8 ms·

Free Transit for Riders Under 18? In Paris, It’s Here

69 points by danso 6y ago

shahsyed 6y ago
18 is great. This concept itself, is not new. I'd love to see US cities with notorious transit systems (i.e New York City) implement this. In Toronto, Canada, where I live, allow all children 12 years of age and under to ride the TTC (our transit system here) for free. This is great, because it enables students to enroll in public (elementary or middle) schools that they normally shouldn't be able to get into (if they win the lottery, or if they apply well in advance and somehow do get in), and gives opportunities to students that they normally wouldn't have access to.
- mellavora 6y ago
  In Luxembourg, ALL public transport is free for everyone.
  - ChuckNorris89 6y ago
    Yes but Luxembourg is a small, wealthy, homogeneous country (cough, tax haven, cough). Bigger countries can't afford to do that as their infrastructure costs are higher.
    - kevindong 6y ago
      Larger countries can, but the political willpower isn't there. NYC's subway was originally projected (pre-COVID) to take in $3.6 billion in fares in 2020 [0]. Some 8.4 million people live in NYC. $3.6 billion / 8.4 million residents = ~$429/resident/year would suffice to make the subway free of fares. Note: this would be for _just_ the subway; it does not include buses/commuter rail/MTA HQ expenses. Additionally, replacing just the fares for the subway would not suffice for balancing the budget since a deficit was planned. [0]: Page VI-123 of https://new.mta.info/document/15221 https://new.mta.info/document/15221
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
        It might cost a bit more than that since if it were free then ridership would likely increase.
      - jdsully 6y ago
        The fare recovery of New York City Transit is 47%, so the true cost to the taxpayer would be $912/resident/year using your numbers. The numbers are higher still if you scope to residents over 18.
      - bogidon 6y ago
        Probably somewhat lower than $429/resident/year since transit agencies spend significant resources on labor and maintenance just operating the fare collection. (Sorry, looked but didn’t fare collection cost numbers in the MTA budget)
    - bleepblorp 6y ago
      What do you mean by 'homogeneous' here? This word has a long history of being used as a racist dog-whistle in discussions over why the US lacks public services. It's not a good term to use without clarification.
      - opportune 6y ago
        Agreed, I have no idea why racial/cultural homogeneity is an argument against public services. It has always seemed to me to be a roundabout way of saying “We can’t do it in the US because minorities would ruin it”
        throwaway5398 6y ago
        The most comical thing is when the same people argue that countries like Canada or Switzerland have homogenous populations.
      - jeroenhd 6y ago
        While I can see why you'd suspect the term might be used as a dogwhistle, I can see why honogenity might be an advantage here. It's a country with very few different people and viewpoints because there's not that many people to form groups. While I certainly would never see a lack of diversity as a general goal for a country, fewer viewpoints to consider significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to get stuff done in governments. The fewer ideals you need to consider, the shorter the debates can be. A country built up out of immigrants like the USA bring a plethora of viewpoints and cultures, all living inside one general government. This is a valuable source of cultural development and progress but the more groups you have within your borders, the more chances of friction you get and the longer politics should take; there are just more factors to take into account, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
      - sky_rw 6y ago
        Isn't the whole point of a racist dog whistle that the only people who can hear it are racists. If you are hearing dog whistles everywhere, maybe you're the dog.
      - 6y ago
    - the8472 6y ago
      > Bigger countries can't afford to do that Bigger countries still have areas of higher density of wealth. So if that's all there is to it then we should be seeing free transit in those areas.
- boulos 6y ago
  NYC issues student metro cards from the school if you need to go more than half a mile: https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/transportation/bus-eligibility https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/transportation/bus-e...
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    Yeah, our schools would hand out green/gold metrocards, which were very coveted items (if you found an extra one on a bus that was a huge get). They'd only cover 3-6 trips, plus transfers, so it wasn't quite free, but it was often good enough.
spodek 6y ago
I'm 49 and for as long as I can remember, every American that knew economics, when talking about France and Japan, would say the nations would fall apart economically soon and would have to reform to market-based approaches -- less social safety net, less worker protections, etc. Decades pass and while France and Japan have their problems, they seem to do okay. The US seems to have more problems despite (because of?) its approaches.
- jokethrowaway 6y ago
