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Free or extremely cheap transportation is a fascinating development. I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money

Free or extremely cheap transportation is a fascinating development. I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money. We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why transportation? If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out. Maybe it'd gain some popularity and we could finally see a shift away from cars. Public transportation is a difficult process because until the money is spent and the line is there, people are not sold. Whereas with cars, even if a highway is not built, people still have a car by default. Therefore the government needs to float money, either in infrastructure or in subsidized fares. At least subsidized fares is a little less binary than infrastructure.

ghaff 4y ago
>If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out. On the Northeast Corridor it could change the driving equation for couples and families. BUT Amtrak on the Northeast Corridor already runs at pretty high utilization. In fact, I believe there are expansion projects underway.
- balderdash 4y ago
  I was under the impression that the northeast corridor is actually profitable on its own, and keeps the rest of the system from losing even more money
  - ghaff 4y ago
    That too. Yes. To a first approximation Amtrak makes a fair bit of money on the Northeast Corridor which is then loses it pretty much everywhere else in the country. (There may be a few city pairs that are profitable but not many.)
dragonwriter 4y ago
> I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money. We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. While it shows a deep misunderstanding of the concept of a public service, there are lots of other parts of government we do expect to be self-sustaining on user fees. Like the Postal Service.
- Aperocky 4y ago
  Postal service can be used in bulk though, this leaves a lot of space for misuse and abuse if the service was made free. I can't transport myself in bulk, at most I'll just go to a lot of places, which is probably good for the economy anyways.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Any time there's a debate about building or enlarging a road, the idea of induced demand is brought up. More capacity leads to more demand (i.e. people bring able to travel more and/or further then they otherwise would have), causing traffic to increase over time until the new road is also congested. A similar pattern would emerge for any infrastructure investment, really. Some regulating force is needed, or it will emerge naturally via congestion and queuing. Edit: though once the tracks etc are built, public transport scales much better than roads so maybe it never becomes an issue.
    - Aperocky 4y ago
      That is correct, but induced demand here is capped by each person only able to travel so much. Even if the person lives on the train he could only occupy one seat at one time. And I would imagine a very small subset of population would actually want to do that.
      - hadlock 4y ago
        Right, but in his example, you are also capped by the ability to also only drive one car at a time. And yet highways are overflowing with cars during peak commute hours.
er4hn 4y ago
As a counterpoint, the us post office is expected to make money as well. There's a number of onerous rules around that in fact.. During the Trump administration the head of education was a big fan of charter schools, which is a way of turning public schools into subsidized private schools. The concept of government providing services that are taxpayer funded and do not turn a profit is something that the Republican party became opposed to around, I guess, the Regan administration.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  The US reached the point of being the only rich country where universal tax-funded healthcare is called “socialism”.
stop50 4y ago
In germany (currently month 2 of 3) there is an ticket for 9€ per month for using local public transport. Millions of tickets are sold and people are using the so much that the trains are litterally full. And the users are still enduring it. For those who don't know it: german trains have an lowsy reputation at best, no cooling in the summer, no heating in the winter and every user has to plan for the case the train is 15 minutes or more late or broke on the way down.
- manish_gill 4y ago
  I’m writing this from a German train (Regional Bahn, not even the ICE), and it does have air conditioning. Not too crowded, smooth journey for the past 2 hours. I’ve travelled all across Europe, and German trains aren’t what I would call “lousy”.
  - lmarcos 4y ago
    You have to live in Germany to appreciate that. Otherwise all you get is a few data points.
    - manish_gill 4y ago
      Living here for 3 years, I think I can “appreciate” that.
- distances 4y ago
  While the German train system can definitely improve, it's hard to come up with many countries that actually have a better service. France and Japan, maybe Spain? I don't know about the Netherlands and Nordics? It's still too rare to have such an extensive network.
  - rsynnott 4y ago
    It's all relative, I think. I've met Americans living in Ireland who were amazed by how good Dublin's public transport was. "Good" is not a description that anyone in Dublin, or anyone in Europe, would use for Dublin's public transport. I've always thought that German transport was generally excellent when I'm over there, but then I'm from Dublin :)
UIUC_06 4y ago
If you want a preview of what free trains would look like, just go to the public library some afternoon.
