Should Public Buses Be Free? (cnn.com) 362
"More major cities in the United States are letting public transit riders hop on board for free," reports CNN:
Kansas City; Raleigh; Richmond; Olympia; Tucson; Alexandria, Virginia; and other cities are testing dropping fares on their transit systems. Denver is dropping fares across its system this summer. Boston is piloting three zero-fare public bus routes, and New York City is expected to test free buses on five lines.
Eliminating fares gives a badly needed boost to ridership, removes cost burdens — particularly for lower-income riders — — and reduces boarding times at stops. Proponents also hope it will compel more people to get out of their cars and ride transit... At least 35 US agencies have eliminated fares across their network, according to the American Public Transit Association. Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey and US Rep. Ayanna Pressley have introduced a bill in Congress to establish a $25 billion grant program to support state and local efforts for fare-free systems.
The zero-fare push comes as ridership nationwide remains sluggish after people shifted to working from home during the pandemic. Ridership is at about 70% of pre-pandemic levels nationwide, and transit agency budget shortfalls threaten service cuts, layoffs and fare hikes.
CNN also reports the case against. Experts "say there are more effective policies to get people out of their cars and onto transit, such as congestion pricing and parking restrictions.
"And dropping fares does not make buses run on time or lead to faster and cleaner trains. These are the improvements that will get more people to take transit instead of drive, according to passenger surveys."
Eliminating fares gives a badly needed boost to ridership, removes cost burdens — particularly for lower-income riders — — and reduces boarding times at stops. Proponents also hope it will compel more people to get out of their cars and ride transit... At least 35 US agencies have eliminated fares across their network, according to the American Public Transit Association. Massachusetts Sen. Edward Markey and US Rep. Ayanna Pressley have introduced a bill in Congress to establish a $25 billion grant program to support state and local efforts for fare-free systems.
The zero-fare push comes as ridership nationwide remains sluggish after people shifted to working from home during the pandemic. Ridership is at about 70% of pre-pandemic levels nationwide, and transit agency budget shortfalls threaten service cuts, layoffs and fare hikes.
CNN also reports the case against. Experts "say there are more effective policies to get people out of their cars and onto transit, such as congestion pricing and parking restrictions.
"And dropping fares does not make buses run on time or lead to faster and cleaner trains. These are the improvements that will get more people to take transit instead of drive, according to passenger surveys."
Should? (Score:5, Informative)
Where I live, in Luxembourg, they are all free, just as trains, trams and cable-cars and the call-buses for elderly and handicapped.
Best thing ever!
Re: Should? (Score:2)
Some Post pandemic public transit is avoided bc of Rick of Covid. Keep it clean, give out sanitizer & masks. More cars to avoid crowded cars.
Free? Most definitely.
Re: Should? (Score:2, Insightful)
So let me get this straight:
- ridership is down (70% of pre-pandemic levels)
- far fewer people are returning to major cities, instead working from home
- transit systems are operating at a loss
Did I miss anything?
Obviously, the answer is to eliminate fares!
This may lead to crowded buses, trains as the homeless take up camp in them.
This may actually slow down busses, as people queue-up to get on the bus (dropping coins/waving a pass didn't really slow down the boarding process)
Increased ridership of people th
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
How much have you ridden? (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to ride public transit. People dropping coins absolutely slowed loading down in my experience.
As for homeless, the fix for that is to actually get them housing that isn't the flawed mess that is most emergency housing for them.
Increased ridership of people who "couldn't afford to rid the bus" should be, if you take care of the homeless problem independently, not be enough to squeeze out anybody, because as far as I know, welfare pays for bus stuff quite frequently, so they're already riding the bus, and with ridership down anyways...
That said: I view not charging for the bus to be a strategic move - IE save money in other ways, like reducing the number of cars on the road, because in such dense areas busses are cheaper than trying to expand road capacity.
Re: (Score:3)
If your federal program involved setting up on some VERY isolated federal land somewhere, far away from normal working families and cities....and shipped all the homeless there, I'd be ok with it...and would accept a bit higher taxes.
That way we get them off our streets, they can live and do all the drugs they want and shit the streets there of their area and we'd solve all our problems.
They could offer educational services, etc...but until they passed some sort of test and got off drugs
Re: (Score:3)
Well, as I said, emergency shelters have the problem that they're both extremely expensive per bed and also somehow suck so badly that most homeless people view staying outside as superior.
