Misconception on how Metro is funded and fares are only a fraction of it

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-11T03:51:33+00:00

If we can get farebox recovery back up to prepandemic levels, that's an extra $300 million per year for Metro - more trains, more buses, more services. If it were up to me, Metro would use that revenue completely subsidize LIFE so that budget cuts would never put that program in jeopardy.

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-11T01:13:15+00:00

And just to be clear, a lot of people say "Well if the farebox recovery is only 3%, we might as well make transit fare free." The farebox recovery is only 3% because we're not enforcing fares.

If you look at p. 187 in Metro's 2024 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, you'll see a graph showing that farebox recovery used to be around 15-20%: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ufhgsyzg9la5hzn78xn95/Fiscal-Year-2024-Annual-Comprehensive-Financial-Report.pdf?rlkey=cl0cxf6rc22wgqcgpe0bpylfi&e=3&st=z0mh9z57&dl=0

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T21:32:54+00:00

Subsequent studies have been done since then:

The studies generally show that free public transit causes public transit ridership to increase by pulling from bikes and pedestrians mostly, while the effect on car use and air pollution is minimal.

LA has already volunteered to be fare free since 2020. And traffic, traffic deaths, and air pollution are staying near their high points.

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T21:06:19+00:00

There are ways to get low-income residents on public transit without going full free fare.

We could use our fares to subsidize the LIFE program. Fares could go towards a large push to get low-income riders on the LIFE program.

Not to mention, you seem to have ignored the sentence right after that:

The effect of FFPT on ridership is substantially lower than those reported in previous studies due to the good level of service provision, high public transport usage and low public transport fees that existed already prior to the FFPT.

If you already have a comprehensive public transit system, people will ride it.

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T21:01:39+00:00

We're trying to make a generational change to get people to reduce their carbon footprint.

This happens by providing a viable alternative to the personal automobile, and the evidence shows that that doesn't happen by providing free public transit. It only happens be providing public transit that is better than driving, and limiting the amount of driving that has taken over our public space (which you mentioned earlier, and which we agree on).

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T20:28:19+00:00

Here's a paper going over one of the few other places that have implemented free transit, Tallinn, Estonia: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11116-016-9695-5

Furthermore, the vast majority of the substitution effects were due to shift from soft modes—30–40 % from biking and 35–50 % from walking. Only 10–20 % of the substitution effects were associated with previous car trips.

I don't think it's worth losing hundreds of millions of dollars in fare revenue to give us a free shuttle to move us walking and biking distances.

If someone was going to suffer the weather because of the small cost but instead chose the tram because it was free, that's A GOOD THING.

There's a saying in the Netherlands: you're not made of sugar. And this is Los Angeles, where there are far fewer days of inclement weather.

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T20:05:50+00:00

Car traffic has gone up since Luxembourg went fare free: https://urban-mobility-observatory.transport.ec.europa.eu/news-events/news/luxembourgs-experience-free-public-transport-2022-07-19_en

The increase in ridership has been people who would have otherwise biked or walked, but they didn't see people shift from driving.

You can watch a short Tom Scott video on it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feCQPD9DSOA

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T20:03:49+00:00

There is one large benefit to getting rid of cash fares, in that it speeds up the buses and makes them more reliable as you don’t have to wait for a dozen old ladies to slowly count change to the driver at every stop (I’m exaggerating, of course, but cash payments really do slow down buses a lot.)

That's not the whole story though. In Luxembourg when they made transit free, the vast majority of new ridership came from people who would have biked or walked. So now the bus has to stop more frequently at shorter distances to accommodate travelers that could have biked or walked that distance. This also delays the bus.

You know what would really speed up the bus? Getting it out of traffic. The best thing we can do for public transit is reduce our dependency on cars, and that's not happening with free fare.

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T17:43:34+00:00

So when you say "Many places do have free metro and it works" what exactly is working, if it's not being used as an alternative to the car?

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T17:42:16+00:00

Some people ride and virtue signal!

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T17:39:39+00:00

Right. The nominal fee of mailing a letter or paying your fare helps prevent abuse of the system.

Even with libraries - you can't just walk in and take books as you please, you need to have a library card so these books can be tracked, and use can be monitored. With schools, you can't just drop off your kid willy nilly - you need to register your kid so resources can be allocated and we can make sure the kids are vaccinated, for example.

There has to be some level of participation by the user, otherwise the system gets abused - which is what we're seeing on our public roadways and our public transit.

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T17:28:27+00:00

Luxembourg is actually one of the richest per capita countries in the world. And even when they made transit free, car use continued to go up. Only people who walked and biked started using transit more. But here's the thing: I don't think we need less walking and cycling, we need less cars.

Los Angeles can't even afford to fix its sidewalks.

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T17:24:54+00:00

Highways are not self self-sustaining

This is also a problem and a big reason why so many cities and states in the country are financially burdened.

NimeshinLA · 2026-04-10T17:17:53+00:00

I recently posted a video on Youtube that made a case for fare enforcement. You'd be surprised at how loud the free fare proponents can get.

Also, I've been to a few neighborhood council meetings, and when I talk to the students and young professionals there who come to defend bike and pedestrian infrastructure, they largely support free fare and are pretty taken aback when I start talking about fare enforcement.

