24 ms·

Maybe buses should be free

• roin 13y ago
  The key point that is likely tip the scale in one direction or another is the positive externalities of converting a driver to a rider. This externality will differ by city, line, time of day, etc, and it would include external costs of traffic, parking, car accidents, among others. Economists can approximate this sort of thing. We are often really bad at accounting for externalities because they aren't immediate dollars in or out of our pockets and lack certainty (pollution controls, infrastructure improvements, etc), but this case may be a bit more straight forward.
• rb2k_ 13y ago
  As somebody from Germany, it's slightly entertaining to see that most comments in this thread have something to do with homeless people seeking shelter on public transport. I can see how this would be an implementational detail, but I don't think that should be the primary argument.
  • GauntletWizard 13y ago
    As someone from the USA, you clearly haven't encountered America's homelessness culture. I'd call it a problem, but that would imply that there's a solution - What we actually have is a large population that chooses to be homeless, actively avoiding the social programs that exist. Homelessness isn't an affliction, it is a way of life for them.
    • Svip 13y ago
      In their defence, a lot of the social programmes in the USA are rather demeaning. Food stamps comes to mind. But that being said; even in a country like mine, where there is larger 'social security net' (as I hear Americans term it) for homeless people, there are still those who choose to be homeless. But they are few and far in between, that I would not consider them a problem here (for public transportation, that is).
      • dragonwriter 13y ago
        Perhaps more relevantly, many of the programs related to homelessness (e.g., shelters) are both of inadequate availability and hazardous; homeless shelters are often, from reports I've seen, a trade-off where you get better protection from the elements in exchange for a higher rate of criminal victimization, compared to being on the streets.
        • frozenport 13y ago
          In highschool I volunteered at a homeless shelter. Homeless shelters often had rules about drugs and drinking that people couldn't deal with. The real problem is substance abuse levels that are significantly above the EU.
      • drstewart 13y ago
        I don't see how food stamps are in any way demeaning, compared to, say, visiting an NHS hospital or living in council housing or any other social program?
        • steveplace 13y ago
          I believe that parent assumes that food stamps are physical stamps instead of EBT cards.
        • laurencerowe 13y ago
          Visiting an NHS hospital is no different than sending your kids to a public (state) school - the NHS is used by almost everyone, it's not Medicaid. Food stamps are demeaning because they send the message that those receiving them cannot be trusted to choose how to spend that money wisely. They deny any flexibility to recipients, what if you need to buy new shoes for your kid one week?
          • jpadkins 13y ago
            can't give cash because of drugs. Addicts will spend money on meth instead of their kids shoes. If you have a better solution, fire away.
    • r00fus 13y ago
      Your comment, to me, is more of a telling condition of the state of social programs in the US. When you have a major national party that believes that social programs are evil, it's clear that it's not an economic, but a political issue.
    • rb2k_ 13y ago
      I have lived in Boston for a 7-8 months and I did notice quite a few homeless people. I always assumed that the american social system is just a bit too demeaning for people to actually use it. (e.g. having to present food stamps and thus showing everyone that you're poor). Then again, I don't know very much about the details besides occasional NPR content. I just think it would be a shame if you can't solve problem a because of problem b :)
  • TillE 13y ago
    It's actually like a parody of privileged, selfish middle-class opinions about the poor. Sad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x10QK0ND6A http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x10QK0ND6A
    • fatjokes 13y ago
      That's a lot of condescension in one sentence. Do you live in an American city with a large homeless population and can argue otherwise? I live in NYC and while I care about the problems of "the poor", I assure you the worries a lot of people on this board raise are legitimate. Even with the fares, the subway cars are often crawling with mariachi bands, hip-hop dance crews and good-ol' fashioned panhandlers pushing their way through crowds. I would love a free public transport system---but it'd be rather pointless if I can't get into a crowded subway car half filled with sleeping homeless. A solution to help the poor needs to be found---but belongs in another discussion thread.
  • fatjokes 13y ago
    I live in NYC, and perhaps German homeless are a better-mannered folk than out here. Should you ever visit however, here is a tip: if, on a busy day, the subway cars are all packed except for one which is suspiciously empty---avoid it. A homeless person is in there and likely soiled himself. The stench is overwhelming, and you don't need to be sitting next to him to feel it.
    • rb2k_ 13y ago
      I think over here the really crazy ones (e.g. the ones that soil themselves in public) are usually in psychiatric care/detoxing. I'm quite happy to pay a tiny bit more taxes for a pee-less subway ride :) The few times I was in NY, I did actually keep away from them.
