11 ms·

> Other attempts around the world to offer citizens free travel have failed, including in US city Seattle. Why do they not mention the large amount of cities w

> Other attempts around the world to offer citizens free travel have failed, including in US city Seattle. Why do they not mention the large amount of cities where free public transit is working just fine (most notably Estonian capitol Tallinn)? List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport#List_of_towns_and_cities_with_area-wide_zero-fare_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport#List_of_...

Quarrelsome 9y ago
Tallinn is not very big though compared to other European capitals, also they have form for it as it was former USSR. They never even put up barriers when you had to pay (trains would have inspectors and buses were self ticket stamping).
- dx034 9y ago
  Few German stations have barriers. It's actually "profitable" in most cities to never buy a ticket, checks are rare. I guess German mentality helps avoiding widespread abuse (and the fact that it's a crime under German law).
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    Germany is the only country I ever visited where i feared the ticket inspector. I've seen them put fines. They go undercover in the metro: sometimes its just a dude sitting there suddenly takes the gadget out and yells out a control. I've had foreign friends, as tourists having to pay the fine. In SF you can simply not pay,there is no control. In argentina, the bus driver might not start the bus if you don't pay, turning the whole bus people against you. In germany, you get a damn ticket very fast, which you can pay with credit card. I once didnt pay the ticket and felt like Jason Bourne.
    - dx034 9y ago
      Problem is that this can get you in legal trouble after a few times. While first offender cases always get dropped, you'll get a court date if you get caught too often. I once witnessed a case where someone had to spend a short time in jail because of that. He got caught 13 times over two years (not sure how he managed that) but still appears quite harsh. The fact that Germany doesn't have massively overcrowded jails shows that most people end up paying at some point.
      - walshemj 9y ago
        And get caught dodging rail fairs you will often be fired there was a high profile case of a highly paid financier in the City (uk) getting fired for this he probably wont be able to work in finance again.
      - conanbatt 9y ago
        Its a criminal offense not to pay a public transportation ticket? Damn. I really was like Jason Bourne.
        whyever 9y ago
        In practice, it's punished as a criminal offense only if you are a serial offender.
        billforsternz 9y ago
        I am glad to hear this is a thing. I was apprehensive about travelling to the other side of the world by myself recently and confessed to my wife I wish I could be more like Jason Bourne. "He never fumbles for his passport, misplaced his tickets, worries about losing his medication". This became a theme as I reported my progress. On one leg I sat opposite a high powered cop (I could see the files he was working on). I reported back to my wife with pride that I overtook the action man in the race to passport control, "just like Jason Bourne".
        pgeorgi 9y ago
        https://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/265a.html https://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/265a.html StGB means criminal law. (1) means that using public telecommunication services (eg. public phones, maybe paid public wifi?), public transport or entering an event with the intent not to pay the fee can lead to jail up to one year or a fine, unless there's another law that mandates a bigger punishment. (2) means that even the attempt is a crime (ie. you don't have to succeed), otherwise them catching you would make you exempt from that law (as long as you paid up). The first few incidents can usually be settled with the fine set by the transportation authority, both to avoid too much work in the legal system and because you might legitimately forget it every now and then (and that means no intent = not criminal = they'd lose a case based on this law). After too many occurences they'll claim that you can't forget it that often, which helps build a case in court.