- darkerside 4y ago
  Clean, quiet, and productive?
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  Why don't you explain?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - conscion 4y ago
    They're implying that the trains would be filled with homeless people.
    - lowwave 4y ago
      Should be ok if they are not harassing other passengers.
      - Shugarl 4y ago
        The great majority won't. But a part will, which is likely to be a problem.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      Why do you say that? Is that what you think?
    - KoftaBob 4y ago
      I've never seen a single public library filled with homeless people. What area is this?
balderdash 4y ago
While I don’t think this stuff needs to make money, I think the goal should be at least be to break even, as people’s willingness to pay seems to be the best proxy of its actual utility to society. (E.g. trying to avoid bridges to nowhere [1]) The question then becomes how much if at all do want to subsidize transportation. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge
- clairity 4y ago
  yes, free inevitably means unvalued and creates distortions in markets that lead to unintended consequences (like homeless people using trains as makeshift housing). in contrast, market competition is one of the reasons cited by the tokyo transit system for why they're so good. also, economists are capable of estimating the ratio of private good to public good for a transit system, and we can simply apportion the funding of the network accordingly. if 40% of the value of transit accrues to the public, then pay that part out of taxes and set fares so that they pay for the other 60%. i'd rather have a system that responds in some proportion to market signals than one that is entirely immune to them. in LA, they're trying to make transit free, and while i'd benefit from this, i oppose the initiative on these grounds.
  - throwaway743 4y ago
    Have you used Tokyo's multi corp transit? It can be a real headache. Also, the MTA is private (mostly) and the subway costs a fare, yet there's homeless folks everywhere on the trains. Implementing a fare !== homeless people not setting up shop in subway cars or on the platforms. * the homeless and housing situation is a deeper issue with many variables. Just pointing at the claim that was made
    - clairity 4y ago
      my experience of tokyo was as a tourist some 10 years ago, so i can't speak to the breadth of the transit experience there. i just remember being very impressed with the quantity and punctuality of trains and don't remember any homelessness. that's not to say i saw no homelessness in tokyo, but it seemed tiny compared to LA. i also rode the shinkansen between tokyo and osaka, which felt almost like flying, in contrast to amtrak's acela train on the east coast, which feels only slightly faster for a few short periods.
stormbrew 4y ago
> If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out My understanding is that in north America the big problem with passenger rail is less cost and more the fact that there's a bias towards freight in track right of ways. Even if you're willing and happy to pay a lot to travel by train, scheduling is still likely to be screwed up somewhere by a big ass freight train in the way and there's nothing you can do about it. Edit to add after a double check: I guess in the US it's technically the law that passengers be given priority but it's poorly (or just not) enforced[1]. [1] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/mythbusters-enforcing-amtraks-legal-right-to-preference.pdf https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
- notatoad 4y ago
  this is a chicken-and-egg problem. our railways prioritize freight because that's the customer that actually uses the system. as long as passengers are rare, there's no reason to prioritize them. if passenger trains were actually a critical part of the transportation network, i'm sure we'd stop letting freight pre-empt them.
  - ericd 4y ago
    Aren’t the tracks owned by the companies that run the freight trains, rather than Amtrak?
    - notatoad 4y ago
      yes. and one of the ways to stop letting freight trains preempt passenger trains would be for amtrak to build their own tracks. but as long as amtrack has to rely on operating revenue for that sort of project, it's never going to happen because they can't attract enough customers.
      - closeparen 4y ago
        Build their own tracks where? Through and adjacent to both natural environments and people's homes. The America where you could do that kind of thing is long gone.
FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
>We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why transportation? Because it's on demand, and a significant part of it is recreational, if every means of transportation was free, even just in a state or country, people would move a lot more and the cost would be astronomical
- solarkraft 4y ago
  Car travel is often recreational, yet roads are typically not expected to make money; they're simply seen as something to enable economic activity and increase quality of life. Where's the difference?
  - FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
    Huge taxes on cars, oil, highways aren't always free, parking is expensive.
    - frosted-flakes 4y ago
      Parking is free nearly everywhere, highways are free nearly everywhere, and the US hardly taxes and cars at all compared to the rest of the developed world.
      - tylergetsay 4y ago
        Even today gas is taxed at almost 10%, every car on the road pays hundreds in fees for registration every year.
        frosted-flakes 4y ago
        Yes, that's what I said. The US hardly taxes cars at all compared to the rest of the developed world.