  I can't talk about Japan but, having visited France and Paris extensively, living in Paris is my number 1 nightmare. Terrible housing, terrible traffic, tons of homelessness and dodgy people harassing you in the street (trying to sell you drugs or scam you). The situation got progressively worse over the last 10 years. Other big cities have similar problems. The rest of France, outside of the main cities, is actually quite nice but incredibly rural and with very little services. And all of this for 33% corporate tax and progressive income tax 5-40%. You'd be better off crossing the sea and staying in the UK, which is much more livable and offers some tax benefits and higher salaries. I place the USA a bit higher than France in the chart, but not much more. The high level of taxation and the high cost of health insurance + political craziness going on (the latest BLM riots especially) makes me happy I stayed in Europe, despite missing out on half a million salaries in big tech. In the end I can't say I find France approach to be much different than the American one: it's the old take half of the economical output and redistribute it. The USA may not have public healthcare but they spend more than enough (13 billions per day) maintaining a public army, handing out benefits or what else. I find it ridiculous to picture the states as the land of freedom. That was more than 100 years ago.
  - stank345 6y ago
    I lived in Paris for 5 months in 2006 and I loved it. Took the subway everyone and had no problem with homeless people (at least no more than with other major American east coast cities). Did get targeted by scammers once. I thought the subway system was great and the city was beautiful.
  - kergonath 6y ago
bzb5 6y ago
I live in a small town. They made transit free for people above 65 which means buses are all day full of old people basically joyriding. It’s quite depressive, buses have essentially turned into old people’s homes on wheels. Given the demographics of Paris, I wonder if this will make the transit system the dream of pickpockets.
- jmercouris 6y ago
  What's the depressing part exactly? That old people are going out and about and enjoying their days?
  - bzb5 6y ago
    It is sad that they have no other options for leisure than to abuse the transit system.
    - liability 6y ago
      Better for it to be out if sight; out of mind? Free transit didn't cause the elderly people you describe to be bored, it only exposed that reality to you.
  - walshemj 6y ago
    Free travel for seniors / oap's makes bus/transport companies service the and not maybe commuters to get people off the roads.
- gregoriol 6y ago
  What is exactly the demographics in Paris that makes you think there will be more pickpockets?!? From what I understand most pickpockets target tourists (lots of cash, cameras, ...) or rich people (expensive watches, necklaces, bags, ...).
  - tasogare 6y ago
    Dare to write this comment from your phone on subway line 4 at night, nothern portion?
BrianHenryIE 6y ago
Sacramento has free transit for under 18 too: https://rydefreert.com https://rydefreert.com (I'm think it's being renewed for this year)
bleepblorp 6y ago
Not good timing. Encouraging people to ride transit during a pandemic isn't a particularly bright idea.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  Japan is dominated by public transit and is one of the countries least affected by it. Transit is not unsafe when people follow distancing procedures and wear masks / don't talk loudly. This was backed up by research "It’s a similar situation in Japan, where researchers failed to connect a single cluster to the country’s commuter trains, said Hitoshi Oshitani, a virologist and public health expert at Tohoku University. The vast majority of the clusters were instead traced to gyms, bars, live music venues, karaoke rooms and similar establishments where people come in close contact with one another," https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-is-little-evidence-that-mass-transit-poses-a-risk-of-coronavirus-outbreaks/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-is-little-e...
  - closeparen 6y ago
    The only indoor environment comes close to an average BART commute as far as human density is the center of the dance floor in a nightclub at capacity. Japan is famously even worse. How is that not close contact?
    - fomine3 6y ago
      People in train don't talk.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- jdeibele 6y ago
  https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/ shows about 8000 cases per day in France (pop: 65M) I can't find a breakdown by region but the news reports say that there's a lot of cases caused by vacationers, presumably in the south. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-recent.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-recent.pag... says that NYC (pop: 8.5M) is averaging about 1650 cases per week. https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/ridership https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/ridership says there were 1.5M subway passengers on 9/3. Riding transit doesn't seem like the issue. Not wearing masks and respecting social distancing seem more likely problems.
gregoriol 6y ago
