7 ms·
Without nominal costs, buses turn into mobile benches for unhoused people and druggies. It’s the same story as what happens with libraries.
by Spooky23 11mo ago
Without nominal costs, buses turn into mobile benches for unhoused people and druggies. It’s the same story as what happens with libraries.
- int0x29 11mo agoHave you ever ridden Muni? The fares are mostly dodged. This would change next to nothing.
- crazygringo 11mo 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 11mo agoIf the fares aren't enforced, then yes, the buses are free.
- j_w 11mo 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 I live in an area that had outdated payment systems on their bus network.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).
- eru 11mo ago> Yeah 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? Huh? I never owned a car and taken public transport all my live, and it's never been much of a problem kicking non-paying people off. What kind of lawless hellholes are you guys living in? (I lived in Germany, Turkey, Britain, Singapore and Australia.)
- wetpaws 11mo ago[dead]
- BoorishBears 11mo agoI can't tell if you're feigning not realizing the thread about San Francisco under a post referencing "Iowa City" is probably referring to the US. Feels like a coy way of getting to say something as inflammatory as "the US a lawless hellhole" on HN: which is fine enough... but there's also a reason YC isn't a Singaporean or Turkish or British or German institution.
- gonzobonzo 11mo agoIt very well might be genuine surprise. Most people from other countries have an extremely hard time understanding why most U.S. cities allow people to openly break the law in front of authorities with zero consequences. The U.S. is a pretty far outlier in this regard. It's strange how many people in the U.S. don't realize this at all, and become appalled at when foreigners are shocked by the way things are done in U.S. cities.
- wat10000 11mo agoShit HN says.... American exceptionalism is just as silly when it’s “America bad.”
- crazygringo 11mo ago
- Qwertious 11mo ago>And the driver does nothing because they don't want to get in a fight. Historically, it wasn't even the driver's job - the bus would have 2 employees: the driver and the conductor. The driver would drive, and the conductor would go around collecting fares after everyone gets on the bus. The conductor could have the angry discussion with the fare-evader without interrupting the driver, and if need be, the driver and conductor could 2v1 the fare-evader. At some point, before computers were on buses, they got rid of conductors. For "efficiency".
- mlmonkey 11mo agoYou think it's presence of a fare that prevents homeless people from getting on a bus?? Even the light rail has ways to get on without paying, and the homeless know them.
- eru 11mo agoYou can have enforcers kicking people out?
- teaearlgraycold 11mo agoI’ve only seen them do this once in my 18 months living in the city.
- 6510 11mo agoSome countries have cameras on public transport with security people watching the footage live. If someone misbehaves ever so slightly (like drinking alcohol) the doors wont open until enforcers arrive. With modern AI you can have one person monitor countless cameras. They could even retract before the doors open so that you cant smash or spray them and run away.
- trial3 11mo agothis… can’t be a serious suggestion, can it? have you ever had to rely on public transit in a major city?
- fragmede 11mo agoOh which continent? Is it possible that what you assume it's normal and default is colored by your personal experience and not representative of the world at large?
- trial3 11mo ago> Oh which continent? what answer could i possibly give to you that would change your response? antarctica? > Is it possible that what you assume it's normal and default is colored by your personal experience and not representative of the world at large? of course this is true. what are you going for here. my objection is to standing up a Train Security Panopticon with "modern AI" and locking commuters (in north america) on a train (in north america) who might depend on a schedule (using a north american time zone) stuck at a station until the (north american) cops can come and pull someone (who statistically, but not for sure, would be north american) off of the car for being drunk (off of beer i've had in my personal experience, coloring this example, which may not be the beer that is representative of the world at large) and napping on the seats
- darth_avocado 11mo agoYou clearly haven’t used MUNI. Homeless are already riding the buses without paying, and I’ve rarely seen them camp in them. Most bus drivers know these people on a first name basis and very few of them are actually do anything beyond going from place to place. And if you’re from San Francisco and use MUNI, you’ll also know that half the people don’t pay anyway. There’s no reason to make people pay.
- teaearlgraycold 11mo agoI see a lot of homeless people on the 14 and they’re just chilling going from place to place. 38 however can have some very mentally ill people on it. My friend saw this guy on the 38 who was yelling about how much he hates the Japanese. Funny enough that guy got off at Japantown. Rambling aside, I think it’s unfair to give people shit because they’re homeless. The real issue is we don’t commit people to psychiatric care when they’re clearly a problem in our society.
- ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago> The real issue is we don’t commit people to psychiatric care when they’re clearly a problem in our society. I’m old enough to remember when we did that. The homeless population absolutely skyrocketed, after all the mental institutions were closed in the 1980s and 1990s. That said, many of them were hellholes. It’s sort of arguable as to whether the patients were worse off, but one thing’s for sure; the majority of city-dwellers (the ones with homes) are not better off, now. I’m really not sure who benefited from this. Here, on Long Island (NY), we have some of the largest psychiatric centers in the world; almost all completely shut down, and decomposing. The campuses are gorgeous, but can’t be developed, because they would require hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup.
- teaearlgraycold 11mo agoIf we want to reopen them we owe it to the patients to make them a nice place to be.
- 11mo ago
- Hnrobert42 11mo agoI take the bus a lot in DC. People get on without paying all the time. If someone just wants to sit on the bus, the fee is not what's stopping them.
- anon291 11mo agoThe fee gives a reason to kick them off. Portland's trimet recently made it a policy to not allow sleeping which means the transit police can now intervene when the opioid addict does his dose on the train. Meanwhile the tired professionals are left alone. As it should be
- idiotsecant 11mo agoIt seems like the more straight forward version of that policy is 'no drugs on the train'. Allowing selective enforcement is a sure path to unintended consequences.
- anon291 11mo agoNah the consequences are more riders. That's a great consequence. > no drugs on the train Nonsense. I'd rather have people carry their illegal drugs on the train and take them at home. The issue is people experiencing the effects of the drug on the train and often times making it unsafe for women, children, and men too (it doesn't really matter what your sex is when the drugged out man vomits on you). I honestly don't care if you carry your illegal drugs everywhere, as long as you make sure the effects of said drugs are dealt with privately. I have major issues with people making the consequences of their drug use other people's problem
- squigz 11mo agoPretty sure GP meant "no doing drugs on the train" not "no possessing drugs on the train"
- sudosysgen 11mo agoThey will just get on another bus. Meanwhile the entire bus will be slowed down by the inspectors asking everyone to leave the bus so they can check for payment or by holding up passengers exiting at connection stations.
- m463 11mo agoWhat if busses are a solution for the carless people. (un-carred?)
- mmooss 11mo agoMore fear mongering about the 'other'. Not immigrants or religous groups or racial groups this time, but unhoused and addicted people. The dangerous people are the ones spreading fear - that leads to horrible things. I've had no problem with unhoused people who I am around almost every day. Why would I? All the fear mongering is wrong. You have nothing to fear but fear itself.
- cindyllm 11mo ago[dead]
- rahimnathwani 11mo agoSadly, there's very little enforcement of fares on SF buses.
- cycomanic 11mo agoHere is an idea: Fix your homelessness problem and don't let other policies be guided by the best way to keep homeless people out of sight.
- dyauspitr 11mo agoYou can’t unless were willing to forcibly put these people in shelters. Many of the persistent ones are hardcore drug users waiting to die, they don’t give a damn about being rehabilitated.
- Qwertious 11mo agoThe number of people who can afford a home is very strongly correlated with how affordable homes are. I therefore propose that if we can make homes more affordable, homelessness will decrease.
- Der_Einzige 11mo agoMost people here don’t realize how much the homeless are hated and how willing trump voting Americans are to literally let them die on the streets or worse. Schadenfreude is the dominant feeling of the times, and many if not most Americans would basically celebrate a “purge” of the homeless.
- array_key_first 11mo agoThis is just not true generally. It might seem stupid or incredibly obvious, but homelessness is mostly caused by housing prices. In places with less affordable housing, there is more homeless people. The solution to homelessness is to build more housing. That's the solution a 5 year old would come up with, too, but it's correct.
- pkulak 11mo agoThe problem is that the transit agency doesn't have a lot of agency over its city's homeless population.
- bmicraft 11mo ago
- sudosysgen 11mo agoThis is completely false - a drug addict will simply get on the bus without paying. The fine for fare evasion won't even change the calculus one iota.