Opinion: Keep Athens Transit fare-free forever

Since my days with Athens for Everyone, I’ve been an advocate for a better-funded transit system that goes more places, more often while not relying on fares for revenue. I’m sure it comes as no surprise when I say I support the current model of paying for transit expenses primarily through TSPLOST sales taxes. This model is sustainable and could fund transit operations fare-free into the indefinite future.

But there are some on the ACC Commission, perhaps a majority, who are planning to start charging fares again. For example, Commissioners Dexter Fisher, Ovita Thornton and John Culpepper have all voiced this opinion in recent years.

The pro-fare sentiment on the commission gained momentum recently with the audit ACC Internal Auditor Gavin Hassemer completed of Athens Transit. In the audit, Hassemer pointed out that Athens’ zero-fare structure was unusual in Georgia and he argued that commissioners should take another look at the costs and benefits of charging fares.

There’s already so much I want to say in response. First, if commissioners want to take an in-depth look at transit funding in Athens and the benefits of the current zero-fare structure, I’d be thrilled. By all means, they absolutely should! I have no doubt that fare-free will ace any comprehensive cost-benefit analysis.

Fares are just about the worst possible way the local government could be raising money. While fares do raise more money than they cost to collect in Athens, the overhead cost is tremendous. About a quarter of the money raised is wasted on farebox purchases, repair, ticket printing and so forth. The other methods Athens has to raise money – sales and property taxes – are much more efficient. Sales taxes cost the local government absolutely nothing to collect (because the state government does it for us), and property taxes have a minimal cost (about 2% by my estimate).

Furthermore, fares tend to sabotage the core purpose of transit systems, which is getting people where they want to go. Raising fares lowers ridership; it’s a well-known fact among transit experts. At the same time, lowering fares tends to boost ridership. When a system goes fare-free, ridership tends to go up by 20% to 60%. If Athens Transit re-instituted fares, ridership would undoubtedly fall.

Our bus system needs revenue, but why would we choose the one option that depresses ridership when it also has a high overhead cost?

Of course, there’s a simple answer – to raise even more money that Athens Transit desperately needs. If the revenue gained from collecting fares is greater than the financial cost of buying fare-boxes (which it is), does that mean we should do it? If commissioners are only interested in raising money for transit, this is perhaps all that matters. The extra money could be used to expand frequency or hours of operation, some might argue.

However, fares don’t bring in as much money as you probably think they do. In 2019, the last year Athens Transit charged fares, fare boxes and UGA’s contribution combined brought in $1.2 million, or only 22% of the system’s total budget that year. Around $290,000 of that was wasted, being spent on the fare-collection machinery itself. If Athens Transit had an extra $910,000 today, they could expand frequency on a few routes maybe, but that’s not enough for large system-wide changes. If you think cars are expensive today, wait until you find out what a bus costs to purchase, fuel and maintain.

But I understand the desire to use any method available to raise revenue for transit. More fundamentally, I agree that commissioners have a responsibility to make decisions in the financial best interests of the transit system and of the government as a whole. 

While this is undeniable, I feel that commissioners have an even greater responsibility to their constituents and to the public at large. Our government was created by the people and its true purpose is to serve us, not itself. Therefore, it’s our pocketbooks commissioners should be most concerned about, not the government’s. If all they care about is revenue, why not raise property taxes to the maximum rate allowable by law? That would raise a very large amount of money that could be used to completely transform the transit system, which is only one of so many important things we could be doing with that money.

Instead, each year commissioners make every attempt to lower property tax rates, even if only by a symbolic amount.

Clearly, commissioners understand their duty to their constituents, at least to certain constituents, and they act accordingly. And that makes sense. Commissioners have so much in common with this particular group of taxpayers. With rare exceptions, commissioners all own taxable property themselves. They are also in regular contact with their well-off constituents, people who always make their voices heard during public comment and who frequent some of the same social circles as do commissioners.

Commissioners care about this group of Athenians, as they should, and they work in office to serve them, lowering their taxes whenever feasible. In exchange, they receive moral support and political contributions to their campaigns during election season.