This might be kind of "unfair" for under 18 people living in smaller towns or in rural areas: they must have a car or motorbike to do everything, which is expensive (purchase, gas, repair); while transport is not very expensive in Paris to start with (~80€ per month adult price).
- Barrin92 6y ago
  Which gives a proper incentive for people to urbanise, which is a good thing. Not to mention that Paris is also one of the principal sources of public revenue to begin with.
  - MayeulC 6y ago
    > which is a good thing Well, no offense, but things aren't that Manichean in my book. There are upsides and downsides to urbanisation. Obviously, public transport is an up in most cases, but there are also a lot of downsides.
    - Barrin92 6y ago
      a lot of rural or provincial towns in Europe are in terminal decline for many reasons, but chief among them demographics. My family comes from a very rural German village. There is no economy, there isn't even a physician any more since the last one retired, everyone commutes over an hour to work in the next big city etc, and this is systemic. Some people may not see it that way because it's always painful to uproot ways of life but I think the case for the prosperity of those regions is virtually impossible to make, and it's getting worse steadily.
- kergonath 6y ago
  Food and housing is also much cheaper in smaller cities or rural areas. Overall, it costs much more to live in or near Paris, even accounting for free transport.
jdeibele 6y ago
Portland Public Schools and Tri-Met (local authority that runs the buses) let high school students travel for free. That's because PPS doesn't provide yellow bus service for students in high school. One of my daughters did Tri-Met as a 7th Grader because it saved more than 30 minutes over the yellow bus. Taking the bus seems a lot less convenient than driving most of the time but for her it was faster. I took the bus with her the first day and she was fine after that. No bad experiences that I ever heard of. When we were in Japan, we saw many students of all ages on the trains.
- fermentation 6y ago
  I wonder if (or hope that) filling public transit with kids would help convince people to fund better and safer public transit systems.
  - Hello71 6y ago
    if children's needs were taken into account when designing transit systems, then school buses wouldn't be taking kids to school at 7 a.m.
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
      Isn't this only older cohorts? (Though ironically it may be the teens who need to sleep in the most.) I believe it's done as a cost cutting measure to maximize usage of the bus fleet.
      - Hello71 6y ago
        sure, but my point is that despite all the rhetoric, when it comes to actually spending money, kids seem to get the short end of the stick.
  - nerfhammer 6y ago
    the yellow bus system is arguably the world's largest public transit system and is something Americans don't realize other countries don't have
boulos 6y ago
San Francisco has a means-tested variant instead [1] with the same thresholds for both children (5-18) and seniors (65+ here). Children under 5 are free. I think you can quibble about means testing, barriers to application, and just “do it through taxes”. Amusingly, we’re quite similar to Paris in that the SFMTA “farebox recovery ratio” (fare revenue divided by costs) is in the 25% range [2]. That low funding rate (75% through taxes then) is despite fairly large increases in the fare over time. IIRC, the youth / senior Pass was $10 in 2007 and is now $40, the regular was $50 and is now... $81 (and set to increase in January [3]). Somewhat rationally, it seems this was all connected to indexing the fares to Bay Area inflation [4], designed so that salary of the drivers keeps up with inflation. Like Paris though, we have (had) a large tourist contingent that pays full fare when visiting. Some argue that “they’re not taxpayers, make them buy tickets”, but it seems more efficient to just account for that in hotel taxes. Otherwise you never get out of the fare collection inefficiency (in San Francisco, drivers on buses must also be fare enforcers, historically leading to it being a dangerous job) and again it penalizes people who don’t know to apply for their free passes they’re entitled to. [1] https://www.sfmta.com/fares/free-muni-youth https://www.sfmta.com/fares/free-muni-youth [2] https://www.sfmta.com/reports/muni-farebox-recovery-ratio https://www.sfmta.com/reports/muni-farebox-recovery-ratio [3] https://www.google.com/amp/s/sf.curbed.com/platform/amp/2020/4/22/21231004/sfmta-muni-fare-increase-coronavirus-covid-19 https://www.google.com/amp/s/sf.curbed.com/platform/amp/2020... [4] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/6/19/18691884/muni-price-inflation-sfmta-fare-hikes-double-2009 https://sf.curbed.com/2019/6/19/18691884/muni-price-inflatio...
- supernova87a 6y ago
  I thought what people in SF do is simply not pay the fare, to the tune of probably 1/3 of the people on the bus. Just like, by the way, in Paris. It seems turnstile jumping is a professional sport there. I'll just add by the way (since apparently I'm being downvoted for speaking a snarky comment), that fare enforcement seems almost non-existent in both SF and Paris. Something about it being too expensive or dangerous to actually make people buy tickets. But policing your rules is an important thing for having people believe in the system, as unpopular as it may be. And maybe how safe/trustworthy the system is. Which neither SF nor Paris are shining examples of.
