All transit service is not created equal

Bus shelter in Brookland
Originally uploaded by rllayman

Many transit riders are complaining about the current fare increase proposals in that the increases are loaded onto subway riders, rather than the bus system.

This is expressed in complaints such as that by Dan Friedman of Silver Spring, in a letter to the editor in today's Examiner, don't really hold water. He wrote:

But it disturbs me to no end that they have the gall to threat a $1.60 round-trip increase for train riders while offering a zero round-trip increase for bus riders with a SmartTrip card identical to the one used for the train. Since I commute into DC each day from the Forest Glen Metro station, I am one of Metrorail's second-class citizens.

Although I agree with him that Red Line service has significantly degraded over the past few months--It's why more and more I prefer to bicycle. (Now if I could only get my girlfriend to be equally inclined...)

But Mr. Friedman is a first class citizen when it comes to the quality of the ride generally, when he takes the subway versus riding the bus.

No matter how you look at it, riding the subway is a premium service, and the cost for a basic fare doesn't reflect the difference in service, not only in terms of infrastructure, such as the depicted bus stop and shelter, sometimes the quality of the vehicle (although the average age of the bus fleet is now pretty young), but mostly in terms of the time it takes to ride the bus somewhere, which is much longer, especially if you just miss a bus, or if there is bus bunching, more mayhem on the bus from youths, etc.