iso1631 4y ago
In the UK you get on a west coast train in the evening and it's rammed, with people paying 50p per mile. That service costs money to run. We could increase public spending to run the service, but you won't get more people on the train because it's already full. Now how are you going to increase that spending? Raise taxes? Cut other public services? Borrow more? Miraculous "efficiencies" no doubt. We could make it more cost effective, by building a new line instead, which would carry more people per operational cost. HS2 is this (1000 seats doing the journey in 1 hour for 2 members of staff is 500 seats per person hour, vs 500 seats doing it in 2 hours for 3 members of staff which is 83 seats per personhour, thus staffing costs drop 84%). And that's what we're doing.
- solarkraft 4y ago
  > We could increase public spending to run the service, but you won't get more people on the train because it's already full. Isn't increasing capacity the point of increasing spending?
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Not if you’re increasing spending simply to lower out of pocket costs to $0.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    If you increase spending by building new lines they yes, you increase capacity If you increase spending to offset a reduction in fares you don't increase capacity
bennysomething 4y ago
There are a reasons I can think of for making money and charging for tickets: 1. The investment can come from the private sector, it takes the risk instead of burdening the tax payer. 2. Free rail for all burdens all with the cost of rail, it removes freedom of not paying for it. 3. No ticket pricing means no market signals that would show if the operator is running it's business poorly. 4. No adjustable pricing mean that the user has no reason to adjust their usage in terms of avoiding peak times or utilising quieter times. 5. No competition means no alternative, if the monopoly provides a terrible service that fleeces the tax payer, well tough luck for the user.
- ttymck 4y ago
  Re (2): public roads burden all with the cost of roads (and inducing car travel). We don't expect roads to make money, as far as I'm aware.
  - foogazi 4y ago
    But cars are not free
    - zeusk 4y ago
      nor is their fuel - electric or oil.
    - itronitron 4y ago
      shoes aren't free either
    - solar-ice 4y ago
      Cool, so you would like the Government to fund construction and maintenance of the rails as long as the operation of trains is ticketed? :)
      - taffer 4y ago
        Yes.
tomjen3 4y ago
Services have to (at least in some part) listen to those who pay for it. As long as tickets are priced to cover costs, there is an incentive to ensure enough people travel and that it hits a comfort/safety/trade of that most people are happy with. When people are not paying, there is no incentive to do anything but what is required to get the government subsidy. In addition because it is so cheap there is a lot less competition from people taking the car instead, which means that there is even less pressure to make the train ride nicer. This hurts everybody, including those who do not have a car as an alternative. Basically: by paying the fee you get a vote. If it is free you don't.
acchow 4y ago
> was that it should make money Most public transit isn't profitable, but they take fares to partially fund their operating costs. This aligns incentives
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  Not really, the government has a competing incentive for people to consume transportation as it has knock-on effects on economic activity and tax revenue while at the same time driving down the marginal cost of transportation
tylergetsay 4y ago
Amtrak is more expensive than a flight for a reason, making it free would make it inaccessible
Joeri 4y ago
As someone who has chosen to get rid of my car and rely on public transport I would say the biggest problem public transport faces is quality and not cost. For people to trade in their cars connections need to be fast, frequent and a comfortable ride. This requires large investments and having high enough fares helps offset those investments. Making it free makes it harder to achieve that level of quality, so while it will sway the most price-conscious group, it would never convince the masses to take a train instead of their car.
- baby 4y ago
  Just increase taxes for everyone instead of spending a ton of money on trying to catch people not paying their fare or technology to process payment.
- cormacrelf 4y ago
  If I were a transport operator, I would be worried about losing access to the trip data you get from people constantly scanning their tickets at the start and end of journeys. How do you know how people are using your services if nobody is scanning tickets any more? Maybe counting passengers gives you enough info to deliver capacity at required times. Hopefully the need for data on what actual trips people are taking (to influence line design etc) is not so necessary that operators start doing facial recognition. Yuck.
  - robotresearcher 4y ago
    The story says that the goverment will issue free season tickets, not remove ticket scanning.
  - coffeeblack 4y ago
    Number of phones trying to connect to the train’s Wi-Fi.
  - elashri 4y ago
    In my city, the metro decided that this summer it will be fare-free on weekends. The bus operators count people in their system as they board. This is how they simply track the usage.
dillondoyle 4y ago
I would! I want to do the california zephyr. But hard to poney up just for a scenic ride when the cars aren't even very nice and cost more than a flight in some cases. Seems like the problem though is Mr Buffet's rail monopoly? Maybe if the Govt got a right of way...