To use your water analogy, you have a horse who's used to drinking from a relatively fresh stream, which you are trying to water using brackish water that has picked up a metallic tang from the container you were keeping it in.
Maybe the solution isn't to make the horse thirstier, so it'll drink the brackish water, maybe t
Re: (Score:3)
This may actually slow down busses, as people queue-up to get on the bus (dropping coins/waving a pass didn't really slow down the boarding process)
The coins and passes do slow things down. But a bigger advantage is boarding passengers can use both the front and rear doors to board, rather than only the front door where the fare machine is.
Re: Should? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
dropping coins/waving a pass didn't really slow down the boarding process
Are you special? Of course it did and does. There's a reason why countries moved away from having to have the driver handle the change, and why countries which do have front-entry tap on cards are moving to being able to tap on everywhere in the bus. Of course standing in a line while someone in front of you does an action slows the boarding process.
Increased ridership of people that previously couldn't afford to ride the bus will likely squeeze out other riders, the ones that could and did pay for the privilege of riding the bus.
The fact you think public transport is a "privilege" rather than a baseline expectation for everyone in a functional society is utterly despicable. Not every go
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Creating a greater relative cost to people like you is a central benefit to making public transportation free.
Re:Should? (Score:5, Funny)
Riding public transit means being robber and/or murdered by criminal Ñöggers
I live near a beach. My public transport is full of teenage girls in beachwear.
(true story)
Re: (Score:2)
I can see it. And that is not a bad image. ;) Though I might prefer coeds.
Anyways, free, more convenient riding means more people using it, which can justify more busses, more routes, etc... More busses and routes means it's even more convenient, and thus more riders - and fewer cars on the roads.
Note: I'd try to fund the busses in such a case on a basis of number of riders. The rider doesn't get charged, but the bus "company" still gets paid per rider.
Re: (Score:2)
But how do you take your surfboard on a crowded bus?
Re: (Score:3)
But how do you take your surfboard on a crowded bus?
Is that a euphemism?
Re:Should? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity what was the firing rate ( in the hands of a highly skilled operator) of the fastest firing firearm at the rime of the amendments inception?
Well, let's see. The Belton Fusil -- Belton petitioned the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary War looking for a military contract -- would fire up to eight rounds in three seconds with a single pull of the trigger, no 'skilled operator' required. The Girandoni repeating air rifle had been in existence for more than a decade prior to the 2nd Amendment being written. The Lorenzoni pattern of repeating flintlocks, invented in 1688, was widely available, allowing the wielder to cock and prime in one action, allowing a high rate of fire. The Chelembron magazine-fed repeading flintlocks could fire up to twenty rounds, requiring the user only to point the weapon up and turn the barrel and its magazines to feed powder into the chamber, prime the lock, cock it, and feed a bullet into the barrel, after which the barrel was rotated back, ready to fire. And this ignores weapons like the 1718 Puckle gun -- a giant flintlock revolver -- and volley guns, which fired from an array of multiple barrels, or the Chambers-pattern volley gun, which could fire 224 rounds at a rate of fire of approximately 120 rounds per minute. The Founding Fathers were well aware of developments in rapid-fire weapons at the time the 2nd Amendment was drafted.
Re:Should? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Founding Fathers were well aware of developments in rapid-fire weapons at the time the 2nd Amendment was drafted.
They were also well aware of the development of political parties and popular elections, and yet they completely failed to anticipate both would rapidly become the default in US politics.
Why do you assume they correctly anticipated not only the technological advancements in gun technology, but the corresponding supremacy of professional armies (nullifying the whole militia thing), and how guns that were smaller, more lethal, and far easier to use would interact with cities far more densely populated than anything they had seen?
All the evidence shows that the US Founding Fathers were ordinary mortal humans, well educated and relatively well intentioned ones, but otherwise normal humans. And as such they would have written the US Constitution to serve the country, society, and technological landscape almost exactly as they perceived it at the time they wrote it.
Re: Should? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have owned at least one of those big, scary AR-15s since Columbine. By the time Aurora, Colorado happened I was up to two. When San Bernardino went down, I had my third one, but chambered in 6.5 Grendel instead of the usual 5.56. They are all fully featured with pistol grips, collapsible stock, and high capacity magazines between 30-40 rounds. They are stored responsibly in a large safe anchored to a solid concrete floor.