Digory 6y ago
Surprised no one has mentioned Kansas City’s free transit on streetcars and busses. I think it’s the largest city with entirely no-fare transit. At some point, free Uber /Lyft would be a better deal. But transportation-as-a-basic-service seems to be catching on. [0] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/17/21026425/kansas-city-free-bus-system https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/17/21026425/kansas-cit...
- clairity 6y ago
  los angeles is talking about making transit free[0] at the same time we just got apple transit pass support for iphone and apple watch[1]. while a lot of the pushback is from fearmongerers lashing out at the homeless on transit (which is a problem, but wider than transit, since mayor garcetti has been wholly ineffective for 7+ years at getting the homeless off the streets), i find that an ugly distraction from the real issue of "free" being too easily conflated with "worthless". we all need skin in the game in the form of paying for our services to feel their worth and make better transit decisions. there's an argument to be made that a certain portion of transit benefits everyone, so everyone, in the form of taxes, should pay that portion (and only that portion). and sure, subsidize the disadvantaged for equal opportunities' sake, but don't make it free for everyone. [0]: https://thesource.metro.net/2020/08/27/metro-to-study-and-consider-eliminating-bus-and-rail-fares/ https://thesource.metro.net/2020/08/27/metro-to-study-and-co... [1]: https://thesource.metro.net/2020/09/03/tap-is-now-on-iphone-and-apple-watch/ https://thesource.metro.net/2020/09/03/tap-is-now-on-iphone-...
- mumblerino 6y ago
  As far as I know there’s also Luxembourg: https://www.afar.com/magazine/luxembourg-launches-worlds-first-free-public-transit-network https://www.afar.com/magazine/luxembourg-launches-worlds-fir...
specialist 6y ago
100% free transportation. Buses, highways, rails, subways. Everything free all the time. Let the travelers decide for themselves how to spend their most precious resource: time. Read Caro's The Power Broker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker TLDR: Post WWII, NYC's Robert Moses figured out how to exfiltrate money from the public (subways, buses, rail, autos) and leverage that cash flow to finance his major works projects, thereby funneling capital back to bankers, realtors, developers, contractors. Every other jurisdiction followed his lead. Resulting in today's terrible land use and congestion. Sure, Moses had help. But he was the criminal mastermind. He orchestrated the wholesale theft of our time, our money, our precious open spaces, our health, our homes, our natural resources. We have no moral obligation to keep paying for his crimes.
- clairity 6y ago
  > "100% free transportation. Buses, highways, rails, subways. Everything free all the time." that sounds like a great way to externalize a lot of negative consequences to counter one known corruption problem. just stop subsidizing oil & gas, including through regulatory capture, and price travel explicitly accounting for comprehensive cost. price in the externalities through multiple measures, like a carbon tax, a use tax, etc., and use those proceeds to counteract the negative externalities.
  - specialist 6y ago
    10 years ago, I would have agreed with you. Alas. We no longer have the luxury of incentives, incrementalism, and relying on emergent behavior. We need aggressive policies and massive investments. And I'm fresh out of both patience and goodwill. Today, I agree 100% with Saul Griffith, David Roberts, and a handful of others. Here's two example action plans that I support: How to decarbonize America — and create 25 million jobs https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/8/27/21403184/saul-griffith-ezra-klein-show-solve-climate-change-green-new-deal-rewiring-america https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/8/27/21403184/saul-griffit... The US South could save money by cleaning up its power grid https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/9/1/21407275/duke-energy-southern-company-renewable-power-solar-wind-market-competition https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/9/1/21407275...
DickScarington 6y ago
Chapel Hill, North Carolina - millions of fare-free bus trips since 2003. And we've finally started to see interest in adopting fare-free in Durham and Raleigh.
DickScarington 6y ago
Chapel Hill, North Carolina - millions of fare-free bus trips since 2003. Finally getting Durham, Raleigh and GoTriangle to consider the same.
agumonkey 6y ago
Let's see how this goes, I can see a lot of time saved from chasing kids without tickets. Albeit Parisian kids are not the poorest of this region but still, I think it's gonna be a systemic bonus.
ksaj 6y ago
In Toronto (Canada) our transit is free for those 12 and under. At first it caused a fair amount of fraud because adults were using the kid's passes. Easy enough to get around: kids don't need to use passes now, either. There are Proof of Age cards for the kids who look older than 12, though. Adults can't usually take advantage of that, so apparently that has solved the problem.

