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Iowa City made its buses free. Traffic cleared, and so did the air
https://archive.ph/lEmzI https://archive.ph/lEmzI
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- RicoElectrico 1y agoI am impressed there was no report of conservative backlash.
- 3eb7988a1663 1y agoThat is a particularly fine line to walk for the modern conservative. Government should not be picking winners, except for the very targeted tariffs that just happen to benefit company X or Y.
- blitzar 1y agoGovernment should not be picking winners ... the company with the biggest bribe wins.
- trollbridge 1y agoI would note that based on my experience in Africa, there were a lot of private buses being operated, ridership was high, and the buses were cheap. In America we have very few private intra-city buses, ridership is low, and the buses are very expensive when you consider how much goes to them in the way of subsidies.
- exasperaited 1y agoShouldn't be picking winners -- unless you can bully them for a cut of the business, of course.
- PopePompus 1y agoIowa City is the bluest of Iowa cities. It's a university town.
- jerlam 1y agoThat tracks, it's a situation where most people are going to the same place so public transit has a huge advantage. I am surprised that the bus wasn't already free; in my college town and the one near it (both had their own bus line), fares are free for all undergraduates.
- E39M5S62 1y agoU of I's cambus is free, but it has a limited route in and around the campus. City buses cover a lot more area.
- SoftTalker 1y agoMy experience with bus service in college towns is that the routes between campus and student residential areas get heavy use, while the buses serving the rest of the town drive around nearly empty.
- themafia 1y agoI'm conservative. I think buses should be free. Then they'll actually get used and all the secondary benefits they were supposed to bring will be much more easily realized. You need public transport in major cities. Not everyone can or should drive. You need private transportation almost everywhere. Not everyone should be forced to ride public transport just because it exists. As long as people have an actual choice that's not manipulated in some way then I think the system is fine. It has a public function and it provides immediate and secondary benefits.
- b3ing 1y agoI guess once the car companies find out about this, they’ll start lobbying the local government and put an end to this
- boothby 1y agoThat's how we lost public transit the first time. Here's hoping local government knows their history.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bediger4000 1y agoUnited States vs National City Lines, Inc. 1947. Is it cheaper to lobby or to create an incompetent monopoly to ruin things?
- id00 1y agoIn Brisbane, Australia they run a 6-month trial to make all public transport trips to be 50c (that includes buses, metro, ferries). It was so successful and widely loved that it was a no-brainier for it to be extended indefinitely
- II2II 1y agoThe real benefits come from eliminating fares. While I have never lived in a place with free transit, I have lived in places where it was possible to board trains without passing through fare gates and certain busses through the rear exit. It is amazing how much faster boarding is. They probably face some lost fares, but the benefit of faster travel times outweigh the cost. I also think that those criticizing free fares are disingenuous. None of those cities had problems with (insert stereotypical undesirable group) using public transit. If anything, there were fewer issues because everyone was more inclined to behave since there were more eyes on the trains and busses. EDIT: it's also worth noting that collecting money costs money. That's especially noticeable when upgrading to (or to new) electronic fare systems, but it's also true when using things like tickets and cash. It probably doesn't mean such in the cities I've lived in ($3+ fares), but I'll bet it accounts for a lot more in cities that charge $0.50 or $1 fares.
- wat10000 1y agoIn most systems, fares just about cover the cost of collecting fares. They contribute little if anything to operating expenses. Their effect is to limit usage. That could be desirable, but usually not.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoI've tried to calculate this for the New York City Metro, but they spend about $1 billion per year collecting $5 billion per year, out of a budget of $20 billion per year. Year so they would need to make up about $4 billion per year if they were to eliminate fare collection, or increase the budget by 20%. In my mind it would be a no-brainer for all the benefits you would get from free service, but 20% increase in cost is not an easy sell - especially when a lot of people paying tax on it never go to NYC
- touwer 1y agoParis, Amsterdam, Kopenhagen, Utrecht did it with bikes https://www.ethicalmarkets.com/paris-air-pollution-is-down-50-after-its-radical-bike-friendly-transformation/ https://www.ethicalmarkets.com/paris-air-pollution-is-down-5...
