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I would like to see someone advance an idea that all rail should be fully subsidised and free to use. Because rail creates massive economic gains by increased m

by dreen 4y ago

I would like to see someone advance an idea that all rail should be fully subsidised and free to use. Because rail creates massive economic gains by increased mobility, but modern rail companies struggle to maintain a modern infra while trying to make money and competing with coach and planes. If they just focused on running trains things could be much better.

flohofwoe 4y ago
Offering free train rides should only be used as incentive to use trains more. When the rail infrastructure is alreay overwhelmed as it is in Germany it really doesn't make sense without first massively investing in the infrastructure - which will take decades.
bobthepanda 4y ago
Free runs into the issue of capacity management. Prices, even token prices, serve to limit some consumption. Without it, free transit mostly serves to divert people from walking and cycling, not cars and planes. Guangzhou planned to offer free transit to ease congestion during the 2010 Asian Games. It was cancelled after a few days; metro ridership doubled, causing queues of up to twenty minutes to enter stations, and eight stations turned exit only to relieve emergency levels of overcrowding. Most rail transportation could not handle the crush of additional riders from free rides. https://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-fare-experiment.html https://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-far...
- hjanssen 4y ago
  > free transit mostly serves to divert people from walking and cycling, not cars and planes Source for this claim? I would be surprised if it holds true. > Most rail transportation could not handle the crush of additional riders from free rides This is a problem with the infrastructure, not free rides. Of course capacity planning has to be adapted to keep up with increased usage, but thats literally what we want. We want more people to use public transportation, limiting or capping usage is the wrong approach IMHO.
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-22/the-green-case-against-free-public-transit https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-22/the-green... > Residents of the Estonian capital of Talinn have been able to ride public transportation for free since 2013. Last year Estonia’s national auditor issued its assessment of that policy: It had induced many additional transit rides, but it failed to reduce car journeys. Dunkirk, France, and Frydek-Mistek, Czech Republic, have adopted free transit as well. > “There’s no evidence at all that cities introducing fare-free public transport have seen their car traffic reduced,” said Mohamed Mezghani, the secretary general of the International Association of Public Transport, which has published a policy brief on the topic. “Most of the [new] people taking public transport used to walk.” > The story was similar in Santiago, Chile, where researchers randomly assigned free two-week transit passes to residents. Those receiving the free passes took 12% more trips overall, but they did not drive less. > If free public transportation failed to attract drivers in relatively transit-rich Europe and Santiago, there’s little reason to think it would fare better (pun intended) in the U.S., where scant transit service acts as a deterrent. An extensive 2012 study by the National Academies of Sciences noted that fare-free experiments undertaken in Denver (1978-9) and Austin (1989-90) failed to reduce driving; most new trips were taken by those lacking access to a car. > Three MBTA bus routes went fare-free last August, and data showed that ridership on the 28 line rose 38%. (Other Boston bus routes, where fares were still collected, also saw increases, but smaller ones.) A survey of riders indicated that 15% of riders were new — but the fare-free rides replaced more biking and walking trips (8%) than driving (5%). —- Limiting or capping usage is the reality in most major cities because we cannot build our way out of the induced demand. Guangzhou is no slouch to public transport construction, in 25 years they have gone from zero to 621km of metro (the third largest system in the world) and yet even they cannot handle the capacity crunch. If there is no hope at Chinese levels of metro investment it’ll be impossible for anyone to actually build enough.
smcl 4y ago
Someone made a point recently that the UK government's plan to counter inflation by reducing the tax on petrol (by 10p/litre) amounted to roughly the same cost to the taxpayer as making all public transport in the country free. So it's something that's not outside the realms of possibility, it's just very unlikely that either of the major parties would actually do it.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  In the UK if you make public transport free the main beneficiaries are going to be Londoners and people in the South East. So this is a political issue because people will then complain that everything is always for the benefit of the "London bubble". On the other hand, cutting petrol price makes most of the country happy.
  - smcl 4y ago
    Well that is certainly possible (and speaks volumes to how areas like the North of England repeatedly get the short shrift) but I think the main take-away for me is that the 10p fuel duty reduction was seen as no big deal ... but a "free public transport" policy that would move the country closer to their emissions goals and make people's lives better while reducing financial burdens would've been considered a ridiculous, impossible extravagance. As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the national rail networks in DE and UK is already operating at near-capacity so adding more passengers wouldn't exactly help, but making it cheaper to use local bus, tram and train networks would be brilliant.
    - mytailorisrich 4y ago
      I am not sure free public transport will make such a big difference. It would probably make some people commute by train instead of driving where that's possible because of cost. On the other hand there is also a push to switch to EV cars nationally so what would impact emissions the most is not clear to me. This not just the North by the way. Most of the country drives with the only public transport being very impractical buses. Really this is the same in many European countries as well.
johnwalkr 4y ago
All public transit in Luxembourg is free, and they are investing in more buses and trains at a pretty fast rate. Alternatively a country could stop subsidizing cars. It’s weird that people complain about investment in trains but fail to realize roads are extremely expensive too and gas taxes don’t come close to covering costs. There’s virtually no free parking in Japanese city centres and all highways there are tolled. For one person the tolls are similar to high speed train fare, and it’s a no brainer to travel by train instead of car for most destinations.
- iggldiggl 4y ago
  Luxembourg traditionally had very low farebox recovery ratios (something around 14 %, and definitively much lower than Germany, even if you account for things like reduced fares for students), plus it's a small state that still is somewhat of a tax haven.
- mrep 4y ago
  > gas taxes don’t come close to covering costs You sure about that because when I did some quick math on US road spending I found it would require about a $2.50 tax per gallon to fully fund our yearly road construction costs with taxes [0] and Luxembourg charges $2.23 per gallon [1] which is just 10% shy. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29190632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29190632 [1]: https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe/ https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe/

by dreen 4y ago

flohofwoe 4y ago

Offering free train rides should only be used as incentive to use trains more. When the rail infrastructure is alreay overwhelmed as it is in Germany it really doesn't make sense without first massively investing in the infrastructure - which will take decades.

