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Public transportation should always be free in cities, with car commuters paying the operation costs. Not saying it can be implemented right away, but it should

Public transportation should always be free in cities, with car commuters paying the operation costs. Not saying it can be implemented right away, but it should be a policy goal for cities. You have all the right in the world to prefer driving and chilling on your air conditioning and stereo if you can afford it, but it shouldn't be free if you're occupying the lane space 10 people would occupy in a bus, and making the traffic slower for the bus in doing so.

cyprien_g 1y ago
Completely agree with you. I live in Montpellier, France, and we have had free public transportation for a year and a half, and it's very good. I definitely use my car less and take public transport more often. Everyone, including people without cars, pays for the roads through taxes; it is only fair to do the same for public transport.
- Herring 1y ago
  Society pays for cars in a lot of ways other than just taxes. Roads/highways/parking takes up tons of valuable land (opportunity costs). Cars cause a lot of medical conditions, from respiratory/cardiovascular diseases, to obesity. Cars add to climate change, which causes extreme weather events. Congestion and noise impacts health and the economy, etc. Cities all around the world would be net improved with much fewer cars.
komali2 1y ago
> and making the traffic slower for the bus in doing so. Strong agree except here, busses should have their own lanes at all expense to cars - even if this means entire roads are now no longer available to cars. The private car should be the slowest, least convenient way to get where you're going.
- mvieira38 1y ago
  We have dedicated bus lanes where I live, and they don't really work during heavy rush hour, unfortunately, due to merging and turns. For example, most of the time the bus lane needs to be on the right so it can pick people up, so cars turning right will have to cross the bus lane somewhere. The opposite happens if the bus needs to take a left turn, or if another bus is stopped for maintenance or something and overtaking is necessary. Not to mention a lot of people figure out where the cameras are for the bus lane auto-fines and just dodge them when appropriate, but I guess that's a third world problem.
  - jewayne 1y ago
    Actual Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems are in place all over the world, where there are physical barriers protecting the bus lane, and transit signal priority along the entire route. They work extremely well when they don't rely on motorists being on their best behavior.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    If they don't work where you live, it's because they are poorly designed.
- ferguess_k 1y ago
  Agree with dedicated bus lanes. But your attitude is problematic. You sounds like private cars are your enemies. Private car drivers, in a whole, are also public (just not public services). If you count them as your enemies, they will vote against you. If you have this attitude, please never ever get into a private car. Good luck!
  - komali2 1y ago
    I drive a private motorcycle sometimes. It's not like I don't have empathy. I get it - the allure of the ultimately selfish option that puts your comfort and convenience over everyone else's. In abomination cities like Houston it's not like there's an alternative, and society kowtows to you so much as a driver it's no wonder why every driver parked on a sidewalk is confused as I explain to them why what they're doing is wrong. You can almost see their thoughts writ across their face: "but, there was no parking available, and this was free space. Free space in cities is... For cars..." Never mind they're about to get out of their car and become a pedestrian themselves! Thanks for the warning, but a couple decades of activism has tought me long ago to let go of the idea of winning total support from the most strident opposition. Sometimes people just need to be dragged kicking and screaming into a better world for them and their neighbors. That's ok.
bluGill 1y ago
> Public transportation should always be free in cities, with car commuters paying the operation costs Strongly disagree. There are too many perverse incentives that work against transit. If there are a lot of car commuters (which there will be - plumbers taking their tools to the job for example) they have inventive to pressure politicians to reduce that tax - any voting block will always be more powerful than the distributed masses. Your transit operators need to ensure transit doesn't become too popular: the more people taking transit the less cars there are paying that tax. Besides almost no transit rider is worried about costs. They are all interested instead in better service, so use all the money you can get - including fares - to build better service. This is long term what everyone needs. Yes you do need a program for the poor. However the majority of your people shouldn't be in that program.
- jewayne 1y ago
  I'm going to guess that you're a fellow American. That's our answer to everything - build a ghetto. Why make anything nice for everybody when you can make it suck for 79% of us, Hell on Earth for another 20+%, and nice for the privileged few?
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    Most ghettos aren't built to be ghettos. They were built as nice neighborhoods and have nothing structurally wrong with them, but then had criminals and shitbags wreck the place. Ghettoification can in fact be reversed without any changes to infrastructure by simply having nice people move in who give a shit and make an effort to clean up and maintain their properties. This is derogatorily called "gentrification". Also, your ratios are absurdly out of wack. 79% of the country doesn't live in a ghetto and you don't need to be economically or socially privileged to maintain a nice neighborhood. Most working class neighborhoods are not ghettos, nor even resemble one in the slightest.
    - abeppu 1y ago
      I mean in the US a bunch of them are still the remaining product of redlining policies where racial minorities were allowed to live but banks would not give loans. Housing segregation was planned and enforced. That sounds a lot like intentional creation of a ghetto. And later when cities need to invest in building amenities, or raze neighborhoods to make way for infrastructure, often it's been the minority neighborhoods that are neglected or destroyed respectively. Of _course_ ghettos are the result of planning and intentional policy.
aqme28 1y ago
I don't want to comment on if it should be free or not, but public transit and micromobility should always be cheaper than owning+driving a car. Even with NYC's controversial new congestion pricing, it's still cheaper to drive your family to the city than to take them via train.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  Commuting as one person from Mountain View to SF was cheaper with a car including the total ownership cost of the car, nevermind the reasonable discount for "stuff I wand to do with my car other than commute". And riding caltrain during peak hours for an hour twice a day would violate the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.
  - bkettle 1y ago
    Riding Caltrain during peak hours is totally fine and not unpleasant at all, particularly with the new trains (I do it most days and am writing this comment while doing so)
    - colechristensen 1y ago
      I left California before the new trains were a thing, but peak hours going north starting in Mountain View meant standing room only tightly packed on the world's more unstable train cars.
      - kccqzy 1y ago
        I took Caltrain regularly pre-pandemic when I had a job in Palo Alto and going to SF. It was not bad at all. Other cities like NYC had way more packed trains.
- kccqzy 1y ago
  No it's absolutely not cheaper to drive your family into the city. You said owning+driving a car; did you really take into account ownership costs (maintenance, insurance etc) and driving costs (tolls, parking)? Just the cost of parking alone dwarfs the cost of the train.
ferguess_k 1y ago
I think the biggest issue is cost. Also this is completely out of sense if the city doesn't have enough public transit. It's going to be outrageous in my city at least, and it already has a reasonably well public transit in NA.
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
I used public transportation less when it was free here in Seattle because it felt less safe. The buses have improved a lot since Seattle started enforcing fare collection again, and a few dollars isn’t much compared to not getting stabbed by some drug addict having a fent crisis. Switzerland is different though: you know the police aren’t going to put up with crap at all (and they will arrive fairly quickly if there is an incident), so free could really work. Although I was never tempted to drive while living in Switzerland (in the next city over from Geneva). I don’t think free works in the USA however.