- mlok 1y agoI just love cycling in Paris (apart from winter...) the experience is amazing, and the city is beautiful. It's a joy to experience the city this way. Both bicycles & free transports would be even better !
- Animats 1y agoDo they clear out each bus at some end point of the route, so homeless people can't live on the bus?
- idle_zealot 1y ago[flagged]
- PeterHolzwarth 1y agoDo daily commutes by bus in a major west coast city. You'll quickly find this is no made up problem.
- defrost 1y agoParticular to the US in many ways. Not an issue for cheap / free public transport in many other countries mentioned. Perhaps the manner in which the US deals with the distribution of income and basic human needs could use a few tweaks.
- baggy_trough 1y agoAlternately, the US is simply much more tolerant of dysfunction and antisocial behavior.
- shkkmo 1y agoHomeless already often get access to free or cheap passes, often that allow unlimited rides. Insisting that we charge everyone a bus fare because we think otherwise it might make it eaier to homeless people to use the bus is not only uninformed, but also heartless. If you have problems with homeless people on buses, then figure out why those people aren't in a better shelter and solve that problem.
- PaulHoule 1y agoIt’s not easy to shelter people. In Ithaca we recently built this place https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115398619308992584 https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115398619308992584 which is all low income housing on top of a conference center with maybe 1/4 of the units for people who had been unhoused. I think most of the people there are not criminally minded and keep to themselves but there are a few people there who are starting fires, dealing drugs, and causing damage. (Note a few windows in that image are busted out) Many homeless people have dogs that are important to them and wouldn’t be housed if they couldn’t bring their dogs, but… last year they had an outbreak of parovirus because dogs were having puppies and the puppies weren’t getting shots. A friend of mine got bit by a dog across the street from that place and thought it belonged to someone who lived there. Some of it is people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can be almost impossible to live with if they aren’t getting treatment and I’m worried that deinstitutionalization will have a even more profoundly negative legacy seen 50 years from now than it already does. Not least, a 20 year old today spent many years of their life in a classroom where a ‘special’ kid sucked all the air out of the room and will probably be highly receptive to the notion that if we ‘get rid’ of 5% of people we can live in a utopia. If being in public means being in a space dominated by someone screaming at the demons they hallucinated then people will move to the suburbs instead of the downtown, they will not support public transit, they will order a private taxi for their burrito instead of eating out. They’ll retreat to Facebook.
- wat10000 1y agoWhenever this is discussed where I live, drivers come out of the woodwork to oppose it. And of course they also complain endlessly about traffic. It amuses me to no end.
- djohnston 1y ago[flagged]
- throwaway5465 1y agoPlease stop watching, andd being a pawn of, paid and party propoganda on tiktok et al.
- djohnston 1y agoWatching Iryna Zarutska get stabbed in the neck and a bunch of people do fuck-all to help her wasn't anyone's propaganda. Though it was radicalising.
- throwaway173738 1y agoWe did this in the seventies too. I get that it’s infuriating but I don’t get how the solution is to charge $3.00. I’ve seen guys on street corners get more in one handout. Meanwhile we’re letting one guy ruin it like Bin Laden did air travel.
- djohnston 1y agoIt's all probability distributions. A bus driver will usually stop the bus and refuse to move if someone refuses to pay the fair. People who skip fairs are more likely to commit other crimes. If you put these together, you improve the probability that a subhuman doesn't get to commit acts of violence on public transit.
