Will MTA Hike Rates Affect Commuter Behavior?

A train pulling into the Ossining, NY Metro North Train Station. Photo credit: USA Today.

Yesterday I mentioned that it is the Golden Age for mass transit use in the United States today, as 2008 set a record for the most people using mass transit. At present in the New York Metro region there is a proposal by the MTA to increase fares on commuter train lines by up to 33%. Every day the governor and state legislature play political hardball with the MTA, it becomes more and more likely that the proposed fare hikes will become reality. The question is how will these fare hikes affect the behavior of commuters? Will air quality suffer as a result of these fare hikes?

To answer this it’s useful to know, how does New York’s commuter train lines compare to other Metropolitan train lines in terms of expense? To calculate this I looked at how expensive it would be to ride the train from the central station to the terminal station on each line during rush hour and then divided this number by the total number of miles traveled by rail. The distance travel was estimated by google maps on a few train lines, numbers in red in the tables below represent estimated quantities. One could alternatively calculate the ratio at the first station serviced, midpoint or an average of all the stations serviced, but in this analysis the terminal station for each line was used.



Table 1. Comparison of New York Metro region train line cost per mile. The top group is the Long Island Railroad, the second ground is Metro North and the last group represents New Jersey Transit.

The Long Island Railroad cost an average of 22 cents per mile traveled, or 25 cents per mile traveled if you exclude the Montauk Branch. New Jersey Transit also averaged 22 cents per mile traveled, including the two branches that serve Rockland and Orange Counties in New York. Metro North, which serves the Hudson Valley and Connecticut averaged 27 cents per mile, the highest rate in the Metropolitan Region.

These rates are less than what the IRS considers to be the rate to operate a motor vehicle of 55 cents per mile, thus offering an economic incentive to use mass transit. However trains are often less convenient than an automobile it terms of scheduling and comfort, so the economic incentives must outweigh the comfort costs of using a personal vehicle to remain competitive. Assuming the MTA raises fares the projected 33%, the regional trains would now cost 29 cents per mile (LIRR or 33 cents excluding the Montauk line), 29 cents per mile (NJ Transit) and 36 cents per mile (Metro North). Given the falling cost of operating a vehicle due to declines in gasoline prices, will taking mass transit still be an attractive choice for commuters?

How would these rates compare to other metropolitan regions? The commuter lines in Boston average 20 cents per mile and in the Baltimore – DC – Northern VA corridor the average cost is 23 cents per mile (see the table below). As it stands the New York Metro regions cost of 24 cents per mile places it as the most expensive, but very close in cost to its neighbors. Given a 33% increase in fares across the board, New York would cost on average about 33 cents per mile, which is nearly 50% more expensive as other metropolitan regions.



Table 2. As per table 1, but here the top group are the commuter lines in Boston and the bottom group are the commuter lines in the DC-Baltimore-VA Metro Region.

This large increase in fares, coupled with declining gas prices will lead to additional motorists using the roadways to get to work each day. These additional drivers will congest an already taxed roadway system, leading to increased emissions of carbon dioxide as well as ozone forming pollutants. The increases in commuter fares are a direct threat to air quality in the New York Metropolitan region.

How Now Brown Cloud?

Brown clouds are not the sinister creation of a science fiction writer, but rather the name that atmospheric scientists have given to smog, soot and dirt clouds that obscure the Earth’s surface from space. Smog originates mainly from the burning of fossil fuels for transportation, but can also form naturally in some locations. Soot is found in the atmosphere as a result of wood or coal burning, or natural occurring forest fires. Some people explain these clouds to “pollution clouds,” but in truth these clouds are more complicated than that, sometimes being a result of man’s activities, but other times being wholly natural.

When you spend a lot of time looking at satellite images of the Earth as I do, you get used to certain features of the Earth looking a certain way. Sometimes, these features become obscured by a grey haze. Occasionally this grey haze becomes thicker and darker in color. This is what is referred to generally as a brown cloud. Brown clouds are common over India and Southeast Asia, especially in the late fall through early spring, where rapid industrialization has increased emissions from human activities.


The above figure, taken from NASA’s MODIS website, features Southeastern Asia. To the north of the image is Nepal and China, the mountainous terrain there is crisp and clearly brown in color. As you move south into India and Bengladesh, the surface becomes obscured by a grayish obscuration. The green of India and Bengladesh’s forests is barely visible. This is due to the presence of a so-called brown cloud, a cloud made of soot, smog and dust, most of which are due to human activities.

However these brown clouds are not only native to Asia, but can be found in the United States as well, as the image below shoes.


This satellite photograph, taken from NASA’s MODIS website, shows the Southeastern United States. Here a brown cloud is seen over Louisiana and Texas. The origin of this cloud, seen in the summer of 2004, were extensive forest fires in Southern Canada.

Scientists recently have been examining what exactly causes these brown clouds over Asia to form so regularly each year. Understanding this is important because these brown clouds can affect how much sunlight reaches the surface in these regions, affecting not only climate but crop growth. These clouds are also thought to interact with regular water clouds, changing the way the normal clouds reflect sunlight and how they produce rainfall.

The results of the scientists research are quite shocking, at least to me. The expectation was that a large portion of these brown clouds would come from fossil fuel combustion. The team of scientists report that around 2/3rds of the source material for the brown clouds come from biomass burning. In this region, biomass is used for home heating and cooking, along with burning of residual crops to produce fertilizer. This is an important finding, because it would allow for regional governments to address the issue of unclean home cooking and heating fuels, if they wanted to improve air quality.