6 ms·

They should make the public transport cheaper. At least as cheap so that gas for driving alone in a car is more expensive. Even among other big cities in the Ne

by yread 7y ago

They should make the public transport cheaper. At least as cheap so that gas for driving alone in a car is more expensive. Even among other big cities in the Netherlands Amsterdam per km rate for public transport (€0.162 p/km) is quite high.

XCSme 7y ago
For me the biggest cost (with buses/tram) is usually the one-time boarding fee, not the p/km charge. So it's €0.96 + €0.162/km, and I usually pay like €1.5 (so ~60% of the cost is the boarding fee).
blunte 7y ago
Considering many Dutch jobs include a supplement to cover transportation costs, public transport is not a particularly big expense for locals. And for tourists, it's ok to be a bit expensive (especially in Amsterdam where tourism is so big that it's making the city almost unlivable). And if you compare public transport costs to housing, it's nothing.
- yread 7y ago
  I don't know about that. Median netto salary is 2150 eur[1], people often pay 30% of their netto in rent = 1505 eur, health insurance is about 100 eur so you're left with 1405 eur "discretionary spending". Average commute is 22.6km [2]. You need to go there and back again - 45 * 0.162 + 0.96 = 8.25 eur/day * 22 = 181.5. That's almost 13% of your money. Or anecdote: my wife travels from Amsterdam to Utrecht. Seasonal train ticket is about 180 eur but there is another 200 eur she spends on bus and train of getting to and from train station. Compared to taking the car which costs like 150 eur in gas. It shouldn't be cheaper to take the car alone compared to public transport! [1] https://www.amsterdamtips.com/salaries-in-amsterdam-netherlands https://www.amsterdamtips.com/salaries-in-amsterdam-netherla... [2] https://www.iamexpat.nl/career/employment-news/more-half-employees-netherlands-commute-work https://www.iamexpat.nl/career/employment-news/more-half-emp...
  - evandijk70 7y ago
    A lot of companies reimburse the costs for your commute. Even when they don't, you can deduct transportation to work from your taxes, which helps quite a bit. I do agree that it shouldn't be cheaper to take the car to work, but you did not take into account two major factors for the cost of commute by car: 1. Depreciation, insurance, maintenance and taxes paid for the car 2. The cost of parking in Amsterdam
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Pfhreak 7y ago
They should make public transit free. Why should it need to make money if it's a public benefit? If everyone is better off the more people use it, why not optimize to maximize it's utilization?
- kthejoker2 7y ago
  First, free != "free". You pay for it with either fees or taxes. Is the concept of a public benefit collecting fees for its own operations that strange to you? And of course not everyone is better off the more people use it; regular business commuters will be turned off by "problem riders" (See above comments for details. Having a nominal barrier to entry reduces the percentage of problem riders. One of the main reasons people elect not to use public transit is personal safety and comfort. ( https://transitcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TC_WhosOnBoard_Final_digital-1-1.pdf https://transitcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TC_Whos... )
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    > Is the concept of a public benefit collecting fees for its own operations that strange to you? Yes. This seems to be the thing that kills public services. If you are going to have everyone spend a lot on the initial cost, it seems wild to me that people don't want to spend a little more to make sure their investments are well maintained. Would you buy a car and then not maintain it? That's just asking for things to get broken down sooner. Public transit cannot just raise prices, as higher prices reduces ridership. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons public housing in the states has such a different reputation than public housing in the rest of the world - housing is expected to make enough money to maintain itself while also providing housing for the poorest. (Also, maintaining giant buildings is much more expensive than, say, maintaining a bunch of 4 story apartments.)
mvexel 7y ago
Where I live, revenue from fares makes up ~11% of the total. (The largest chunk of revenue is from local sales tax.) Making transit cheaper would be relatively painless and highly effective: we have a 'free fare day' every year where 25-65% more people board a bus or train than on regular days. A new frequent bus service connecting train stations and major destinations sees as many boardings as existing light rail; it is free to ride. A small sales tax hike is palatable to enough people that it is politically viable, whereas a $2.50 fare every time you board a bus or train makes more people not ride transit who otherwise might.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  It wouldn't even cost 11% of the total to make public transit free because you can save money by not having to collect payment at all. No gates or ticket machines to maintain, buses go faster because no one is waiting in queues to pay at the door, etc. Now admittedly more people would start using it if it were free, but that's a feature not a bug. And the marginal cost of higher ridership is much lower than the sunk capital costs of constructing the system in the first place.
  - eMSF 7y ago
    >buses go faster because no one is waiting in queues to pay at the door Well, you could always not accept payment at the door. But more passengers doesn't equal faster buses; after a point the service will bog down as the buses bunch up, and increasing the number of buses will not solve that. A small base fare goes a long way to persuade people to walk short distances instead of catching the bus.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > Where I live, revenue from fares makes up ~11% of the total Where is this? 11% would put your system near the bottom of farebox recovery ratios for major systems. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio
  - mvexel 7y ago
CydeWeys 7y ago
Plenty of people in major cities across the globe are fighting for free mass transit. It's not that unreasonable at all when you consider that, in many cities, the per-trip subsidy is already higher than the fare price anyway. And if you reverse the situation, and imagine a city with free public transit that is then considering adding a fare to it, said fare would be extremely regressive and would hit the worst off the hardest.
- zucker42 7y ago
  Most free fare experiments have been failures from what I've seen. City Beautiful has a video about it. Free fare can attract people who are less desirable to ride with, even potentially decreasing ridership.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Can you provide a link? What major cities have tried free fares? I'm also really curious to know what "less desirable" means, exactly.
    - Afton 7y ago
      Less desirable probably means "people who are homeless and/or mentally ill, who use the free-bus ride as a heated place to hang out all day".
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - zucker42 7y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccxVYborUcU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccxVYborUcU was the video I was referencing. It was far more positive than I remember. https://ftp.fdot.gov/file/d/FTP/FDOT%20LTS/CO/research/Completed_Proj/Summary_PTO/FDOT_BC137_38_FF_rpt.pdf https://ftp.fdot.gov/file/d/FTP/FDOT%20LTS/CO/research/Compl... is the research I remember that was more critical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport is also good. Less desirable means people that other riders are less likely to want to ride with. From the paper above: > In the Austin, Texas fare-free demonstration, both anecdotal and official data suggest that problem riders increased substantially and drove away other riders. Joy-riding youth and inebriated adults, as well as vagrants, increased. In addition, in both the Mercer Metro and the Austin, Texas experiences, problem riders actually drove away many of the regular bus commuters. In none of the experiments did the increase in transit ridership include automobile commuters enticed by the fare-free service (Connor, 1979; Kounes, 1993; People for Modern Transit Technical Committee, 2001).