- naikrovek 1y agos/fair/fare/g;
- undeveloper 1y agoActually, it was, given that many right wingers who benefit from a sense of unease from existing in society boosted the video to make it seem like more than an a random act of crime, done by a schizophrenic man who wasn't treated properly. > [The suspect's] mother told ABC News that [the suspect] was diagnosed with schizophrenia [...] and displayed violent behavior at home. His mother said that she had sought involuntary commitment, but that it was denied. > Elon Musk criticized judges and district attorneys for allowing "criminals to roam free". > U.S. President Donald Trump called the attacker a "madman" and "lunatic", and said that "when you have horrible killings, you have to take horrible actions. And the actions that we take are nothing", before blaming local officials in places like Chicago for failing to stop crime and denounced cashless bail. > On the same day, the White House released a statement criticizing "North Carolina's Democrat politicians, prosecutors, and judges" for "prioritizing woke agendas that fail to protect their citizens". > On September 9, the White House released a video in which Trump said that Zarutska was "slaughtered by a deranged monster". > On September 24, U.S. Vice President JD Vance discussed the killing in a visit to Concord, North Carolina, blaming it on "soft-on-crime policies" and stating he was "open" to deploying the North Carolina National Guard to Charlotte if requested by Governor Stein and Mayor Lyles. > The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary held a field hearing in Charlotte on September 29 on safety in public transit systems and the treatment of repeat offenders. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Iryna_Zarutska#Reactions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Iryna_Zarutska#Reac...
- yegle 1y agoI live in the SF Bay Area. For a family weekend day trip to SF, taking BART costs $50+, and we always elect to just drive. I wonder how much the traffic would improve in/out of SF if BART is cheaper.
- raybb 1y agoIf you have any transfers as part of that to muni or other services you'll be happy to know that they'll be much cheaper/free starting in December. https://clipper2.hikingbytransit.com/ https://clipper2.hikingbytransit.com/
- bombcar 1y agoSo many public transit options just absolutely fall about if you have more than the standard 1.5 kids. It adds up super fast; even “kids ride free with parent” would go a long way.
- ericmay 1y agoPerhaps, but with more transit options that means fewer people on the road which is good for those who have 2+ children to lug around. On a side note we should drop the public bit of this because it implies a bus is “publicly funded” but highways aren’t. Both are subsidized by the taxpayer.
- bombcar 1y agoIt distinguishes it from private transit like Uber and taxis and even shared ride vans.
- eru 1y ago> On a side note we should drop the public bit of this because it implies a bus is “publicly funded” but highways aren’t. Both are subsidized by the taxpayer. Arguably, neither of them should be. Give poor people money, instead of giving free highway access (and bus transit) to rich and poor alike. Rich people don't need our help, and poor people would rather have the money to spend as they wish instead of other people deciding for them what alms they should consume. Individual cars have worse externalities than busses, so that means we should tax them more than busses. Though I suspect once drivers of cars and busses are paying non-subsidised prices for road access and fuel, busses will naturally look better in comparison, no extra tax differential needed.
- matt-p 1y agoAll public transport should be like $1. You need to charge something to keep the crackheads out, but it should not be enough that people think 'oh I better walk/cycle/drive instead to save money'
- jfengel 1y agoOr maybe you could take serious steps for the homeless as well.
- matt-p 1y agoThat would be amazing and is worth serious effort and resources. However I wonder if you could find one country that's managed to do this successfully (eradication not reduction)? It's often not really about housing and healthcare, it's about addiction, mental health, childhood trauma..
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bdangubic 1y agoevery developed country on earth has solved this problem except us addiction, mental health, childhood drama… only in america would that lead to sleeping on the streets
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoSorry from Canada, we haven't solved it either.
- jeffbee 1y ago[flagged]
- ImJamal 1y agoThe UK and France have hundreds of thousands of homeless.
- FloorEgg 1y agoIowa city is a gem of a college town. Beautiful, vibrant and really nice people. Maybe this program wouldn't work everywhere. Makes sense it would work there.
- cheema33 1y agoCorvallis, Oregon is another college town where buses are free within the city and also to some other cities including Eugene and McMinnville.