    - pound 9y ago
      There are fare inspectors in SF. May not be too often but checks are happening.
      - conanbatt 9y ago
        Anecdotally, I see people not pay the bus almost every stop i use it. Muni is anarchy. Not to mention that the way to pay for cash doesnt give out change, which means taht if you dont have a clipper card, you just dont pay anything at all.
  - lispm 9y ago
    > It's actually "profitable" in most cities to never buy a ticket, checks are rare. The operators are adjusting this so that there are just enough controls to have enough payments. This is an optimization problem and they know what they are doing and how much.
  - jedrek 9y ago
    Every time I visit Berlin I get my ticket checked, like clockwork.
  - cleeus 9y ago
    I think it's not profitable. I work in Berlin and commute to work by public transport every day. You currently pay 60EUR if you get caught and I get checked at least twice a week. Repeated offenders pay more and get additional sanctions. For 60EUR you get a ticket for a month (in a yearly subscription).
  - whyever 9y ago
    Really depends on the city! In some my ticket was checked twice a year, in others more like twice a week.
- r3bl 9y ago
  Albeit a small data point, I've used public transport in more than a dozen of countries in Europe and saw barriers near public transports in three countries.
  - dx034 9y ago
    The big problem with barriers is that you need standardised tickets. If you want to allow a mix of local tickets and rail tickets (to allow one fare for the whole journey) it'll be close to impossible to build a barrier that works for all of those. The cities that do have barriers (e.g. London) only accept specific tickets on those lines and are large enough to run their own system.
    - cr1895 9y ago
      > If you want to allow a mix of local tickets and rail tickets (to allow one fare for the whole journey) it'll be close to impossible to build a barrier that works for all of those. Let's take Rotterdam or Amsterdam as an example. Both of these stations are closed off to non-ticket holders. You can access Dutch trains as well as international trains like Thalys to France and ICE to Germany. Access is granted by individual tickets bought from the Dutch railway kiosks, by Dutch public transport cards, or by printed/digital QR-code tickets from any of the three rail companies. There is only one type of barrier. There are not isolated entrances for particular lines. Maybe I misunderstand you, because what you say is close to impossible seems to work just fine in the NL.
      - dx034 9y ago
        That works because the Netherlands standardised all tickets. German ICEs and Thalys are one of the rare exceptions and have a work-around. That needs one central body organising and standardising travel across the country. Few countries operate that way. But you're right, it's actually not impossible just unlikely to happen. And I must say I really enjoyed the Dutch system where you don't have to print paper every time.
        9y ago
taoistextremist 9y ago
I'm not sure how Germany organizes their rail systems, but I'm guessing the rail companies profit from increased property values like in much of the world. This makes free public transport potentially workable (and even profitable) at least in the subway aspect. The US does not exercise a system like this in the vast majority of cases. Of course, there's also the fact that if you have a well-designed system, free transport should encourage a lot more economic activity that'll pay back into the funding of the system. That's another thing many cities in the US lack.
- thesimon 9y ago
  Not really, the infrastructure is state-owned and separated from the rail companies.
  - taoistextremist 9y ago
