7 ms·

By enforcing a "user pays" model on public transport, we are requiring that the most disadvantaged support their own transport system, which they use to get aro

by dools 4y ago

By enforcing a "user pays" model on public transport, we are requiring that the most disadvantaged support their own transport system, which they use to get around to go to jobs to support the wealthy. Meanwhile, the richest people, who are benefitting from the availability and mobility of labour, can afford to move around in luxury vehicles (sometimes driven by others). This is a negative feedback loop which renders public transportation increasingly dangerous and decreasingly effective. If you want to "fund" public transport, you should do it through increased taxation on cars (especially luxury cars) and air travel (in particular private aviation), but ultimately public money doesn't necessarily need to be entirely offset through taxation if it's federally supplied. There would be a lot to be said for a federal infrastructure spending bill that targeted uniformly effective and free public transport.

mixmastamyk 4y ago
Like the car tax idea, but free attracts the destitute and mentally ill. Offer the working poor and looking a transit pass instead.
- Broken_Hippo 4y ago
  Oh, no, poor people might share the bus with me. Wouldn't want poor or mentally ill folks to do things like get to a doctors appointment, buy food, or visit family if they can't get there invisibly. /s. Now is when I'd like to remind you that you share spaces with mentally ill folks every single day and you don't notice a thing: A lot of destitute folks are disable and being destitute shouldn't mean that you have to have a lonely and hard life. And I'd also like to mention that you can both be destitute and have a job. You can be mentally ill and have a job.
  - supersour 4y ago
    I think the parent comment is referring the homeless population which is violent or too public in their drug use/paraphernalia. Pick the right bus line in Vancouver. You will notice mentally ill, violent people, and it certainly discourages the public from using public transit. Now, will waiving a $2 fee change this meaningfully? Hard to day. But it's not helpful to ignore the problem.
    - mixmastamyk 4y ago
      [dead]
  - FormerBandmate 4y ago
    DC has a lot of dangerous homeless lunatics and criminals. Poor and mentally ill are euphemisms that also include many people who don’t fall into those categories
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    You’ve obviously never taken the LA metro episode of the walking dead. And the ignorance shows.
    - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
      1. Of course I'm not going to reference a TV show. They aren't exactly known for realism. I've seen how they think poor people live, after all. 2. One line, a city, or a few riders isn't an issue with busses, be they with or without fares. That's society not taking care of folks. Plus, it would be ridiculous to think that it would be like this everywhere.. because it isn't like this everywhere now.
      - mixmastamyk 4y ago
        If you really want to help folks, get them a home and treatment first. Before inflicting your "utopia" on us transit riders.
        Broken_Hippo 4y ago
        How are they supposed to get to treatment if there isn't a transit system to help them with that? And of course folks should have housing and treatment. The reason we have issues in some areas is because they aren't doing that. It doesn't meant that we shouldn't provide public transport to everyone that wants it, though. It is quite possible to do more than one thing at the same time.
        mixmastamyk 4y ago
        No, some things are prerequisites to others. See project management. They are not going to inpatient treatment and housing voluntarily on the bus. Is the guy screaming obscenities at the air even aware of all his treatment options? They often need to be coerced, so trained individuals need to bring them there humanely. If they are just having bad luck, they will mostly likely need their belongings brought with them. Both these things point to van transportation with trained drivers. Not the city bus. You might spend some time thinking through the problem rather than casting aspersions. But one of those is easier, isn't it?
- dools 4y ago
  If free attracts the "destitute and mentally ill", then probably we should be: 1) Not allowing anyone to be destitute and; 2) Also providing free and comprehensive mental health care
  - Rebelgecko 4y ago
    In my state there are both moral and legal roadblocks preventing that - except in extreme cases you can't force someone into treatment. You can write tickets for people who urinate or smoke on the trains but if someone has no assets there's really no point.
  - supersour 4y ago
    I love this idea in theory, but recognize that you are moving the discussion from providing effective, safe, and equitable transportation towards solving homelessness. Both issues are important, but in the context of this article one must ask, "what is best for the majority of public transit users?". It's certainly possible that a $2 rate improves quality or security meaningful ways. The problem of "sketchy homeless and mentally ill people" is large enough that I personally prefer cycling over public transport when possible.
    - dools 4y ago
      > I love this idea in theory, but recognize that you are moving the discussion from providing effective, safe, and equitable transportation towards solving homelessness. Sure, but if the objection to "public transport should be free" is "then there will be a bunch of scary homeless people there" shouldn't be "let's charge enough so they can't ride the bus" it should be "hey let's fix that too!" We can fix two things. More even!
      - mixmastamyk 4y ago
        You would think, but obviously not happening. This quarter measure (enacted before prerequisites) makes it worse for the working poor. And anyone who is in favor of transit, tourists too, who are important for the economy.
mattalex 4y ago
> If you want to "fund" public transport, you should do it through increased taxation on cars (especially luxury cars) and air travel (in particular private aviation), but ultimately public money doesn't necessarily need to be entirely offset through taxation if it's federally supplied. I don't think public transport should be entirely free just from both an economic but also ecological POV: despite how much more efficient public transport is on a per-user basis, it's still not free (both environmentally and economically). There's a recent report by a large public transportation company in Germany which illustrates some of the problems: During the pandemic Germany introduced the "€9-ticket", a ticket that, as the name suggests, costs only €9 and gave you public transportation for ~3 Months (Let's call that free for the sake of argument). After the end of that program there was a report by (I think) the state Hesse that looked at how public transportation usage and car usage behaved. The result was that there was massively increased public transportation usage, but not a massive reduction in car usage. In effect (and from personal, anecdotal experience) free public transport lead to an increase in "fun drives" (e.g. to vacation destinations), but not a decrease in work related transportation. One of the reasons might be that public transport usage is often fundamentally misunderstood. A significant number of people use a car, not because they want to, but because it is their only option: People living in cities already use public transport, while rural areas (and I count everything with <25k citizens as "rural") often don't have sufficient public transport. You could start expanding public transport in those rural areas to match the one in cities, but that by itself would be an environmental catastrophe: Public transport is good in high density scenarios, where, even in the dead of night, buses or subways are relatively well filled. However, increasing public transport in low density areas will always have "dead times" in which few people transit. The issue is that you still need to send e.g. buses in those low utilization timezones since otherwise people still need a car as they cannot rely on public transport to fulfill their needs. If you want people to be able to rely on getting from A to B without a car, this problem is uncircumventable: You need a high density population that fills your public transport for it to be sensible. For example, despite living in Germany (which overall has good public transportation) I couldn't travel from the close city (~20min drive) home on any weekday past 10:00PM. That is despite the fact I still live in a town of ~20k people. I don't even fault the people that made the decision not to drive busses here: If I drive in that 10:00PM bus, it's consistently half empty (or worse: I've also been in that bus with only 2-3 others, including the driver)! The solution isn't to tax cars to high heavens, as that decreases the likelihood of people moving outside of cities. Too many people inside cities yields its own share of well-known problems, like high rent prices due to high demand for a, by definition, limited amount of space (density = people/area). I think the solution for this is much simpler: Specifically subsidize work related transportation by giving people money proportional to the maximal transportation costs (which usually will be a car). This prevents subsidizing "fun drives", while also encouraging people to use public transport when available. This money can be clawed back from employers, which also encourages them to offer e.g. work-from-home (which from both an environmental and congestion POV trumps even public transport). Since transportation is now well supported via taxes, we can use the saved money to increase public transport where it is logical: people living outside of high density areas _should_ use a car because building a public transport system has too high of an environmental overhead (though stuff like ample parking should exist outside of any high density area to allow for a switch from car->public transport) Stuff like luxury cars or private air travel obviously should also be taxed, but not because it's transportation, but because highly expensive items for the 1% should be taxed in _any_ case (e.g. an idea would be a progressive VAT which is low for cheap items like food, but high for expensive items like private jets).

