Kudos to the MRT for the increased level of detail on the actual cost of operations of the EZ Rider Transportation System (Reporter: Stephanie Miller). The...er...money quote:
"Monthly EZ RIDER operating expenses averaged about $142,000, and user fees from riders cover only about nine percent of operating costs, according to the transit district."Actually, I calculate that user fees cover less than 6 percent of the operating costs ($100,000/$1,699,315 = 0.058) but let us not split hairs. Now, with just the expense information provided in this article we can do this:
| A | B | C | D | |
| Passenger Trips | 233,000 | 500,000 | 500,000 | 849,777 |
| Revenues/Fares | $100,000 | $214,592 | $500,000 | $849,777 |
| Expenses | $1,699,315 | $1,699,315 | $1,699,315 | $1,699,315 |
| Net Operating Loss/Total Subsidy | $1,599,315 | $1,484,723 | $1,199,315 | $849,538 |
| Local Tax Subsidy | $424,044 | $393,661 | $317,988 | $225,247 |
| State/Federal Tax Subsidy | $1,175,271 | $1,091,062 | $881,327 | $624,291 |
| Fare Revenue/Passenger Trip | $0.43 | $0.43 | $1.00 | $1.00 |
| Local Subsidy/Passenger Trip | $1.82 | $0.79 | $0.64 | $0.27 |
| State/Federal Subsidy/Passenger Trip | $5.04 | $2.18 | $1.76 | $0.73 |
| Total Subsidy/Per Passenger Trip | $6.86 | $2.97 | $2.40 | $1.00 |
| Percent of Expenses Covered by Fares | 5.9% | 12.6% | 29.4% | 50.0% |
This is just some playing around with the numbers.
Column A is what has been reported for EZ Rider operations from October 2003 through September 2004. The next three columns are "what-ifs?"
Column B: What if ridership more than doubled to 500,000 passenger trips?
Column C: What if ridership more than doubled to 500,000 AND the fares collected per trip (on average) more than doubled to $1.00?
Column D: Holding expenses steady, and assuming the full fare is paid by every rider, what level of ridership would be required for the tax subsidy required per trip to exactly equal the fare? In other words, how many riders would it take to get to the point where the taxpayer were only paying for half of the cost of each trip.
(All of these scenarios do something that is both wildly generous and unrealistic: They hold the cost of operations steady at $1,699,315 even though the ridership more than triples by the last scenario.)
CAVEAT: And a big one at that. These expense numbers were reported as costs of operations in the original MR-T article. If a large portion of these Local/Federal and State subsidies went toward the purchase of vehicles and other non-recurring type expenses then a re-calculation is in order.