    I'd be interested to see how they intend to make this plan successful, then. There's no other avenue for the rail to collect revenue in that case, unless its economic benefit is already a significant net profit for the government. It may be, for all I know, it allows higher population density and encourages market participation, both of which increase taxes collected. It is hard to see how it'll really convince many people not already taking public transit to use it, though. Cars are pretty expensive to have anywhere in Europe with the price of gas and typically more discouraging laws for car ownership (not sure what they're like specifically in Germany), I can't imagine it's a large cross-section of the population that drives because it's cheaper.
    - thesimon 9y ago
      >There's no other avenue for the rail to collect revenue in that case They already get paid around $9 billion/year, so I guess the government would just pay more.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      Marginal cost, I would guess. When you have a car, but you don't have a transit pass, the cost of completing a particular trip by car is (or at least appears to be) cheaper than doing so by public transit. For example, if I have to go to the city center and back by tram, the cost for two one-way tickets is € 4,60. The cost of one liter of gasoline is somewhere below € 2,00. Public transit only becomes cheaper than going by car if you use it regularly and thus purchase monthly or yearly passes.
lumberjack 9y ago
Also many European cities subsidize public transport and it would not be possible any other way. It would be too expensive for its core demographic without subsidies and still be unprofitable. https://www.openstarts.units.it/bitstream/10077/5892/1/vanGoeverden_et_al_ET32.pdf https://www.openstarts.units.it/bitstream/10077/5892/1/vanGo...
mcguire 9y ago
Once upon a time, Austin, TX, made its Capitol Metro busses free. Ridership went way up, although there were a couple of complaints. The first was that really sketchy people starting riding the busses a lot[1]---possibly because they were heated/air conditioned---and the second was from UT Austin students, who were still paying for bus service as part of their student fees. I never heard why they stopped, though. [1] At one point, I was waiting at a bus stop and a man who was either on serious drugs or schizophrenic came up and started talking to me. When the bus arrived, he followed me on but didn't sit next to me while I started reading a book. A few minutes later, he started behaving even more oddly and pulled out a crack pipe. Sheriff's deputies eventually removed him because he was getting threatening.
philwelch 9y ago
In Seattle, we had a “free ride zone” across downtown. But since virtually every route crossed the “free ride zone” and went elsewhere, it was extremely confusing to use. Also, Seattle has a huge homeless problem, so you’d end up with vagrants using the buses as rolling shelters and crowding out legitimate transit use.
bobthepanda 9y ago
Notice that all those cities are small. (Tallinn looks like the biggest one that makes all public transit free.) Prices are useful in that they provide a price signal that regulates demand. If you make the price zero, people will start using it for trips that they wouldn't really need to use public transport for, because why put in the effort to walk or bike when the transit is free? The spike in ridership will force an increase in frequency, making transit even more convenient for walkers and bikers, creating a cycle of having to cater to bottomless free demand. As far as attracting drivers goes, transit is in many cases already much cheaper than driving. Price is not the main issue keeping drivers on the roads. Guangzhou tried free transit to reduce pollution and had to stop because it caused severe overcrowding issues. http://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-fare-experiment.html http://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-fare...
- majewsky 9y ago
  > If you make the price zero, people will start using it for trips that they wouldn't really need to use public transport for, because why put in the effort to walk or bike when the transit is free? This argument doesn't hold because it already applies to all time-based passes. I have a year pass, so the marginal cost of any particular tram ride is zero. When I'm walking along a road that also happens to have a tram line, I may hop on the tram for a stop if one happens to be coming at the right moment, even if I could easily walk.