I have yet to hear a logical, fact based argument that says my ownership of these typ
Re: (Score:3)
It worked in Australia, no guns.
If somebody want to buy a AR15 on the black market, he has to pay 34000 dollars, if you have 34000 dollars, you're a good little saver, no need to become a criminal.
Re:Should? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you living in the same country as I am? Not sure where you've been in the last 50 years, but the people in the US absolutely do not hold any power. In fact, I don't know if that was ever true in the history of the US, but its a nice bit of propaganda to believe to make yourself feel better.
When politicians in power can alter districts as they wish to pre-determine the outcome of votes; when politicians are bought and paid for by moneyed interests; when justices on the Supreme Court feel empowered to cozy up to oligarchs and feel no shame about conflicts of interest; when congress is a dysfunctional mess; all of these things are pretty much the opposite of having the 'power' in the hands of the people.
Re:Should? (Score:5, Informative)
You know that the government has drones, planes, nukes and tanks, do you?
Everything Should Be Free (Score:2)
Or just 20 cents.
Re: (Score:2)
Even just collecting $0.20, or $0.25(a quarter) or $1.00 can delay things at the bus entry enough to actually cost more than just letting them get on. Especially if you have lots of passengers. Passholders(I was one as a teenager) are better, just flash the pass, but it still slows things down.
Especially in tourist heavy cities like NYC, I think that it's a good plan. You need every method you can get to get people out of personal vehicles.
The lower expense may actually be ancillary to just making things
Re: (Score:3)
You need every method you can get to get people out of personal vehicles.
The ultimate goal is not to get people to leave their cars at home but to convince them they don't need to own a car.
My family has three adults and three cars. If my city had decent transit, we could cut back to two cars or maybe even only one. The savings would far outweigh any tax we paid to support transit.
Re:Everything Should Be Free (Score:5, Interesting)
> It's like charging $20 for a doctor's visit under the premise that if you don't, people will visit the doctor when they shouldn't.
this has actually been studied.
A couple of decades ago, a study was done which put a $1 copay on medicaid visits.
It *gutted* the rate of frivolous appointments--by which I mean those that wouldn't have been made by those paying for their care, or who had to take time off work, or pay the taxes to support medicaid, for things like the common cold, minor cough, etc.
You *do* have to take into account the overuse by those for whom it is "entertainment" to take the bus ride, or have a. medical apointment, etc.
And with $0 bus fare in a cold city in the winter, you will find you have a bunch of homeless shelters on wheels . . .
Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter what it costs if it's not frequent and reliable, a very common problem in the US. If it comes once per hour and doesn't always show up, nobody will take it regardless of cost because there's no guarantee it will get them where they want to go when they want to get there.
Honestly, money spent making the bus "free" would be better spent making it more frequent and reliable.
Re:Irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had a bus go right by me, which is what they do when they're "full" or too far behind schedule. I mean, who the fuck is going to wait for a bus if they actually have to be somewhere?
Re:Irrelevant (Score:4, Informative)
"Which is not an argument for whether it should be free."
Of course it's an argument. If you have a fixed budget, which every municipality does, does that fixed number of dollars go into more service, or into lower or free fares? Those dollars come from somewhere, and there's a limited supply of them. One can argue, philosophically, about whether or not fares should be free. But here in the real world, my tax dollar can only be spent once, and I'd rather have the practical argument about how to spend it. Even the linked article points out that surveys of actual low-income people who are the intended beneficiaries of free fares show they agree with more frequent and reliable service over free fares.
"No transportation does not."
I assume you mean "no transportation is guaranteed to get you where you want to go," which is a nonsense argument. (If I've misinterpreted, then I apologize, but the written sentence is hard to parse.) I'm guessing that your argument would be something like walking can't, eventually, be guaranteed to get me somewhere because I could be hit by lightning on the way. Or, with an intense irony, run over by a car.
The fact of the matter is that my car is far more reliable in getting me to places I want to be when I want to get to them. The train and the bus have both failed me before, repeatedly, and I use them basically to get to work or to special events, both places I don't really want to drive to for obvious reasons. Buses that don't show up and trains that get stuck in lengthy delays due to various issues of all kinds, both of these have happened more than once. I had to leave a concert right before the encore once to catch the last train of the evening, before midnight on a weekend, and I know that had I driven, I'd have been able to stay for the whole show and then meet the artist rather than risk being stranded. Trying to act like these things don't exist doesn't make them go away.
