Comment by triceratops

>I think public transport should be free.

>Absolutely not.

I think that having it very cheap compared to quality and service delivered is the best of both worlds.

Limits. You put limits in place.

Don't give endless free fair, give n free fair per day.

Very true. This is why they don’t appreciate roads or parking.

This isn't a big problem for roads, sidewalks, or the library.

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That wouldn't be an issue if we also provided shelter to the most distressed people in our society. As if we don't have the technology to build housing on the cheap. Our lack of communal will to help fellow people is a real shame.

Another commenter already made the same observation. See reply there.

>it becomes de facto free shelter

So? Let it.

If people need shelter, it's a shame we are building a ballroom instead of shelter.

That's a different problem, and it requires a solution by itself.

> You let people evade fares and then those people go onto stab people like Zarutska.

That has nothing to do with it. The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee. But it is interesting that you should right away jump from the one to the other, effectively using the poor dead girl for your agenda. Crime and homelessness are complex problems some parts of which are easy to solve and some of which are much harder.

You can't simply jump from 'someone got murdered on public transport' to 'public transport can't be free'.

> The problem with free public transport is that it turns into a de facto homeless shelter.

Perhaps there's something broken about a society that has a significant homelessness issue. The free public transport isn't the problem, it's likely that society has a surplus of citizens that prevent economic progress and/or the deployment of solutions known to be effective against homelessness.

> The problem with free public transport is that it turns into a de facto homeless shelter.

I don't think $2.50 is what's preventing this from happening today.

Fares typically make a negligible contribution to the overall costs of operating the system.

Public transport in the state of Queensland, Australia charges a flat fare of 50 cents. They only reason they charge anything at all is because they want the trip data for route planning purposes.

So, explain why it works in 100+ cities all over the world?

Congestion taxes are completely different from ticket fees.

Free public transport solves many issues and is a great policy.

The notion that transit agencies need to be funded via fares is nonsense to begin with, but it looks even wackier when one looks at how roads are funded.

Of course it doesn't. The cost of public transport is a cost to society. It will be paid regardless of ticket fees. Hence the word 'public' in 'public transport'. The difference is that by making the users of public transport pay you give people a good reason not to use it when there are alternatives available. But those alternatives have a hard time competing with free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport

It exists, and it works. And the best bit: all the money spent on the whole administration around tickets, making tickets, enforcing laws, gates and so on can be spent on improving the system.

Go have a look what percentage of the operating costs are covered by fares in your city. I wouldn't be surprised if the costs relating to fare enforcement were more than the revenue from fares.

I don’t find this claim persuasive in the least. I could just as easily assert without evidence that fees reduce cleanliness because patrons feel they’ve prepaid for their messes to be cleaned up, and security because resources that could be applied to safety and reducing crimes against patrons are used to enforce fare collection and secure methods of payment instead.

For a first order argument, yes, because people won't use free very often.

But if the collected fares are paying for enhanced police brutality or other deleterious second-order system behavior, it's not so cut and dry.

> But it's a persuasive argument.

Persuasive to what type of people?

At that point just make separate no fee, low fee, and high fee train cars with varying levels of poor people and/or cleanliness.

> It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare

Are you making a case that a violent person, who ignores the stringent laws of society against violence, will diligently follow the laws of society requiring $2.50 prior to riding public transport?

LOL

I take your comment in the sardonic humor it conveys, hopefully it matches your intent.

The robber barons built libraries. Yes, it took some heat off of their reputation, but, they weren't idiots and neither were the people for whom they were driving wages down or driving prices up. They and municipal orgs of the time and other civic minded groups built libraries and schools because society is better off have more education. Capitalism, done right, actually can have good outcomes.

In a similar vein, healthcare makes people healthier as a general outcome. "Socialized medicine" (more properly understand of as healthcare as a publicly-provided good) enables a more healthy population -- business owners benefit because the people they can hire from are healthier, so more productive.

Public transportation in dense areas should be seen similarly. More efficient, lower pollution when expanded and widely available, easier to police, less of the nasties like PM2.5 from tires and asphalt, less road deaths, and so forth.

Or fund it fully through taxes, like roads, schools, etc...

Or you know run it as a public service like the roads. We are able to do that without enslaving road maintenance employees.