by yread 7y ago

XCSme 7y ago

For me the biggest cost (with buses/tram) is usually the one-time boarding fee, not the p/km charge. So it's €0.96 + €0.162/km, and I usually pay like €1.5 (so ~60% of the cost is the boarding fee).

blunte 7y ago

Considering many Dutch jobs include a supplement to cover transportation costs, public transport is not a particularly big expense for locals. And for tourists, it's ok to be a bit expensive (especially in Amsterdam where tourism is so big that it's making the city almost unlivable). And if you compare public transport costs to housing, it's nothing.

yread 7y ago
I don't know about that. Median netto salary is 2150 eur[1], people often pay 30% of their netto in rent = 1505 eur, health insurance is about 100 eur so you're left with 1405 eur "discretionary spending". Average commute is 22.6km [2]. You need to go there and back again - 45 * 0.162 + 0.96 = 8.25 eur/day * 22 = 181.5. That's almost 13% of your money. Or anecdote: my wife travels from Amsterdam to Utrecht. Seasonal train ticket is about 180 eur but there is another 200 eur she spends on bus and train of getting to and from train station. Compared to taking the car which costs like 150 eur in gas. It shouldn't be cheaper to take the car alone compared to public transport! [1] https://www.amsterdamtips.com/salaries-in-amsterdam-netherlands https://www.amsterdamtips.com/salaries-in-amsterdam-netherla... [2] https://www.iamexpat.nl/career/employment-news/more-half-employees-netherlands-commute-work https://www.iamexpat.nl/career/employment-news/more-half-emp...
- evandijk70 7y ago
  A lot of companies reimburse the costs for your commute. Even when they don't, you can deduct transportation to work from your taxes, which helps quite a bit. I do agree that it shouldn't be cheaper to take the car to work, but you did not take into account two major factors for the cost of commute by car: 1. Depreciation, insurance, maintenance and taxes paid for the car 2. The cost of parking in Amsterdam

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Pfhreak 7y ago

They should make public transit free. Why should it need to make money if it's a public benefit? If everyone is better off the more people use it, why not optimize to maximize it's utilization?