Re:Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
No transportation does not.
People's behavior needs to change. Your argument ignores that reality and comes to the wrong conclusion because of it.
WTF have you been smoking? How do you change behavior of a secretary making close to minimum wage who needs to get from her home to work and will get written up if she's 5 minutes late and eventually fired if she's late too often? She can't leave an hour earlier to give herself an extra hour of waiting every workday as she has to juggle kids as well. When I lived in The Netherlands for a month, I rode the public transportation system every day. There was a schedule at each bus stop. When it said the bus would be there at 8:12, the bus was there at 8:12 +/-2 minutes. If it was early, it waited until 8:12 to leave so that the next stop would be on schedule. Do accidents happen every once in a while that may impede its movement? Sure, but that was not the norm and actually never happened during my 30 day stay.
Now back to the U.S. where there's no guarantee that a bus will get you to your destination on time and you can actually arrive at your destination 30 minutes late (not every bus route is like that - but many are). That is not something you need to change your behavior for. Well, actually it could be. If that way me, I'd try my darnest to get a car. Even a shitty car is more dependable than that.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you from the US? The way you describe it, it does sount like a third world country. Here in western Europe, public transit is actually usually on time (not less than when I take my car and get randomly stuck in traffic, whereas buses have their own lanes)
For a nation that once was great, the way you guys describe the USA sure makes it look like it went down bad.
Re: (Score:2)
Libertarians should approve car-tracking & bil (Score:2, Insightful)
Canadian author Joe Heath pointed out something in a 2001-ish book, "The Efficient Society", that by now is technologically trivial, would definitely work:
* Every car should be tracked for its whole time on public infrastructure
* Records not available to police without warrant
* You get billed, based on road cost, and popularity (varies time time of day) for all road use.
* Typical daily bill would be a few cents for a few blocks of your local street, many cents for your trip on the collector road to the high
Re:Libertarians should approve car-tracking & (Score:5, Funny)
someone got radicalized at r/fuckcars
Re:Libertarians should approve car-tracking & (Score:5, Insightful)
Since Heath's book predates reddit itself by four years, that's not possible.
Heath actually had no opinion on cars, he was writing about fair distribution of costs, and how many costs are "levelized" by taxation; how many could not be directed to a user-pay system.
Those who advocate that buses not run at a loss, that bus users pay for every cent of the costs of running the bus system, tend to come up with all manner of excuses for not having to user-pay on roads.
Pedestrians used to have to pay for grading gravel sufficient for horses to walk upon. Pedestrians, who themselves may never get in a car, are now tasked with paying for $80M freeway interchanges, so that car drivers can, very literally, free-ride.
I mention Heath's proposal here at Slashdot about once every three years. It is always attacked for whether it is practicable, whether my motives are impure, whether it will incentivize bad behaviour. The admission that the current system is socialist, with the cost of car operation being socialized onto those who don't use the service, exactly like taxpayers subsidizing a bus that they never take, is rare.
Re: (Score:2)
So, he's a moron.
Re:Libertarians should approve car-tracking & (Score:5, Insightful)
I like how Libertarians bend over backward to reinvent taxes in a way that is less efficient.
Re: (Score:2)
> * Every car should be tracked for its whole time on public infrastructure
> * Records not available to police without warrant
Made me chuckle ... If you believe that to be possible, I have a bridge to sell you. (Or a few license plate scanners, and their data)
We have this system in quite a few european countries, so far for highways. License plate scanner on every on/offramp. Guess what was a main requirement in the public specification for the software operating it? A direct data feed into the system
Re: (Score:2)
Typical daily bill would be a few cents for a few blocks of your local street
A few bucks for 20 minutes on the highway
Sounds like local roads will be cheaper than the arterials or highways. Excuse me while I cut through your neighborhood.
This already happens in Seattle (for a slightly different reason). Lowered speed limits congest the main roads and reduce the time differential between using them and neighborhood routes. So more people take shortcuts on residential streets. So then Seattle starts a program of shutting down neighborhood roads. Since this requires that residents apply for the restricted status, it starts a
Re: (Score:3)
> No more grannies with no car paying for roads they don't use.