Quarrelsome 9y ago

Tallinn is not very big though compared to other European capitals, also they have form for it as it was former USSR. They never even put up barriers when you had to pay (trains would have inspectors and buses were self ticket stamping).

dx034 9y ago
Few German stations have barriers. It's actually "profitable" in most cities to never buy a ticket, checks are rare. I guess German mentality helps avoiding widespread abuse (and the fact that it's a crime under German law).
- conanbatt 9y ago
  Germany is the only country I ever visited where i feared the ticket inspector. I've seen them put fines. They go undercover in the metro: sometimes its just a dude sitting there suddenly takes the gadget out and yells out a control. I've had foreign friends, as tourists having to pay the fine. In SF you can simply not pay,there is no control. In argentina, the bus driver might not start the bus if you don't pay, turning the whole bus people against you. In germany, you get a damn ticket very fast, which you can pay with credit card. I once didnt pay the ticket and felt like Jason Bourne.
  - dx034 9y ago
    Problem is that this can get you in legal trouble after a few times. While first offender cases always get dropped, you'll get a court date if you get caught too often. I once witnessed a case where someone had to spend a short time in jail because of that. He got caught 13 times over two years (not sure how he managed that) but still appears quite harsh. The fact that Germany doesn't have massively overcrowded jails shows that most people end up paying at some point.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      And get caught dodging rail fairs you will often be fired there was a high profile case of a highly paid financier in the City (uk) getting fired for this he probably wont be able to work in finance again.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      Its a criminal offense not to pay a public transportation ticket? Damn. I really was like Jason Bourne.
      - whyever 9y ago
        In practice, it's punished as a criminal offense only if you are a serial offender.
      - billforsternz 9y ago
        I am glad to hear this is a thing. I was apprehensive about travelling to the other side of the world by myself recently and confessed to my wife I wish I could be more like Jason Bourne. "He never fumbles for his passport, misplaced his tickets, worries about losing his medication". This became a theme as I reported my progress. On one leg I sat opposite a high powered cop (I could see the files he was working on). I reported back to my wife with pride that I overtook the action man in the race to passport control, "just like Jason Bourne".
      - pgeorgi 9y ago
        https://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/265a.html https://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/265a.html StGB means criminal law. (1) means that using public telecommunication services (eg. public phones, maybe paid public wifi?), public transport or entering an event with the intent not to pay the fee can lead to jail up to one year or a fine, unless there's another law that mandates a bigger punishment. (2) means that even the attempt is a crime (ie. you don't have to succeed), otherwise them catching you would make you exempt from that law (as long as you paid up). The first few incidents can usually be settled with the fine set by the transportation authority, both to avoid too much work in the legal system and because you might legitimately forget it every now and then (and that means no intent = not criminal = they'd lose a case based on this law). After too many occurences they'll claim that you can't forget it that often, which helps build a case in court.
  - pound 9y ago
    There are fare inspectors in SF. May not be too often but checks are happening.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      Anecdotally, I see people not pay the bus almost every stop i use it. Muni is anarchy. Not to mention that the way to pay for cash doesnt give out change, which means taht if you dont have a clipper card, you just dont pay anything at all.
- lispm 9y ago
  > It's actually "profitable" in most cities to never buy a ticket, checks are rare. The operators are adjusting this so that there are just enough controls to have enough payments. This is an optimization problem and they know what they are doing and how much.
- jedrek 9y ago
  Every time I visit Berlin I get my ticket checked, like clockwork.
- cleeus 9y ago
  I think it's not profitable. I work in Berlin and commute to work by public transport every day. You currently pay 60EUR if you get caught and I get checked at least twice a week. Repeated offenders pay more and get additional sanctions. For 60EUR you get a ticket for a month (in a yearly subscription).
- whyever 9y ago
  Really depends on the city! In some my ticket was checked twice a year, in others more like twice a week.
r3bl 9y ago
Albeit a small data point, I've used public transport in more than a dozen of countries in Europe and saw barriers near public transports in three countries.
- dx034 9y ago
  The big problem with barriers is that you need standardised tickets. If you want to allow a mix of local tickets and rail tickets (to allow one fare for the whole journey) it'll be close to impossible to build a barrier that works for all of those. The cities that do have barriers (e.g. London) only accept specific tickets on those lines and are large enough to run their own system.
  - cr1895 9y ago
    > If you want to allow a mix of local tickets and rail tickets (to allow one fare for the whole journey) it'll be close to impossible to build a barrier that works for all of those. Let's take Rotterdam or Amsterdam as an example. Both of these stations are closed off to non-ticket holders. You can access Dutch trains as well as international trains like Thalys to France and ICE to Germany. Access is granted by individual tickets bought from the Dutch railway kiosks, by Dutch public transport cards, or by printed/digital QR-code tickets from any of the three rail companies. There is only one type of barrier. There are not isolated entrances for particular lines. Maybe I misunderstand you, because what you say is close to impossible seems to work just fine in the NL.
    - dx034 9y ago
      That works because the Netherlands standardised all tickets. German ICEs and Thalys are one of the rare exceptions and have a work-around. That needs one central body organising and standardising travel across the country. Few countries operate that way. But you're right, it's actually not impossible just unlikely to happen. And I must say I really enjoyed the Dutch system where you don't have to print paper every time.
      - 9y ago

taoistextremist 9y ago

I'm not sure how Germany organizes their rail systems, but I'm guessing the rail companies profit from increased property values like in much of the world. This makes free public transport potentially workable (and even profitable) at least in the subway aspect. The US does not exercise a system like this in the vast majority of cases. Of course, there's also the fact that if you have a well-designed system, free transport should encourage a lot more economic activity that'll pay back into the funding of the system. That's another thing many cities in the US lack.

