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Should public transport be free?
electricitylikesme
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Every time the issue of getting people to drive less comes up, it is naturally always mentioned that those people should take public transport. Then of course, the issue is always raised that public transport is generally shit (unless you live in Europe apparently) and that if we would just invest in infrastructure then more people would use it.
To this, I say maybe.
Not using public transport for me is really about two factors: (1) if I drive, I can leave when I want and go exactly where I want - generally. (2) although nominally a car may cost me more to own, it provides far greater utility then spending $3 to catch a bus + another $5 for the train which only gives me the straight journey.
My hypothesis about why I feel these expenses so much is that essentially they feel like toll roads - which I will also do my upmost to avoid while driving - it seems like a lot of money for simple transportation.
Now, naturally the government already subsidizes a good deal of the ticket price when riding public transport but this has always made me wonder - why do we pay anything at all to use it? Why not, much like a car, we move the entire expense of public transport into indirect taxation (since it is indeed, a public good - we all benefit from it whether using it or not), and eliminate that toll road feeling involved in using it.
So, D&D, do you think (no matter where you live) that in fact the obvious answer to improving usage of public transport is to make it truly public and allow people to ride for free? Or is it a gross misuse of your hard earned dollars going off in tax?
To this, I say maybe.
Not using public transport for me is really about two factors: (1) if I drive, I can leave when I want and go exactly where I want - generally. (2) although nominally a car may cost me more to own, it provides far greater utility then spending $3 to catch a bus + another $5 for the train which only gives me the straight journey.
My hypothesis about why I feel these expenses so much is that essentially they feel like toll roads - which I will also do my upmost to avoid while driving - it seems like a lot of money for simple transportation.
Now, naturally the government already subsidizes a good deal of the ticket price when riding public transport but this has always made me wonder - why do we pay anything at all to use it? Why not, much like a car, we move the entire expense of public transport into indirect taxation (since it is indeed, a public good - we all benefit from it whether using it or not), and eliminate that toll road feeling involved in using it.
So, D&D, do you think (no matter where you live) that in fact the obvious answer to improving usage of public transport is to make it truly public and allow people to ride for free? Or is it a gross misuse of your hard earned dollars going off in tax?
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But to answer your question: It should be free when underutilized, since filling empty seats carries virtually no additional cost. Charging makes sense for congested public transport (e.g. rush hour) to allocate scarce capacity.
Does not compute.
It's not a bad idea though. Most places would need the infrastructure massively upgraded though. If your gonna tax everyone enough to make it free, their going to expect actually efficient service.
Sorry, let me try to say it in not-stupid.
People using individual cars are less efficient, cause more pollution, etc. If someone wants one, they will have to pay over and above the taxes needed to support a free public transportation system.
There are similar projects at certain large companies with locations in hard-to-reach places. (this sounds :winky:), when you go by car you get some of your costs refunded, but if you go by bus and train you get more of your costs refunded. This means that these companies have an easier time staffing their buildings in city centres, there's a lower chance their employees will be late and their employees are more rested than those who drive an hour by car before work.
However, this hardly works, the Netherlands is one of the most congested places ever and it is still considered a viable solution to just build more roads to solve these problems (ignoring scientific research about the subject). A lot of politicians score easy points by screaming "more asphalt!" While really it just doesn't work here any more. Time after time it has been proven that more roads just leads to more jams in more places. The heavy tax on the environment is not worth it.
So I do believe free or dead cheap public transport is a better solution to the problems my country is facing than building more roads. Of course it would be even nicer if people would stop wanting to live as far away from their work as possible. <_< But that is practically impossible.
The awesome part are the plans I heard about a while ago to expand the free public transport from either weekends or weekdays to just encompassing the whole week. The costs to do so would apparently be very low and it'd get people to avoid the friday night/monday morning rush.
t corcorigan: it's all privatized here as well, I don't think anyone remembers why we did that and why we thought that was a good idea. o_O
I also have very nice things to say about the bus system (TARC) in Louisville, KY. So long as you actually use the thing, it's excellent service.