69 points by danso 6y ago

18 is great. This concept itself, is not new. I'd love to see US cities with notorious transit systems (i.e New York City) implement this. In Toronto, Canada, where I live, allow all children 12 years of age and under to ride the TTC (our transit system here) for free. This is great, because it enables students to enroll in public (elementary or middle) schools that they normally shouldn't be able to get into (if they win the lottery, or if they apply well in advance and somehow do get in), and gives opportunities to students that they normally wouldn't have access to.

mellavora 6y ago
In Luxembourg, ALL public transport is free for everyone.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  Yes but Luxembourg is a small, wealthy, homogeneous country (cough, tax haven, cough). Bigger countries can't afford to do that as their infrastructure costs are higher.
  - kevindong 6y ago
    Larger countries can, but the political willpower isn't there. NYC's subway was originally projected (pre-COVID) to take in $3.6 billion in fares in 2020 [0]. Some 8.4 million people live in NYC. $3.6 billion / 8.4 million residents = ~$429/resident/year would suffice to make the subway free of fares. Note: this would be for _just_ the subway; it does not include buses/commuter rail/MTA HQ expenses. Additionally, replacing just the fares for the subway would not suffice for balancing the budget since a deficit was planned. [0]: Page VI-123 of https://new.mta.info/document/15221 https://new.mta.info/document/15221
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
      It might cost a bit more than that since if it were free then ridership would likely increase.
    - jdsully 6y ago
      The fare recovery of New York City Transit is 47%, so the true cost to the taxpayer would be $912/resident/year using your numbers. The numbers are higher still if you scope to residents over 18.
    - bogidon 6y ago
      Probably somewhat lower than $429/resident/year since transit agencies spend significant resources on labor and maintenance just operating the fare collection. (Sorry, looked but didn’t fare collection cost numbers in the MTA budget)
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    What do you mean by 'homogeneous' here? This word has a long history of being used as a racist dog-whistle in discussions over why the US lacks public services. It's not a good term to use without clarification.
    - opportune 6y ago
      Agreed, I have no idea why racial/cultural homogeneity is an argument against public services. It has always seemed to me to be a roundabout way of saying “We can’t do it in the US because minorities would ruin it”
      - throwaway5398 6y ago
        The most comical thing is when the same people argue that countries like Canada or Switzerland have homogenous populations.
    - jeroenhd 6y ago
      While I can see why you'd suspect the term might be used as a dogwhistle, I can see why honogenity might be an advantage here. It's a country with very few different people and viewpoints because there's not that many people to form groups. While I certainly would never see a lack of diversity as a general goal for a country, fewer viewpoints to consider significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to get stuff done in governments. The fewer ideals you need to consider, the shorter the debates can be. A country built up out of immigrants like the USA bring a plethora of viewpoints and cultures, all living inside one general government. This is a valuable source of cultural development and progress but the more groups you have within your borders, the more chances of friction you get and the longer politics should take; there are just more factors to take into account, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
    - sky_rw 6y ago
      Isn't the whole point of a racist dog whistle that the only people who can hear it are racists. If you are hearing dog whistles everywhere, maybe you're the dog.
    - 6y ago
  - the8472 6y ago
    > Bigger countries can't afford to do that Bigger countries still have areas of higher density of wealth. So if that's all there is to it then we should be seeing free transit in those areas.
boulos 6y ago
NYC issues student metro cards from the school if you need to go more than half a mile: https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/transportation/bus-eligibility https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/transportation/bus-e...
- staticassertion 6y ago
  Yeah, our schools would hand out green/gold metrocards, which were very coveted items (if you found an extra one on a bus that was a huge get). They'd only cover 3-6 trips, plus transfers, so it wasn't quite free, but it was often good enough.

spodek 6y ago

I'm 49 and for as long as I can remember, every American that knew economics, when talking about France and Japan, would say the nations would fall apart economically soon and would have to reform to market-based approaches -- less social safety net, less worker protections, etc. Decades pass and while France and Japan have their problems, they seem to do okay. The US seems to have more problems despite (because of?) its approaches.