bobthepanda 4y ago
The issue is usually capacity management. Pre-covid most places with decent transit had crowding issues during rush hour. In 2010 Guangzhou made fares on its subway free to ease congestion during the Asian Games, and the result was a more than doubling of ridership. Users reported queue times of more than 20 minutes to enter stations, and eight busy stations had to be turned exit only as an emergency measure. https://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-fare-experiment.html https://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-far... A fair amount of places have tried free transit. Usually the result found is that most trips were diverted from walking and cycling.
otsaloma 4y ago
> I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money. We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why transportation? That sounds like a straw man. This probably varies, but where I'm from public transport is about half funded by ticket sales and half subsidized by tax payers (some of whom don't use public transport). The reasons I'm aware of againt free public transport are (1) the economist view that a free service (that in reality costs money to operate) leads to inefficient and wasteful use and (2) the city-planner view that over long term free public transport leads to thinly spread out residential land use development which in turn leads to high infrastructure costs for roads, pipes, electricity, schools, etc. and also emissions as not everyone will use public transport for all their trips. I think free public transport is an interesting thought especially give various modern challenges, but seems prone to shallow argumentation that doesn't quite match the complex dynamics of the matter itself.
bigDinosaur 4y ago
'Free PT' is an idea that sounds good but hasn't actually been shown to solve the real problems of PT such as service quality or safety or the ability to actually get where you need to go. I'd characterise it more as a distraction than anything else. Compounding this it means that the more people using it actually means less revenue per person which is problematic when you need to scale based on the number of people using it (basically you become entirely dependent on public revenue allocation which can really suck if your city/country has political issues with funding PT). My experience has been that when 'free PT' gets floated it's usually instead of actual infrastructural improvements since it's trivial to implement. And yeah, all these issues exist with 'free' roads and car infrastructure too. Again, toll roads are unpopular, and free car infrastructure is a vote winner. Doesn't mean it's actually a good idea at a systems level.
- kjkjadksj 4y ago
  One theory is if its free, more people might hop on the bus and use it for a block or two since they know its free and they don’t have to keep up a current transit pass. This basically catches the car users who might occasionally use transit but aren’t familiar with the pass system as it is. Free fares aren't even so much for low income people, as at least in my city low income people already have their fares subsidized. The more people using transit the more likely ballot initiatives pass even if they only occasionally use transit.
eMSF 4y ago
Most countries don't expect publicly funded transportation to turn a profit, or even break even. The reason Spain has to find new avenues to waste money is due to the unnecessarily large EU recovery fund, of which Spain was the biggest recipient. This is not even Spanish tax payers money, but I'm sure they'll have no problem finding ways to spend it, like all the other hand outs.
kortilla 4y ago
> I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money. We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why transportation? Because it’s competing with private industry. It should be revenue neutral at least if you don’t just want to use tax money to destroy public businesses and operate something economically inefficient. Why not have the government make an electric car that is free? Why not a government airline that offers free flights?
- e12e 4y ago
  Seems to work fine for libraries, infrastructure, education and health care. Obviously nationalizing any existing market that's been given over to private industry will have consequences for that industry.
  - treasurebots 4y ago
    American education, health care and infrastructure industries probably shouldn't serve as a model for other industries
    - e12e 4y ago
      I meant it works fine in eg Europe.
oort-cloud9 4y ago
antr 4y ago
The problem with "free or extremely cheap transportation" is that it's neither free nor cheap. It's expensive and paid for by tax payers through constant budget deficits and debt issuance that will indebt future generations.
- iforgotpassword 4y ago
  Unlike a car, which comes for free with your birth certificate, as well as a voucher for lifelong supply with gas. And don't forget about all the highways that get built for free! I don't immediately see how one would be more or less expensive than the other.
  - antr 4y ago
    Putting aside the absurd attack labeling my argument as pro-car (don't own one by the way), I'll I'm saying is that public transport ain't cheap nor free, and has a cost. You can cover your eyes, be against x or y, but that won't stop things from being different.
LtdJorge 4y ago
The problem is train transportation is not making a profit here. Specially since we have the second best high speed network which doesn't see much use and cost us an incredible amount of money. This is going to be a disaster, the only way they'll sustain this is with (even) higher taxes.

