Sometimes we encounter articles that use data as if they exempted the authors from explaining their assumptions about cities. When it comes to urban problems, the solutions to tackle them are numerous and not always compatible. It explains why there are so many different theories about which scholars, urban leaders, practitioners, etc., argue most of the time. Let’s consider transport for example. There is not one straightforward answer to the following questions: How should public transit be financed? What is a good fare for citizens in order to foster efficient public transit? What is, precisely, an efficient public transit?
Eric Jaffe, however, writing in CityLab, seems to have the answer to all of these questions and he assumes that everybody shares his point of view. Writing an article about the London public transit (http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2014/06/5-lessons-us-transit-systems-should-learn-from-london/373667/), he cuts short to any debate about public transit economic framework. Everything lies in his first sentence: “Public transportation in London achieves the sort of financial efficiency that most U.S. transit agencies can only dream of matching (…) a recovery rate of 70%”. He wants the reader to understand that a good public transit network is a network that gets a lot of revenues from fares and does not need help from public subsidies. Eric Jaffe makes this belief clearer later in his article: this system leaves “tax payers on the hook for only a slice” (revealing choice of vocabulary), “it won’t need any public subsidies”. Follow all kinds of figures to depict the revenue structure of TfL, the operator of this network, the great decreases in ticketing costs and the service improvement. The article looks detailed and informative. What it does in fact is take out all the complex mechanisms of transport pricing to give an oversimplified view of public transit. Exit social fares, right to transport, economy participation to public transport improvement, repartition of tax revenues (let’s remind ourselves that the car economy benefits heavily from tax revenues), etc. And let us welcome a nice and easily understandable scheme where the goal is to reach a 100% recovery rate by reducing costs and increasing fares that will be paid by sympathetic travelers. But by the way, where are the people in this article?
According to Eric Jaffe, “TfL has set an expectation in the minds of travelers, not to mention politicians, that fares must rise on an annual basis to meet costs”. It is partially true but is it enough to advise US transit systems authority to “make fare increases a routine”? Apparently, what is good for the transport operator budget automatically becomes a lesson to learn. I won’t comment on this “lesson” but I will point out the much paradoxical fact that Eric Jaffe never tells you how much a London ticket costs and by how much it increases. We know everything about the revenue structure but we don’t even know what a person pays for a ticket. The author might have good reasons for keeping secret that London has by far the highest fares in Europe, as proves the following map provided by UTP (http://www.utp.fr/images/stories/utp/publications/GART_UTP2012_Une_d_cennie_de_tarification_Rapport.pdf. Follow the link for a better view of the map).
His argument about the efficiency of the network suddenly becomes a bit less relevant. Likewise, there are a lot of arguments against the astronomic annual raise of the TfL fares. After another big raise in 2012, Rachael Holdsworth listed the different fares from 2000 to 2012 (http://londonist.com/2011/11/london-transport-fares-2000-2012.php and figures below). With an approximate annual increase of 6%, it would mean that prices double every 11 or 12 years . Obviously, travelers cannot cope with such an increase, despite the “expectation in the minds” and the optimism of Eric Jaff.
Not only does Eric Jaffe misses these crucial figures in his argumentation – price of tickets and annual increase – but, above all, he also overlooks important urban trends that largely explain the differences of recovery rate from a network to another. One of the main parameters of recovery rate is the spread of your network, and, corollary, the urban spread. In France, in ten years, the recovery rate fell from 39% in 2002 to 31.5% in 2012 (a low rate explained by high public subsidies and companies’ taxes, leading to a much lower price than in London and UK in general) (http://www.utp.fr/images/stories/utp/publications/GART_UTP2012_Une_d_cennie_de_tarification_Rapport.pdf). The principal explanation for this problematic decrease lies in the urban sprawl observed during the same period. In 2012, the public transit network reached 10% more people than in 2002, but covered 50% more area (cf the figure below).
The deterioration of the recovery rate is therefore mechanical. We suppose that the US public transit authorities will face similar problems. London, with its large pool of travelers on a relatively small area, may not be the best model, especially because the car is not a competitive mean of transport for many Londoners.
In conclusion, this article is partial in the assumptions made on the theory of public transit and partial in the data it brings to the attention of the reader. I believe the author should have justified the importance of the recovery rate in public transit networks and explained the political questions underlying this rate. The problem is that articles of this kind become extremely banal in the media. Sound data – all the data provided by Eric Jaffe is absolutely true – become a sufficient information for an article. The careless readers will be attracted to the nice bar charts and the detailed figures, as flies attracted to light. It is necessary to be reminded that good sources do not necessarily make an article good and that critical thought should always prevail, even when the data is convincing.
Complex Cities, between science and politics 