- geophph 1y agoFares end up being a trade off between service area and ridership. Eliminating fares tends to mean cuts to service for the same budget, so your service area would drop. Alternatively, having fares will allow for some more service, to cover more area but some people might not ride. Becomes dependent then on the goals of the transit system.
- mtoner23 1y agoIowa city doesn't even run buses on the weekends/holidays. I really don't think this should be a model for real urban centers
- righthand 1y agoGood thing there are plenty of other cities with free bus lines and no one saying “no we have to do everything exactly like Iowa City”!
- SapporoChris 1y agohttps://www.icgov.org/government/departments-and-divisions/transportation/transit/bus-schedules https://www.icgov.org/government/departments-and-divisions/t... Most of the routes run Monday thru Saturday. Schedules are something that are easily changed to support demand.
- deadbolt 1y agoSo there is nothing to learn her at all?
- panick21_ 1y agoIf you want to look at successful systems, would you look at Paris, London, Berlin, Tokio, Münich, Zürich .... or Iowa City?
- chrystalkey 1y agoI wouldnt call the Munich one successful as in "nailed it". the shortcomings are many and increasingly visible
- panick21_ 1y agoEverybody loves to complain about their own city, but compare it to US cities and its fine. I just listed a bunch of European cities that I have visited and seemed fine. My point is that if you want to 'learn' there are lots of places that you can take a look at.
- mlmonkey 1y agoSan Francisco's Muni (light rail + bus) system has a budget of about $1.2B and its ticket revenues are about $200M. That means, 5/6th of the budget is subsidized by the taxpayers of SF. There is no reason why Muni can't be free. Surely a city with a budget of $15B can find $200M (about 1.5% of budget) to make up for the shortfall? It would directly help the taxpayers of the City. But obviously nobody wants that (sarcasm)! Example: the City has been trying to get rid of the RVs parked illegally on the streets, dumping their effluents and engine oil all over the City streets. To get these RVs off the streets, the City is spending $36M+ (and counting). So money can be found for the homeless, the RV dwelllers, etc. but not for the city's lawful residents and taxpayers.
- Spooky23 1y agoWithout nominal costs, buses turn into mobile benches for unhoused people and druggies. It’s the same story as what happens with libraries.
- int0x29 1y agoHave you ever ridden Muni? The fares are mostly dodged. This would change next to nothing.
- crazygringo 1y agoThey're already mobile benches for unhoused people and druggies. They just get on anyways already and don't pay the fare. And the driver does nothing because they don't want to get in a fight. (Unless a passenger threatens others, then they get the police involved.) Making the buses free isn't going to produce any more of it.
- zdragnar 1y agoIf the fares aren't enforced, then yes, the buses are free.
- j_w 1y agoYeah comments like the parents are typical from people that don't use public transit. The people who can't/aren't going to pay that some people "don't want" on public transit are always going to not pay and still use it, so why not make it free for everybody? I live in an area that had outdated payment systems on their bus network. They determined that the cost to upgrade the payment systems would be higher than the revenue of fares, so they just made the buses free. Edit: A lot of replies associate fare payment with behaviors (and smell?) of riders. I think that it's important to recognize that ones ability to pay a fare does not inherently indicate that they are "undesirable" in some way. Could their be a correlation? Possibly. But dedicate the policing to things that actually matter - an unruly passenger should get policing efforts, not a non-paying one (or smelly, really? Obviously homeless people can be putrid but seriously people smelling bad is not a crime).
- tylervigen 1y agoThe MVTA in Minnesota operates with 90% subsidies, so only 10% of revenue is from fares. It feels like there could be some societal benefit to similarly reducing the number of busses and just making them free. (Today most busses are only at 10-30% capacity). This seems to support that idea.
