Here’s the pretty picture, or ugly picture, depending on how you feel about colors and cumulative bar charts.
Wednesday I posted some comparisons of transit revenue data from the NTD for big, regional agencies. I got some questions and comments, one being a comment from brilliant friend Shane Phillips, that LA Metro’s reliance on sales tax might not be as a bad as I suggested, granted that much of it is expended in capital improvements. I disputed this point, simply in that volatility can hurt your capital budgets, too, and I did raise the point that LA got much less from early Measure R implementation simply because it passed in the middle of the recession, and it took us awhile to climb out. During those months, we got much less take than forecasts suggested. It took us a good three years to get to forecast levels, and while Metro can use the funds, those early low months are painful–especially when R was set to sunset on us, and we got little out of the first two-three years.
Another concern came up about whose revenues I aggregated; I only did singleagencies. Brilliant friend Erik Griswald suggested that we should aggregate by geography rather than just agency. I don’t know about this. I see little evidence that different agencies within regions harmonize either service or budgets; agencies have separate budgets even if their service areas and spans overlap, and not all providers are full reporters for the NTD. Geography might be enlightening for things like comparing bases. You might compare total farebox take out of total travel base, for example for bus-only companies and rail-only companies in the same general area. But those are vastly different services with buses doing feeder work that rail services do for a smaller number of trips. Even then, though, agencies operate different service spans and coverage areas, which mean different revenue-mile and revenue-hour potential. Besides the conceptual problems, it’s also a mess given the way NTD reporting is done. You have to do the work to aggregate even by agency as they split by expenditure category and source. There is a lot of budget detail that agency aggregation hides; for instance, Miami Dade Transit gets general fund appropriations from both localities and the state. That’s really interesting information for budget nerds; it’s probably less interesting for people interested in transit just thinking where the money is coming from, which is what motivated me to start poking these data in the first place.
My own concern is a simple lack of confidence that I aggregated the categories properly. I think I did fine except for some chickenfeed categories, but nonetheless, I’d have to do a lot more checking work before I published these in a journal. I think I’d need a budget person to help sort it for sure.
Nonetheless, I figured I could do some with just LA providers, and it might be interesting. I know the providers a bit better here than anywhere else. I am still missing a bunch. I tried to get every agency that participates in TAP (I didn’t; some are under the “small operators” category, tho). It’s interesting but incomplete, with all the problems I figured I’d get once I tried to do this by geography. I’ve got the kitchen sink here institutionally and service wise, as well, including a paratransit provider for illustration (Access).
Sorry for the truncated names, but R has strong preferences about size, and for the locals who are most likely to be interested, the names should be obvious enough.
A better person would have completely consistent colors between yesterday and today, but I am a sad and sloppy coder and I didn’t save plot coding; I did the best I could. I did somewhat alter the small categories around “other” because with the tiny agencies, those become more important. Nobody here is reporting any toll revenue, so that category is gone, but I find that confusing. I checked the NTD stuff three times–I thought Metro got some revenue from HOT lanes. If they do, I don’t see it. Maybe it’s funneled through the state funds, and that’s where it shows up in the budget.
Also gone is the income tax category, we since don’t have any with these agencies, but oooooooo how I wish California would make that an opt-in option on income tax forms. It’s not the same as a big-base dedicated tax, but I think lots of people in California would be willing to chuck in $20 for transit voluntarily, and that could add up to a decent amount.
As to the “active capital investment program” suggestion Shane raised…that might be true with Metro, but many of these little, LA-area agencies do not strike me as having particularly active capital investment programs. I could be wrong, I suppose. They have to buy vehicles, and their real estate is as expensive as anybody else’s here. My suspicion, however, is that they rely on the sales tax because it’s there, and it essentially displaces other potential funding sources; you can, by comparison, see where other small providers in other states where sales taxes aren’t an option, they go with appropriations from general funds or some state fund. So my point doesn’t hold, either; appropriations can be even more of a white-knuckle ride in terms of stability than sales taxes, and you have the extra headache of dedicating lobbyist time to that in addition to policy measures.
The availability of sale tax revenue probably has enabled smaller cities to stabilize funding for transit and use their other local funds for other purposes. On balance, I’m guessing that is probably to the good. Probably. Sales taxes are easy for consumers to pay (the retailer has the cost of the compliance), have a nice big base, and tax foreigners living abroad (but visiting us) and resident noncitizens.
One counter, which I suspect Metro would make: because Los Angeles raises local funds with the sales tax, these agencies attract more Federal dollars–the flypaper effect. That can be true, too, but the Feds do not necessarily care what public finance tool you are using, as long as the money is there. So LA could go with market-rate parking charges and dedicate that to a fund, and as long as it went to a dedicated fund, that would work the same way for flypaper effects.
I’d need to do more work to be able to show anything solid about flypaper or displacement. This is only one year of funding, too, and it may just be that agencies that are seeing bigger lumps of money from the Feds had holdover ARRA funds or got lucky during one grant cycle.
Fun note: What do Metrolink and MARTA have in common? They would miss parking charges if those go away.
I’m reaaaaaaalllly sick of these data; I’ve scratched this particular itch, which is a passive aggressive way of noting that anybody who wants to see more should go play with the data themselves. 😊😊😊