Why the Orca Lift Program is a Step Back

The new fare policy, Orca Lift, which took effect March 1, 2015, has great intentions. By offering low-income public transit riders in Seattle the opportunity to pay $1 less per ride, King County Metro hopes to help people continue to access goods, services and leisure activities. However, if this policy is an effort to acknowledge the rapidly vanishing middle class in Seattle, they are dangerously misguided.

They have fallen into what I am calling the fallacy of selective benefits. If the goal is to reduce inequality, the shortsighted and insultingly small contribution actually divides us and our interests.

Let me explain: it is shortsighted and divisive because the benefits are only for a portion of the population. The program is only for people earning less than double the federal poverty guidelines, about one in four. Because the other 75% of the population has to pay more for their tickets, a raise implemented to cover the costs of the Orca Lift program, using public transit becomes less likely for a large majority. Putting poor people onto buses and wealthy people into cars is a terrible and predictable outcome of this policy.

The relationl poverty perspective illuminates clearly the dangers of the fallacy of selective benefits. Victoria Lawson and Sarah Elwood of the University of Washington have written of the importance of inter-class contact zones as a source of empathy and re-working of class dynamics. De facto and explicit segregation of housing, schools and transportation by definition reduces these beautiful interactions. For the sake of poverty politics, the environment and the freedom that comes with quality public space, we should encourage public transportation across the board!

Additionally, as the ridership gets poorer, the population invested in public transit’s success becomes smaller and less powerful.  I wholeheartedly believe in the power of the people, and in the difficult struggle for rights, it is important that as many of us as possible are in the coalition.

The fallacy of selected benefits claims to reduce inequality, while creating tiered systems that divide us and make future gains more difficult. We can see it in the debate about whether to provide need-based financial aid, or eliminate college tuition, or the debate between Obamacare and a single-payer system. In each of these cases, the fallacy of selected benefits supposedly seeks to level the playing field, but actually leaves people saddled with debt and stranded in inefficient systems and traffic jams.  For decades, Portland offered FREE public transportation. What we spend on reducing fares, we can recover by reducing accidents, asthma, road construction and private car ownership.

It is important that public services are public, free-of-charge, for everyone. While the low-income fare policy probably has the best of intentions, the program will increase inequality and social stigma.

With Enrique Peñalosa talking in Seattle on May 6^th, maybe we could learn from one of his best-known bits of wisdom: “An advanced city is where…even the rich use public transportation.”