by dools 4y ago

mixmastamyk 4y ago

Like the car tax idea, but free attracts the destitute and mentally ill. Offer the working poor and looking a transit pass instead.

Broken_Hippo 4y ago
Oh, no, poor people might share the bus with me. Wouldn't want poor or mentally ill folks to do things like get to a doctors appointment, buy food, or visit family if they can't get there invisibly. /s. Now is when I'd like to remind you that you share spaces with mentally ill folks every single day and you don't notice a thing: A lot of destitute folks are disable and being destitute shouldn't mean that you have to have a lonely and hard life. And I'd also like to mention that you can both be destitute and have a job. You can be mentally ill and have a job.
- supersour 4y ago
  I think the parent comment is referring the homeless population which is violent or too public in their drug use/paraphernalia. Pick the right bus line in Vancouver. You will notice mentally ill, violent people, and it certainly discourages the public from using public transit. Now, will waiving a $2 fee change this meaningfully? Hard to day. But it's not helpful to ignore the problem.
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    [dead]
- FormerBandmate 4y ago
  DC has a lot of dangerous homeless lunatics and criminals. Poor and mentally ill are euphemisms that also include many people who don’t fall into those categories
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  You’ve obviously never taken the LA metro episode of the walking dead. And the ignorance shows.
  - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
    1. Of course I'm not going to reference a TV show. They aren't exactly known for realism. I've seen how they think poor people live, after all. 2. One line, a city, or a few riders isn't an issue with busses, be they with or without fares. That's society not taking care of folks. Plus, it would be ridiculous to think that it would be like this everywhere.. because it isn't like this everywhere now.
    - mixmastamyk 4y ago
      If you really want to help folks, get them a home and treatment first. Before inflicting your "utopia" on us transit riders.
      - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
        How are they supposed to get to treatment if there isn't a transit system to help them with that? And of course folks should have housing and treatment. The reason we have issues in some areas is because they aren't doing that. It doesn't meant that we shouldn't provide public transport to everyone that wants it, though. It is quite possible to do more than one thing at the same time.
        mixmastamyk 4y ago
        No, some things are prerequisites to others. See project management. They are not going to inpatient treatment and housing voluntarily on the bus. Is the guy screaming obscenities at the air even aware of all his treatment options? They often need to be coerced, so trained individuals need to bring them there humanely. If they are just having bad luck, they will mostly likely need their belongings brought with them. Both these things point to van transportation with trained drivers. Not the city bus. You might spend some time thinking through the problem rather than casting aspersions. But one of those is easier, isn't it?
dools 4y ago
If free attracts the "destitute and mentally ill", then probably we should be: 1) Not allowing anyone to be destitute and; 2) Also providing free and comprehensive mental health care
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  In my state there are both moral and legal roadblocks preventing that - except in extreme cases you can't force someone into treatment. You can write tickets for people who urinate or smoke on the trains but if someone has no assets there's really no point.
- supersour 4y ago
  I love this idea in theory, but recognize that you are moving the discussion from providing effective, safe, and equitable transportation towards solving homelessness. Both issues are important, but in the context of this article one must ask, "what is best for the majority of public transit users?". It's certainly possible that a $2 rate improves quality or security meaningful ways. The problem of "sketchy homeless and mentally ill people" is large enough that I personally prefer cycling over public transport when possible.
  - dools 4y ago
    > I love this idea in theory, but recognize that you are moving the discussion from providing effective, safe, and equitable transportation towards solving homelessness. Sure, but if the objection to "public transport should be free" is "then there will be a bunch of scary homeless people there" shouldn't be "let's charge enough so they can't ride the bus" it should be "hey let's fix that too!" We can fix two things. More even!
    - mixmastamyk 4y ago
      You would think, but obviously not happening. This quarter measure (enacted before prerequisites) makes it worse for the working poor. And anyone who is in favor of transit, tourists too, who are important for the economy.