  • Symmetry 13y ago
    My impression is that this was much less of a problem in the US before the mid 70s when the Supreme Court decided that people which psychiatric problems couldn't be involuntarily committed if they didn't pose a danger to others[1]. My understanding is that things in Germany work like they did in the US in the 1960s. [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Connor_v._Donaldson
    • laurencerowe 13y ago
      I don't think it was the change in law, but the defunding of mental health services that followed the closing of the psychiatric institutions. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-men...
  • brendoncrawford 13y ago
    As someone who has travelled throughout Germany, I can say that there is nothing in Germany that remotely resembles the scope of homelessness that exists in certain parts of the US. So, I can understand why you might find it amusing.
• protomyth 13y ago
  I would expect better of the Economist, but the buses would be fully tax-payer and advertising subsidized and most definitely not free. [edit: added advertising]
  • Luc 13y ago
    Nitpicking, and you didn't read the article, either.
    • protomyth 13y ago
      Yes, I read the article. I am just very sick of the concept of "free" being used when it puts an additional burden on everyone. The problem with collecting money is not unique to buses. Many businesses are struggling with higher fees and collection costs. The government is a paid service of the tax payer, no more holy than paying someone to mow your lawn. The sooner we realize the retroact of free is an illusion, the better. We need to pay for the infrastructure.
      • Gravityloss 13y ago
        With a tight enough definition, nothing is free, since it's always someone or something that spent resources creating the "thing" or service. And hence the word "free" can be erased from the dictionary.
      • mhurron 13y ago
        You're the only one who seems to have a problem with realizing that your taxes pay for government services. Everyone else has figured out that free in this case means you don't either plop some change in a box when you get on or are not buying a monthly pass.
        • derleth 13y ago
          > You're the only one who seems to have a problem with realizing that your taxes pay for government services. Them and the entirety of the Libertarian and Tea Parties, not to mention whatever Anarchists still exist.
• raldi 13y ago
  What's the largest city in the world that does this?
  • nathell 13y ago
    According to Wikipedia [1], it's Tallinn. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport
    • brunnsbe 13y ago
      Juzt a small note: It's free only for citizens of Tallinn, not for e.g. tourists.
      • saalweachter 13y ago
        I wonder if that was a rational decision. Is the cost of authenticating higher or lower than the revenue gained from tourists? If the revenue difference is actually that large, they probably could have just rolled it into the typical "hotel taxes" most places have.
        • jnsaff2 13y ago
          The revenue gained is not from tourists but from people living in neighboring municipalities (but working in Tallinn) registering them as citizen of Tallinn and therefore bringing their tax money.
    • VLM 13y ago
      Impressive. Redstone Arsenal in Alabama only has 40K people or so. At least in the 90s when I was at the Ordnance school. Which has apparently moved to Ft Lee since then. The free buses were rather convenient.
  • itcmcgrath 13y ago
    Sydney, Australia does have a fee bus service that runs a certain route for key points. It certainly isn't all buses though. There are other cities in Australia that also do this. http://www.131500.com.au/plan-your-trip/cbd-shuttle http://www.131500.com.au/plan-your-trip/cbd-shuttle
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• VLM 13y ago
  Basically the same idea as giving up on detailed long distance billing and going to flat rate. Where in this case the flat rate is about $5 on your property tax bill. The good news is locally the bus service is approx 75% subsidized anyway, so they'd only "lose" 25% of revenue but the substantial gain of no more cash handling etc would help. The other problem is you can tell the author lives in California. Where I live, the weather outdoors is at least somewhat foul about 10 months out of the year, so they would become rolling homeless shelters at least 10 months out of the year, maybe more by habit. That leads to even more expensive systems for what amounts to loitering ticketing, enforcement of no sleeping on the bus, etc. The problem is this might even lead to politically sensitive ideas, like having enough homeless shelters to hold our homeless, or even having mental health treatment so our nuts are not just tossed out on the street as human debris until they die, instead we might try actually treating them. The criminal justice-industrial system would protest at the lack of revenue. It would be a little disruptive.
  • sopooneo 13y ago
    Free buses would likely attract more riders, so the cost of providing the service would increase at the same time the 25% fare revenue disappeared. This does not counter your point, it just strikes me as a confounding issue.
    • VLM 13y ago
      The std deviation of utilization is pretty spectacular. You could play games with pricing where its free at 2pm when the bus usually only has 2 people, but it costs money at 5pm rush hour, or if there's an open seat its free but if you have to stand it costs, or something like that. Now that I think about it, I'm not a big drinker so I don't pay much attention, but a local brewer pays the fares on new years eve to keep the drunks off the roads, and despite claims that free fare = 20 times utilization, I'm just not seeing it.
