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Seattle used to have this for an area of the city. It was called the "Free Ride Zone" - and it had some unexpected consequences. The primary problem is that h

• noobermin 7y ago
  That is essentially treating the symptoms, not the cause.
  • acchow 7y ago
    Right. So of course we're supposed to solve homelessness. Know how this can be accomplished in Seattle?
    • runarberg 7y ago
      You don’t need to solve it. But there are numerous tried and proven ways of significantly reducing homelessness. We could start by evaluating and employing some of these.
      • troydavis 7y ago
        That statement is the equivalent of inserting “just” into technical advice, as in “It’s just code” or “Just scale out.” If it was that simple, the problem would have been solved. Here’s the laundry list of things Seattle has tried and is trying: https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness, https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/addressing-the-crisis https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/addressing-the-crisis
        • runarberg 7y ago
          Note that homelessness is not a problem of the same scale as Seattle in many cities around the country, and around the world. These cities have in turn some measures and initiatives that are proven solutions that reduces homelessness. Note that not all of them could work in Seattle, but some of them might.
    • CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
      You don’t need to solve all of homelessness, just providing something competitive with a bus could be a start one would think.
      • nostromo 7y ago
        Seattle has tried that. People with chemical addictions will not go to shelters because shelters don't allow you to be drunk or high. So shelter beds go unused, and people shoot up and drink in parks, on sidewalks, and on busses.
        • crooked-v 7y ago
          > So shelter beds go unused Shelter bed usage in Seattle runs at 90% as of last year, with low reported use rate before that being an artifact of bad reporting rather than reflecting actual conditions [1]. [1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/qa-with-project-homeless-are-homeless-shelter-beds-sitting-empty/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/qa-with-p...
        • runarberg 7y ago
          If true, then there is something wrong with the policy that all shelters need to be sober. Introduce some number of shelters—in parts of the city where high drug usage is a problem—that include safe use spaces (i.e. with medical access, clean needles and dispose boxes, no drug arrest policy etc.)
          • dmode 7y ago
            Cities increasingly are calling for safe injection sites, but it is against Federal law
            • runarberg 7y ago
              Federal legislation doesn’t stop Seattle from allowing the sale of marijuana, so that is a pretty lame excuse.
    • smileysteve 7y ago
      The most glaring one in response to this symptom is to offer at least some public bath options.
    • jtmcmc 7y ago
      yes we're supposed to fucking solve homelessness.
    • DoreenMichele 7y ago
      Seattle needs a great deal more housing. https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/seattle-statistics-on-homelessness-and.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/05/seattle-sta... The US needs to provide a national health care system. Our current system is actively part of the problem. Homeless services need to do a better job of providing "opportunity," not just charity. Most homeless services actively help keep the problem alive, a la The Shirky Principle. https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/08/give-man-fishing-line.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/08/give-man-fi... https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-shirky-principle-and-homelessness.html https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-shirky-...
      • adrr 7y ago
        Lot of the homeless services do offer job training. Goodwill is all about job training and Salvation Army also offers job experience for people recovering from addictions. Issue with homeless is a lot more complicated than access to jobs.
        • DoreenMichele 7y ago
          I once qualified for assistance with job hunting based on my handicap. Thankfully, I was offered a corporate job making better than minimum wage about the time I completed the lengthy intake process or they would have had me permanently underemployed and destitute instead merely trapped in poverty for a decade or more. Please note that I spoke of opportunity, not jobs nor jobs training programs. Lots of job training programs et al actively limit opportunity. They don't want their participants to get too uppity or ambitious.
    • nsporillo 7y ago
      Hopefully with some better allocation of resources. https://www.zerohedge.com/political/seattle-taxpayers-fund-transgender-strippers-performance-homelessness-conference https://www.zerohedge.com/political/seattle-taxpayers-fund-t...
• proc0 7y ago
  It's so infuriating to see big cities completely incapable of dealing with homeless people as if they are delicate creatures that can't be touched, and then have the majority of people ignore them even though they are assholes that make a scene every single time. Most of these people act that way because no one has taught them any better and therefore they have no incentive to act otherwise.
