4 ms·

They'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 th

They'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 ago
If the fares aren't enforced, then yes, the buses are free.
j_w 1y 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? I live in an area that had outdated payment systems on their bus network.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 1y 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 1y ago
    [dead]
  - BoorishBears 1y ago
    I 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 1y ago
      It 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 1y ago
        Shit HN says.... American exceptionalism is just as silly when it’s “America bad.”
      - crazygringo 1y ago
        The US is pretty average I'd say, not an outlier at all. It's obvious nowhere near e.g. Switzerland or Singapore, for example. But then on the other hand, people obey the rules a ton more than in places like Brazil or India. Just as many foreigners are shocked at how polite and orderly Americans are, compared to back home. The world is a vast and diverse place.
        eru 11mo ago
        I suspect the US is an outlier amongst rich countries. Especially amongst the richest countries (as measured by GDP per capita).
- hodgesrm 1y ago
  I use public transit (mostly SF BART) on a regular basis. It's not a matter of "don't want," it's a matter of public safety. People won't use public transit if they have to deal with mentally ill people or hucksters. This is very basic economics of public transit. I completely agree with the comment about having a minimum payment and enforcement.
  - viraptor 1y ago
    > People won't use public transit if they have to deal with mentally ill people or hucksters. Do they also not use the streets in that case? There's nothing preventing "mentally ill people or hucksters" from being there.
    - hodgesrm 1y ago
      Yes, they avoid streets too. That's one of the reasons that San Francisco shopping around Union Square has collapsed. [0] There were other reasons like COVID as well. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/san-franciscos-union-square-store-closures-since-2020-2023-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/san-franciscos-union-square-...
- dfadsadsf 1y ago
  Main reason normal people do not use public transport is this attitude and police giving up on enforcing basic public order on transport. Personally I am voting against any public transport funding until all homeless/druggies are kicked off public transport (even if they are willing to pay). You have to pass certain very low behavior bar to use public transport (no intoxication, no aggression to other passengers, no smell, no shouting random things). It's not rocket science and other countries figured out how to do it.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    It's not a policing problem, it's a homelessness and mental health problem. You'll never have enough police for regular enforcement on buses. The numbers don't add up, not even remotely. Other countries do a better job when they're able to keep people off the streets in the first place. Which then becomes a much more complicated question about social spending and the civil liberties of mentally ill people who don't want to be institutionalized.
  - sagarm 1y ago
    Same here -- except for roads. I'm opposed to all road funding until all drivers follow the letter of the law.
    - subroutine 1y ago
      Car-related taxes (vehicle sales, gas tax, yearly registration fees, in some cases tolls) have historically covered the majority of roadway infrastructure costs. I don't think free buses are going to be able to maintain the roadways.
      - sagarm 1y ago
        A common misconception; usage fees only covered about 50% of highway-related expenses a few years ago. Feel free to find the latest numbers. This is less than the fare box recovery ratio of many transit systems, though not all. And that, of course, does not include all the unpriced externalities of roads. For example, if you value a life at $1M, then the 40,000 people killed by drivers each year cost us collectively another $40B.
- Spooky23 1y ago
