Compared to a peer group of transit agencies in other cities, the Port Authority (PAT) had a cost per passenger in 2015 of $5.79, highest in the group.
That comes from the Authority examining itself; we did similar work years before by looking at data from the National Transit Database, which is where transit agencies submit data on finances and operations on an annual basis. That 2004 piece found PAT operating costs were 18% above the average. The piece in the article based on PAT’s group shows an average of $4.85, meaning more than a decade later PAT was 16% above the average.
A PAT spokesman said that it hopes its current contract with the ATU will lower health care costs and the fare changes effective this year will boost ridership (“…the agency believes reducing fares will draw more riders from outlying areas, filling more seats on existing routes and thus reducing the cost per passenger”).
For 2015, in the NTD stats, PAT provided 65.2 million unlinked passenger trips. It has a service area of 775 square miles and a service area population of 1.4 million. Some of the peer agencies have much larger service areas (Denver, Seattle, and Baltimore’s agencies cover more than 2,000 square miles) and PAT falls in the middle on service population (it is close to Cleveland, St. Louis, and Portland).
PAT’s 2015 NTD profile shows that it had $377 million in operating expenses; with 65.2 million unlinked trips, the resulting $5.79 as quoted in the article is found. If the flat fare change can attract ridership to boost the number of unlinked trips to 70.2 million, the cost per passenger could fall to $5.34; assuming operating expenses did not change. If the hoped for health care savings through the contract are realized ($11.2 million over the four year deal) and, assuming other factors in the budget will grow at about 3% per year, the budget in 2021 would be around $411 million. If ridership does not grow and stays flat at 65 million, the cost per passenger would be $6.32. If ridership grows by ten million unlinked trips at that budget amount it would fall to $4.78.
