to taxes), higher parking costs, even higher license costs (Singapore being the extreme example). 

Smaller cities and rural areas have correspondingly lower costs, so the gap is less extreme.

This guy costs less in the Quad Cities than he would in a city like London--to get, keep up, and use.

2. Increased Bike Access

Conversely, the bike has much greater utility in cities that actually support it. I got my local temple to install a bike rack (thanks, folks!) but it isn't standard for houses of worship, grocery stores, or pretty much anywhere else you go in places like the Quad Cities to have bike parking--much less general public bike parking like you'll see general public car parking.

This is unusual.

This is unheard of (well, obviously it's heard of in Amsterdam, where I took this photo, but you know what I mean).

And that's just talking about what you do with the bike once you get there: the bike access to places is much harder in places like the QCA as well. 

My kingdom for a separated bike lane!

That makes the lower costs of bike use much more accessible, since it means that someone who wants to use a bike instead of a car actually can.

3. Social Expectation

And of course, part of why there isn't the bike infrastructure in places in the QCA that there is in bigger cities is that a car is just expected here, and a bike isn't. London may be struggling to get as many bike commuters as it would benefit from, but it's also doing a lot to improve that (hence the CityBracket win after all).

The QCA has implemented improvements, and the recreational biking around is definitely good and getting better, with long bike lanes on both sides of the river and along Duck Creek in Davenport. But for true bike replacement, it's not even really in the realm of possibility. 

Trust me, I'm trying.

I often bike to work, bike to get groceries, bike my kids to school, bike to services--but I can't bike everywhere, every day, safely, and do what I need to do without a car pretty frequently, because the social expectation is that everyone has a car, so everything is built around that.

This is one of the ways in which mass transit and bike infrastructure are mutually advantageous: both shift the baseline expectation of car to one of not necessarily having a car, which means that the world bends more freely to allow life without that particular kind of vehicle.

London's excellent transit creates space for better biking; similarly, Amsterdam's better biking creates mental space for better transit. They're co-constitutive.

That creates the great puzzle of a cityscape like the QCA: how do we go from neither to either, or both?

Well, the main thing I'm trying is just actually using what's here--biking where I can, using the bus when I can, and so on.

But community organizing--bending social expectations by actually talking to each other--is a key component as well.

And if you can get the local government on board like London has, well, that really kickstarts the process.