WBEZ’s Curious City has an amazingly detailed take on what it takes to operate buses here in Chicago: Fare Game: When do CTA Buses Break Even.
First off, they found great data that answers baseline questions of revenue and cost:
To answer Fred’s question, we have to determine what CTA buses earn, and compare that to what it costs to run the system. Most of the CTA’s expenses fall into one of two categories: 1) overall costs (fuel, driver salaries, maintenance, and administration); and 2) capital costs (the price tags for new buses). According to transportation figures which the agency reports to the federal National Transit Database, the CTA lines up fare collection data against its overall operating costs and excludes capital costs, since operating costs are where the bulk of the annual budget is directed.
The CTA’s overall bus costs added up to $764,280,757 in 2013 — the latest year for which data are available.
In that same year, CTA buses earned $298,824,494 just in fares, or 39 percent of what it spent on its overall costs. The remaining 61 perecent was mainly paid for with state and city subsidies deriving from sales taxes and Chicago’s real estate transfer tax.
That’s pretty stunning. 61% of our bus services is subsidized by our communal efforts in paying taxes.
Moreover, there is good evidence that buses are great public investments and that they are being stewarded in a efficient way at this time:
Interestingly, even the Civic Federation’s Laurence Msall says the break even idea is “not a reasonable expectation,” and the government needs to subsidize public transit in some form.
“There is a very strong argument to be made that if Chicago, if the State of Illinois was in better financial shape, that it should be investing more in the public transportation system,” he says. “We basically should be reducing even more the cost of riding the CTA to attract more riders or to expand the system.”
Msall says the CTA has struggled with inefficiencies in the past, but right now, he thinks, the system can’t get cheaper. It just costs too much to operate. It’s worth the price, because CTA buses earn their keep everyday by cutting rush hour traffic and improving air quality.
All hail Curious City and the CTA.