      • loceng 13y ago
        You could assume that high traffic areas, at least during peak hours, would be considered healthy and productive environments - and whereby those people involved / using those services would be economic producers - which are needed - and therefore you would / should cover their costs overall with the tax base, as their activities are helping everyone in the society.
• yalogin 13y ago
  That would increase the traffic on these buses by some multiples and will increase wait times, frustration and overall dissatisfaction among the public. Then some one will do some napkin math saying the amount of "money" wasted by all these people waiting is not worth the free rides. I guess my point is, free rides probably would have made sense in 1965 when the population was a fraction of what it is in NYC today. Add all the tourists to that and free rides are not sustainable.
  • VLM 13y ago
    Wouldn't that demand logically result in an explosion in the amount of "free bus supply" resulting in an implosion in the amount of traffic congestion frustration and delay? Heck I'd pay money for a bus I don't use just to drive home faster.
    • draugadrotten 13y ago
      > Heck I'd pay money for a bus I don't use just to drive home faster. I think there is a bigger business opportunity in this simple line than it first appears. Perhaps the bus company's customer isn't the person riding the bus.
  • frenchy 13y ago
    You would have to increase the number of buses and their frequency on the routes. The consequence of this is that there will be fewer cars (and maybe bikes) on the roads, which mean that buses can go faster, which means you don't need to add quite so many. Probably the net result would be to increase the number of buses, decrease the overall traffic, and increase everyone's mobility. It may increase the number of tourists (could be good or bad), and will probably cost everyone a little more than expected.
    • VLM 13y ago
      "will probably cost everyone a little more than expected." A little less on a large enough system wide scale. Hard to find a cheaper way to move people around, quickly, on land, in any weather, than a properly applied bus. Tourists in taxis is definitely not cheaper and rentals are even worse. I admit trains/subways are cheaper if the utilization level is high enough, but it has to be Really high. If "your" subway stop has 50,000 potential riders that'll work. But where I live a subway stop by my house would have about 50 potential riders, which is a bit of a financial problem.
• benjohnson 13y ago
  In Seattle, the inner-city busses have zero fare. The trouble is that some of our more fragrant hobos use the bus as a rolling shelter to the detriment of those that appreciate bathing.
  • blackjack48 13y ago
    They discontinued the free ride zone: http://metro.kingcounty.gov/tops/bus/ride-free-area/index.html http://metro.kingcounty.gov/tops/bus/ride-free-area/index.ht...
    • mratzloff 13y ago
      Specifically because of the problem mentioned, in fact.
      • saraid216 13y ago
        That's not actually true. The Free-Ride Zone was discontinued due to budget problems.
    • MostAwesomeDude 13y ago
      Portland, Oregon also discontinued the "Fareless Square" free downtown transit because of this.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • nijk 13y ago
    Of course, the fix for that is to police the offending begavior, not tweak some vague correlate.
  • GFischer 13y ago
    They tried it here in Uruguay, happened the same, and also the "Ni-Ni" youth (neither work nor study youth, a huge problem here) used them as amusement rides.
• lostnet 13y ago
  The US town I last worked in was not at all happy about the traffic externalities of office space. Their attempt to remedy it were complex and entailed a lot of overhead for everyone. Surveys, building restrictions, reimbursement plans, etc. A tax system could simply charge employers based on the commutes of all employees and offer free to board public transit. Then it could stop allowing commute expense to be deducted in the covered areas.. I find tolls to be a little backward since virtually everyone traveling during the max capacity times can deduct them, while leasure travelers can not.
  • nickff 13y ago
    Why should employers be responsible for the transit habits of their employees? Does this not also increase the cost of employment, thereby decreasing the employee's income? From what I can see, this would be a hidden tax on the employee, which violates the principle that democracy requires maximum possible transparency.
    • lostnet 13y ago
      > Why should employers be responsible for the transit habits of their employees? Because an employer is responsible for the transit habits of an employee which determines the capacity and cost of major arteries. We have payed for these roads at the federal level first for the defense and now to allow the DOT to bully everyone. Transparent, eh?
    • lmm 13y ago
      In a world where we could measure everything for free we would charge employees directly for the externalities of their commute (e.g. the road space they consume). Since this is not practical we make the best approximations we can.
• lquist 13y ago
  Hmm...interesting article. In SF, BART is pay-per-ride throughout the system, while MUNI is proof-of-payment in many locations. One thing that I've noticed is that there are significantly more homeless people on MUNI than on BART. As a rider, this negatively influences my experience and desire to ride (mostly because of potential for screaming/attacking). Especially if public transportation is free, I can imagine that the homeless would take shelter there in case of inclement weather. Not a huge issue in SF, but comes into play in other cities.