jokethrowaway 6y ago
I can't talk about Japan but, having visited France and Paris extensively, living in Paris is my number 1 nightmare. Terrible housing, terrible traffic, tons of homelessness and dodgy people harassing you in the street (trying to sell you drugs or scam you). The situation got progressively worse over the last 10 years. Other big cities have similar problems. The rest of France, outside of the main cities, is actually quite nice but incredibly rural and with very little services. And all of this for 33% corporate tax and progressive income tax 5-40%. You'd be better off crossing the sea and staying in the UK, which is much more livable and offers some tax benefits and higher salaries. I place the USA a bit higher than France in the chart, but not much more. The high level of taxation and the high cost of health insurance + political craziness going on (the latest BLM riots especially) makes me happy I stayed in Europe, despite missing out on half a million salaries in big tech. In the end I can't say I find France approach to be much different than the American one: it's the old take half of the economical output and redistribute it. The USA may not have public healthcare but they spend more than enough (13 billions per day) maintaining a public army, handing out benefits or what else. I find it ridiculous to picture the states as the land of freedom. That was more than 100 years ago.
- stank345 6y ago
  I lived in Paris for 5 months in 2006 and I loved it. Took the subway everyone and had no problem with homeless people (at least no more than with other major American east coast cities). Did get targeted by scammers once. I thought the subway system was great and the city was beautiful.
- kergonath 6y ago

bzb5 6y ago

I live in a small town. They made transit free for people above 65 which means buses are all day full of old people basically joyriding. It’s quite depressive, buses have essentially turned into old people’s homes on wheels. Given the demographics of Paris, I wonder if this will make the transit system the dream of pickpockets.

jmercouris 6y ago
What's the depressing part exactly? That old people are going out and about and enjoying their days?
- bzb5 6y ago
  It is sad that they have no other options for leisure than to abuse the transit system.
  - liability 6y ago
    Better for it to be out if sight; out of mind? Free transit didn't cause the elderly people you describe to be bored, it only exposed that reality to you.
- walshemj 6y ago
  Free travel for seniors / oap's makes bus/transport companies service the and not maybe commuters to get people off the roads.
gregoriol 6y ago
What is exactly the demographics in Paris that makes you think there will be more pickpockets?!? From what I understand most pickpockets target tourists (lots of cash, cameras, ...) or rich people (expensive watches, necklaces, bags, ...).
- tasogare 6y ago
  Dare to write this comment from your phone on subway line 4 at night, nothern portion?

BrianHenryIE 6y ago

Sacramento has free transit for under 18 too: https://rydefreert.com https://rydefreert.com (I'm think it's being renewed for this year)

bleepblorp 6y ago

Not good timing. Encouraging people to ride transit during a pandemic isn't a particularly bright idea.

Barrin92 6y ago
Japan is dominated by public transit and is one of the countries least affected by it. Transit is not unsafe when people follow distancing procedures and wear masks / don't talk loudly. This was backed up by research "It’s a similar situation in Japan, where researchers failed to connect a single cluster to the country’s commuter trains, said Hitoshi Oshitani, a virologist and public health expert at Tohoku University. The vast majority of the clusters were instead traced to gyms, bars, live music venues, karaoke rooms and similar establishments where people come in close contact with one another," https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-is-little-evidence-that-mass-transit-poses-a-risk-of-coronavirus-outbreaks/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-is-little-e...
- closeparen 6y ago
  The only indoor environment comes close to an average BART commute as far as human density is the center of the dance floor in a nightclub at capacity. Japan is famously even worse. How is that not close contact?
  - fomine3 6y ago
    People in train don't talk.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
jdeibele 6y ago
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/ shows about 8000 cases per day in France (pop: 65M) I can't find a breakdown by region but the news reports say that there's a lot of cases caused by vacationers, presumably in the south. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-recent.page https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-recent.pag... says that NYC (pop: 8.5M) is averaging about 1650 cases per week. https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/ridership https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/ridership says there were 1.5M subway passengers on 9/3. Riding transit doesn't seem like the issue. Not wearing masks and respecting social distancing seem more likely problems.

gregoriol 6y ago

This might be kind of "unfair" for under 18 people living in smaller towns or in rural areas: they must have a car or motorbike to do everything, which is expensive (purchase, gas, repair); while transport is not very expensive in Paris to start with (~80€ per month adult price).

