7 ms·

If they took the 2% least savory bus riders and kicked them off, even calling them an Uber Black, I think they’d triple their ridership.

carapace 7y ago
I stopped riding the bus mainly due to social reasons: there was always somebody on every trip watching TV on their phone without headphones. And people stopped waiting for others to disembark before boarding. That's the weirdest thing: the bus stops, the doors open, and the people waiting to board just start piling in before the people coming off have left. Maybe that's only in SF. And then there's this: > In Gavin Newsom’s book Citizenville he talked about how, after becoming SF mayor, he discovered that fare collection cost as much as the revenue generated from fares. He started the process of making the bus free but was told by so many advisors that the busses would become “dumpsters on wheels,” from a combination of homeless people using them for shelter and people not respecting services that are free, that the plan was scrapped. ~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21808851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21808851 It blows my mind, and it makes me resent paying the fares at all.
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  It is the stacking social ills problem. If SF had an effective set of homeless policies/programs then they wouldn't misuse the bus. While it is true that people respect "free" services less than paid ones, I have yet to read any reports from places that have implemented free bus service that suggested general damage/misuse due to a lack of respect. The bus service in Logan UT for example is pretty awesome.
  - freepor 7y ago
    SF has the most effective set of homeless policies in the United States, so effective that it has drawn a vast number of homeless to the city who overwhelm even the overwhelming resources the city devotes to homelessness. The comparison to Logan Utah is moronic beyond the bounds of imagination.
  - et-al 7y ago
    I suspect the venn diagram of cities implementing free public transit and cities with tough homeless issues are not overlapping.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Any effective homeless/mentally ill/drug addiction policy would have to come from the Feds.
    - tdy721 7y ago
      What is ineffective about addressing the issue locally? Why “the feds”?
      - austhrow743 7y ago
        Unless the solution being proposed is to brutalise the homeless to make them move elsewhere, then it needs to be enacted at the level with control over freedom of movement of people. If SF creates policies to help the homeless, more will move there than already do so.
        carapace 7y ago
        First, the feds should not limit the freedom of movement of a human person even if said human person does not own or rent a house. One of the messed up things about being homeless (I was for several years) is people thinking of you and treating you like some other kind of creature, less than fully human. SF is doing it right now by making a special "homeless card" complete with computer-aided bureaucracy to manage the permanent underclass more efficiently. There's a tech company implementing it for them. <Snark omitted> To me it's so weird that a city that really is kind and caring will mess up on implementation. Second, let's say that SF's $250B homeless policies work, meaning people get their lives together, get off the drugs or into a place where they can cope w/ their mental|emotional|physical problems or whatever it is that messed them up in the first place (and a lot of people just need a home, as they are perfectly normal and capable but e.g. some debt or a death in the family or something threw them for a loop and now they're stuck living in their car or the park or something and it's hard to get back on your feet w/o a support network, etc.) Let's say it works, and more homeless people do move here to take advantage of it. That is a good thing. God forbid ol' San Francisco should become a continent-wide renovation center for human lives, eh?

carapace 7y ago

I stopped riding the bus mainly due to social reasons: there was always somebody on every trip watching TV on their phone without headphones. And people stopped waiting for others to disembark before boarding. That's the weirdest thing: the bus stops, the doors open, and the people waiting to board just start piling in before the people coming off have left. Maybe that's only in SF. And then there's this: > In Gavin Newsom’s book Citizenville he talked about how, after becoming SF mayor, he discovered that fare collection cost as much as the revenue generated from fares. He started the process of making the bus free but was told by so many advisors that the busses would become “dumpsters on wheels,” from a combination of homeless people using them for shelter and people not respecting services that are free, that the plan was scrapped. ~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21808851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21808851 It blows my mind, and it makes me resent paying the fares at all.

ChuckMcM 7y ago
It is the stacking social ills problem. If SF had an effective set of homeless policies/programs then they wouldn't misuse the bus. While it is true that people respect "free" services less than paid ones, I have yet to read any reports from places that have implemented free bus service that suggested general damage/misuse due to a lack of respect. The bus service in Logan UT for example is pretty awesome.
- freepor 7y ago
  SF has the most effective set of homeless policies in the United States, so effective that it has drawn a vast number of homeless to the city who overwhelm even the overwhelming resources the city devotes to homelessness. The comparison to Logan Utah is moronic beyond the bounds of imagination.
- et-al 7y ago
  I suspect the venn diagram of cities implementing free public transit and cities with tough homeless issues are not overlapping.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Any effective homeless/mentally ill/drug addiction policy would have to come from the Feds.
  - tdy721 7y ago
    What is ineffective about addressing the issue locally? Why “the feds”?
    - austhrow743 7y ago
      Unless the solution being proposed is to brutalise the homeless to make them move elsewhere, then it needs to be enacted at the level with control over freedom of movement of people. If SF creates policies to help the homeless, more will move there than already do so.
      - carapace 7y ago
        First, the feds should not limit the freedom of movement of a human person even if said human person does not own or rent a house. One of the messed up things about being homeless (I was for several years) is people thinking of you and treating you like some other kind of creature, less than fully human. SF is doing it right now by making a special "homeless card" complete with computer-aided bureaucracy to manage the permanent underclass more efficiently. There's a tech company implementing it for them. <Snark omitted> To me it's so weird that a city that really is kind and caring will mess up on implementation. Second, let's say that SF's $250B homeless policies work, meaning people get their lives together, get off the drugs or into a place where they can cope w/ their mental|emotional|physical problems or whatever it is that messed them up in the first place (and a lot of people just need a home, as they are perfectly normal and capable but e.g. some debt or a death in the family or something threw them for a loop and now they're stuck living in their car or the park or something and it's hard to get back on your feet w/o a support network, etc.) Let's say it works, and more homeless people do move here to take advantage of it. That is a good thing. God forbid ol' San Francisco should become a continent-wide renovation center for human lives, eh?