This is how democracy is supposed to work. The problem is that there’s a large group of people who don’t own property, who don’t walk in the same social circles, who don’t make political contributions and who generally don’t speak up during public comment. 

I think you know where I’m going with this. Bus riders are not well represented on the commission right now!

If, hypothetically, bus riders attended every commission meeting and spoke up during public comment, if they voted in large numbers and were routinely able to elect their own to public office, if they had the money to make large political contributions and if they walked in the same social circles – then commissioners might care about them just as much as their wealthier neighbors. In this case, there is no way commissioners could even think about raising fares from zero, just like they have difficulty contemplating a property tax rate increase in the real world.

I’m not necessarily advocating for using property tax dollars to fund transit here, despite the fact that sales taxes like SPLOST and TSPLOST are regressive taxes that fall more heavily on the poor. Some Athenians even vote against authorizing these sales taxes for this very reason, even though they have become an essential source of capital funding for the ACC government. Personally, my conscience is eased by the fact that a significant portion of sales tax revenue (particularly from TSPLOST 2023 which funds transit operations) is returned to low-income communities across Athens. 

We should continue to fund transit through TSPLOST regardless of what the commission ultimately decides to do with fares (or with property taxes). But if we’re this worried about the regressive nature of TSPLOST, as we should be, then how much more should we oppose fare collection? It’s pretty clear that bus riders in Athens have lower average incomes than car drivers.

Athens’ poverty problem has improved somewhat in recent years, but a large percentage of Athenians still live at or below the poverty line. For someone who takes one round-trip bus ride a day on average, at $2 each way, that would add up to $1,460 a year. That’s 9.3% of the income of someone on the poverty line in 2025.

That means fares could be nine times more costly to people in poverty than the entire TSPLOST program, which could only ever take 1% of someone’s income at most.

I could go further and mention that some of the fares that were purchased in previous years actually came from local non-profits as they tried to provide mobility for their clients. These non-profits get some of their funding from the county government, and when the same dollars cycle back into Athens Transit, local government financial staff would consider it revenue. I don’t believe this is “revenue” we should be seeking, but I think I’ve made my point already.

To conclude, I’ll start by admitting that Athens Transit desperately needs more funding. It needs more routes going to more places, it needs to run later into the night and, most importantly, it needs to come more often – two, three or even four times as often. Bus drivers also need and deserve to be paid more. Since the needs are so great, it’s understandable that some commissioners and some transit advocates outside the government want to take a look at charging fares again. Even if fares won’t bring in much money, they’ll bring in some that we can use to improve the system. That’s true.

But, as I’ve tried to argue above, the main benefit of fares is not the amount they would bring in (they wouldn’t raise much money at all), it’s not how efficient they are (they’re horribly inefficient) and it’s not the other benefits they would provide (they would actually harm the system in important ways). The main benefit of fares as a revenue source is their political feasibility. That is to say, the main benefit of fares is the population they would extract money from – the poor, the disconnected, those without any other options and no way to fight back.

I could argue that a 0.2 mil property tax rate increase (providing $1.5 million in revenue) would fund all the money we could expect to get from fares. I could say that property owners probably wouldn’t even notice it, as they probably won’t notice the 0.2 mil reduction that Commissioner Mike Hamby put into the budget this year. Property taxes as a whole (including the rates that fund the school district) can take a big bite out of people’s incomes, of course, but 0.2 mils (that’s 0.02%) is small potatoes however you slice it.

I could say all of that, but it won’t matter. Raising property taxes to take a tiny, almost imperceptible portion of the incomes of the middle class and wealthy is not politically feasible, whereas taking from the poor is no problem at all. There may not even be anyone speaking during public comment to object to it.

This is why paying for transit through sales taxes makes the most sense. Since sales taxes fall most heavily on the poor anyway, the rich generally don’t object to them (at least not that strongly). If we must have sales taxes, let’s have the most progressive version of them we possibly can. Let’s put even more TSPLOST dollars towards transit so Athenians can have the excellent system that we deserve. If we have to sacrifice bike lanes or trails to do it, as a biker I’m loath to say this, but that’s a compromise I’m willing to make. Please, commissioners, please do not return to charging fares in Athens. There is no need to do that and so many reasons not to.