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The problem then is that those people don't have enough income, not that the price of buses to them is too high. If it's hard to provide the service to them, th

The problem then is that those people don't have enough income, not that the price of buses to them is too high. If it's hard to provide the service to them, the price should be correspondingly higher to discourage use of the bus except when it would be efficient to use it. Yes, even by those protected classes. If they need it so desperately badly, that means they would be willing to pay the higher price. If there's simply no money in their budget to pay for it and we as a society judge their welfare to be lower than what we would like as a result, it means they need more money, not that the pricing system needs to be messed with.

jdietrich 8y ago
>If it's hard to provide the service to them, the price should be correspondingly higher to discourage use of the bus except when it would be efficient to use it. You've got the economics completely backwards. Running a bus route has a fixed cost; where the fares collected fall short of that cost, it may be necessary to subsidise that route. You actively want to encourage more people to use that route, because it reduces the level of subsidy necessary. People who find the route merely convenient help to fund the service for people who vitally need it. Bus subsidies are often remarkably cheap on a per-journey basis, because the service would only be modestly unprofitable without the subsidy. Paying a few pennies per passenger to make a service profitable is vastly cheaper than paying for taxis to ferry all of those people to their destination.
- dzhiurgis 8y ago
  At some point something like Uber pool must be more efficient. Some smaller, more efficient buses should be also employed.
AlexCoventry 8y ago
Market forces should serve society, not the other way around, and humane societies value more than simple efficiency. If market forces aren't aligned with social values, it's sensible to use a different resource-allocation mechanism.

jdietrich 8y ago

>If it's hard to provide the service to them, the price should be correspondingly higher to discourage use of the bus except when it would be efficient to use it. You've got the economics completely backwards. Running a bus route has a fixed cost; where the fares collected fall short of that cost, it may be necessary to subsidise that route. You actively want to encourage more people to use that route, because it reduces the level of subsidy necessary. People who find the route merely convenient help to fund the service for people who vitally need it. Bus subsidies are often remarkably cheap on a per-journey basis, because the service would only be modestly unprofitable without the subsidy. Paying a few pennies per passenger to make a service profitable is vastly cheaper than paying for taxis to ferry all of those people to their destination.

dzhiurgis 8y ago
At some point something like Uber pool must be more efficient. Some smaller, more efficient buses should be also employed.

AlexCoventry 8y ago

Market forces should serve society, not the other way around, and humane societies value more than simple efficiency. If market forces aren't aligned with social values, it's sensible to use a different resource-allocation mechanism.