10 ms·

Slight tangent but I've always wondered what the economic impact would be if public transit were just free. If there was no monetary nor mental overhead to get

• netizen-936824 5y ago
  That could also be good for the environment, in that it encourages use of shared transportation and lowers barriers.
• toast0 5y ago
  Seattle used to have free transit inside the downtown core, maybe there's some data from the period they were doing that.
  • xyzzyz 5y ago
    Yes, Seattle discontinued its mobile homeless shelter program, and instead moved it to occupy city parks and sidewalk greenery.
  • xenocyon 5y ago
    Long-time Seattle resident and transit rider here. Seattle's erstwhile "Ride Free Zone" was instituted with the aim of promoting tourist activity and applied solely to rides that began and ended within a tiny part of the city center; for example, if you were a homeless person in the U District making a trip downtown, you would still have to pay, each way. So - except for very short trips - it was not necessarily something that meaningfully benefited poor people nor low-income people. More recently Seattle's Transit Riders Union (among other groups) has advocated for more substantial free transit. Some baby steps in this direction have been realized with such things as free transit for high school students.
• oconnor663 5y ago
  My understanding is that one of the serious practical downsides to free public transit in American cities is that lots of homeless people use it. This sounds silly (like, isn't that the goal?), but some fraction of those people are smelly and/or scary, and what tends to happen is that anyone who has a choice stops using those parts of the system. And then however one might feel about that outcome, what tends to happen next is that the transit system loses political support and funding. There's probably a common sense solution somewhere that includes both free ridership and also fairly strong enforcement around loitering and hygeine, but I don't know if any city has managed to really nail it. Incidentally, I think a lot of similar problems come up in cities that have free public bathrooms. A small number of abusers tend to make those bathrooms extremely unpleasant for everyone else.
  • bombcar 5y ago
    This is it exactly - in areas without a "homeless problem" however you want to define that - you have a completely workable solution (example: airport shuttle trains, etc). Where you have an issue the fare requirement is often used an excuse to enforce a minimum level of "cleanliness" if you will.
  • analog31 5y ago
    This sounds like a strange idea, but when I traveled in Europe, there were always first and second class carriages on the trains. You could do the same thing with transit. Every other bus is free. People could then choose between hanging out with the people for a few blocks, or paying for a ride.
    • ampdepolymerase 5y ago
      What an innovative idea! Here in the states, economic indicators are a great proxy for many other aspects. Maybe we could do a trial in Montgomery, Alabama, surely nothing would go wrong.
      • mikro2nd 5y ago
        It would be helpful to us non-US persons if you'd explain what signal you're proxying with "Montgomery, Alabama". As it is this means nothing to a large number of people reading your comment.
        • K5EiS 5y ago
          I think they are referring to Rosa Parks, where the economic difference would lead to segregation.
          • deleted 5y ago
            [deleted]
  • gizmo686 5y ago
• 73gfg 5y ago
  Transport within Melbourne's entire downtown area is free: https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/assets/default-site/Maps-and-Timetables-PDFs/Maps/Network-maps/5b4a3efe80/PTV-Free-Tram-Zone-Map.pdf https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/assets/default-site/Maps-and-Time...
  • senectus1 5y ago
    Same in Perth Western Australia also the current Lab gov has promised to cap Public Transport at a maximum of $4.90. A pretty significant saving https://twitter.com/MarkMcGowanMP/status/1350648142585217025/photo/1 https://twitter.com/MarkMcGowanMP/status/1350648142585217025... *Goes into effect Jan 2022
  • pomian 5y ago
    Calgary, Canada; has free transit in the downtown core. But not very far, and not to the suburbs. But makes it very convenient when you are in the centre, and don't need to think twice about moving around that core.
    • Mandatum 5y ago
      In Vancouver it's unenforced, about half of people actually pay for their tickets.
  • gelatocar 5y ago
    The free tram zone is great, but only covers the CBD which is pretty tiny.
• deleted 5y ago
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• jandrewrogers 5y ago
  This has been done, I’ve lived in cities where this was the case for a while. In at least some cities, this turned public transit into a mobile homeless shelter, drug den, etc. So normal people stopped using public transit because it was unsafe and unpleasant.