  • nimbius 7y ago
    >Most of these people act that way because no one has taught them any better Have you seen homeless people? they are elderly invalids and the mentally ill who were brought upon us by Reagans neoliberal policy of deinstitutionalization. They are destitute former criminals barred from any future gainful employment by the checkbox on the job application. They are addicts who since Nixon have been stacked like cordwood as casualties of the US war on drugs, and since the stabilization act of 1942 unable to afford treatment. These arent people who've simply forgotten the golden fucking rule, they are the last rungs of society that America as a whole has chosen to intentionally ignore. Investment housing in the US and NIMBY laws basically mean sidewalks in the summer and busses in the winter to keep from freezing to death, as no city is daring enough to cross the third rail of homeless housing to which their constituents so ardently object. On the rare chance these homeless people are just loud and rude, this is possible. In a world where you have to scrape dumpsters for meals and risk getting mugged on the streets you call home...in a world where you're in constant filth and every passer-by has collectively decided to shun you instead of help you...yeah, you can lose a bit of your sense of civic duty in the process.
    • proc0 7y ago
      It actually sounds like you haven't met homeless people. I have lived in SF and LA for most of my life, and I can assure you, I know MANY homeless people PERSONALLY. What you are describing is how it used to be prior to 2010. Right now there's rising population of relatively young, relatively healthy people who are choosing to make sacrifices. Sure it can be tough but you can't complain if you actually have options and your choice is to sacrifice some shelter for extra money. The problem is these places with homelessness crisis actually have law enforcement crisis and this increases the incentive for people to live on the sidewalk instead of moving to a cheaper city. There are hundreds of options of cheaper places to live. If you can work why choose to stay in a super expencive city that demands high skill labor?
• ksec 7y ago
  Arh, is this why why people in US hate public transport and prefer to drive themselves or go by taxi? For those of us living in the "outside" world where public transport are the norm, it is sometimes hard to understand why public transport is treated so differently in US.
  • jcranmer 7y ago
    A lot of the distaste for public transit in the US is ultimately motivated by a "fuck poor people" mentality, especially in regards to bus transit (rail systems tend to attract a somewhat wealthier clientele).
    • nostromo 7y ago
      Ridiculous. Americans are practical like anyone else. Transit in the US tends to be (much) slower than driving, so people drive. In the few places where transit actually works, like New York, Americans use it.
      • briffle 7y ago
        My last town, the bus at busy times would literally stop on every major corner to let on or off one person. Plus, there was no actual place for the bus to pull out of traffic, so every block, it would stop in the right lane. So the bus took at least 4 times longer to get to downtown, and caused TONS of frustration with other drivers, who were always frantic to get to the left lane to get around the bus. Tends to not leave a great impression on people. Now, if there was something like a BRT, with limited stops, out of traffic, with much faster loading, then that would probably really change its image in my town.
      • jcranmer 7y ago
        But there's no political will to fix transit, because that would help poor people who depend on it, and that money would be much better spent on all the rich people.
    • Dumblydorr 7y ago
• farss 7y ago
  It's not just the free fare - it's the abysmal lack of shelter options and the attempts by cities to criminalize encampments and force people to find somewhere indoors to avoid arrest.
  • werber 7y ago
    100% this, I’ve been homeless and slept on the bus or subway to stay warm (and safe) and not once did someone try to help me. And now I’m years out of being in that situation and I am part of the same problem, I almost never take public transportation and use Lyft or my car to get around.
    • awb 7y ago
      > I’ve been homeless and slept on the bus or subway to stay warm (and safe) and not once did someone try to help me. Curious how someone could have most helped you at that time in your life if you don't mind sharing.
      • nojvek 7y ago
        I’m guilty. I’d like to help but I’m not so sure how.
      • mcv 7y ago
        I think the city should just provide enough shelters for the homeless. That seems cheaper than running public transport that's not getting used the way it's intended. It's hard to fix every cause of homelessness, but providing shelters is pretty easy.
