As you may recall, Metro opened early this morning for Black Friday. Apparently the extra hours are costing the city a nauseating amount of money:
As we reported earlier this week, the District of Columbia arranged with Metro to open the rail system an hour earlier than normal this morning, at 4 a.m. instead of 5 a.m., in order to accommodate shoppers looking to be the first to arrive for early bird sales on "Black Friday." Metro spokesperson Lisa Farbstein emailed to let us know that 2,287 people rode Metro between 4 and 5 a.m. today, and that the cost to the city to pay Metro to open early was $27,000. That comes out to the District having paid $11.80 for each early bird rider. Given that today is also a tax-free holiday for shoppers in the District, that $27,000 is money the city won't make back in sales tax revenue, either.
So...how much money is the city losing on keeping the stations open late for a Skins game? There are at least 1,000 fans using Metro, correct? FedEx Field holds 91,704 people (Wikipedia says the stadium is the largest in NFL, which shows how much I care about football). Let's say a mere ten percent use Metro to get home, numbering 9,170 (a difference against today of 6,883). Cost per rider would amount to $48!
I'm not feeling so great. I think I need to rest.
Comments
I am having some problems with this...at what point does the Metro break even? Plus, I am fairly sure that a lot more than 10% of the Redskin game attendees ride the Metro. But, let's suppose you are right. You are telling me that 9,170 riders for one hour causes the Metro to lose money? Well, when does it make money? Because this business model doesn't seem to be working!
I'm pretty sure more than 10 percent are riding too (that doesn't seem to be enough people to warrant a late closing in my opinion). It was just an arbitrary number to illustrate my point. 9,170 seems like too few to lose money but opening early brought in 2,287 riders, and Metro said it lost money!
I agree. Friday's opening can't have helped the financial crisis the city (and Metro) are currently in...
...Yet I love when Metro extends its hours and wish every city were open early and late...
How much money does earn, er, lose on every passenger every day? The last I heard, no public transportation system has ever even broken even. They're all subsidized.
So every time you expand service, you lose even more money.
That's one reason the roads are in increasingly poor condition. Money is being taken from highway funds to pay for urban mass transit.
That's fine as long as the public knows what's going on and approve, but how this has anything to do with capitalism, escapes me fully.
By the way, the grammar monster in me says that you probably meant to write "citizens'" instead of "citizen's." ;-)
By capitalism I meant the shopping. I was being smart. ;)
Thanks for catching that.
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