cyprien_g 1y ago

Completely agree with you. I live in Montpellier, France, and we have had free public transportation for a year and a half, and it's very good. I definitely use my car less and take public transport more often. Everyone, including people without cars, pays for the roads through taxes; it is only fair to do the same for public transport.

Herring 1y ago
Society pays for cars in a lot of ways other than just taxes. Roads/highways/parking takes up tons of valuable land (opportunity costs). Cars cause a lot of medical conditions, from respiratory/cardiovascular diseases, to obesity. Cars add to climate change, which causes extreme weather events. Congestion and noise impacts health and the economy, etc. Cities all around the world would be net improved with much fewer cars.

komali2 1y ago

> and making the traffic slower for the bus in doing so. Strong agree except here, busses should have their own lanes at all expense to cars - even if this means entire roads are now no longer available to cars. The private car should be the slowest, least convenient way to get where you're going.

mvieira38 1y ago
We have dedicated bus lanes where I live, and they don't really work during heavy rush hour, unfortunately, due to merging and turns. For example, most of the time the bus lane needs to be on the right so it can pick people up, so cars turning right will have to cross the bus lane somewhere. The opposite happens if the bus needs to take a left turn, or if another bus is stopped for maintenance or something and overtaking is necessary. Not to mention a lot of people figure out where the cameras are for the bus lane auto-fines and just dodge them when appropriate, but I guess that's a third world problem.
- jewayne 1y ago
  Actual Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems are in place all over the world, where there are physical barriers protecting the bus lane, and transit signal priority along the entire route. They work extremely well when they don't rely on motorists being on their best behavior.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  If they don't work where you live, it's because they are poorly designed.
ferguess_k 1y ago
Agree with dedicated bus lanes. But your attitude is problematic. You sounds like private cars are your enemies. Private car drivers, in a whole, are also public (just not public services). If you count them as your enemies, they will vote against you. If you have this attitude, please never ever get into a private car. Good luck!
- komali2 1y ago
  I drive a private motorcycle sometimes. It's not like I don't have empathy. I get it - the allure of the ultimately selfish option that puts your comfort and convenience over everyone else's. In abomination cities like Houston it's not like there's an alternative, and society kowtows to you so much as a driver it's no wonder why every driver parked on a sidewalk is confused as I explain to them why what they're doing is wrong. You can almost see their thoughts writ across their face: "but, there was no parking available, and this was free space. Free space in cities is... For cars..." Never mind they're about to get out of their car and become a pedestrian themselves! Thanks for the warning, but a couple decades of activism has tought me long ago to let go of the idea of winning total support from the most strident opposition. Sometimes people just need to be dragged kicking and screaming into a better world for them and their neighbors. That's ok.

