{"id":265760822,"date":"2013-06-03T22:27:02","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T22:27:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=265760822"},"modified":"2013-06-03T22:27:02","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T22:27:02","slug":"its-a-classic-problem-of-sunk-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=265760822","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a classic problem of \u201csunk costs\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you’ve already purchased a car, there are big financial incentives to drive it. Image: Better Institutions<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

Today’s tangent comes from Streets Blog’s “The Big Leap From Car-Lite to Car-Free”<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\nI was thinking wouldn’t be great if we could model car use after mass transit use, there in front of your house is a free car and to use it you just have to plop down $25 for the first 20 miles (average daily cost and average daily travel distance rounded to nice numbers). Just think how many more would use a car more often with that model.\n<\/p>\n

\nWait, what? You think car use would go down if we charged per trip? Well that’s my point, why are we using this model to “sell” mass transit? When I moved to New York City they offered a discount if you bought tokens in bulk. And with a pocket full of tokens I was more likely to pick mass transit as my travel mode, that is to say I had already sunk my money into mass transit so I used it.\n<\/p>\n

\nBut here in Maryland it is very different, a single trip is $1.60 a day pass is $3.50, 30 cents more for what a ideal round trip should cost but our routes are so convoluted that a day pass is considered a bargain because you are going to have to take more than one line to get anywhere. – That is not selling mass transit as a viable option!\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd then there is the weekly pass, ideally if you took mass transit to and from work 5 days a week or ten trips that would cost $16 so for 50 cents MORE<\/b> you can get a weekly pass. Again only a bargain because of our poorly designed routes. – That is not selling mass transit as a viable option!\n<\/p>\n

\nFor completeness there is a monthly pass that is exactly the same price of 20 round trips. I really have to ask what is the incentive here for someone with a car to try mass transit? If you happen to live\/work someplace where one line will serve your needs there is no incentive to sink costs into mass transit, and if you live\/work someplace where you need to take more than one line so these options are a bargain but the wait and transfers are a nightmare so that is not an incentive.\n<\/p>\n

\nWhile we do need to un-spaghettize our routes we really need to offer a discount at least on the monthly pass to help put mass transit on the same playing field as owning a car. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve already purchased a car, there are big financial incentives to drive it. Image: Better Institutions Today’s tangent comes from Streets Blog’s “The Big Leap From Car-Lite to Car-Free” I was thinking wouldn’t be great if we could model car use after mass transit use, there in front of your house is a free … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “It\u2019s a classic problem of \u201csunk costs\u201d”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-265760822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mass-transit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265760822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=265760822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265760822\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=265760822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=265760822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=265760822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}