ghaff 4y ago

>If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out. On the Northeast Corridor it could change the driving equation for couples and families. BUT Amtrak on the Northeast Corridor already runs at pretty high utilization. In fact, I believe there are expansion projects underway.

balderdash 4y ago
I was under the impression that the northeast corridor is actually profitable on its own, and keeps the rest of the system from losing even more money
- ghaff 4y ago
  That too. Yes. To a first approximation Amtrak makes a fair bit of money on the Northeast Corridor which is then loses it pretty much everywhere else in the country. (There may be a few city pairs that are profitable but not many.)

dragonwriter 4y ago

> I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money. We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. While it shows a deep misunderstanding of the concept of a public service, there are lots of other parts of government we do expect to be self-sustaining on user fees. Like the Postal Service.

Aperocky 4y ago
Postal service can be used in bulk though, this leaves a lot of space for misuse and abuse if the service was made free. I can't transport myself in bulk, at most I'll just go to a lot of places, which is probably good for the economy anyways.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Any time there's a debate about building or enlarging a road, the idea of induced demand is brought up. More capacity leads to more demand (i.e. people bring able to travel more and/or further then they otherwise would have), causing traffic to increase over time until the new road is also congested. A similar pattern would emerge for any infrastructure investment, really. Some regulating force is needed, or it will emerge naturally via congestion and queuing. Edit: though once the tracks etc are built, public transport scales much better than roads so maybe it never becomes an issue.
  - Aperocky 4y ago
    That is correct, but induced demand here is capped by each person only able to travel so much. Even if the person lives on the train he could only occupy one seat at one time. And I would imagine a very small subset of population would actually want to do that.
    - hadlock 4y ago
      Right, but in his example, you are also capped by the ability to also only drive one car at a time. And yet highways are overflowing with cars during peak commute hours.

er4hn 4y ago

As a counterpoint, the us post office is expected to make money as well. There's a number of onerous rules around that in fact.. During the Trump administration the head of education was a big fan of charter schools, which is a way of turning public schools into subsidized private schools. The concept of government providing services that are taxpayer funded and do not turn a profit is something that the Republican party became opposed to around, I guess, the Regan administration.

rbanffy 4y ago
The US reached the point of being the only rich country where universal tax-funded healthcare is called “socialism”.

stop50 4y ago

In germany (currently month 2 of 3) there is an ticket for 9€ per month for using local public transport. Millions of tickets are sold and people are using the so much that the trains are litterally full. And the users are still enduring it. For those who don't know it: german trains have an lowsy reputation at best, no cooling in the summer, no heating in the winter and every user has to plan for the case the train is 15 minutes or more late or broke on the way down.

manish_gill 4y ago
I’m writing this from a German train (Regional Bahn, not even the ICE), and it does have air conditioning. Not too crowded, smooth journey for the past 2 hours. I’ve travelled all across Europe, and German trains aren’t what I would call “lousy”.
- lmarcos 4y ago
  You have to live in Germany to appreciate that. Otherwise all you get is a few data points.
  - manish_gill 4y ago
    Living here for 3 years, I think I can “appreciate” that.
distances 4y ago
While the German train system can definitely improve, it's hard to come up with many countries that actually have a better service. France and Japan, maybe Spain? I don't know about the Netherlands and Nordics? It's still too rare to have such an extensive network.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  It's all relative, I think. I've met Americans living in Ireland who were amazed by how good Dublin's public transport was. "Good" is not a description that anyone in Dublin, or anyone in Europe, would use for Dublin's public transport. I've always thought that German transport was generally excellent when I'm over there, but then I'm from Dublin :)

UIUC_06 4y ago

If you want a preview of what free trains would look like, just go to the public library some afternoon.

darkerside 4y ago
Clean, quiet, and productive?
wildrhythms 4y ago
Why don't you explain?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- conscion 4y ago
  They're implying that the trains would be filled with homeless people.
  - lowwave 4y ago
    Should be ok if they are not harassing other passengers.
    - Shugarl 4y ago
      The great majority won't. But a part will, which is likely to be a problem.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Why do you say that? Is that what you think?
  - KoftaBob 4y ago
    I've never seen a single public library filled with homeless people. What area is this?