Barrin92 6y ago
Which gives a proper incentive for people to urbanise, which is a good thing. Not to mention that Paris is also one of the principal sources of public revenue to begin with.
- MayeulC 6y ago
  > which is a good thing Well, no offense, but things aren't that Manichean in my book. There are upsides and downsides to urbanisation. Obviously, public transport is an up in most cases, but there are also a lot of downsides.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    a lot of rural or provincial towns in Europe are in terminal decline for many reasons, but chief among them demographics. My family comes from a very rural German village. There is no economy, there isn't even a physician any more since the last one retired, everyone commutes over an hour to work in the next big city etc, and this is systemic. Some people may not see it that way because it's always painful to uproot ways of life but I think the case for the prosperity of those regions is virtually impossible to make, and it's getting worse steadily.
kergonath 6y ago
Food and housing is also much cheaper in smaller cities or rural areas. Overall, it costs much more to live in or near Paris, even accounting for free transport.

jdeibele 6y ago

Portland Public Schools and Tri-Met (local authority that runs the buses) let high school students travel for free. That's because PPS doesn't provide yellow bus service for students in high school. One of my daughters did Tri-Met as a 7th Grader because it saved more than 30 minutes over the yellow bus. Taking the bus seems a lot less convenient than driving most of the time but for her it was faster. I took the bus with her the first day and she was fine after that. No bad experiences that I ever heard of. When we were in Japan, we saw many students of all ages on the trains.

fermentation 6y ago
I wonder if (or hope that) filling public transit with kids would help convince people to fund better and safer public transit systems.
- Hello71 6y ago
  if children's needs were taken into account when designing transit systems, then school buses wouldn't be taking kids to school at 7 a.m.
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Isn't this only older cohorts? (Though ironically it may be the teens who need to sleep in the most.) I believe it's done as a cost cutting measure to maximize usage of the bus fleet.
    - Hello71 6y ago
      sure, but my point is that despite all the rhetoric, when it comes to actually spending money, kids seem to get the short end of the stick.
- nerfhammer 6y ago
  the yellow bus system is arguably the world's largest public transit system and is something Americans don't realize other countries don't have

boulos 6y ago

San Francisco has a means-tested variant instead [1] with the same thresholds for both children (5-18) and seniors (65+ here). Children under 5 are free. I think you can quibble about means testing, barriers to application, and just “do it through taxes”. Amusingly, we’re quite similar to Paris in that the SFMTA “farebox recovery ratio” (fare revenue divided by costs) is in the 25% range [2]. That low funding rate (75% through taxes then) is despite fairly large increases in the fare over time. IIRC, the youth / senior Pass was $10 in 2007 and is now $40, the regular was $50 and is now... $81 (and set to increase in January [3]). Somewhat rationally, it seems this was all connected to indexing the fares to Bay Area inflation [4], designed so that salary of the drivers keeps up with inflation. Like Paris though, we have (had) a large tourist contingent that pays full fare when visiting. Some argue that “they’re not taxpayers, make them buy tickets”, but it seems more efficient to just account for that in hotel taxes. Otherwise you never get out of the fare collection inefficiency (in San Francisco, drivers on buses must also be fare enforcers, historically leading to it being a dangerous job) and again it penalizes people who don’t know to apply for their free passes they’re entitled to. [1] https://www.sfmta.com/fares/free-muni-youth https://www.sfmta.com/fares/free-muni-youth [2] https://www.sfmta.com/reports/muni-farebox-recovery-ratio https://www.sfmta.com/reports/muni-farebox-recovery-ratio [3] https://www.google.com/amp/s/sf.curbed.com/platform/amp/2020/4/22/21231004/sfmta-muni-fare-increase-coronavirus-covid-19 https://www.google.com/amp/s/sf.curbed.com/platform/amp/2020... [4] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/6/19/18691884/muni-price-inflation-sfmta-fare-hikes-double-2009 https://sf.curbed.com/2019/6/19/18691884/muni-price-inflatio...

supernova87a 6y ago
I thought what people in SF do is simply not pay the fare, to the tune of probably 1/3 of the people on the bus. Just like, by the way, in Paris. It seems turnstile jumping is a professional sport there. I'll just add by the way (since apparently I'm being downvoted for speaking a snarky comment), that fare enforcement seems almost non-existent in both SF and Paris. Something about it being too expensive or dangerous to actually make people buy tickets. But policing your rules is an important thing for having people believe in the system, as unpopular as it may be. And maybe how safe/trustworthy the system is. Which neither SF nor Paris are shining examples of.