Next you have the fact that any substantial amount of rain in NYC has the chance of rendering the subway system useless. It's happened multiple times here and it's very silly. I honestly don't understand how it's possible and I frankly don't care. It's unacceptable for a city with frequent downpour that relies heavily on public transportation to come to a standstill from rain.
Last, at night, the subway system is a clusterfuck. I understand that you have to do maintenance at some point, but how is it that every single night there seems to be some subway oddity WITHOUT SIGNS ANYWHERE where one train will be on the other side of the track while another will not be running at all with no MTA official anywhere or a sign anywhere to let youknow?
The fact is, public transportation here is too often unreliable, too often uncomfortable, and quite often too expensive. All anecdotal, sure, but that's how I feel as a public transportee.
We went through a lot of other stations and most looked sufficiently clean and some were very shiny (the one next to the Pentagon, mostly). Now if you could fix the rest of the city, that would be swell. :whistle:
{edit to aldo} I admit I don't really know shit about D.C. aside from the affluent government center. I do believe they are really pushing the whole "gentrification" thing to what people say is a good rate of success. Anyways if you're in D.C. and you want to have fun, go to Alexandria. It's the tits.
And yeah, that random maintenance crap is ridiculous, there have been so many times when I'm just sitting on the subway and then the conductor man goes and tells me that the subway is skipping the next 5 stops and half the people on the train go ?!?!? and get off.
* not actually free: I pay a mandatory transportation fee every semester, but every student needs to pay that even if you own a car.
The CIA is in Langley, so it was probably the FBI (or State or something).
DC's system is fantastic. I live in Boston now, the oldest public transit system in the country (AND IT SHOWS!)
In response to the OP. Yes, it should be free. The question is *CAN* it be free? The answer to which is probably negative.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
Now I'm wondering whether free public transport would mean more bus lines or less bus lines...
So cliche, Aldo. So cliche.
You know too much
*reaches for the red phone*
It can, and doing so would reduce the overall cost of running the system (assuming you don't expand on it, which you should in preparation for making it free.) It also increases the efficiency of bus loading as the 'back door' is no longer an exit only door due to concerns over fare jumpers, and the same to a lesser extent with removing turnstiles in stations. Particularly since it costs more to actually prosecute fare jumpers than it does to just let them ride the damn train.
I'll dig around for an interesting article on this issue from a little while ago when I get home. It put forth the argument that public should be made wholly government subsidized for the economic benefits that it would produce.
In any event, yes, it should be made free to ride and existing systems need to be repaired and expanded. They should be expanded first, and preparations put in place to deal with the issue of increased ridership when the fares disappear, though. If you don't prep for it and just throw open the doors it'll be a major clusterfuck.
In the US, there's the issue of the scale though. Your cities are hundreds of kilometers apart, and the cities itself are spread out too. In europe, everything is much closer together, which makes for easier public transport, (the higher the concentration of people, the fewer stops a route a makes, the fuller busses and trains are). This lowers the viability. The US is never big on government involvement, and any plans to make a high speed railway system will probably encounter huge political resistance even if it is viable (In europe, trains are become viable for northwestern travel once again, right now Amsterdam-Paris is faster by train then by plane, about the same price. Mostly due to aviation safety regulations driving up travel times, and locations of train stations vs airports).
The Netherlands has the problem of it's trains being arguably to succesful: So many people take them that the rails cannot support anymore trains, any delay in one train will cascade through the system and effect the rest. Still, it's by far the best way to travel between major cities here. Also, during rush hour, people are standing in the isles on the biggest lines. Small towns, Travel time becomes an issue, and if you live in the countryside, public transport is still crappy. The price is not great either, but generally comes down to if you are travelling alone, the train is probably cheaper, with 2 people in a car, it'd be close, and 3-4 the car is definitely cheaper.