kthejoker2 7y ago
First, free != "free". You pay for it with either fees or taxes. Is the concept of a public benefit collecting fees for its own operations that strange to you? And of course not everyone is better off the more people use it; regular business commuters will be turned off by "problem riders" (See above comments for details. Having a nominal barrier to entry reduces the percentage of problem riders. One of the main reasons people elect not to use public transit is personal safety and comfort. ( https://transitcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TC_WhosOnBoard_Final_digital-1-1.pdf https://transitcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TC_Whos... )
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  > Is the concept of a public benefit collecting fees for its own operations that strange to you? Yes. This seems to be the thing that kills public services. If you are going to have everyone spend a lot on the initial cost, it seems wild to me that people don't want to spend a little more to make sure their investments are well maintained. Would you buy a car and then not maintain it? That's just asking for things to get broken down sooner. Public transit cannot just raise prices, as higher prices reduces ridership. Incidentally, this is one of the reasons public housing in the states has such a different reputation than public housing in the rest of the world - housing is expected to make enough money to maintain itself while also providing housing for the poorest. (Also, maintaining giant buildings is much more expensive than, say, maintaining a bunch of 4 story apartments.)

mvexel 7y ago

Where I live, revenue from fares makes up ~11% of the total. (The largest chunk of revenue is from local sales tax.) Making transit cheaper would be relatively painless and highly effective: we have a 'free fare day' every year where 25-65% more people board a bus or train than on regular days. A new frequent bus service connecting train stations and major destinations sees as many boardings as existing light rail; it is free to ride. A small sales tax hike is palatable to enough people that it is politically viable, whereas a $2.50 fare every time you board a bus or train makes more people not ride transit who otherwise might.

CydeWeys 7y ago
It wouldn't even cost 11% of the total to make public transit free because you can save money by not having to collect payment at all. No gates or ticket machines to maintain, buses go faster because no one is waiting in queues to pay at the door, etc. Now admittedly more people would start using it if it were free, but that's a feature not a bug. And the marginal cost of higher ridership is much lower than the sunk capital costs of constructing the system in the first place.
- eMSF 7y ago
  >buses go faster because no one is waiting in queues to pay at the door Well, you could always not accept payment at the door. But more passengers doesn't equal faster buses; after a point the service will bog down as the buses bunch up, and increasing the number of buses will not solve that. A small base fare goes a long way to persuade people to walk short distances instead of catching the bus.
vonmoltke 7y ago
> Where I live, revenue from fares makes up ~11% of the total Where is this? 11% would put your system near the bottom of farebox recovery ratios for major systems. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio
- mvexel 7y ago

CydeWeys 7y ago

Plenty of people in major cities across the globe are fighting for free mass transit. It's not that unreasonable at all when you consider that, in many cities, the per-trip subsidy is already higher than the fare price anyway. And if you reverse the situation, and imagine a city with free public transit that is then considering adding a fare to it, said fare would be extremely regressive and would hit the worst off the hardest.

zucker42 7y ago
Most free fare experiments have been failures from what I've seen. City Beautiful has a video about it. Free fare can attract people who are less desirable to ride with, even potentially decreasing ridership.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Can you provide a link? What major cities have tried free fares? I'm also really curious to know what "less desirable" means, exactly.
  - Afton 7y ago
    Less desirable probably means "people who are homeless and/or mentally ill, who use the free-bus ride as a heated place to hang out all day".
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - zucker42 7y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccxVYborUcU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccxVYborUcU was the video I was referencing. It was far more positive than I remember. https://ftp.fdot.gov/file/d/FTP/FDOT%20LTS/CO/research/Completed_Proj/Summary_PTO/FDOT_BC137_38_FF_rpt.pdf https://ftp.fdot.gov/file/d/FTP/FDOT%20LTS/CO/research/Compl... is the research I remember that was more critical. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport is also good. Less desirable means people that other riders are less likely to want to ride with. From the paper above: > In the Austin, Texas fare-free demonstration, both anecdotal and official data suggest that problem riders increased substantially and drove away other riders. Joy-riding youth and inebriated adults, as well as vagrants, increased. In addition, in both the Mercer Metro and the Austin, Texas experiences, problem riders actually drove away many of the regular bus commuters. In none of the experiments did the increase in transit ridership include automobile commuters enticed by the fare-free service (Connor, 1979; Kounes, 1993; People for Modern Transit Technical Committee, 2001).