Grand River Transit

[mpd618]

Public transit is a public service. We pay taxes to fund public services, including roads too (which certainly don't have 50/50 farebox recovery). Why is it that 50% farebox recovery should necessarily be a goal?

Because it sounds "fair" is my suspicion. I suspect the new council might revisit that goal for GRT's 2015-2018 business plan.

I'm not actually opposed to effectiveness goals for transit, but an overall farebox recovery goal is odd. There is competitive transit which is designed and able to attract high ridership, and there is transit which is mostly there to ensure most everyone has access to transit. Or rather, it's a spectrum. The two goals - ridership and coverage - are at odds when you have a fixed budget or a fixed farebox recovery target. But as a community, we have made the choice to run low ridership coverage routes in low density areas that will never be anywhere near 50% cost recovery. (For a good discussion of this theme, see the Human Transit book.)