Comment by greekrich92
8 hours ago
The subway should be free, and continuous fare hikes when you're already double paying with your eyes because of all the advertising they shove in front of you is more incentive to turnstile jump. Overpaid do-nothing senior adminstrators and lawmakers who are in the pocket of privatization are the problem, not that 17 year old.
Enforcing fares massively decreases vandalism, and antisocial behavior on public transportation.
If you don’t have public transportation that I feel safe having a 10-year-old ride on unaccompanied by an adult then you do not have public transportation. You have a very expensive drug addict shelter on wheels/rails.
When I became homeless (again) about 26 years ago, the buses were a place of refuge and relaxation for me. I could easily pay the fare and stay on a long haul line. I'd be assured of safety and quietness for about 2 hours or so.
The area clinics were participating in this, because they could procure "Reduced Fare" passes that they would distribute to mentally ill patients, and we could get unlimited transit rides all month long, as long as we were still checking in, on the regular, with our case managers. Our providers would ensure that they qualified us for the "Reduced Fare" program.
After a while, the bus stops became camping grounds for street people who didn't ride. And the trains became camping grounds for people who needed to sleep. Literally, early in the morning, I would board the train and see people zonked out, with pillows, blankets, the whole bit.
Then a campaign began to clean up behavior aboard the transit system. Riders would need a destination, and fares were checked, and people were booted if they hadn't paid fares. So the vehicles themselves became quite sparse, and safer, and smelled better. But oh, the bus stops again. Everyone camped with impunity at the bus stops, and for paying passengers, it was intimidating just to beg for one place to sit down.
The transit system is undeniably safe. I am sure that 10-year-olds can ride unaccompanied. Any violence or fights, those seem to be between gangstas or people who know one another already, not just random outbursts.
Thankfully, too, they open up centers where people can chill, and get drinks of water and use the bathroom, which is honestly preferable to riding buses on false pretenses.
Genuinely curious here: is this born out across all geographies? Japan's fare enforcement for instance vs western Europe and resultant behavior?
some culture as just better than others
Right maybe we can make them free and safe? Not sure why that is not possible. Walking on the street is free. In many places it is safe too.
Safe is a tougher problem, and especially when you consider that in most American cities with subways, the exact cities we're talking about right now, generally NO, there are many areas where it is not safe to walk! While I agree public transportation safety and public safety in general are incredibly important, they're also (clearly, given how we're failing at them) also difficult endeavors.
I also think this is relatively orthogonal to cost; cost is nice because it helps keep the people you don't want in the train (crazy people with knives, people smoking weed in the train, people who yell at everyone on the train and make them feel unsafe, etc.), but it's also important to create at least a small barrier so that people don't 'waste' the transit system! In general, when things are completely free, they will be taken advantage of; even a very small tax / friction helps stop this. If the subway is completely free, there's no reason to not just sit on it all day (taking up space and making it worse for everyone). I think subsidizing the subway is net beneficial given that we subsidize cars and things already with road upkeep and such, but free is not what you want.
3 replies →
> If you don’t have public transportation that I feel safe having a 10-year-old ride on unaccompanied by an adult then you do not have public transportation. You have a very expensive drug addict shelter on wheels/rails.
What an escalation. If I don’t feel safe having a 10 year old drive a car is that just a drug addict shelter on wheels?
Private Jet rides should be free
Fares cover 40 per cent of the subway operating budget. It seems necessary revenue.
The 17 year old dodging fares becomes the 34 year old doing the same.
The percentage of fare dodgers who aren't pieces of shit in other parts of their life is zero.
Public transit should be worth the (inexpensive) cost of a ticket. The money used to make fares free should instead be spent on improving the quality of service. Better service attracts more riders, bringing in more ticket revenue, enabling further service improvements, and so on. It produces a positive flywheel effect that benefits current passengers, new passengers, and even drivers!
Free transit is a downward cycle, where increased ridership just increases costs, creating a negative flywheel.