  Nah, I’ve rode a bus to work most days forever. It’s my calm place when I go home. Tragedy of the commons is real, even a nominal stake in a service, thing or place impacts behavior. If you’ve ever shopped at Aldi, they make you put a quarter in each shopping cart. Most people wouldn’t pick a quarter up from the ground, but they almost always put their carts back at Aldi. Personally, I could care less if a dude smells or is poor. We’re all the same. But I have tolerance for boorish behavior that scares people who are trying to go about their business.
- Marsymars 1y ago
  > 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. I'm strongly in favour of free transit, but this boggles my mind. If your payment system is just a box where people drop in tickets/change, it's pretty low cost, never gets outdated, and pretty high compliance.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    Selling tickets and collecting change from thousands of boxes is actually quite expensive in terms of manual labor and machines. The boxes themselves are expensive, as they have to be able to sort and count coins. And then the vending machines for the tickets. And it doesn't raise compliance at all. Why would it?
    - Marsymars 1y ago
      > The boxes themselves are expensive, as they have to be able to sort and count coins. The boxes in my city of ~1.7 million don't do this. They're just boxes. Presumably they have some big box at the bus HQ they dump them in to sort the change. > And it doesn't raise compliance at all. Why would it? I'm not saying they raise compliance over other systems, I'm saying that observationally, compliance is pretty good. When I take the bus, I see basically everyone either put something that looks like a fare/ticket in the box or show a transit pass to the driver.
      - crazygringo 1y ago
        Who counts that the coins all add up to the fare then? Do you have to show the coins to the driver that they add up to the fare, before putting them in the box? I've only ever seen systems that count and display the amount of coins dropped in, until it adds up to a fare, and then there's an indication that it's sufficient and it beeps and then resets for the next person.
        Marsymars 1y ago
- eru 1y ago
  > 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? Why? We are excluding non-paying passengers from planes just fine. Why not busses and trains? And over in many other parts of the world, they also manage this just fine, too. It's not exactly rocket science.
  - sudosysgen 1y ago
    It's because the fare and boarding latency on planes is much higher, which funds the cost of having security guards around and amortizes the check-in time penalty.
    - eru 1y ago
      Maybe. But in any case, you don't need to re-invent the wheel to check that passengers on busses and trains pay their fare. Just learn from any of the countless successful systems around the world today, or in the US's own past: streetcars used to be widely profitable, and that only worked because they actually managed to collect fares. (Careful: I'm not suggesting that collecting fares would make streetcars widely profitable again. I am merely suggesting that whatever mechanisms they used to enforce fares can be learned from.) See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
      - sudosysgen 11mo ago
        It's a tradeoff you can make. The US is far from the only country in the world where fare evasion is a problem. I've lived in countries with similarly high inequality and homelessness where fare evasion was such a problem despite enforcement that the bus drivers would simply refuse to pick up certain passengers, and conversely people would then hitch a hike on roller skates behind the bus.
        eru 11mo ago
        I don't doubt that there are countries worse than the US (in this regard). But that doesn't mean you can't learn from the success stories. Especially since they are really common in a variety of places that don't have much in common otherwise, so it can't be too hard to clamp down on most fare evasion. > [...] and conversely people would then hitch a hike on roller skates behind the bus. I assume there's not much overlap between the really problematic passengers (often loud, drunk, aggressive and/or mentally ill) and the skaters? Mostly just because you need a minimum level of physical fitness to pull this feat off, and you need to be organised enough to both have skates and have them at the ready? In most places I lived in, the traffic police (if nothing else) would nab you for trying to pull this stunt.
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".