balderdash 4y ago

While I don’t think this stuff needs to make money, I think the goal should be at least be to break even, as people’s willingness to pay seems to be the best proxy of its actual utility to society. (E.g. trying to avoid bridges to nowhere [1]) The question then becomes how much if at all do want to subsidize transportation. [1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravina_Island_Bridge

clairity 4y ago
yes, free inevitably means unvalued and creates distortions in markets that lead to unintended consequences (like homeless people using trains as makeshift housing). in contrast, market competition is one of the reasons cited by the tokyo transit system for why they're so good. also, economists are capable of estimating the ratio of private good to public good for a transit system, and we can simply apportion the funding of the network accordingly. if 40% of the value of transit accrues to the public, then pay that part out of taxes and set fares so that they pay for the other 60%. i'd rather have a system that responds in some proportion to market signals than one that is entirely immune to them. in LA, they're trying to make transit free, and while i'd benefit from this, i oppose the initiative on these grounds.
- throwaway743 4y ago
  Have you used Tokyo's multi corp transit? It can be a real headache. Also, the MTA is private (mostly) and the subway costs a fare, yet there's homeless folks everywhere on the trains. Implementing a fare !== homeless people not setting up shop in subway cars or on the platforms. * the homeless and housing situation is a deeper issue with many variables. Just pointing at the claim that was made
  - clairity 4y ago
    my experience of tokyo was as a tourist some 10 years ago, so i can't speak to the breadth of the transit experience there. i just remember being very impressed with the quantity and punctuality of trains and don't remember any homelessness. that's not to say i saw no homelessness in tokyo, but it seemed tiny compared to LA. i also rode the shinkansen between tokyo and osaka, which felt almost like flying, in contrast to amtrak's acela train on the east coast, which feels only slightly faster for a few short periods.

stormbrew 4y ago

> If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out My understanding is that in north America the big problem with passenger rail is less cost and more the fact that there's a bias towards freight in track right of ways. Even if you're willing and happy to pay a lot to travel by train, scheduling is still likely to be screwed up somewhere by a big ass freight train in the way and there's nothing you can do about it. Edit to add after a double check: I guess in the US it's technically the law that passengers be given priority but it's poorly (or just not) enforced[1]. [1] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/mythbusters-enforcing-amtraks-legal-right-to-preference.pdf https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

notatoad 4y ago
this is a chicken-and-egg problem. our railways prioritize freight because that's the customer that actually uses the system. as long as passengers are rare, there's no reason to prioritize them. if passenger trains were actually a critical part of the transportation network, i'm sure we'd stop letting freight pre-empt them.
- ericd 4y ago
  Aren’t the tracks owned by the companies that run the freight trains, rather than Amtrak?
  - notatoad 4y ago
    yes. and one of the ways to stop letting freight trains preempt passenger trains would be for amtrak to build their own tracks. but as long as amtrack has to rely on operating revenue for that sort of project, it's never going to happen because they can't attract enough customers.
    - closeparen 4y ago
      Build their own tracks where? Through and adjacent to both natural environments and people's homes. The America where you could do that kind of thing is long gone.

FrenchDevRemote 4y ago

>We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why transportation? Because it's on demand, and a significant part of it is recreational, if every means of transportation was free, even just in a state or country, people would move a lot more and the cost would be astronomical

solarkraft 4y ago
Car travel is often recreational, yet roads are typically not expected to make money; they're simply seen as something to enable economic activity and increase quality of life. Where's the difference?
- FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
  Huge taxes on cars, oil, highways aren't always free, parking is expensive.
  - frosted-flakes 4y ago
    Parking is free nearly everywhere, highways are free nearly everywhere, and the US hardly taxes and cars at all compared to the rest of the developed world.
    - tylergetsay 4y ago
      Even today gas is taxed at almost 10%, every car on the road pays hundreds in fees for registration every year.
      - frosted-flakes 4y ago
        Yes, that's what I said. The US hardly taxes cars at all compared to the rest of the developed world.