bluGill 1y ago

> Public transportation should always be free in cities, with car commuters paying the operation costs Strongly disagree. There are too many perverse incentives that work against transit. If there are a lot of car commuters (which there will be - plumbers taking their tools to the job for example) they have inventive to pressure politicians to reduce that tax - any voting block will always be more powerful than the distributed masses. Your transit operators need to ensure transit doesn't become too popular: the more people taking transit the less cars there are paying that tax. Besides almost no transit rider is worried about costs. They are all interested instead in better service, so use all the money you can get - including fares - to build better service. This is long term what everyone needs. Yes you do need a program for the poor. However the majority of your people shouldn't be in that program.

jewayne 1y ago
I'm going to guess that you're a fellow American. That's our answer to everything - build a ghetto. Why make anything nice for everybody when you can make it suck for 79% of us, Hell on Earth for another 20+%, and nice for the privileged few?
- lupusreal 1y ago
  Most ghettos aren't built to be ghettos. They were built as nice neighborhoods and have nothing structurally wrong with them, but then had criminals and shitbags wreck the place. Ghettoification can in fact be reversed without any changes to infrastructure by simply having nice people move in who give a shit and make an effort to clean up and maintain their properties. This is derogatorily called "gentrification". Also, your ratios are absurdly out of wack. 79% of the country doesn't live in a ghetto and you don't need to be economically or socially privileged to maintain a nice neighborhood. Most working class neighborhoods are not ghettos, nor even resemble one in the slightest.
  - abeppu 1y ago
    I mean in the US a bunch of them are still the remaining product of redlining policies where racial minorities were allowed to live but banks would not give loans. Housing segregation was planned and enforced. That sounds a lot like intentional creation of a ghetto. And later when cities need to invest in building amenities, or raze neighborhoods to make way for infrastructure, often it's been the minority neighborhoods that are neglected or destroyed respectively. Of _course_ ghettos are the result of planning and intentional policy.

aqme28 1y ago

I don't want to comment on if it should be free or not, but public transit and micromobility should always be cheaper than owning+driving a car. Even with NYC's controversial new congestion pricing, it's still cheaper to drive your family to the city than to take them via train.

colechristensen 1y ago
Commuting as one person from Mountain View to SF was cheaper with a car including the total ownership cost of the car, nevermind the reasonable discount for "stuff I wand to do with my car other than commute". And riding caltrain during peak hours for an hour twice a day would violate the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.
- bkettle 1y ago
  Riding Caltrain during peak hours is totally fine and not unpleasant at all, particularly with the new trains (I do it most days and am writing this comment while doing so)
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    I left California before the new trains were a thing, but peak hours going north starting in Mountain View meant standing room only tightly packed on the world's more unstable train cars.
    - kccqzy 1y ago
      I took Caltrain regularly pre-pandemic when I had a job in Palo Alto and going to SF. It was not bad at all. Other cities like NYC had way more packed trains.
kccqzy 1y ago
No it's absolutely not cheaper to drive your family into the city. You said owning+driving a car; did you really take into account ownership costs (maintenance, insurance etc) and driving costs (tolls, parking)? Just the cost of parking alone dwarfs the cost of the train.

ferguess_k 1y ago

I think the biggest issue is cost. Also this is completely out of sense if the city doesn't have enough public transit. It's going to be outrageous in my city at least, and it already has a reasonably well public transit in NA.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

I used public transportation less when it was free here in Seattle because it felt less safe. The buses have improved a lot since Seattle started enforcing fare collection again, and a few dollars isn’t much compared to not getting stabbed by some drug addict having a fent crisis. Switzerland is different though: you know the police aren’t going to put up with crap at all (and they will arrive fairly quickly if there is an incident), so free could really work. Although I was never tempted to drive while living in Switzerland (in the next city over from Geneva). I don’t think free works in the USA however.