The train travel to my mothers house, about 140km from here, takes 1h22mins, leaves every 30mins between 08.00 and 00.15, and costs E 26 for a return trip. (Note: gas is currently E 1.55 / liter in NL) It's a direct line too, which is sort of lucky. To my grandparents it's E 8 for 25mins/25km, and my father is E 14 for 40mins/50km. All of those are really nice, but then again, I live in a big city (by dutch standards). I know people who live in the woods in southern NL and travel upwards of 1.5 hours to make the last 20km home.
City transportation is generally handled well, but not without problems. Tickets are a bit expensive (E 2,40 for a single trip, or about E 1,5 per trip for a 7 trip card), buses are frequent enough during daytime, but schedules become erratic in morning rush hour due to traffic jams, the buses to the university are extremely overcrowded (waiting 4 bosses to get in is no exception, and feel like lifestock transport, they go every 2-3mins, students get to travel free though).
In time it may happen, but I'm willing to be any kind of legislation would be shot down immediately these days. Too much economic strife to deal with as is.
***EDIT***
^was a response to Moniker
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
Congestion is an economic money sink and reduces productivity by a vast degree. Do you think Fed-Ex loves the thought of its trucks sitting in rush hour not delivering packages and drinking up diesel at these prices? It is more expensive not to do anything about it. Again, I'll see if I can't find the article on the economic benefits to free fares. I was linked to it from one of the blogs I read sporadically so it's kind of a crap shoot. I think the RTA had a shitty powerpoint on just improving public transit in general too.
Also, inter-city rail lines are only feasible on the coastal corridors and possibly linking some of the metros as a sort of spoke and wheel around Chicago. Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Indy. Maybe Detroit or something, but you couldn't go to Atlanta and have it make any sense compared to flying. Intra-city is where things can and should be improved.
Over short distances or long? Because, yeah, a bullet train would beat a plane from New York to Boston. Not so much with New York to LA, though. Even if you ignore the 2 mountain ranges.
Service is overall decent, although having to wait 30+ minutes for a bus in cold weather when there's supposed to be one every 10 minutes ca be a frustrating experience.
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Only worry is that when something is free, it isn't valued. But it would definitely remove the cost-weighing that I imagine most motorists do. Right now the equation factors in cost as well as effectiveness, and a lot of people living in the suburbs come to the conclusion that it's worth the little bit extra it might currently cost to drive than to take the GO Train/Bus if there's the possibility of a delay or poor service.
So are most streets and highways (I think). The land and the money for upkeep had to come from somebody, and I imagine they're not all donations.
Free, I don't think is either realistic or politically possible in most places. Mostly because rightly or wrongly, free public transit would be seen as using tax money to subsidize the poor, and even in countries like Canada that have a fairly large commitment to a social safety-net, thats not likely to go over very well with the people who vote.
Also, we've spent much of the last sixty years since WWII or so here in North America, and even in parts of Europe (and I imagine in Australia, New Zealand and other places), designing and building huge areas of housing that are designed around the private automobile and transit service in those areas (the burbs), is either non existent, grossly inadequate, or physically impossible to get into those neighbourhoods due to their urban design.
Our whole lifestyle and physical infrastructure in vast, vast, areas is designed around the private automobile. Given that, the general will for free transit is simply not going to be there in my opinion.
Yeah, I didn't even realize how the damn system worked in Berlin, so I rode it for free the whole time until at one point we got fined, but since we were confused tourists they gave us half the fine, and so it still cost less than all my freeriding...
The passes for the TTC are ridiculous. You've got to take the bus more then 10 times a week to make it worth it. That's just stupid.
Also, Light-Rail is pretty dumb in our climate. The cost of repair for those things is nasty. Subways are a far better idea. More initial investment, but large long term savings. Of course, since that involves sacrificing the short term for the long term, it will never get done.