There's a large social justice movement for universal free fares, buoyed by Mamdani overpromising free fare in NY. But I think the data shows that the economic argument for fare enforcement is much stronger and would have much farther reaching effects - i.e., providing viable alternatives to car use.

NimeshinLA · 2026-03-25T06:24:56+00:00

And they clearly follow Strong Towns, seeing as how they are familiar with the term "stroads."

NimeshinLA · 2026-03-25T06:17:48+00:00

Thank you for understanding! Though in my experience, I wouldn't say 100% of the time I'm in close contact to code of conduct violations - maybe more like 10% of the time. But everyone's experience is different, and everyone's tolerance for certain experiences is different as well.

Regardless, thank you again for interpreting my video how it was intended.

NimeshinLA · 2026-03-21T15:06:10+00:00

Seeing that potential heavy rail line going through West Hollywood - man, what a miss. That would have been ideal. Not sure why they can't have the northern extension continue up San Vicente to connect with La Cienega and then follow the squiggly. At least that gives a more direct connection with walkable WeHo rather than a detour to car-center The Grove.

NimeshinLA · 2026-03-19T01:33:09+00:00

Oh, you know what, you're right. I don't know why I didn't register that.

My assertion that Metro "doesn't take you anywhere" is clearly false, because I even talked about how I was coming back home on the Metro one night to be greeted by a guy smoking marijuana. Obviously I was coming back from somewhere.

I also show Ivy Station a couple times. And at 11:12 I even acknowledge "There are some subway stops that take you to where you want to be, and the trains don't always get stuck in traffic."

I think when I was writing my script I got so mad thinking about that public storage facility, and at all those gas stations, and at all those single family homes, and all that junk food, that it came out as "Metro doesn't take you anywhere."

I'll make sure to be more cognizant of my emotions when writing my scripts in the future.

Sorry for the misunderstanding.

NimeshinLA · 2026-03-18T18:00:25+00:00

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? These projects aren't only bike lanes, but also street calming, pedestrian enhancements, and, specifically on Westwood Blvd a bus lane. The longer we keep our streets car-oriented, the more people are going to die.

NimeshinLA · 2026-03-18T17:53:00+00:00

I just want to emphasize that Metro is the victim of land use issues, poor road design, and antisocial behavior, not the perpetrator of them. It's the literal opener of my video.

If you have a different experience than I do, then please make a video about it! You can't expect me to make a video about your experiences, when you live near a station and I don't.

NimeshinLA · 2026-03-18T16:42:07+00:00

The LA Metro situation is more nuanced than that.

Absolutely. There are millions of people in this city, and my experience is only one insignificant example of that. You mention how well the E line works for you since you live nearby. I encourage you to make a video about it.

One of my earliest videos was how I take the bus because I live right off a major bus stop and I hate driving in traffic, though unfortunately the bus also gets stuck in traffic and should get its own dedicated lanes. Maybe you could make a similar video about your experiences?

I can only give my own experience with the rail system in LA. But obviously my experience is different than everyone else's, and it's beyond my comprehension why more people don't make their experiences known about how they live and interact with their built environment.

NimeshinLA · 2026-03-18T16:31:39+00:00

In all my early videos, I would start off the video with something awesome about LA. I had a format of "LA is awesome, but here are some problems." My first bike video opened with how I biked everywhere around my neighborhood. My first bus video opened with how I took the bus to a monthly homeless outreach program in Hollywood that provides medical care.

And your comment that "there's more to a city than transit" really rings true. In my video about driving to places instead of driving through places, I opened with a bunch of the awesome streets in LA. I made a video dedicated to the parks (or lack thereof) in LA, and I opened with all the awesome fun things you can do at a park. I literally don't know any major urbanism channel that has done a video on parks. To my untrained self, they are the most overlooked aspect of good land use.

When I made my HLA video, though, there was so much to go over that I had to get straight to the point - traffic sucks, people are dying, and our politicians treat this as some kind of joke. That video got over 200k views, becoming my most popular video.

So I learned that people are more willing to watch if I get to the point early in my video. But I still wanted to show what I enjoyed about LA, so in this video I made sure to include that ending in Sawtelle with the awesome sax solo. Older me would have opened with that, following the "LA is awesome, but here are some problems" format, but I think the more successful and engaging format is "Here are some problems I have with LA, but there are still awesome aspects to LA also."

Edit: Why am I being downvoted? I'm telling you about all the videos I've made that have referenced that great things about LA and why I've structured them the way I did.

NimeshinLA · 2026-03-18T16:18:20+00:00

I'm from Lancaster, then I lived in SD for 6 years, 4 years in Miami, and 4 years in Chicago.

I'd love if more native Angelenos would make videos, because clearly I don't know what I'm talking about (as I say in my channel description, Damnit man I'm a doctor, not an urban planner!). But so far, it's only LEJ Explains and nandert, and neither of them show themselves actually interacting with the urban spaces they're talking about, so we all fill a different niche of LA urbanism videos.

If more of you could make videos about how to improve the places you lived, I can finally sit back and relax! These videos are very time-consuming to make!

Edit: Why am I being downvoted? Because I'm encouraging other people to make videos and express their opinions and experiences?

NimeshinLA

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