Comment by micromacrofoot
1 day ago
What I don't understand about initiatives like this is... why bother charging at all? wouldn't the system be more efficient without a fare process? at that point you don't have to maintain an entire money handling system.
It would be more efficient for travelers, but not really from a systems point of view. The Netherlands is densely populated and its railways are amond the busiest in Europe. If twice as many people took the train it would be impossible to have enough trains running. Also, a money handling system functions as a gatekeeper. With some regularity there are stories in the media of people misbehaving on public transport. If everybody has the right to board it's more difficult to keep those people out.
"money handling system" scales quite well, and more money is good to have if it's affordable enough for many people?
but wouldn't the whole system be cheaper if it were paid for by taxes? because at that point you don't have to maintain a point of sale? hundreds of fare boxes, communication systems, physical barriers, auditing, accounting, printing cards, employees to maintain and operate it all... you even save a little time it takes tapping a card to get people on
the tax system is also progressive, so the people who are most capable of paying pay the most and the poor truly pay nothing
charging for a public system seems like pure waste
No, it's not even close. Those fares don't cover the whole operation of the train system, but they actually go a long way to covering a very large chunk of it. The cost of operating the fare system is a rounding error relative to the sums of money talked about here.
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