thesimon 9y ago
Not really, the infrastructure is state-owned and separated from the rail companies.
- taoistextremist 9y ago
  I'd be interested to see how they intend to make this plan successful, then. There's no other avenue for the rail to collect revenue in that case, unless its economic benefit is already a significant net profit for the government. It may be, for all I know, it allows higher population density and encourages market participation, both of which increase taxes collected. It is hard to see how it'll really convince many people not already taking public transit to use it, though. Cars are pretty expensive to have anywhere in Europe with the price of gas and typically more discouraging laws for car ownership (not sure what they're like specifically in Germany), I can't imagine it's a large cross-section of the population that drives because it's cheaper.
  - thesimon 9y ago
    >There's no other avenue for the rail to collect revenue in that case They already get paid around $9 billion/year, so I guess the government would just pay more.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Marginal cost, I would guess. When you have a car, but you don't have a transit pass, the cost of completing a particular trip by car is (or at least appears to be) cheaper than doing so by public transit. For example, if I have to go to the city center and back by tram, the cost for two one-way tickets is € 4,60. The cost of one liter of gasoline is somewhere below € 2,00. Public transit only becomes cheaper than going by car if you use it regularly and thus purchase monthly or yearly passes.

lumberjack 9y ago

Also many European cities subsidize public transport and it would not be possible any other way. It would be too expensive for its core demographic without subsidies and still be unprofitable. https://www.openstarts.units.it/bitstream/10077/5892/1/vanGoeverden_et_al_ET32.pdf https://www.openstarts.units.it/bitstream/10077/5892/1/vanGo...

mcguire 9y ago

Once upon a time, Austin, TX, made its Capitol Metro busses free. Ridership went way up, although there were a couple of complaints. The first was that really sketchy people starting riding the busses a lot[1]---possibly because they were heated/air conditioned---and the second was from UT Austin students, who were still paying for bus service as part of their student fees. I never heard why they stopped, though. [1] At one point, I was waiting at a bus stop and a man who was either on serious drugs or schizophrenic came up and started talking to me. When the bus arrived, he followed me on but didn't sit next to me while I started reading a book. A few minutes later, he started behaving even more oddly and pulled out a crack pipe. Sheriff's deputies eventually removed him because he was getting threatening.

philwelch 9y ago

In Seattle, we had a “free ride zone” across downtown. But since virtually every route crossed the “free ride zone” and went elsewhere, it was extremely confusing to use. Also, Seattle has a huge homeless problem, so you’d end up with vagrants using the buses as rolling shelters and crowding out legitimate transit use.

bobthepanda 9y ago

Notice that all those cities are small. (Tallinn looks like the biggest one that makes all public transit free.) Prices are useful in that they provide a price signal that regulates demand. If you make the price zero, people will start using it for trips that they wouldn't really need to use public transport for, because why put in the effort to walk or bike when the transit is free? The spike in ridership will force an increase in frequency, making transit even more convenient for walkers and bikers, creating a cycle of having to cater to bottomless free demand. As far as attracting drivers goes, transit is in many cases already much cheaper than driving. Price is not the main issue keeping drivers on the roads. Guangzhou tried free transit to reduce pollution and had to stop because it caused severe overcrowding issues. http://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-fare-experiment.html http://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-fare...

majewsky 9y ago
> If you make the price zero, people will start using it for trips that they wouldn't really need to use public transport for, because why put in the effort to walk or bike when the transit is free? This argument doesn't hold because it already applies to all time-based passes. I have a year pass, so the marginal cost of any particular tram ride is zero. When I'm walking along a road that also happens to have a tram line, I may hop on the tram for a stop if one happens to be coming at the right moment, even if I could easily walk.