iso1631 4y ago

In the UK you get on a west coast train in the evening and it's rammed, with people paying 50p per mile. That service costs money to run. We could increase public spending to run the service, but you won't get more people on the train because it's already full. Now how are you going to increase that spending? Raise taxes? Cut other public services? Borrow more? Miraculous "efficiencies" no doubt. We could make it more cost effective, by building a new line instead, which would carry more people per operational cost. HS2 is this (1000 seats doing the journey in 1 hour for 2 members of staff is 500 seats per person hour, vs 500 seats doing it in 2 hours for 3 members of staff which is 83 seats per personhour, thus staffing costs drop 84%). And that's what we're doing.

solarkraft 4y ago
> We could increase public spending to run the service, but you won't get more people on the train because it's already full. Isn't increasing capacity the point of increasing spending?
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Not if you’re increasing spending simply to lower out of pocket costs to $0.
- iso1631 4y ago
  If you increase spending by building new lines they yes, you increase capacity If you increase spending to offset a reduction in fares you don't increase capacity

bennysomething 4y ago

There are a reasons I can think of for making money and charging for tickets: 1. The investment can come from the private sector, it takes the risk instead of burdening the tax payer. 2. Free rail for all burdens all with the cost of rail, it removes freedom of not paying for it. 3. No ticket pricing means no market signals that would show if the operator is running it's business poorly. 4. No adjustable pricing mean that the user has no reason to adjust their usage in terms of avoiding peak times or utilising quieter times. 5. No competition means no alternative, if the monopoly provides a terrible service that fleeces the tax payer, well tough luck for the user.

ttymck 4y ago
Re (2): public roads burden all with the cost of roads (and inducing car travel). We don't expect roads to make money, as far as I'm aware.
- foogazi 4y ago
  But cars are not free
  - zeusk 4y ago
    nor is their fuel - electric or oil.
  - itronitron 4y ago
    shoes aren't free either
  - solar-ice 4y ago
    Cool, so you would like the Government to fund construction and maintenance of the rails as long as the operation of trains is ticketed? :)
    - taffer 4y ago
      Yes.

tomjen3 4y ago

Services have to (at least in some part) listen to those who pay for it. As long as tickets are priced to cover costs, there is an incentive to ensure enough people travel and that it hits a comfort/safety/trade of that most people are happy with. When people are not paying, there is no incentive to do anything but what is required to get the government subsidy. In addition because it is so cheap there is a lot less competition from people taking the car instead, which means that there is even less pressure to make the train ride nicer. This hurts everybody, including those who do not have a car as an alternative. Basically: by paying the fee you get a vote. If it is free you don't.

acchow 4y ago

> was that it should make money Most public transit isn't profitable, but they take fares to partially fund their operating costs. This aligns incentives

sudosysgen 4y ago
Not really, the government has a competing incentive for people to consume transportation as it has knock-on effects on economic activity and tax revenue while at the same time driving down the marginal cost of transportation

tylergetsay 4y ago

Amtrak is more expensive than a flight for a reason, making it free would make it inaccessible

Joeri 4y ago

As someone who has chosen to get rid of my car and rely on public transport I would say the biggest problem public transport faces is quality and not cost. For people to trade in their cars connections need to be fast, frequent and a comfortable ride. This requires large investments and having high enough fares helps offset those investments. Making it free makes it harder to achieve that level of quality, so while it will sway the most price-conscious group, it would never convince the masses to take a train instead of their car.

baby 4y ago
Just increase taxes for everyone instead of spending a ton of money on trying to catch people not paying their fare or technology to process payment.
cormacrelf 4y ago
If I were a transport operator, I would be worried about losing access to the trip data you get from people constantly scanning their tickets at the start and end of journeys. How do you know how people are using your services if nobody is scanning tickets any more? Maybe counting passengers gives you enough info to deliver capacity at required times. Hopefully the need for data on what actual trips people are taking (to influence line design etc) is not so necessary that operators start doing facial recognition. Yuck.
- robotresearcher 4y ago
  The story says that the goverment will issue free season tickets, not remove ticket scanning.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  Number of phones trying to connect to the train’s Wi-Fi.
- elashri 4y ago
  In my city, the metro decided that this summer it will be fare-free on weekends. The bus operators count people in their system as they board. This is how they simply track the usage.

dillondoyle 4y ago

I would! I want to do the california zephyr. But hard to poney up just for a scenic ride when the cars aren't even very nice and cost more than a flight in some cases. Seems like the problem though is Mr Buffet's rail monopoly? Maybe if the Govt got a right of way...