        • xzcat 7y ago
          The rationale for why "just add more shelters" is hard has been explained to me as: * nobody wants a shelter built near them * even if it does get built, it's often women/children only and the second bullet point isn't (afaik...) just sexism or anything, it's just picking risk categories. Consider all the following like you were an insurance company trying to appraise how costly it is to do business with a group of people: Apparently homeless men are, collectively, more expensive to shelter than women/children because they're plagued by more expensive issues - more violence, more drug issues, etc. So homeless shelters frequently can't afford to operate if they try to shelter men. So it becomes an issue of "women/children only" or "it's literally too expensive to safely run the (both-genders) shelter to be feasible".
• papreclip 7y ago
  Yep, I personally would much sooner use public transportation that charged $10 (with no exceptions) than free public transportation. Sharing close quarters with aggressive, smelly, intoxicated, unstable people is stressful and unpleasant
  • jeromegv 7y ago
    Wow. Have you ever wondered that may be inequality should be a problem worth solving instead of finding yet another way of isolating yourself from the problem?
    • werber 7y ago
      What can be done outside of good free healthcare that views mental health including drug use as a public health issue? I live in Detroit and we have abysmal services for people in those Circumstances
    • mbreedlove 7y ago
      It's a lot easier to isolate myself than it is to solve homelessness.
    • tbrownaw 7y ago
      I'm not entirely clear on how avoiding unpleasant situations precludes also working to fix those same situations. (I'm also not clear on why this is an "inequality" problem rather than a "destitution" problem.)
      • drdeadringer 7y ago
        "Out of sight, out of mind" is real and not uncommon.
        • buzzkillington 7y ago
          Not being assaulted is privilege now? I live down town. There's a homeless man on drugs who screams at the top of his lungs at random people every so often until the police come and pick him up. If you would rather he not be out of sight and out of mind please send me your address, I will buy him a one way ticket so he can camp out in your back yard.
• bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  Salt Lake City used to have a free ride downtown zone - don't know if it still does, so it was basically free buses in a very limited number of streets. I think basically 4 or 5 stops away from the 1st Main - so not enough to be interesting to homeless people as a place of accommodation.
• petermcneeley 7y ago
  We can't have free transit because people without homes will use it to get out of the cold. It's like a USSR joke.
  • carapace 7y ago
    After the fall of the Soviets, I heard that a joke over there was, "Everything they told us about communism was a lie, but everything they told us about capitalism is true."
• asveikau 7y ago
  I moved out the year before it was scrapped, but I am not so sure it was because of homeless people. When I lived in Seattle I had literally 0 bad encounters with homeless people on buses. [Definitely nonzero on the sidewalks] The worst part in my view about the free ride zone was when you would take a bus from downtown to outside the zone. You'd need to pay when you left. Which was hard to enforce, so I think a lot of people walked off. Even if you wanted to play it right, you needed to remember when to pay and when not. I remember hearing from drivers that they didn't care if you pay anyway. Of course in recent years in towns like Seattle or SF there is always somebody trying to say that the homeless are responsible for the downfall of everything.
  • lazyasciiart 7y ago
    It was not because of homeless people. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/warning-seattles-free-ride-zone-coming-to-an-end/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/warning-seattles-f...
• toomanybeersies 7y ago
  Interestingly, here in Melbourne we have a similar system when it comes to paying fares. It's not the bus/train/tram drivers responsibility to ensure you pay your fare, you can walk onto a bus without tagging on and the driver won't even blink, it's the job of roaming ticket inspectors to enforce fare payment. In my experience, we don't have a particularly significant problem with homeless people and other "undesirables" on public transport. It probably helps that they have police patrols at most train stations at night.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • flukus 7y ago
    In Melbourne it had some not so great effects. A lot of people will use it instead of just walking a couple of blocks and the free zone is already the slowest and most congested part of the network, so it made PT worse for everyone else. As a resident of zone 1 I now get to subsidize the free users in the city and zone 2 because they removed zone 1 only tickets. I have a feeling the people complaining about the homeless would say the same things encountering "undesirables" on our PT though, it's just a disguised "I have to interact with poor people" argument.