- afuchs 1y ago> ... It feels like there could be some societal benefit to similarly reducing the number of busses and just making them free. (Today most busses are only at 10-30% capacity). ... Public transit systems need to consider a lot of trade offs when they plan how to use the resources they have. Optimizing for cost like this can make the busses less practical to use and less attractive to potential riders. If a bus stop is only visited by a bus once an hour, then the average amount of time someone needs to wait for a bus to visit that bus stop is 30 minutes (assuming a uniform distribution for when that person arrives at the bus stop). If the bus stop is visited by a bus every 20 minutes, then that person would only need to wait at that bus stop for an average of 10 minutes. The average time of a trip on this bus will be roughly equal to: the time to walk to the bus stop + the time spent waiting for the bus + the time the bus takes to reach the closest stop to the destination + the time to walk to the destination. From that, reducing the number of busses that visit that bus stop increases the average amount of time for trips which originate from that bus stop. A factor which impacts usage of public transit system is how quickly it can get someone to some arbitrary destination. So, cutting the amount of busses a public transit system runs can reduce costs but also reduces how attractive that public transit system is to potential riders because of the increase in the amount of time an average trip takes. That increases the use of other forms of transportation, assuming that people don't forgo trips entirely (e.g., staying home instead of going to a bar and getting a DUI, or eating at a hotel's restaurant to avoid spending $60-80 on taxis or Uber for a single meal).
- wenc 1y agoThis is one of those NYTimes "solutions journalism" pieces meant to celebrate the program rather than truly analyze it. You can pick free, or scalable, or financially sustainable (and without sustainability, a political shift will kill it), but you cannot have all three at once. The minute you push on one, second-order effects pop up somewhere else. It is a classic wicked problem: solving it literally changes the problem. Big-city transit has an equilibrium point, and it is incredibly stable. Every serious transit city in the world ends up in the same place: charge fares, subsidize low-income riders, and fund the basic system with taxes. That equilibrium is stable for a reason. Every major city that tries free transit at scale will eventually snap back to it, because it is the only configuration that does not implode under feedback loops. It keeps demand reasonable, service reliable, and the politics tolerable.
- eru 1y agoI mostly agree. > You can pick free, or scalable, or financially sustainable (and without sustainability, a political shift will kill it), but you cannot have all three at once. Real polities are of finite size, so you don't need (infinitely) scalable. Here in Singapore we could sustainably afford to make public transport free, if we wanted to. However I agree with you that charging for public transport is the right thing to do. (And to charge users of government provided services in general for everything, and to give poor people money.) If nothing else, you at least want to charge for congestion at peak hours, so that there's always an epsilon of capacity left even at rush hour, so any single person who wants to board the train at prevailing prices can do so.
- fragmede 1y ago> charging for public transport is the right thing to do It's a simple matter of supply and demand so even if the transit system operates on tokens but those tokens are given away for free, my weird brain would still want to the system to exist to track how the system is being used.
- MrJohz 1y agoThere are plenty of different survey techniques that will tell you how different routes are being used. You don't need tickets or tokens for that.
- cyberax 1y agoThe article is dishonest. A better title would be: "Making transit free in Iowa City did not significantly increase the ridership (just 18% over the 2019 level), while imposing more taxes on everyone". They claim to have removed 5200 cars, out of area of 500000 people ("Iowa City-Cedar Rapids statistical region"). The increase is pitiful, from 6.7% of people using transit to 7.2% with the rest being car commutes. Neither has it "cleared the traffic". Iowa City is also a well-run city, with just a 17-minute average commute time, indicating that it has no congestion to speak of.
- estabn 1y agoI agree. You can't compare the transit system of Iowa City (population less than 75,000) to that of New York City (population 8,500,000).
- Marsymars 1y ago"More taxes on everyone" also is dishonest. Every individual is paying more in "taxes", but the net amount of money collected from the population of the city for the cost of providing transit is decreased. (Since the cost of fare collection disappears. Or if the net amount of money doesn't decrease, they're presumably spending what was formerly spent on fare collection on additional service.)
- cyberax 1y agoNo, it's not. Fares are not taxes, so while some people might end up paying less (no fare), the overall amount of tax did go up.
