All aboard for paid Metromover rides – it’s the smart plan

As commissioners scramble to close a $402 million gap between what everyone seeks in the next county budget and what’s available to pay for it all, they echo an old tune: charge to ride Metromover.

They’re on track. Now they should move at the speed of transit rather than government to get it done.

Charging to ride the now-free 4.4-mile loop around downtown Miami wouldn’t be popular. Nobody wants to pay for any government services, in the belief that once we’ve paid our taxes we’ve funded everything.

Compound that with the reality that Miami-Dade charged to ride Metromover from 1986 to 2002, when it removed the 25-cent fare in return for voter passage of a half percent sales tax to build more transit. Is a new fare really fair?

As the county finetunes everything it does and commissioners want it to do, however, it now faces the painful truth that its beer pocketbook can’t fund a champagne budget. 

A county deficit budget would be illegal (unlike the federal government, which has amassed a gargantuan and fast-expanding deficit) so the county must cut services, grow revenues, or both.

Last week, commissioners looked beyond this year’s deficit to when a Metromover fare could realistically begin.

Miami Today has long supported a fare. At $2, Metromover at its present level of use could bring in almost $15 million that the county doesn’t now have.

We’ve also argued that downtown high-rise residents who frequent Metromover should pay a fare just as other transit riders pay for Metrorail or buses. Downtowners get even more benefit because paying for parking downtown would cost far more than any Metromover fare. Government doesn’t give away parking; why give away transit?

Today, as commissioners noted, taxpayers subsidize all Metromover rides, just as they do all transit. Transit chief Stacy Miller said fares recover only 11% of county transit costs. If we charged Metromover riders what the train and buses charge, they’d still be subsidized, but at least it wouldn’t be 100% free, and the county would get that 11% back.

“It’s more ideology than actual dollars,” said Commissioner Raquel Regalado, who raised the fares issue. 

There’d be no legal problem in charging for Metromover rides, she said, and she’d ridden five times the prior week and didn’t see anyone who couldn’t afford to pay $1 or $1.50 – though we wonder if she also judges the value of books by their covers.

There might not be a legal problem in a fare, but is it another case of misleading voters? 

Voters were promised free Metromover in passing the transportation tax, just as they were promised that all receipts would go to new transit and a trust would oversee all money. But the county used much of the money for operations instead of new transit, and that spending was committed before commissioners created the trust. Would charging for Metromover be another broken pledge?

We’ve often suggested putting Metromover fares to voters. Pledging those fares to transit alone might make a vote easier to pass. But to keep faith, the public deserves its say. 

Commissioner Eileen Higgins, the county’s downtown transit guru who’s now a candidate for City of Miami mayor, has long derided a perception that Metromover caters to “Brickell lawyers … getting a free ride.” She told the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce in 2019 that “people who live in Brickell aren’t riding the Metromover to their jobs in Brickell. I don’t think there’s a lot of money to be made with a fare.”

Last week, facing budget realities, she argued against any fare on Metromover for the next 18 months because “at minimum one third of the mover is going to be shut down at any given time” during a complete revamp “so we can’t be charging for something that basically isn’t running. The Omni loop is going to be shut down.”

Before the Omni loop was created, however, Metromover users paid, so there’s value in riding what’s left.

Still, charges would be a future revenue. It “take a lot of time to install fare gates, so we would need to give them time to do that,” Ms. Higgins said.

She cited ways to reap Metromover income from tourists. “If they want to ride the Metromover for ten bucks a day, I’m happy to take their $10,” she said. She also suggested a ridership card for $100 a month as a monthly pass for those who rely on Metromover but noted that if the fare were as low as $1 it would cost almost that much to collect the money.

“We can charge them that whole $2.25,” suggested Commissioner Oliver Gilbert III. “Pay what everyone else is paying.”

Creative minds can tinker with how to charge and collect. Our Metromover doesn’t have to invent the wheel – transit around the world offers models. Likewise, costs could vary by time with the number of users, just as many highways do.

A key to unlock new transportation revenue even as state and federal governments apply the brakes is to charge for what’s being given away. Commissioners need the courage of their convictions to get the process rolling now.