• monksy 7y ago
  > The primary problem is that homeless people would get on the bus because it's warm, and would fall asleep. The busses became rolling homeless shelters. That's not really unexpected.
• bilekas 7y ago
  Not to be rude, but don't you guys have security to just take them off ? It's a public disorder no ? I do feel for the homeless, and of course its a refuge etc, but its a public service and so can be removed from the tram/service. Its not a difficult solution to have to just grab a free ticket which could take you to the end of the line. In which case, no ticket (even free) no pass. I have a high opinion of Seattle in my mind, not that I've been, but to not think of ways around the problem and just throw it in the bin.. I dare say, it might not have been just the homeless problem. > not to collect fares from anyone that declines to pay How is that possible by the way ? Get on without paying ? Why would any driver do that anyway ? -- Edit 2 -> I am coming from a EU & ASIA experience only
  • uneekname 7y ago
    I live in DC so this might not be comparable, but our bus drivers are too focused on driving to worry about fare collection. How do you keep someone off a bus who refuses to pay the fare, and stay on schedule? There's really no way to make someone cough up $2 on a bus like there is on the Metrorail.
    • bilekas 7y ago
      Fair, I am in Europe, and at the stop, the bus will stop to accept the fares, one by one, there are NFC cards which make a particular noise if you want to fast pass - bad noise if you don't have the money on the card, nice noise if you do. But I will be the first to admit our public transport would not be the most punctual! - EDIT: And if someone wont pay, and it delays the driver leaving, the other people on the bus start shouting at the person who wont pay! Or in certain times, pay for them :)
    • nothrabannosir 7y ago
      In London, drivers turn off the bus entirely and rely on peer pressure to solve the problem. I’ve seen it happen multiple times. Sometimes it works out, sometimes passengers turn on the driver. But not paying? The bus just won’t leave until you do.
  • nostromo 7y ago
• chiefalchemist 7y ago
  > and it had some unexpected consequences. Perhaps instead of waving our finger at free buses we should look for the root problem(s) that leave too many ppl with too few choices. Eliminating the no fare might have kept the marginalized off the buses, but it didn't address the problem. There still there. Somewhere.
• tzs 7y ago
  That kind of (unintentionally, I'm sure) makes it sound like they introduced the free ride zone, quickly attracted a lot of homeless people, and so cancelled the program. It actually ran for almost 40 years. It started in 1973, and ended in 2012.
• sitkack 7y ago
  The rolling homeless shelter meme is a way to virtue signal against the existence of the homeless. I have been a consistent bus rider in Seattle since the mid 90s, and the bus is not a destination for homeless, much less so than the library. Many homeless people have bus passes legitimately, and are more respectful than the average rider.
  • new_realist 7y ago
    As a Seattle bus rider, I would have to disagree. A few outlier homeless (e.g. those who shit on the bus) can create irrational triggers among the general public which decrease bus use.
    • fiblye 7y ago
      Wanting to avoid literal shit on a bus isn’t irrational. If it’s a common enough issue that it’s acknowledged as more than a one-off thing, it’s rational to want to avoid that. And it’s not only wanting to avoid shit on a bus, but wanting to avoid people who have no concerns with shitting on a bus. They’re unpredictable.
      • Fricken 7y ago
        I've never seen shit on a bus. What's the likelihood that you'll see shit on a bus? I've on many occasions seen shit in public restrooms. What's the rational thing to do about shit on public restrooms? Is seeing shit on a bus worse than seeing shit in a public restroom? I guess we're used to seeing shit in restrooms, so it doesn't carry the same stigma. Maybe if there was more shit lying around in general it would help destigmatize our fear of having to be aware of other people's shit. Potty training for many kids can be difficult and traumatic, but for most of us after a while we don't even give it a second thought, because we're so used to it.