- Marsymars 1y agoI didn't imply that fares are taxes, because I don't feel that it's a relevant point either way, it's just a distraction to the actual matter - the cost of transit to society. Whether the cost is collected in taxes or fares is just an implementation detail.
- honkycat 1y agoMeanwhile PDX is letting homeless people ride certain bus rides for free. It is a fucking nightmare. I'm a liberal guy but the amount of bums make the transit here unusable.
- terminalshort 1y agoThe truth that nobody wants to admit is that if you build a system that anybody can use, nobody will want to use it.
- miki123211 1y agoWhy is public transit so expensive in general? In Europe, if you're a group of 2-5 adults with no discounts, it's often cheaper to take a car than to use the bus / train. That makes no sense.
- mcdonje 1y agoBecause you're paying humans' wages to operate the system, and there isn't a carbon tax.
- sltkr 1y agoExcise taxes on fuel already exceed carbon taxes. At the IMF suggested rate of €65 per tonne of CO2, a liter of fuel that produces 2.3 kg CO2 would cost €0.15 per liter, while European excise taxes on fuel average around €0.55.
- mcdonje 1y agoVery strange comment. You're over-generalizing a comparison of one proposed carbon tax to one excise tax.
- soloridindan 1y agoNot only that, it can be infeasible for a single-passenger as well. There's only the train available here, and I need to be ~400km away every couple months. Most of the time tickets are ~40€, but sometimes they're 200€+ one-way, even if you book weeks in advance. It makes it infeasible to plan anything when prices may fluctuate so wildly. As a comparison, my 2009 diesel gets me there at around 4,7L/100km, but let's round it to 5, at average cost of fuel 1,65€/L that's 33€, for a single passenger, and I can leave whenever I want, have any sort of holdup and just go.
- skylurk 1y ago> if you're a group of 2-5 adults even a taxi or ride share may come out cheaper than public transit too. Part of it is public transit like trains and trams have to maintain their own infrastructure. Not sure about buses, I would guess these are way cheaper to operate. In many parts of the world they are cheap, private and profitable, e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/Detroit/comments/1l5pt2a/detroit_themed_bus_in_kenya/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Detroit/comments/1l5pt2a/detroit_th...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mrosett 1y agoI'm calling BS on this one. The claimed increase in ridership is modest (18%) off a low baseline (0 service on weekends) and occurred over a long time period (pre-pandemic to today.) They also expanded service during that period, which probably fully explains the increase in ridership. Certainly the reduction in fare ($1-->0) is nice for some people, but it's hard to imagine that it is actually decisive for a large portion of trips. The estimates of traffic reduction and CO2 reduction just quote the city's numbers without establishing that "traffic cleared, and so did the air." Key paragraphs: > In 2021, the city starting [sic] running more buses, streamlining routes and seriously considering waiving the $1 fares. In 2023, the City Council voted to pay for a two-year fare-free pilot with Covid-19 relief funds. ... > Ridership eventually grew to 118 percent of prepandemic levels, compared to the average nationally transit ridership-recovery levels of 85 percent.
- yalogin 1y agoIn a country like the US there are many opportunities like this to improve the overall status but other than small hyper local changes nothing will happen at a large scale because the powers be will not let it happen. Problem is politcians and aspiring politicians/media influencers have figured out that the money is not in solving problems but keeping it in the news and agitating people. They will never do anything to solve problems but keep throwing wrenches and never let it be solved. Well, if it’s solved they need to find a new problem, worse still, what if people now expect things to be actually solved!
- hyperman1 1y agoIn my country, the elderly used to ride for free on busses and trams. 15 years ago I was involved in this problem where some decided to get on a bus or tram in the morning, go back and forth all day, bring a lunchbox, and go home just in time for the favorite soap series. They got free heating and some social contact. It turned out, in my region, about 1/3 of public transport capacity was lost on them on peak hours. Also, some decided a specific seat was 'theirs' and started verbally abusing 'seat thiefs', throwing their stuff around, or even hitting them with canes. They also drove everyone bonkers by begging drivers to speed up or change routes so they would be home in time for their favorite soap series. At the time, not much was done about it. The busses and trams forced everyone off at the terminus, made a round, enforced being empty while pausing a bit, and then the elderly were allowed back on, but at least places got shuffled and others got a chance for a seat. There was great gnashing of teeth about this decision. I still feel double about it. It is very sad how this was a great life quality improvement for these people, but public transport is not the right medium for fixing this.