• aaron695 5y ago
  Free public transport has been researched and it's not clear if it's positive. It's certainly not a slam dunk community good - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2213624X17300858 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22136... ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cstp.2017.10.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cstp.2017.10.002 )
  • admax88q 5y ago
    Abstract from your link suggests that the study was pretty inconclusive. > Findings suggest certain flaws limit the program’s potential success since the program design is misaligned with its primary stated goals, and several program goals relating to external effects of fare reform cannot be evaluated. Although it would be valuable for transport managers in other cities to learn about this experience, the Tallinn fare-free public transport program provides scant transferable evidence about how such a program can operate outside of a politicized context,
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Anecdotal: The Dutch government offers students free public transit. This allowed me and millions of others to be able to attend a much better (college, uni level) education than I would otherwise be able to have. Or it would involve a 25 kilometer bike ride every day. Another anecdotal one: Many companies offer travel / commute expense cover. If my commute wasn't covered by my employer, I'd be spending €250 a month out of pocket just to get to work (in addition to the time spent). It would make me reconsider working for that employer in favor of something more local.
    • josephcsible 5y ago
      I like these kinds of solutions way better than just removing all fare gates, because then you won't have a huge influx of people who will abuse the service and drive away anyone with the means to avoid public transit.
• shaggyfrog 5y ago
  Why would public transportation need to be paid for by "boosted commerce" to be beneficial? Why does it need to be profitable? As a public service, do we ask fire departments to be profitable? What consequences happen when we try and make other essential services profitable, e.g. police? Should armed forces be made to be profitable? How do you define profitability in the first place... how do you define the costs and benefits? Why does this question only ever seem to come up when we're talking about things that raise quality of life for the poor?
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    > Why does it need to be profitable? It doesn't need to be profitable, but if it isn't, then the money to subsidize it needs to come from somewhere. Do you think raising taxes for this would be politically popular, especially if most taxpayers wouldn't use it? > As a public service, do we ask fire departments to be profitable? It is politically popular to use tax dollars to fund fire departments. > Should armed forces be made to be profitable? This is a textbook example of a public good. You can't give national defense only to people who pay for it. Either the whole country has it or nobody does. > How do you define profitability in the first place... how do you define the costs and benefits? This seems fairly obvious: if the income from fares exceeds the costs to pay the drivers, maintain the vehicles, etc. > Why does this question only ever seem to come up when we're talking about things that raise quality of life for the poor? Because people don't like paying for things that they don't get value from, even if other people do.
    • asdff 5y ago
      In LA a majority of voters elected to raise sales taxes several times to improve transit, despite only like 20% of commuters using it city wide (transit use is extremely high in certain neighborhoods like Westlake, though). LA metro is considering slashing fares because they make up something like 5% of the operating budget, thanks to these sales tax measures and federal grants. It's not just LA metro that is funded like this, cleveland RTA is also funded by a portion of sales tax revenues.
    • shaggyfrog 5y ago
• renewiltord 5y ago
  SF public transit is de facto free. I don’t think it’s led to any particular surge of commercial activity.
  • kelnos 5y ago
    > SF public transit is de facto free. Huh? I mean, sure, enforcement is pretty lax, but most people who ride buses in SF do indeed pay. The homeless generally do not, and drivers look the other way. (Frankly, I'm ok with this, as long as they aren't violent or using the bus as a toilet.)
• asdff 5y ago
  I commute on transit and in my experience, those that can't afford transit simply don't pay the fare, so I'd guess impact would be pretty limited for those that might benefit the most from free transit. They either hop on via the back of the bus on the second set of doors away from the driver, walk directly onto the train platform without tapping up a fare card, or for the few stations that do have turnstyles, they use the emergency exit gate which says is alarmed, but in fact is not and swings open freely.
• throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  > Slight tangent but I've always wondered what the economic impact would be if public transit were just free. Look at areas where the cost of distance is high. Rural areas. Areas with bad transit. Islands. Then reverse that. Basically anything you do to decrease the cost (in money or time) of moving from A to B flattens the cost of living. The poor guy who just wants to hang a picture doesn't have to put up with the insane costs of some wire and nails at the local hardware store that mostly caters to yuppies and has the pricing to match. He can justify the cost in time and money of getting on the subway or get in his car and go where it's cheap. Now apply this to every economic transaction from buying milk to getting a job and everything in-between. The second and third order effects are immense. People can afford to stop transacting with bad jobs and bad landlords because they can afford to access the alternative equivalent services. Of course improving transit never gets much support because the people with the money don't want it spend on the subways they don't use and they don't want to have to compete with the poors for access to car infrastructure so you never see that stuff democratized, just more fees and whatnot to discourage use by those not wealthy enough.
• tomjen3 5y ago
  I don't know how much that will matter in the states, but when we tried it in Denmark (in some towns), it meant people took the bus more - but it was those who would otherwise take their bike or walk, not people who would otherwise use their car. It makes sense too. I can get a 30 day pass to drive with public transportation as much as I want, but it is so much faster to take my car that I essentially only take it (prepandemic).