mattalex 4y ago

> If you want to "fund" public transport, you should do it through increased taxation on cars (especially luxury cars) and air travel (in particular private aviation), but ultimately public money doesn't necessarily need to be entirely offset through taxation if it's federally supplied. I don't think public transport should be entirely free just from both an economic but also ecological POV: despite how much more efficient public transport is on a per-user basis, it's still not free (both environmentally and economically). There's a recent report by a large public transportation company in Germany which illustrates some of the problems: During the pandemic Germany introduced the "€9-ticket", a ticket that, as the name suggests, costs only €9 and gave you public transportation for ~3 Months (Let's call that free for the sake of argument). After the end of that program there was a report by (I think) the state Hesse that looked at how public transportation usage and car usage behaved. The result was that there was massively increased public transportation usage, but not a massive reduction in car usage. In effect (and from personal, anecdotal experience) free public transport lead to an increase in "fun drives" (e.g. to vacation destinations), but not a decrease in work related transportation. One of the reasons might be that public transport usage is often fundamentally misunderstood. A significant number of people use a car, not because they want to, but because it is their only option: People living in cities already use public transport, while rural areas (and I count everything with <25k citizens as "rural") often don't have sufficient public transport. You could start expanding public transport in those rural areas to match the one in cities, but that by itself would be an environmental catastrophe: Public transport is good in high density scenarios, where, even in the dead of night, buses or subways are relatively well filled. However, increasing public transport in low density areas will always have "dead times" in which few people transit. The issue is that you still need to send e.g. buses in those low utilization timezones since otherwise people still need a car as they cannot rely on public transport to fulfill their needs. If you want people to be able to rely on getting from A to B without a car, this problem is uncircumventable: You need a high density population that fills your public transport for it to be sensible. For example, despite living in Germany (which overall has good public transportation) I couldn't travel from the close city (~20min drive) home on any weekday past 10:00PM. That is despite the fact I still live in a town of ~20k people. I don't even fault the people that made the decision not to drive busses here: If I drive in that 10:00PM bus, it's consistently half empty (or worse: I've also been in that bus with only 2-3 others, including the driver)! The solution isn't to tax cars to high heavens, as that decreases the likelihood of people moving outside of cities. Too many people inside cities yields its own share of well-known problems, like high rent prices due to high demand for a, by definition, limited amount of space (density = people/area). I think the solution for this is much simpler: Specifically subsidize work related transportation by giving people money proportional to the maximal transportation costs (which usually will be a car). This prevents subsidizing "fun drives", while also encouraging people to use public transport when available. This money can be clawed back from employers, which also encourages them to offer e.g. work-from-home (which from both an environmental and congestion POV trumps even public transport). Since transportation is now well supported via taxes, we can use the saved money to increase public transport where it is logical: people living outside of high density areas _should_ use a car because building a public transport system has too high of an environmental overhead (though stuff like ample parking should exist outside of any high density area to allow for a switch from car->public transport) Stuff like luxury cars or private air travel obviously should also be taxed, but not because it's transportation, but because highly expensive items for the 1% should be taxed in _any_ case (e.g. an idea would be a progressive VAT which is low for cheap items like food, but high for expensive items like private jets).