Comment by kccqzy
16 days ago
Absolutely not. People don’t appreciate free things psychologically. When they don’t appreciate it they trash it: vandalism, littering will all become bigger problems.
To prevent this effect, you have to have a well educated population first. That’s actually an even more difficult problem to solve.
>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.
That’s already the case in reality. The NYC Subway’s $3 fare is quite low for example. Just like roads are taxpayer subsidized, public transportation is almost always subsidized. (Some countries like China have heavier subsidies though.)
Limits. You put limits in place.
Don't give endless free fair, give n free fair per day.
In the Phoenix Metro area, the fares are capped, so you never pay beyond the cap for daily, weekly, or monthly fares.
If you ride and pay your fare twice, then every ride after that, for the rest of the day, is free. That is very nice. So if you commute and you have a transfer, and you're taking 4 rides per day, then you're saving half of that in fares.
In the old days, you would pay a cash fare and the bus operator could issue a paper transfer ticket. The transfer would be good for a few hours. So your fare was basically per-trip. But the system couldn't track people paying cash fares like that, so there were no free rides without the transfer ticket. If you took two trips a day, like a normal commute, you'd pay at least two fares. Now, with pre-loaded cards or fares on the mobile app, you can track all that stuff, and reload when necessary.
For disabled people or whoever qualifies for "Reduced Fare", your fare costs half ($1.00 instead of $2.00) and so your daily maximum is only $2.00. A really good deal.
technically, possessing two transfer tickets from the same day could be used as proof that you paid enough for the day.
vienna has day tickets that cost as much as two single tickets but you can only buy them on a strip of 8 which you can use one day at a time over an unlimited period
2 replies →
*fares
Very true. This is why they don’t appreciate roads or parking.
It's definitely why roads and parking are congested! People don't value access to roads properly, that's a big part of why driving became the default mode of transit.
The main reason why we should charge money for transit is because it makes it easier to kick off people who ruin it for everyone else. It's not important that transit covers its costs, it's important because requiring payment filters out people who don't value it.
It fucking sucks to be on a train with a homeless guy shouting threats into the air, or with a bunch of teenagers blasting music and intimidating other passengers. Once on the way back from work once, there was a guy watching porn at full volume in a car with children at the other end. Sure, you can say "call the police!" but it's much harder to place cops everywhere (purely expensive) than it is to just send out some ticket inspectors (who generally justify their own salaries).
I was being sarcastic, to be clear. Though it's funny that people clearly cherish parking over most other things in this world, but are willing to pay nothing for it.
You're right about fares being a useful tool to filter for antisocial behaviour. After becoming a parent I became a lot less tolerant of horrible behaviour on trains and buses. Luckily I rarely encounter it here in the Netherlands (Ireland was worse, but still not atrocious, depending on the area)
This isn't a big problem for roads, sidewalks, or the library.
In our library, I saw a homeless person pleasuring himself.
Roads aren’t really free: you need a car or at least a bike.
Sidewalks are free, but they are usually unpleasant or inaccessible. In places where that isn’t true, they absolutely get trashed by litter; some even spit on the sidewalk.
Libraries are seemingly free, but getting a library card often requires you to provide several forms of proof of address, including evidence of paying rent or property taxes. So they aren’t truly free.
Libraries are free. (Well, at least most public libraries. There are private libraries for personal use, institutional libraries for internal use, subscription libraries which require membership fees, and others.)
I've visited libraries in a half dozen countries, where I'm not even a taxpayer. I just walked in.
Some services at the library might not be free, including book checkout or making photocopies.
But if you want to make that distinction, then walking around your neighborhood isn't free because in most place you need to wear clothes, and clothes aren't free.
FWIW, I've walked a lot of forest roads without a car or bike. And the biggest littering problem on our sidewalks, by weight, are the escooter riders who simply leave their machines parked in the middle of the sidewalk.
The problem isn't that the sidewalks are free to use, the problem is one of regulation and enforcement.
That's why libraries are both free and well-loved - they librarians regulate the free space.
spitting on the sidewalk causes literally no damage. Even peeing on it is minimal.
4 replies →
[dead]
[dead]