Gas taxes are the only tax libertarians generally don't have a problem with. This problem is solved.
In New Hampshire the Constitution restricts gas taxes to the upkeep of roads. Probably other states too.
In corrupt shithole jurisdictions politicians raid their gas tax fund for corrupt purposes but that's where you fix the problem - not with a dystopian surveillance nightmare.
EV's can pay an odometer tax on their registration each year. No t
The seen and unseen (Score:2)
Bastiat talks about the "seen and the unseen" when it comes to economics, and changing to fare-less bus rides could be a prime example of this. (Note that I didn't use the term "free" because this wouldn't be free. It would shift the costs around in unseen ways).
Consider the following:
- Fare-less rides might increase ridership.
- More riders might mean more full busses
- More full busses mean that some riders might not fit, or it might require more busses.
- Full busses might become dirtier and more expensiv
Re: The seen and unseen (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other handâ¦
Every person in a bus is 0.9 cars not on the road. That means
- Less tarmac needs to be laid down to deal with all the cars.
- Less maintenance needs to be done on what tarmac you do lay down.
- More space is left to put properly separated cycle paths in, and get even more people out of cars.
- More people can take their bikes with them, since busses often have great bible racks on them.
- Less car parking needs to be provided, freeing up real estate for valuable tax paying businesses and houses
- Fewer car accidents occur, reducing the burden on fire, police, and ambulance services.
The models of this can be, and have been built, and it comes out *enormously* on the side of good, cheep public transport being the more financially viable solution to transport. The practical experiments have also already been built too. The enormous numbers of US cities going bankrupt pretty much entirely correlates with how many enormous stroads they build, and how few public transport services they provide.
Re: The seen and unseen (Score:2)
The enormous numbers of US cities going bankrupt pretty much entirely correlates with how many enormous stroads they build, and how few public transport services they provide.
No, it doesn't. You ignore the flight of employers from those cities going bankrupt... when a major employer pulls 5-10,000 workers out of a city, no amount of free buses or congestion pricing is going to makeup that loss.
(Take a look at your paycheck stub, see that "city tax" line? If your employer pulled out of the city, the city loses 2x that tax revenue (employer matches the tax), multiply that by several thousand employees, and you begin to get a sense of the scope of the problem.
The issue isn't riders
Re:Miscalculation (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not true; many bus riders do not have a car, or do not have a car for a moment....
That's part of the 0.9 part, but consider that the reason they don't have a car may be because public transit is enough. The more useful/cheap you make public transit for them, the more likely they're to use it, the more likely they're going to stick with busses despite becoming old enough or whatever, the more likely they're going to drop having a car, etc...
This is also not true, as parking need to be able to handle near peak demand, so somewhat lowering amounts of cars driving day to day doens't really alter the number of spaces needed.
Fewer drivers also means lower peak demand, which lowers the spaces needed. Lower spaces needed means you can do more development, more development means more density, more density means more use of the public transit(because you have less parking), etc...
Getting people out of their cars? (Score:2)
That probably won't work because:
No (Score:5, Interesting)
There is zero point in making buses free to encourage ridership if you don't have a decent enough service that most people in all areas of the city can use it to get to and from work. People cannot ride buses that are not there!
Re: (Score:2)
There is zero point in making buses free to encourage ridership if you don't have a decent enough service that most people in all areas of the city can use it to get to and from work
Oh, but there is one, “proving” a free service could never work. I’ve seen some projects done so badly, even an average 6 year old with 1 minute of thinking is asking the questions left unanswered when these types of policies get levied. Either these people think below average 6 year old reasoning, or it’s in some kind of bad faith self dealing propaganda.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, but there is one, “proving” a free service could never work.
If only it were true. The problem is that when tests like this fail the idiots never ascribe the failure to the real reasons like lack of service it's always something else that only they know and can fix by extending the trial. For example, after slashing bus service in the suburbs our council was completely mystified by the reduction in ridership and have variously blamed it on the pandemic, displacement of jobs, changing culture, etc., and never on their disastrous rearrangement of all the routes reduci
Re: (Score:2)
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
On time and safe... (Score:3)
It's a problem in so cities. Buses are literally hours late at times - on routes where they run more often than once a hour. You get on and you don't feel safe sitting with the...clientele. Hold on to your wallet, ignore the guy shooting up on the back, get off and find another means of transport for the next time.