bobthepanda 4y ago

Free runs into the issue of capacity management. Prices, even token prices, serve to limit some consumption. Without it, free transit mostly serves to divert people from walking and cycling, not cars and planes. Guangzhou planned to offer free transit to ease congestion during the 2010 Asian Games. It was cancelled after a few days; metro ridership doubled, causing queues of up to twenty minutes to enter stations, and eight stations turned exit only to relieve emergency levels of overcrowding. Most rail transportation could not handle the crush of additional riders from free rides. https://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-fare-experiment.html https://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-far...

hjanssen 4y ago
> free transit mostly serves to divert people from walking and cycling, not cars and planes Source for this claim? I would be surprised if it holds true. > Most rail transportation could not handle the crush of additional riders from free rides This is a problem with the infrastructure, not free rides. Of course capacity planning has to be adapted to keep up with increased usage, but thats literally what we want. We want more people to use public transportation, limiting or capping usage is the wrong approach IMHO.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-22/the-green-case-against-free-public-transit https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-22/the-green... > Residents of the Estonian capital of Talinn have been able to ride public transportation for free since 2013. Last year Estonia’s national auditor issued its assessment of that policy: It had induced many additional transit rides, but it failed to reduce car journeys. Dunkirk, France, and Frydek-Mistek, Czech Republic, have adopted free transit as well. > “There’s no evidence at all that cities introducing fare-free public transport have seen their car traffic reduced,” said Mohamed Mezghani, the secretary general of the International Association of Public Transport, which has published a policy brief on the topic. “Most of the [new] people taking public transport used to walk.” > The story was similar in Santiago, Chile, where researchers randomly assigned free two-week transit passes to residents. Those receiving the free passes took 12% more trips overall, but they did not drive less. > If free public transportation failed to attract drivers in relatively transit-rich Europe and Santiago, there’s little reason to think it would fare better (pun intended) in the U.S., where scant transit service acts as a deterrent. An extensive 2012 study by the National Academies of Sciences noted that fare-free experiments undertaken in Denver (1978-9) and Austin (1989-90) failed to reduce driving; most new trips were taken by those lacking access to a car. > Three MBTA bus routes went fare-free last August, and data showed that ridership on the 28 line rose 38%. (Other Boston bus routes, where fares were still collected, also saw increases, but smaller ones.) A survey of riders indicated that 15% of riders were new — but the fare-free rides replaced more biking and walking trips (8%) than driving (5%). —- Limiting or capping usage is the reality in most major cities because we cannot build our way out of the induced demand. Guangzhou is no slouch to public transport construction, in 25 years they have gone from zero to 621km of metro (the third largest system in the world) and yet even they cannot handle the capacity crunch. If there is no hope at Chinese levels of metro investment it’ll be impossible for anyone to actually build enough.

smcl 4y ago

Someone made a point recently that the UK government's plan to counter inflation by reducing the tax on petrol (by 10p/litre) amounted to roughly the same cost to the taxpayer as making all public transport in the country free. So it's something that's not outside the realms of possibility, it's just very unlikely that either of the major parties would actually do it.

mytailorisrich 4y ago
In the UK if you make public transport free the main beneficiaries are going to be Londoners and people in the South East. So this is a political issue because people will then complain that everything is always for the benefit of the "London bubble". On the other hand, cutting petrol price makes most of the country happy.
- smcl 4y ago
  Well that is certainly possible (and speaks volumes to how areas like the North of England repeatedly get the short shrift) but I think the main take-away for me is that the 10p fuel duty reduction was seen as no big deal ... but a "free public transport" policy that would move the country closer to their emissions goals and make people's lives better while reducing financial burdens would've been considered a ridiculous, impossible extravagance. As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the national rail networks in DE and UK is already operating at near-capacity so adding more passengers wouldn't exactly help, but making it cheaper to use local bus, tram and train networks would be brilliant.
  - mytailorisrich 4y ago
    I am not sure free public transport will make such a big difference. It would probably make some people commute by train instead of driving where that's possible because of cost. On the other hand there is also a push to switch to EV cars nationally so what would impact emissions the most is not clear to me. This not just the North by the way. Most of the country drives with the only public transport being very impractical buses. Really this is the same in many European countries as well.

johnwalkr 4y ago

All public transit in Luxembourg is free, and they are investing in more buses and trains at a pretty fast rate. Alternatively a country could stop subsidizing cars. It’s weird that people complain about investment in trains but fail to realize roads are extremely expensive too and gas taxes don’t come close to covering costs. There’s virtually no free parking in Japanese city centres and all highways there are tolled. For one person the tolls are similar to high speed train fare, and it’s a no brainer to travel by train instead of car for most destinations.

iggldiggl 4y ago
Luxembourg traditionally had very low farebox recovery ratios (something around 14 %, and definitively much lower than Germany, even if you account for things like reduced fares for students), plus it's a small state that still is somewhat of a tax haven.
mrep 4y ago
> gas taxes don’t come close to covering costs You sure about that because when I did some quick math on US road spending I found it would require about a $2.50 tax per gallon to fully fund our yearly road construction costs with taxes [0] and Luxembourg charges $2.23 per gallon [1] which is just 10% shy. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29190632 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29190632 [1]: https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe/ https://taxfoundation.org/gas-taxes-in-europe/