The distribution of income is clearly the underlying theme of every U.S. election, particularly at the federal level. The principal mechanism for distributing it is taxation. Income taxes began a steep slide from progressive to regressive with the presidency of Ronald Reagan, while sales taxes have always been regressive. Homeowners taxes are also regressive, since homeowners can deduct their mortgage payments from their income taxes while renters cannot deduct their rent from them. Otherwise, our landscape is riddled with a spectrum of lesser mechanisms to redistribute income to accomplish other goals. These mechanisms range from MediCare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, half-fare provisions for disabled public transportation passengers, school lunch programs and pre-school service to barely-noticeable and heavily contested mechanisms like congestion pricing.
Our landscape is riddled with a spectrum of lesser mechanisms to redistribute income to accomplish other goals.
In the arena of public transportation, certain modes benefit enormously from certain redistribution mechanisms, while others do not at all. At one extreme lies public transit: 80 percent of its capital costs are covered with federal funds, as are a large two-digit percentage of transit’s operating costs. Yet two years before COVID-19 struck (when transit ridership was declining, nationwide, by 10 percent a year), the highest-performing transit system in the nation (the New York City Transit Authority) covered only 35 percent of its operating costs from fares. (Los Angeles County covered nine percent; Tokyo covered 160 percent.) Yet motorcoach ridership (except for computer/express service for transit agencies) declined only slightly, until COVID-19 struck. Yet motorcoach services receive no subsidies at all (unless one counts the roadways on which they operate, which similarly subsidize transit services and travel by private automobiles).
A 40-foot transit bus full of seated passengers and 10 standees effectively replaces 40 automobiles.
Why this striking inequity makes no sense is simple: A 40-foot transit bus full of seated passengers and 10 standees effectively replaces 40 automobiles. Yet so too does a 45-foot motorcoach with 57 seated passengers. While our nation’s leaders are relentlessly too inept to address this inequity (a bipartisan failure), there are small measures that could offset it. A tiny one would be to exempt motor coaches from paying bridge and tunnel fees, about which I have complained in multiple issues in National Bus Trader for the past 25 years. Another mechanism that would address this inequity to a much greater extent, as well as offer other benefits to our society, is the concept of low income certification.
Other Innovations Long Forgotten
I covered many of those concepts and innovations that barely exist or which have been abandoned altogether in numerous National Bus Trader articles (see Making Transportation Work – Part 1); Making Transportation Work – Part 2; Making Transportation Work – Part 3; Making Transportation Work – Part 4; Making Transportation Work – Part 5; Making Transportation Work – Part 6; Making Transportation Work – Part 7; Making Transportation Work – Part 8, and ten installments about totally new markets for motorcoaches titled “Making More Money”)
Ridership on sorely-needed public transportation services of all kinds has continued to decline.
Of the mostly transit-oriented innovations heavily talked about in the 1970s, many were implemented to a small degree and a moderate number of a few (mostly park-and-ride lots) still exist. Yet most others have been practically forgotten about in recent decades, even while our middle class has continued to shrink, while ridership on sorely-needed public transportation services of all kinds has continued to decline. Most importantly, for an array of reasons, those modes that deploy large vehicles that transport large passenger loads are even more needed. Yet the entire batch of innovations that would have helped our entire network of public transportation services help pay for themselves (far more than they do now, although not likely fully) have disappeared from virtually every forum of discussion. One droplet of a 1970’s concept – congestion pricing – is clinging to an unsteady fence. Others, like electric buses and coaches – which would cost far more but which would obviously help achieve other benefits – are slowly falling off the fence. One that appears completely forgotten about, and whose application is well-justified for motorcoach service as well as transit service, is low-income certification.
Low Income Certification
While the mid-century U.S. tax system did not begin sliding toward regressivity until the Reagan years, other, more indirect measures to shift resources to lower-income individuals and families, or to exempt lower-income individuals and families from various costs and/or reduce their tax burdens, include Medicaid, MediCare, the ADA and, of course, subsidies for transit services that cover 80 percent of a system’s capital costs and a hefty two-digit percent of its operating costs (differing among cities and their transit systems).
Low income certification is well worthy of discussion among the others noted. The notion of low income certification for public transportation services is simply allows low-income individuals to ride selected public transportation services at lower fares than would members of the middle class and the rich.