Not seeing how making them free will help with either of those problems.
Re: On time and safe... (Score:2)
Won't play in Peoria (Score:2)
"such as congestion pricing and parking restrictions"
In America??
Are you trying to get more people killed?
Re: (Score:2)
Cutting the population in half would certainly solve a lot of problems.
Re: (Score:3)
Cutting the population in half would certainly solve a lot of problems.
*Thanos has entered the chat"
Head Tax (Score:2)
In Pittsburgh, there is an annual "head tax", called the "local services tax". It's a payroll tax of $52/year, deducted evenly from paychecks throughout the year. Of course only people with jobs pay it, and of course people will cry about it being "regressive". But if you want to have an easy to apply and count on tax, this kind of thing is the way to go.
Want to make your busses free? Have a head tax. Everyone with a job pays, whether they arise the bus or not. A lot of people will figure that figure that i
Re: Head Tax (Score:2)
"Local Service Tax"? That's in addition to the city taxes they take out of your paycheck, right? So what is the "Local Service Tax" for, what does it cover that isn't funded by Pittsburgh Local Taxes?
Pittsburgh charges 3% income tax for residents, and 1% for non-residents that live outside the city.
Your $52/year tax is really just an additional revenue source for the city, payable by anyone drawing a paycheck inside the city of Pittsburgh. Do non-resident workers pay the same "Local Service Tax" as resident
A whole new option (Score:3)
You could have a free government-operated ride program and essentially clone the Uber / Lyft models with smaller transit buses and employee operators - and have the routes planned entirely on the fly.
These days the dispatching software to handle the travelling salesman problem is more or less trivial.
Buses are warm and keep the rain off you (Score:2)
Nothing is free (Score:2)
Except the air. Odd that this article should come up when at the same time this article [theguardian.com] came up. In short, to make buses free for senior citizens in England, someone else has to pick up the tab and as a result, local councils are now finding they are short millions of pounds to compensate the bus companies for those "free" rides.
Now imagine how much it would cost a city such as New York or Dallas to provide "free" bus service.
Everyone wants things to be free, but no one wants to pay for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Even the air is expensive, we've spent millions in CA on incentives to get rid of gas mowers and blower and replace with batteries.
Money well spent (IMHO) but still money spent on air :-)
No (Score:2, Insightful)
The cost of riding a bus in most places is pretty low already and when services are free there's a tendency for expectations to be lowered. I think it would be more valuable to establish metrics to measure the quality of service and to make the results publicly available.
I take for example my former home in Montgomery County, MD, a suburb of the nations' capitol. It should be possible for a person anywhere in the county to reach a subway station within 30 minutes by public transport. It should also be po
Re: (Score:2)
and when services are free there's a tendency for expectations to be lowered
How uniquely American. Busses aren't free. If I don't pay for them I still expect my tax dollars to be put to good use. Now if there was an announcement that along with the free service there will be a massive budget cut, then I'd be right there with you.
Your example has nothing to do with free or not free. It has to do with crap or not crap, and they aren't the same thing. I've lived in countries with expensive crap service, I've lived in countries with cheap good service. But I do agree with your final po
Re: (Score:2)
How long by bus + bike?
Already Heavily Subsidised (Score:2)
Mass transit is already heavily subsidised. I believe I heard that the MBTA (Boston) has a budget where only a third of the revenue comes from fares. Eliminating the bus fares would expedite boarding, which could make the service more efficient. It's certainly very friendly for tourists who don't know the system, as well as helpful for those least able to afford it. I would think it would generally improve the quality of urban life, and if the goal is to reduce traffic, pay for it with taxes on parking.
Re: (Score:3)
Nothing is every free (Score:2)
No, just EXTREMELY cheap (Score:2)
I think a bus ride should cost, perhaps, a nickle. Cash only...but you could put in a quarter or a dime, or even a dollar. No change though.
Unfortunately, this would mean that collecting the fares costs more that the amount received.
TL;DR Free: NO . Subsidized: YES (Score:2)
Free public transport incites freeloading (by, for example, tourists), and disuades users to complain about shortcommings in the service ask for improved service ("after all, is free"). So, there is more cost (extra seats and routes for the freeloaders) and worse service (because the users do not complain, and the public transport employees are not accountable).