zdragnar 1y ago

If the fares aren't enforced, then yes, the buses are free.

j_w 1y 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? 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 1y 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 1y ago
  [dead]
- BoorishBears 1y ago
  I 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 1y ago
    It 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 1y ago
      Shit HN says.... American exceptionalism is just as silly when it’s “America bad.”
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      The US is pretty average I'd say, not an outlier at all. It's obvious nowhere near e.g. Switzerland or Singapore, for example. But then on the other hand, people obey the rules a ton more than in places like Brazil or India. Just as many foreigners are shocked at how polite and orderly Americans are, compared to back home. The world is a vast and diverse place.
      - eru 11mo ago
        I suspect the US is an outlier amongst rich countries. Especially amongst the richest countries (as measured by GDP per capita).
hodgesrm 1y ago
I use public transit (mostly SF BART) on a regular basis. It's not a matter of "don't want," it's a matter of public safety. People won't use public transit if they have to deal with mentally ill people or hucksters. This is very basic economics of public transit. I completely agree with the comment about having a minimum payment and enforcement.
- viraptor 1y ago
  > People won't use public transit if they have to deal with mentally ill people or hucksters. Do they also not use the streets in that case? There's nothing preventing "mentally ill people or hucksters" from being there.
  - hodgesrm 1y ago
    Yes, they avoid streets too. That's one of the reasons that San Francisco shopping around Union Square has collapsed. [0] There were other reasons like COVID as well. [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/san-franciscos-union-square-store-closures-since-2020-2023-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/san-franciscos-union-square-...
dfadsadsf 1y ago
Main reason normal people do not use public transport is this attitude and police giving up on enforcing basic public order on transport. Personally I am voting against any public transport funding until all homeless/druggies are kicked off public transport (even if they are willing to pay). You have to pass certain very low behavior bar to use public transport (no intoxication, no aggression to other passengers, no smell, no shouting random things). It's not rocket science and other countries figured out how to do it.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  It's not a policing problem, it's a homelessness and mental health problem. You'll never have enough police for regular enforcement on buses. The numbers don't add up, not even remotely. Other countries do a better job when they're able to keep people off the streets in the first place. Which then becomes a much more complicated question about social spending and the civil liberties of mentally ill people who don't want to be institutionalized.
- sagarm 1y ago
  Same here -- except for roads. I'm opposed to all road funding until all drivers follow the letter of the law.
  - subroutine 1y ago
    Car-related taxes (vehicle sales, gas tax, yearly registration fees, in some cases tolls) have historically covered the majority of roadway infrastructure costs. I don't think free buses are going to be able to maintain the roadways.
    - sagarm 1y ago
      A common misconception; usage fees only covered about 50% of highway-related expenses a few years ago. Feel free to find the latest numbers. This is less than the fare box recovery ratio of many transit systems, though not all. And that, of course, does not include all the unpriced externalities of roads. For example, if you value a life at $1M, then the 40,000 people killed by drivers each year cost us collectively another $40B.
Spooky23 1y ago
Nah, I’ve rode a bus to work most days forever. It’s my calm place when I go home. Tragedy of the commons is real, even a nominal stake in a service, thing or place impacts behavior. If you’ve ever shopped at Aldi, they make you put a quarter in each shopping cart. Most people wouldn’t pick a quarter up from the ground, but they almost always put their carts back at Aldi. Personally, I could care less if a dude smells or is poor. We’re all the same. But I have tolerance for boorish behavior that scares people who are trying to go about their business.
Marsymars 1y ago
> 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. I'm strongly in favour of free transit, but this boggles my mind. If your payment system is just a box where people drop in tickets/change, it's pretty low cost, never gets outdated, and pretty high compliance.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  Selling tickets and collecting change from thousands of boxes is actually quite expensive in terms of manual labor and machines. The boxes themselves are expensive, as they have to be able to sort and count coins. And then the vending machines for the tickets. And it doesn't raise compliance at all. Why would it?
  - Marsymars 1y ago
    > The boxes themselves are expensive, as they have to be able to sort and count coins. The boxes in my city of ~1.7 million don't do this. They're just boxes. Presumably they have some big box at the bus HQ they dump them in to sort the change. > And it doesn't raise compliance at all. Why would it? I'm not saying they raise compliance over other systems, I'm saying that observationally, compliance is pretty good. When I take the bus, I see basically everyone either put something that looks like a fare/ticket in the box or show a transit pass to the driver.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      Who counts that the coins all add up to the fare then? Do you have to show the coins to the driver that they add up to the fare, before putting them in the box? I've only ever seen systems that count and display the amount of coins dropped in, until it adds up to a fare, and then there's an indication that it's sufficient and it beeps and then resets for the next person.
      - Marsymars 1y ago
eru 1y ago
> 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? Why? We are excluding non-paying passengers from planes just fine. Why not busses and trains? And over in many other parts of the world, they also manage this just fine, too. It's not exactly rocket science.
- sudosysgen 1y ago
  It's because the fare and boarding latency on planes is much higher, which funds the cost of having security guards around and amortizes the check-in time penalty.
  - eru 1y ago
    Maybe. But in any case, you don't need to re-invent the wheel to check that passengers on busses and trains pay their fare. Just learn from any of the countless successful systems around the world today, or in the US's own past: streetcars used to be widely profitable, and that only worked because they actually managed to collect fares. (Careful: I'm not suggesting that collecting fares would make streetcars widely profitable again. I am merely suggesting that whatever mechanisms they used to enforce fares can be learned from.) See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
    - sudosysgen 11mo ago
      It's a tradeoff you can make. The US is far from the only country in the world where fare evasion is a problem. I've lived in countries with similarly high inequality and homelessness where fare evasion was such a problem despite enforcement that the bus drivers would simply refuse to pick up certain passengers, and conversely people would then hitch a hike on roller skates behind the bus.
      - eru 11mo ago
        I don't doubt that there are countries worse than the US (in this regard). But that doesn't mean you can't learn from the success stories. Especially since they are really common in a variety of places that don't have much in common otherwise, so it can't be too hard to clamp down on most fare evasion. > [...] and conversely people would then hitch a hike on roller skates behind the bus. I assume there's not much overlap between the really problematic passengers (often loud, drunk, aggressive and/or mentally ill) and the skaters? Mostly just because you need a minimum level of physical fitness to pull this feat off, and you need to be organised enough to both have skates and have them at the ready? In most places I lived in, the traffic police (if nothing else) would nab you for trying to pull this stunt.

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".