Download this page in PDF formatOne of the pieces of the fare increase that has gotten a lot of press is that “peak of the peak” fares have been eliminated.
Uhm.
Yes and No?
The Good News is: yes there will not be a 90 minute window where you will be charged more than some other fare.
In terms of pricing?
The (mostly) Bad News is: just about everyone loses here.
Peak of the peak fare payers
Many of you will be paying more for the new Peak fares than you did for peak of the peak!
The average peak fare (by station combination) works out to a 10 cent increase over peak of the peak
57% of the peak fare combinations are more than the peak of the peak combinations (up to 55 cents more).
21% of the peak fare combinations work out to be equal to peak of the peak while another 22% are a nickle cheaper than peak of the peak fares.
Peak fare payers
If you were able to stay out of the peak of the peak commute time – the average increase in fares will be 30 cents. Some folks will be paying 75 cents more, some fares will only be 15 cents higher.
So, did peak of the peak go away?
The timing did. 1/5th of the station combinations have fares that will break even on the new peak versus peak of the peak… and you have the same price ALL rush hour.
(and ”The Church Lady” from SNL says “Isn’t that special?!”)
Another 1 in 5 station combinations will result in a nickle less than peak of the peak.
Everybody else: the majority of peak of the peak fare combinations AND ALL of the peak riders will pay more on July 1.
The online fare comparison tool will be available tomorrow.
Shortlink for this post: http://wp.me/p2dq5F-gV
If you are creating an average by taking every station pair combination (86×86) and weighting them all equally, then you are far over-weighting the long trips (those above the fare cap). Basically nobody is traveling from the end of one line to the end of another, so giving those the same weight as shorter trips or even trips from the edge to the core is misleading.
Think of it this way – if you look at Shady Grove alone, nearly every fare is going up (everything past Bethesda). But riders from Shady Grove aren't going to 50% of those station pairings (probably more). Nearly all riders from Shady Grove are going to somewhere else on the Red Line or one of the core stations on another line. Your calculation assumes that riders from Shady Grove are evenly distributed to every station.
You would need to get the ridership by station combination data (of course WMATA sucks and doesn't release it like BART does) in order to really say "Many of you will be paying more for the new Peak fares than you did for peak of the peak!"
Actually it isn't exactly 86 by 86 since I'm not dealing with fares from same station pairs.
As I note out several times, I am comparing station to station fare combinations. I'm limited to only looking at station combinations because, as you point out, Metro hasn't released any station to station traffic data.
I'm also not trying to project Metro income. The increases in station pairs are in some instances, though, much higher than the 5% that has been quoted by various news sources.
I would welcome the data necessary to make the comparisons more meaningful – but lacking additional input to render more accurate statistics – rather than wait for July 1 (like the mainstream media are) – imperfect information for the ridership fills the null space.