Have you seen studies which look at how fare levels shift ridership ? It makes sense that keeping fares low or reducing fares would increase the number of people using public transport. However, it also makes sense that at certain points in the life of a family fares are not a determining factor in the choice to use a bus. If you have to get one kid to daycare, another to elementary school and a third to high school, it might just be so much easier to use your own vehicle(s). Same is true if at the end of the day you have to get kids to hockey, soccer, basketball, music lessons etc.
And how does one factor in the new federal government requirement for public servants in the office ? Ridership must be down compared to pre-pandemic levels when public servants were in the office 5 days a week. How much will in the workplace requirements increase ridership? Perhaps not a lot if one only needs to be in 2-3 days, since flexibility may trump the cost of parking.
It certainly seems clear that reducing service to save costs is not likely to put more people on busses. One of the reasons we cycled to work (and I recognize we are lucky that worked for us) was that public transit options were not frequent and reliable enough. Always hated being forced on the bus during winter when riding was too risky for those reasons.
Have you seen studies which look at how fare levels shift ridership ? It makes sense that keeping fares low or reducing fares would increase the number of people using public transport. However, it also makes sense that at certain points in the life of a family fares are not a determining factor in the choice to use a bus. If you have to get one kid to daycare, another to elementary school and a third to high school, it might just be so much easier to use your own vehicle(s). Same is true if at the end of the day you have to get kids to hockey, soccer, basketball, music lessons etc.
And how does one factor in the new federal government requirement for public servants in the office ? Ridership must be down compared to pre-pandemic levels when public servants were in the office 5 days a week. How much will in the workplace requirements increase ridership? Perhaps not a lot if one only needs to be in 2-3 days, since flexibility may trump the cost of parking.
It certainly seems clear that reducing service to save costs is not likely to put more people on busses. One of the reasons we cycled to work (and I recognize we are lucky that worked for us) was that public transit options were not frequent and reliable enough. Always hated being forced on the bus during winter when riding was too risky for those reasons.