bobthepanda 4y ago

The issue is usually capacity management. Pre-covid most places with decent transit had crowding issues during rush hour. In 2010 Guangzhou made fares on its subway free to ease congestion during the Asian Games, and the result was a more than doubling of ridership. Users reported queue times of more than 20 minutes to enter stations, and eight busy stations had to be turned exit only as an emergency measure. https://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-fare-experiment.html https://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-far... A fair amount of places have tried free transit. Usually the result found is that most trips were diverted from walking and cycling.

otsaloma 4y ago

> I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money. We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why transportation? That sounds like a straw man. This probably varies, but where I'm from public transport is about half funded by ticket sales and half subsidized by tax payers (some of whom don't use public transport). The reasons I'm aware of againt free public transport are (1) the economist view that a free service (that in reality costs money to operate) leads to inefficient and wasteful use and (2) the city-planner view that over long term free public transport leads to thinly spread out residential land use development which in turn leads to high infrastructure costs for roads, pipes, electricity, schools, etc. and also emissions as not everyone will use public transport for all their trips. I think free public transport is an interesting thought especially give various modern challenges, but seems prone to shallow argumentation that doesn't quite match the complex dynamics of the matter itself.

bigDinosaur 4y ago

'Free PT' is an idea that sounds good but hasn't actually been shown to solve the real problems of PT such as service quality or safety or the ability to actually get where you need to go. I'd characterise it more as a distraction than anything else. Compounding this it means that the more people using it actually means less revenue per person which is problematic when you need to scale based on the number of people using it (basically you become entirely dependent on public revenue allocation which can really suck if your city/country has political issues with funding PT). My experience has been that when 'free PT' gets floated it's usually instead of actual infrastructural improvements since it's trivial to implement. And yeah, all these issues exist with 'free' roads and car infrastructure too. Again, toll roads are unpopular, and free car infrastructure is a vote winner. Doesn't mean it's actually a good idea at a systems level.

kjkjadksj 4y ago
One theory is if its free, more people might hop on the bus and use it for a block or two since they know its free and they don’t have to keep up a current transit pass. This basically catches the car users who might occasionally use transit but aren’t familiar with the pass system as it is. Free fares aren't even so much for low income people, as at least in my city low income people already have their fares subsidized. The more people using transit the more likely ballot initiatives pass even if they only occasionally use transit.

eMSF 4y ago

Most countries don't expect publicly funded transportation to turn a profit, or even break even. The reason Spain has to find new avenues to waste money is due to the unnecessarily large EU recovery fund, of which Spain was the biggest recipient. This is not even Spanish tax payers money, but I'm sure they'll have no problem finding ways to spend it, like all the other hand outs.

kortilla 4y ago

> I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money. We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why transportation? Because it’s competing with private industry. It should be revenue neutral at least if you don’t just want to use tax money to destroy public businesses and operate something economically inefficient. Why not have the government make an electric car that is free? Why not a government airline that offers free flights?

e12e 4y ago
Seems to work fine for libraries, infrastructure, education and health care. Obviously nationalizing any existing market that's been given over to private industry will have consequences for that industry.
- treasurebots 4y ago
  American education, health care and infrastructure industries probably shouldn't serve as a model for other industries
  - e12e 4y ago
    I meant it works fine in eg Europe.

oort-cloud9 4y ago

antr 4y ago

The problem with "free or extremely cheap transportation" is that it's neither free nor cheap. It's expensive and paid for by tax payers through constant budget deficits and debt issuance that will indebt future generations.

iforgotpassword 4y ago
Unlike a car, which comes for free with your birth certificate, as well as a voucher for lifelong supply with gas. And don't forget about all the highways that get built for free! I don't immediately see how one would be more or less expensive than the other.
- antr 4y ago
  Putting aside the absurd attack labeling my argument as pro-car (don't own one by the way), I'll I'm saying is that public transport ain't cheap nor free, and has a cost. You can cover your eyes, be against x or y, but that won't stop things from being different.

LtdJorge 4y ago

The problem is train transportation is not making a profit here. Specially since we have the second best high speed network which doesn't see much use and cost us an incredible amount of money. This is going to be a disaster, the only way they'll sustain this is with (even) higher taxes.