Subsidized public transport ameliorates these inconveniences.
Great for poor people (Score:3)
Not so great if the busses fill with gangs of hyper-aggressive panhandlers
Re: (Score:3)
hyper-aggressive panhandlers
We tend not to see a lot of these. Just peaceful fentanyl smokers quietly gassing [foxnews.com] all the other occupants.
Cost is a minor issue when it comes to ridership (Score:5, Insightful)
Ridership is broadly a combination of five factors:
Reach of Service: Does public transit get me to where I need to go, or at least close enough as to be convenient? If not, then it is of no use to me.
Speed of Service: Do I reach my destination in a reasonable amount of time, compared to other potential transit methods? If it takes an hour to get to work by bus but only 20 minutes by car, then I'm going to drive.
Frequency of Service: How long do I have to wait for the bus/train to arrive? If missing my train means I only have to wait another 7 minutes then fine, but if it means I'm waiting 30 minutes and would be late for my shift, that's a risk I may not be willing to take.
Reliability of Service: Is the service schedule kept to reasonably well with trains/busses reaching their destination generally around the posted time? If the bus routinely runs 10 minutes or more behind, or worse sometimes doesn't even show up, I can't risk it as a commuting option.
Safety of Service: Do I feel reasonably safe from harm on public transit? This is particularly an issue for solo female riders. Even if driving is less convenient I may still choose to do it if I feel unsafe or are actually a victim of a crime on the public transportation system.
If your public transit system is fast, frequent, reliable, safe, and gets people where they need to go, they will ride it regardless of cost unless you're talking astronomical commuter line rates (ie: >$10 per ride). Likewise if your system is slow, infrequent, unreliable, unsafe, and doesn't get people where they need to go, you're not going to get many riders even if you drop fares to zero.
None of which is to argue against eliminating fares in a vacuum, but you need to weigh the trade-offs. Many public transit systems rely on fares to operate, and if you compromise any of the factors I listed in the process of eliminating fares it's going to reduce ridership, not increase it, even as the price to ride drops.
Re: (Score:2)
also i (Score:2)
you *do*, though, have to factor in cost.
And it typically isn't done in a sane way. Rather, there is babble about the average cost.
The bus/subway/whatever has to meat at least one of the following:
1) total costs of public transit, including paying taxi or whatever when needed, is less than the cost of owning and operating a car.
2) the *marginal* cost of a particular trip (i.e., all fare components) is less than the *marginal* cost of taking that trip in a vehicle the person already owns.
3) it is more conv
my inner cynic: How will/can this be abused? (Score:2)
will they become defacto mobile homes for the homeless during inclement weather? maybe just a place in the a/c to shoot up in front of others who are just there for the ride
I sure won't take the bus or let my kids if I think there's an excess of risk; will drivers be empowered to keep an order to things?
and for those with a hair trigger to mischaracterize and attack, this has nothing to do with the plight of the those folks; but let's not pretend that some behaviors are ok in public... there's gotta be som
Re: (Score:2)
Public intoxication and drug use laws still apply, and if you added a hygiene rule you could force those particular kinds of homeless people to visit a shelter for a shower prior to riding around on the buses.
If they're malodorous, violent, or engaging in drug use... have a nice silent alarm to summon the cops. Otherwise, let 'em ride the bus. They're still going to have to get off and the end of the line, so it's not a permanent solution for them.
Free (Score:2, Interesting)
You're still paying for it, but with the costs buried in several hundreds of taxes.
Even if you "tax the rich" etc, most of the money still comes from you.
Should any public service be free? (Score:3)
I'm not sure that public transit should ever be free. There is something to be said about being forced to pay, even a minimal amount, for some publicly subsidized service like public transit. I think it's a psychological thing. While I support the idea of Mediaid, the granting of health insurance to poor people in the United States, the fact that all medical services are provided with absolutely no copay is not a good idea. It opens the system to a lot of abuse by people who have a tendency to misuse what are expensive, publicly provided services. I've long thought that even a minimal copay would be prudent for at the least a doctor visit or a visit to the ER. Of course, I may be comparing apples and oranges here. Public transit as a service is very different from publicly provided health insurance.
There are problems (Score:2)
Appropriate taxation. (Score:2)
Fares accounted for 2% of total Bus Budget (Score:2)
Fares accounted for about 2% of the total budget for our busses to run.
