Comment by horsawlarway
16 days ago
Or we can all just agree that maybe basic transit in a city should be subsidized, maybe say... To the same degree that road construction is?
At which point no one would need to pay a fare, and we'd all still save money trying to prosecute broke teenagers trying to move around a city?
Public transit is subsidized in a lot of the world. Subsidized is good. Free though.. free is a problem. A good or service that someone doesn't have to pay for becomes valueless to them, despite it still costing someone (sponsor, owner)/something (corp, gov).
Examples:
A free Christmas party, where the cost of the convention center/catered dinner/wine on the table/entertainment was about $110/pp. Those costs were all paid in advance (you might be able to exceed catering, wine is probably fine but at a different rate.. but otherwise you're stuck with the bill/contract), but when tickets were free the no-show rate ("didn't cost me anything") was about 30%. We switched to $20/ticket, and yes there were grumbles about the company being cheap, but the no-shows fell to around 8%.
There's free sections of transit in our city (not the whole system). Most of the disruption and police call-outs happen in this section.. open drug use, screaming at/threatening other passengers or making them feel unsafe, making a home, thefts & pickpockets (does a thief buy a ticket? Perhaps if they spend 6 hours a day "working" and don't need the hassle of being checked for a ticket), even violent crime (stabbings, beatings, one gun situation). An unfortunate side effect of that is we have one of the worst riderships in part because people don't feel safe on transit, and when discussions of subsidies/improvement/expansion come up ridership is basically the only KPI. ("Oh only 12% of the city uses it, let's not further invest").
Transit is very heavily subsidized by taxes. In the US, the least money losing system is BART which covers 70%+ of it's operating (but not capital) expenses through fares.
The point is it should be free. Public roads are free.
Do you think that engineering, asphalt, machinery, and labor are bankrolled by charitable goodwill? Public roads are absolutely not free; you simply haven't thought hard enough about how the public indirectly pays for it.
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I don't even know what to say to that. No wonder the western civilization is crumbling and being overrun right before our very eyes.
Sort of? The people using them (driving) pay significant gas taxes, plus parking permits, and other things.
> Transit is very heavily subsidized by taxes.
So are roads.
Nope. In my state 75-95% (depends on year) of _all_ road-related expenses (including capital projects!) is funded by user fees: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-infrastructur...
In comparison, transit is about 99% subsidized (when capital expenses are included) and about 90% subsidized just for the operational budget.
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By Republican logic, public libraries "lose money". So do a lot of public services.
But it's not about some shitty private equitymoney extraction. And it's not lost money.
Public transit is already substandard to driving, and should be free. And it'd be a way to reduce congestion too. But no, it "loses money".
Can you name a country where public transit is free?
I think a better goal would be to not have to travel across the city for basic needs and services. Would reduce congestion even more.
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