Comments on: A look inside September’s ridership figures

By: Musings on the economics of MetroCards :: Second Ave. Sagas | A New York City Subway Blog

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:42:00 +0000

[...] discount. Because a large percent of straphangers are using some unlimited ride card, the average subway fare (for September) was $1.48 per ride. That’s downright [...]

By: chemster

chemster — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:53:26 +0000

Well, I’ve got a metrocard in my wallet. It expired a year ago. Does it have any money on it? I don’t know… and it’s not really easy to find out. Am I lazy for not trying to find a station agent and getting it moved onto another card? Maybe…

By: Benjamin Kabak

Benjamin Kabak — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:22:22 +0000

Right, but if you take that to the station agent, they’ll combine those into a non-expired card. People letting MetroCards rot to the tune of $5 million in Sept. is a sign of either ignorance of this process or simple laziness. Take your pick.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:18:53 +0000

Uh, no – sometimes, people just refill cards because they don’t want to get new ones all the time. I had a card expire with about $20 left on it, and I have another card, due to expire in two months, with about $30.

By: Benjamin Kabak

Benjamin Kabak — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:56:17 +0000

Precisely. Expired and unused portions of pay-per-ride cars. Amazing how many people either don’t do the math properly or just discard money because it’s on a MetroCard.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 08:53:09 +0000

So what does the liability include – expired pay-per-rides?

By: Benjamin Kabak

Benjamin Kabak — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:01:35 +0000

I believe it counts those as one trip if you would have gotten the free transfer on a pay-per-ride card.

Sort of related: I did confirm with the MTA today that the Fare Media Liability line does not include underutilized MetroCards. So it’s quite possible that the MTA draws in more revenue in that sense due to people who don’t use their Unlimited Ride cards enough to knock the price per ride down to $1.96.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:58:49 +0000

Ben, does the average fare calculation consider a bus to subway transfer as two trips or as one? Because to me, they’re just one trip, so when I calculate how many trips I’m taking with my unlimited monthly (lately about 50 a month), I consider my average fare to be about $1.80, not $0.90.

By: No fare hikes, service cuts in ‘fragile’ 2010 budget :: Second Ave. Sagas | A New York City Subway Blog

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:59:29 +0000

[...] estate taxes were lower than anticipated, ridership figures, as I noted earlier today, have been higher than exepcted this year. Furthermore, summer belt-tightening measures have led to lower-than-expected [...]

By: crescent

crescent — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:33:35 +0000

There’s no way the Fare Media Liabliity line includes any unlimited Metrocards. That’s not how balance sheets work. It’s expired pay-per-ride cards with value still on them or expired unlimiteds that were never activated. No accounting system would estimate an expected usage of an unlimited and somehow track and subtract value from that baseline.

It’s money that comes in and later on, money they can recognize as revenue because in theory it will never be used as expiration has passed (notwithstanding policies allowing exchange after expiration).

<2% of revenue being from money people never used on their Metrocards isn't that much.