One extraordinary benefit of such an approach is that, by exempting lower-income riders from paying high fares, transit agencies could far more easily raise fares – and raise them considerably while driving away precious few riders while, at the same time, attracting many more. Such increases in the full fare would likely place minor burdens on the middle class, and virtually no burden on the rich. Plus, the rich could be induced to ride transit if part of a bus (or a car or two of a train) were cordoned off as first-class compartments or cars, for which the rich (along with their perceptions of entitlement) could afford to, and would likely not mind to, pay even higher than regular, full fares, while alleviating the need to ride elbow to elbow with the “riff-raff” that the rest of us are often perceived to be.
If nothing changes, public transit services are at risk.
While fare increases for the minority of riders who would pay higher fares may not render transit services profitable (as they were before the early 1960s, when urban sprawl reduced them to a skeleton before President Johnson rescued them), this approach would likely lower operating subsidies and forestall the elimination of transit services altogether – which current trends are likely to soon do in many places as a few systems have already eliminated altogether. Realistically: How much will taxpayers throughout our nation consider public transportation as an amenity when efforts are now underway to reduce healthcare services to the poorest segment of our population, and even Social Security distributions? Clear thinking suggests that, if nothing changes, public transit services are at risk. So too is air quality and “Global Melting and Burning” (the politically correct term is “climate change”).
Why Not Us?
Let me remind the reader, once again, that one full motorcoach replaces roughly the same number of automobiles as does a transit bus. Transit fares do not remotely factor in trip purpose. Clearly, in the commuter/express sector, fares are already paid mostly by the FTA funds given to transit agencies (and smaller communities without transit agencies).
Travel by motorcoach contributes a tiny fraction of pollution than does airline travel.
One can easily see the multiple values of subsidizing fares for the intercity/scheduled service sector since long trips by motorcoach cost a fraction as much as taking the same trips by both commercial airlines and AMTRAK (obscenely subsidized by former President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act) – even while long-distance travel by motorcoach usually takes longer than even travel by AMTRAK. With no need to defy gravity, travel by motorcoach contributes a tiny fraction of pollution than does airline travel.
What about the tour and charter sector? Let me remind the reader, once again, that one full motorcoach transports roughly the same number of passengers as 40 automobiles. While I have argued before in two National Bus Trader installments that the reformatting of vehicles to include a first-class compartment along with numerous other changes would greatly expand ridership, subsidizing the fares of the less-wealthy riders traveling in “coach.” This single change – common on subway systems throughout Europe – would likely help the motorcoach industry explode in size and profits (see Survival and Prosperity – Part 1 and Survival and Prosperity – Part 2). While the density of trees and bushes in heavily-forested areas of the country would likely absorb most of these vehicles’ carbon monoxide, most trips would begin and end in urban areas, where the brick-and-mortar buildings and store windows would not do so.
I am not arguing that small vehicles should be subsidized; only large ground vehicles that do not spew huge volumes of pollutants and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere (particularly at ground level during take-offs, when fuel consumption is exponentially greater than at any other time of the flight). Low income certification will not benefit only those who cannot afford transit and motorcoach fares. They certainly would not benefit only motorcoach company owners (and in some cases, their shareholders). They would benefit everyone – in forms ranging from decreases in traffic to contributions to reduce Global Melting and Burning (see Motorcoaches and Climate Change). If transit services and AMTRAK receive so many extraordinary subsidies, it does not make any sense that motorcoaches should receive none.
Within a nation experiencing increasing levels of dissatisfaction about all manner of things, the problems with, deficiencies of, and ideas to improve public transportation (and contribute to many other important goals along the way) are so many oats in a large trough of problems about which there is extraordinary disagreement. So now may not be the right moment to raise such issues as “low-income certification” in the provision of large vehicle transportation services. As we postpone such discussions, our network of services will become worse and worse until many are reduced to a skeleton of what they now are, and some possibly eliminated altogether.
A time may come when those in charge (not the phony non-geniuses assisting them who have recently failed to produce any meaningful efficiency improvements) may entertain ideas which will almost certainly produce genuine improvements in public transportation ridership, revenue and equity, as well as improvements in other areas. It would be a shame if so much time is squandered that the best we can say.
Ned Einstein is the president of Transportation Alternatives (www.transalt.com [1]), a public transportation witness firm. Einstein (einstein@translt.com) specializes in catastrophic motorcoach accidents.
National Bus Trader / July, 2025 – 37