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Doctrina_Stabilitas t1_ja7vh5n wrote

Reply to comment by Middle-Example6618 in MBTA won’t roll out $935M automated fare payment system in 2024 by weallgettheemails2

They money is already spent, the cost has been sunk, it’s not like cancelling the project would get the money back and may be even more expensive with termination fees

Also automated fare collection is a good thing in the long run, it allows for faster boarding and all door operation for street level surface routes

The new system would also allow differentiation of fares by income, bringing us in line with most other modern metros

The plan is now to implement it gradually to minimize issues, according to the herald, I think that’s a relatively good thing

The MBTA expects to collect 450M in fares this year, making up about 25% of the budget, this project will last about 20 years given the last fare implementation, so with straight line depreciation that’s still only 10% of expected post pandemic revenue

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caspa10152 t1_ja8fa9r wrote

They might collect $450 million in revenue but that number is far below the MBTA's operating budget. Last year they had a budget gap of about $400 million. Don't think spending an extra billion on this is really going to improve their budget

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Doctrina_Stabilitas t1_ja8l7e4 wrote

well i mean not collecting fares would mean 450 million bigger hole? Also implementing this will improve service by reducing dwell times and overall make transit more attractive

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the alternative of course is to do this, then throw it out right away by passing a 1% sales tax increase for the MBTA, because the contracted money is spent already, it's not like we'll get it back

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AeuiGame t1_ja8ptyd wrote

Bigger hole, but bigger improvement on the city. Getting cars off the road helps actively the cities budget. Infrastructure shouldn't generate revenue.

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Doctrina_Stabilitas t1_ja8q8qy wrote

yeah sure, but it wouldnt be a bigger improvement if you have to cut 30% to match the new revenue. We could do it if we increased the MBTA sales tax from 1% to 2%, but i highly doubt that would ever happen, and a reduction in service (like to 20-25 minutes between trains) would be a disaster given that trains now are already 15 minutes apart and packed to the gills (or at least the orange line is at sullivan)

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caspa10152 t1_ja8tjxx wrote

I'm curious to see what the total dwell times are. Whenever I am Downtown I almost never see a line of people waiting to pass thru the turnstyle, whereas, when I used to work in Rockefeller center, especially during the holidays, it could take 10 to 15 mins just to get in, so there it made sense. I guess you can say I am struggling to understand the efficiency gain, in regards to dwell times, because I almost never see any. I'm also curious to know how many "free riding" passengers the MBTA believes currently exists.

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Doctrina_Stabilitas t1_ja92jkb wrote

Bus dwell times mostly, green and buses are most likely to see improvements by allowing all door boarding

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thebruns t1_jaaokxv wrote

> Also automated fare collection is a good thing in the long run, it allows for faster boarding and all door operation for street level surface routes

You know what actually allows faster boarding and all door operation for street level surface routes? Collecting fares via taxes instead of at the doors.

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Middle-Example6618 t1_ja7yeim wrote

>They money is already spent, the cost has been sunk, it’s not like cancelling the project would get the money back and may be even more expensive with termination fees

I didn't ask you to change the subject, yet there you go!

FYI, the "sunk cost fallacy" .... is a fallacy. Its not the arugument you think it is.

Might want to work on those logic/semantic skills.

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Doctrina_Stabilitas t1_ja805sa wrote

That’s now how contracting works. The money is spent; we are contractually obligated to spend it, if we don’t we get assessed a penalty for the lost business so they can still be made relatively whole

The sunk cost is a real sunk cost, not in a logical sense, but an economic one

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Coomb t1_ja8c5q8 wrote

The "fallacy"of the *sunk cost fallacy" is people getting emotionally attached to money that has already been spent / time that's already been wasted / other resources that have already been used, and despite knowing or having good reason to believe that future resource use is not a good investment given the current state of affairs, continue using resources.

It is not, however, fallacious to observe that money has already been spent to make some kind of progress, that spending only a little bit more money will actually get you a useful product at the end, and that abandoning the project entirely will get you nothing of value. You are making a rational assessment to continue investing money because, with the state of affairs as it is, additional investment appears to be profitable.

Let's say, for example, that you signed a contract to buy a new Ford F-150 for a million dollars, paid in $1,000 installments, with the vehicle to only be delivered if and when the final payment is made. Otherwise you get nothing.

That would have been a stupid contract to sign. It would be stupid to keep paying on that contract if you had only already paid in $1,000, or $10,000, or $100,000, or $900,000. The value of the vehicle is not a million dollars. It's $100,000 or less. Every single payment you make up to roughly the $900,000 level is objectively a bad decision, even if you've already paid in a substantial amount of money. However, along the way, your decision to keep paying might have been driven by the sunk cost fallacy. After all, you already threw $100,000 down a hole. If you stopped paying now, that money would just disappear to no benefit.

On the other hand, if somehow you inherited the right to be sold the F-150 knowing that only a single $1,000 payment needed to be made to actually get the car, it would not be fallacious reasoning to make that payment. It wouldn't make it fallacious if you observed that the $999,000 already spent are a sunk cost. You would be making a rational decision to spend $1,000 in return for an F-150. Somebody else might have made a bad decision to pay up to that point, but it's not a bad decision to pay just a little bit more money to get a useful product at the end.

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techiemikey t1_ja913ko wrote

>The MBTA expects to collect 450M in fares this year, making up about 25% of the budget, this project will last about 20 years given the last fare implementation, so with straight line depreciation that’s still only 10% of expected post pandemic revenue

From their post.

But even if they didn't include that, they didn't say "let's throw good money after bad money". They said "cancelling the money wouldn't get the money back" with an unspoken "so your comparrison only makes sense in hindsight"

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