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By brodiec (registered) | Posted January 20, 2008 at 23:35:32
As for area-rating, I agree with the sentiments expressed however would like to nuance them a bit. The first and most important point is that any public transit system has a mandate to service all residents regardless of their contribution to the tax base. An example I'd use is people with no income such as young people, students or those with disabilities. Regardless of where they live and that areas density they do not pay property taxes and therefore should get no service, right? Wrong. By that logic we should not service McMaster or any school that educates young people because those riders generally don't make a large enough income or have enough property to pay taxes.
Area rating, as implemented in Hamilton, doesn't make sense because it severely under-charges the suburbs while still providing service. However charging a flat-rate works under the assumption that sprawl never happens, that everyone pays taxes and that we could afford to provide a great quality of service via public or mass transit to the areas of low density. The problem is that as density decreases the cost of providing transit increases, yes we know this, but the demographic of people using transit in those places is unknown. It's a tad jejune and highly elitist to assume that we can expect everyone to pay equally into a system that will not service people equally.
It's more fair to insist on better city planning to prevent the cost of transit from being too high for the fare-box or tax base to afford. That's the disaster in Hamilton more particularly. And it's unfair to approach residents for the same rate that you'd pay in a highly serviced area with density as you would, say on the peripheral nodes of the HSR service area. To flat-rate the service overall because people should know better than to buy homes in the suburbs is elitist, smug and ignorant of the different socio-economic concerns of citizens. Rather than a correct and fair area rating system based on the cost of providing service and improving it.
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