With transit fares the same as they’ve been since 2003, lawmakers are pushing the Maryland Transit Administration to raise them.

Both houses of the legislature have recently voted to require the agency to hike fares to the point where they recoup 35 percent of their costs from the farebox. The MTA has refused.

Is the agency’s eight years of resistance a deliberate and wise strategic policy, or merely the path of least resistance? Another way to view this long-standing flat fee structure is as a symptom of the transit agency’s deeper malaise.

MTA riders may pay more, Circulator riders pay zero

Pricing policies are a crucial part of any business, no less one that operates as a public service. The legislature can certainly be accused of micromanagement, but they might respond that micromanagement is better than no apparent management at all. They already mandate a 35% farebox recovery rate, down from 50% in the 1990s. The MTA’s actual farebox recovery, meanwhile, has dropped down all the way to 28%.

Baltimore City government has chimed in by creating the Charm City Circulator bus system as an alternative to the MTA around downtown. Being free rather than $1.60 is an important part of its marketing strategy, as it seeks ridership from visitors, downtown dwellers and residents in a few economically-thriving parts of town where the buses run.

The Circulator is apparently so important to the city administration that it has decided in its latest budget that a whole host of neighborhood service cuts are better options than cutting transit service or charging fares. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, for example, wants to start charging for bulk trash removal – but not for riding her bus system.

What should the MTA do?

Here’s what I proposed in a Brew article when this issue came up at budget time last year. In brief, the MTA needs to change its entire transit system from “one fare fits all” to one that tailors both fares and service to specific needs. Right now, a bus rider who only needs to go five blocks pays the same as one who travels five miles.

By contrast, Washington D.C.’s Metro adjusts fares according to distance and time of day, charging its minimum fare for short trips at non-rush-hour periods and increasing prices for longer trips and peak-hour travel.

If the MTA had done something like that, it might be showing a better fare-box recovery today, while Baltimore city would not have needed to get itself into the transit business – and could be spending more of its scarce tax revenue on its core responsibilities to its neighborhoods.