Earlier this year
the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District put into effect an
across-the-board rate increase of 10 to 15 percent, depending on which
station a rider boards from.
For folks riding
all the way from Dune Park to Millennium, the fare hike amounted to 75
cents, a 10.3-percent bump.
At the time,
General Manager Michael Noland said the increase would generate
approximately $1.5 million more in annual revenues, needed to meet the
creeping operating costs associated with running the aging South Shore
fleet.
Operating costs,
however, weren’t on Noland’s mind at Friday’s meeting of the NICTD Board of
Directors. Capital costs were.
As Noland reminded
the directors, the $80 million expense of installing the federally mandated
positive train control (PTC) system will effectively exhaust NICTD’s bonding
capacity, or as he called it, NICTD’s “self-funding ability.” For that
reason, Noland said he doesn’t expect to recommend “an operational fare
increase” in 2016 but does want directors to start getting their head around
the value of implementing a fare hike “and putting it to capital projects,
to station or rail improvements, something tangible.”
“It would augment
our capital match capability now that our existing stream of state funding
is committed to debt service,” Noland said. “We need to think about a
self-generating capital program.”
Noland added that
he still plans to revisit in the New Year a proposed increase in the premium
--doubling it, from $1 to $2--charged to riders who purchase their ticket in
cash and on board from the conductor. The board tabled that proposal earlier
this year over concerns that it would unfairly penalize “unbanked” and
“underbanked” riders who don’t have debit cards and thus aren’t able to buy
their tickets from vending machines.
Noland did note
that Metra has approved a fare increase for a Hegewisch-to-Chicago ticket of
25 cents for a one-way ticket, $1.75 for a 10-ride ticket, and $2.50 for a
monthly.
Performance through
October