        • fiblye 7y ago
          The person I replied to mentioned it as something existing. And shit in a restroom is an unpleasant thing to see, but it’s a facility set aside for the explicit purpose of shitting. The explicit purpose of a bus includes transport without shitting. I find it hard to imagine that you can’t conceive of the idea of people being exposed to shit and the types of people who have no issues shitting while on a bus. They’re not mentally stable people and they’re quite possibly dangerous. And no, we should absolutely not destigmatize shitting on buses or in places other than toilets. It’s not only disgusting to look at, but that’s how you spread deadly diseases. It’s a problem the Romans knew how to handle—let’s not set ourselves back in time 2000 years because some mentally unstable person might be offended.
• underpand 7y ago
  The curse of the bottom 1%. This is why we can't have nice things. The bottom 1% in terms of behavior/ethics always ruins it for everyone else.
  • IAmEveryone 7y ago
    Many European countries have free monthly passes for poor people and I haven't noticed any problems of that kind. Nor do I actually see what's particularly "unethical" about riding free public transport when it's cold outside? If capacity on rolling stock is tight, four square feet of floor in a warm room should be eminently affordable for the world's richest country. And, no, the availability of shelters doesn't make homelessness so comfortable that it becomes a lifestyle choice, or do you know anybody who would want to exchange their job & home for a homeless shelter?
• tim333 7y ago
  Portland avoided that by busses running through their free ride zone continuing on to non free zones making them not really work as homeless shelters.
• Paradigma11 7y ago
  Do homeless people in the US really care about tickets? Here in vienna they take the public transport anyway since the ticket inspectors dont bother with them and the dedicated securities will throw them out anyway if they are forced to bother. Worst case is that they spent some hours at a warm police station.
• adreamingsoul 7y ago
  Portland, Oregon also had a Free Zone that was eventually canceled for similar reasons.
• sbmthakur 7y ago
  > But this issue has been returning as it's now common knowledge that Seattle bus drivers are instructed not to collect fares from anyone that declines to pay. Is this legal? From where I come, you can be booked if you intentionally refuse to pay fare.
  • lazyasciiart 7y ago
    Of course it's legal. Basically bus drivers are told not to hold up an entire bus route just to call police to come and arrest someone who won't pay a fare. Even with that in place I have sat on a bus in peak hour traffic while some jackass bus driver yelled at someone who had accidentally got on the wrong door and made them squeeze through a whole crowded bus to swipe their stupid orca card. As if that was worth holding up everyone on the bus, plus the bus behind that couldn't get to the stop, etc.
    • sbmthakur 7y ago
      Thanks for clarifying.
• nojvek 7y ago
  I don’t know about not collecting fares. I’ve been kicked out of bus because my orca card ran out of money and didn’t work. Some drivers are pretty up-stick about it.
• lazyasciiart 7y ago
  That's not actually true. The ride free zone ended because King County has a ton of suburban communities who resent their delusion that they support Seattle through taxes. When the county wanted to pass new car tabs, some of the suburban reps refused to approve it unless the ride free zone was scrapped in return. Luckily for them, they were able to take advantage of the existing biases of people like you to spin their bullshit as "we were making busses better" instead of the actual reason, "fuck off Seattle and busses". https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/warning-seattles-free-ride-zone-coming-to-an-end/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/warning-seattles-f...
  • GhettoMaestro 7y ago
    Ah there it is - the guy that gets pissed when he can’t spend other people’s money on pet projects.
    • lazyasciiart 7y ago
      Weird takeaway, but you do seem to be in a bad mood. This isn't reddit - maybe you need to log off.
• JSeymourATL 7y ago
  Related: Homelessness is Solvable - Malcolm Gladwell > https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/solvable/solvable-podcast-series/homelessness-is-solvable/ https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/solvable/solvable-podc...
• foxyv 7y ago
  > "The busses became rolling homeless shelters" That makes me wonder if that would be a viable way to handle homelessness. Build mobile homeless shelters with beds and toilets. Have them stop at places with services for homeless persons like showers and laundry. I wonder if it would cost more than just paying for a rented apartment or hotel room?
• Wheaties466 7y ago
  In Orlando there is a free Bus system downtown only on certain routes. They don't seem to have the homeless problem on the bus. But I suspect that may be because homeless generally don't need to seek warmth.