Digory 6y ago

Surprised no one has mentioned Kansas City’s free transit on streetcars and busses. I think it’s the largest city with entirely no-fare transit. At some point, free Uber /Lyft would be a better deal. But transportation-as-a-basic-service seems to be catching on. [0] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/17/21026425/kansas-city-free-bus-system https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/17/21026425/kansas-cit...

clairity 6y ago
los angeles is talking about making transit free[0] at the same time we just got apple transit pass support for iphone and apple watch[1]. while a lot of the pushback is from fearmongerers lashing out at the homeless on transit (which is a problem, but wider than transit, since mayor garcetti has been wholly ineffective for 7+ years at getting the homeless off the streets), i find that an ugly distraction from the real issue of "free" being too easily conflated with "worthless". we all need skin in the game in the form of paying for our services to feel their worth and make better transit decisions. there's an argument to be made that a certain portion of transit benefits everyone, so everyone, in the form of taxes, should pay that portion (and only that portion). and sure, subsidize the disadvantaged for equal opportunities' sake, but don't make it free for everyone. [0]: https://thesource.metro.net/2020/08/27/metro-to-study-and-consider-eliminating-bus-and-rail-fares/ https://thesource.metro.net/2020/08/27/metro-to-study-and-co... [1]: https://thesource.metro.net/2020/09/03/tap-is-now-on-iphone-and-apple-watch/ https://thesource.metro.net/2020/09/03/tap-is-now-on-iphone-...
mumblerino 6y ago
As far as I know there’s also Luxembourg: https://www.afar.com/magazine/luxembourg-launches-worlds-first-free-public-transit-network https://www.afar.com/magazine/luxembourg-launches-worlds-fir...

specialist 6y ago

100% free transportation. Buses, highways, rails, subways. Everything free all the time. Let the travelers decide for themselves how to spend their most precious resource: time. Read Caro's The Power Broker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker TLDR: Post WWII, NYC's Robert Moses figured out how to exfiltrate money from the public (subways, buses, rail, autos) and leverage that cash flow to finance his major works projects, thereby funneling capital back to bankers, realtors, developers, contractors. Every other jurisdiction followed his lead. Resulting in today's terrible land use and congestion. Sure, Moses had help. But he was the criminal mastermind. He orchestrated the wholesale theft of our time, our money, our precious open spaces, our health, our homes, our natural resources. We have no moral obligation to keep paying for his crimes.

clairity 6y ago
> "100% free transportation. Buses, highways, rails, subways. Everything free all the time." that sounds like a great way to externalize a lot of negative consequences to counter one known corruption problem. just stop subsidizing oil & gas, including through regulatory capture, and price travel explicitly accounting for comprehensive cost. price in the externalities through multiple measures, like a carbon tax, a use tax, etc., and use those proceeds to counteract the negative externalities.
- specialist 6y ago
  10 years ago, I would have agreed with you. Alas. We no longer have the luxury of incentives, incrementalism, and relying on emergent behavior. We need aggressive policies and massive investments. And I'm fresh out of both patience and goodwill. Today, I agree 100% with Saul Griffith, David Roberts, and a handful of others. Here's two example action plans that I support: How to decarbonize America — and create 25 million jobs https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/8/27/21403184/saul-griffith-ezra-klein-show-solve-climate-change-green-new-deal-rewiring-america https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/8/27/21403184/saul-griffit... The US South could save money by cleaning up its power grid https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/9/1/21407275/duke-energy-southern-company-renewable-power-solar-wind-market-competition https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/9/1/21407275...

DickScarington 6y ago

Chapel Hill, North Carolina - millions of fare-free bus trips since 2003. And we've finally started to see interest in adopting fare-free in Durham and Raleigh.

DickScarington 6y ago

Chapel Hill, North Carolina - millions of fare-free bus trips since 2003. Finally getting Durham, Raleigh and GoTriangle to consider the same.

agumonkey 6y ago

Let's see how this goes, I can see a lot of time saved from chasing kids without tickets. Albeit Parisian kids are not the poorest of this region but still, I think it's gonna be a systemic bonus.

ksaj 6y ago

In Toronto (Canada) our transit is free for those 12 and under. At first it caused a fair amount of fraud because adults were using the kid's passes. Easy enough to get around: kids don't need to use passes now, either. There are Proof of Age cards for the kids who look older than 12, though. Adults can't usually take advantage of that, so apparently that has solved the problem.