They were upgrading their busses to a new fleet, and realized that the cost of putting in new fare-collection devices would exceed that 2%.
In other words, it was actually going to cost the city more to install machines to take fares than it would to eliminate fares entirely.
Thus they cut fares. It was never really about increasing ridership as much as realizing that the cost of implementation and long-term maint
Lot to be said (Score:2)
It's ideological (Score:2)
Need free shelters first (Score:2)
YES! duh. (Score:2)
but not possible in selfish America. It's regressive to make the poor pay a higher % of their income than anybody else. It's expensive to be poor; so many work and are still poor because the system screws them so badly all around. I get credit card perks which are funded by the working poor; sadly, it's not idiot middle to high income people funding that...
Learn to separate issues: homelessness is another problem than has nothing to do with public transportation. They get in the way and impact every public
The reason things are not free is simple (Score:2)
Things are not free because we (rightfully) stick to the standard that no person can be compelled to work for another. Until we have robots doing work, nothing can be free.
Not enough of an incentive (Score:2)
If you want people to use public transit, it needs to be reliable, frequent, extensive and safe. Basically, if it's more convenient to use a car to travel across a city than transit, then the city's design is wrong.
Reducing bus fare from $3.50 to $0.00 is not going to get people out of their cars unless the transit already has the above four attributes, in which case people will gladly pay the $3.50 if it means they don't need to own a car.
There's also very little political will in North America to des
Re: Activist, Rich Elites and Governments (Score:5, Insightful)
Rich elites avoid paying for everything they can. Itâ(TM)s their second-biggest reason for interacting with government. Their biggest is getting government to pay for their stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
Activist, Rich Elites and Governments are the only individuals and entities that think free is a great business model. [snipped remainder of off-topic rant.]
We're talking about municipal busses. Cities are not businesses. Their mass transit systems are not intended to be profitable. We don't expect any "business model."
Moving more people around to work or shop is the real business angle here. Public services like this are yet another way capitalists externalize their costs and make the public foot the bill.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The riskier the road, the greater the profit.
- Ferengi 62nd rule of acquisition
Re:Activist, Rich Elites and Governments (Score:5, Insightful)
Free public transit isn't a "business model"!
Most of the world's public transit is more or less subsidised by the local governments.
From citizen's perspective, the purpose of the government is to serve the citizens.
From the government's perspective, public transit helps citizens get to work so that they can earn money and pay taxes.
From local businesses perspective, public transit helps employees get to work, to make money for the business.
From a macro-economical perspective, helping the poorest to make more money to spend helps everyone make more money (from richest to poorest). It is therefore important to have transit be affordable for the poorest in society so that the cost of transit does not become a barrier against finding/attending work.
In a society where public transit works, it is used by everyone, both rich and poor. That is why you will find the nicest public transit systems in the richest cities of the world, and why you'll find the worst public transit systems (or none at all) in the poorest slums.
What some rich elites and successful politicians have in common is that they actually pay attention to the results of economic science instead of listening to outdated ideology or propaganda from special interests.
Re: (Score:2)
Free public transit isn't a "business model"!
It can be. Consider the small scale - most airports don't charge for their transit systems. They might be smaller in scale. Same with Disney World. The goal of the transit is to get customers where they're going so they can spend money elsewhere.
It's entirely possible for a city to come to the same conclusion. They want potential customers to get to the shops downtown(and such) where they can spend money, they want employees to be able to get to work without clogging up parking garages downtown, they w
Re: (Score:3)
What if I told you that the goal of public transit isn't to turn a profit?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
$3-4/gallon tax for roadways? Are you really trying to claim that when I prune through my 30 gallon tank on my pickup truck, I've done $90-120 worth of damage to the roads?
You'll need to provide some actual statistics/facts if you want to convince me.
Re: (Score:2)
Everything should be free. Speaking of which, YOU must come by and take my trash out for free.
Sounds like life in a Star Trek TOS episode...where even the food was provided for free.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Everything should be free. Speaking of which, YOU must come by and take my trash out for free."
Exactly.
Almost nothing is "free". The correct way to view this is: should all taxpayers have their money forcibly taken and used to pay for bus services to others. Maybe it should, but let's not pretend there is no cost.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Because getting them off the road allows you to get where you're going faster, and more likely to find parking when you get there.