- liampulles 1y agoTANSTAAFL, New York Times
- ZeroGravitas 1y agoI read an old study that claimed driving a mile cost society 20 cents and cycling a mile had 20 cents of societal benefits. I'd imagine public transport is similar so we should move the Overton window towards bus and train tickets entering you into a lottery funded by charging cars for entry to, and for parking in, downtown areas.
- throw0101a 1y ago> I read an old study that claimed driving a mile cost society 20 cents and cycling a mile had 20 cents of societal benefits. "The Social Cost of Automobility, Cycling and Walking in the European Union": * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800918308097?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218... * https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.12.016 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.12.016 * Via: https://medium.com/strava-metro/whats-the-cost-of-choosing-to-drive-a-car-instead-of-riding-a-bike-436ebd0166cd https://medium.com/strava-metro/whats-the-cost-of-choosing-t...
- nielsbot 1y agoI mentioned this video in another comment but I thought it was informative so sharing here: “The truth about Zohran’s free busses” by Breaking Points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P275SobdE-s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P275SobdE-s clickbait headline (of course) but gives a lot of facts about the proposal and talks about other places they’ve tried it.
- freen 1y agoFree public roads and highways? Free public parking? Good, normal, should be encouraged. Add a lane or two to the highway? Always a good idea! (hint: it never is) Free public transit? KILL IT WITH FIRE!!! It will never work (those places it did are aberrations) Go look up: 1. Jevons paradox (induced demand): More road capacity → more traffic. 2. Marchetti’s constant (30-minute city): Average commute time is stable; faster modes → sprawl. 3. Downs–Thomson paradox (transit sets highway speed): Car speeds improve only if transit gets better. 4. Braess’s paradox (network effect): Adding a new road can worsen traffic for everyone.
- coffeecantcode 1y agoMoving from Iowa City to Kansas City I can say that free public transit works quite well. In Iowa City the campus bus system (Cambus) has all of its busses operated by students who go out and get their CDL and get great job experience, on top of it being one of the highest paid campus jobs for students. Kansas City’s street car system is an incredible testament to this as well. It’s clean, safe, and for the most part quite efficient. And with its recent extension down to UMKC’s campus it’s now a viable transportation method for a lot of people in the heart of Kansas City. Keeping it clean and safe after more than doubling the size of its route might be a bigger lift now, but as long as the city sticks with it post-World Cup I see it continuing to grow.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoIMO the key issue to adoption of public transport is not just the cost (which can be subsidized either for everyone or for lower income riders), but the extent of the network and the frequency of buses/trains. Higher density cities with extensive networks have high ridership, cities that are spread out with endless suburbs and who didn't build a good rail network covering the suburbs (looking at you, LA) don't regardless of whether it's free to ride or not.
- ethagknight 1y agoI seriously long for a free transit solution in my city, Memphis. We already pay for 90% of the operating cost anyway via various taxes, and fareboxes frequently cost more than they bring in. If I am a citizen paying property taxes in the city, why charge me $1.75 to hop on a bus? However- it shouldnt be simply "free".. it should be "free with a pass, which is free" and a pass is easy to get, tied to your ID, and easy to revoke. No pass? thats fine, pay the $3 to ride. bus driver yanked your pass because you were peeing on the seat or intimidating other riders? You can ride again, for $3. Concerned about security or privacy? No problem, Pay $3. Before the majority of law abiding citizens and travelers, passes are easy and free to get.
- EtienneDeLyon 1y agoThat's a little racist.
- Currybongos 1y ago[flagged]