  • a-priori 13y ago
    No doubt they would use buses as makeshift shelters. But that's a silly reason to not do a no-payment system. The solution is to improve the city's welfare system (e.g. shelters) since apparently it's inadequate. The homeless population already exists: changing the metro to proof-of-payment or no-payment just concentrates them into the buses and subways.
    • baddox 13y ago
      It's not a silly reason to not do a no-payment system. It's unfortunate, perhaps, but it's pragmatic. Unless you could somehow organize a massive simultaneous restructure of the city's welfare system and its public transit system, you'll have to concede these problems.
      • Cushman 13y ago
        No, it's pretty silly. It's effectively saying that the proper way to respond to strain placed on services by the homeless is to reduce the services the homeless have access to. Pragmatism can still be wrongheaded.
      • newbie12 13y ago
        Indeed, many of the "homeless" may have access to shelter-- it is more of a vagrancy problem. Vagrancy is an issue with any free public service or public space, from parks to libraries to train stations to free buses. You'd have to enforce limits to time on the buses and rules against sleeping and eating and that sort of thing.
• PencilAndPaper 13y ago
  I think "free" is the wrong word for it. Howabout "fare free"? Someone is going to have to pay. I like the idea of pushing the costs more onto the community as a whole, not just users. Make it kind of like most school systems: everyone pays through taxes whether or not they have kids or if they send their kids to private school.
  • wutbrodo 13y ago
    I don't think there's any other way to interpret free. Nobody assumes that the cost of operation of bus routes will drop to zero.
• tomjen3 13y ago
  I take the bus to work everyday I wouldn't want it to be free, since right now those who have a need to take the bus can, whereas if it was free so many people would take the buses that there wouldn't be enough space and the bus company would have no reason to serve any routes.
  • alberich 13y ago
    Here in Brazil (at least in some cities) we have the worst of both worlds... you pay for it, and there is not enough space... it is a complete crap. No wonder so many people are on the streets manifesting against it.
    • mvalle 13y ago
      Here in the Faroes (at least in the capital), we have the best of both worlds. Free, and plenty of space. In 2007, the fare for municipal busses was removes, and at the same time, more frequent trips were introduced (by 50% at day time). The routes and schedule are managed by the City Council, the operated by the lowest bidding bus company. So far, it has been successfull, but it had a bit of a bumpy start. The sudden increase in demand for busses, meant that there weren't enough busses to go around and some cheap, old ones were used. But the success has meant that there was a business case to upgrade the busses. It's payed by tax payers via the Council. The Council is funded via income tax, currently at around 20%. http://www.torshavn.fo/Default.aspx?pageid=822 http://www.torshavn.fo/Default.aspx?pageid=822
    • marcosdumay 13y ago
      That's what you get when the government mandates a monopoly for a private company. If the buses were free, and the governemnt payed per bus, not per passenger, we'd probably have empty buses here too.
• morsch 13y ago
  Axiom: Public transportation is a more efficient (in terms of many basic resources valuable to society: first and foremost among them energy and space) way to get around, so it's in society's interest to shift as much mileage as possible towards it. The central question is two-fold: How much of a shift would result from a given decrease in price? And how do we relate the (primarily:) monetary cost of making it free-to-ride with the (primarily:) non-monetary benefits of any given shift? The result of this question could give you an answer if making it free would be worthwhile. Some thoughts: I think decreasing the price per ride from e.g. 1 USD to 0 USD would make for a bigger shift in uptake than decreasing it from 2 USD to 1 USD. Not having to think about whether each single tour is worth the price of admission makes it a viable default way of getting around. This is just the usual flat rate argument that also applies to things like internet usage. Making public transport free would invariably result not just in a shift towards it from other modes of transportation, it would also lead to an overall increase in mobility, which in terms of some resources reduced the gains in efficiency. There's a valid argument that the efficiency of public transport is highly dependant on the amount of utilization: big buses and trains carrying single digit amounts of passengers can use up more energy than individual transportation. An increase in overall uptake would tend to reduce such problems since you'd get a small bus load full of people in cases where you'd have only a few now. Obviously, free to ride public transportation is a particularly huge potential improvement for people who otherwise could not afford to get around. And since mobility is such an important part of life in modern society (minus us nerds who manage to leave the house only once per week), free-to-ride public transport has a massive impact in terms of social equalization.
  • _delirium 13y ago
    I think there's also an argument that it's not particularly unfair for drivers. One current trend is to charge drivers for access to congested areas: congestion charges in city centers, toll roads along congested routes, and fast-track toll lanes on non-toll highways. An alternate approach is to spend that money on getting other people off the road: subsidize transit so that some percentage of my would-be fellow drivers get off the road and onto buses or trains, leaving a less congested road for me.
• rwhitman 13y ago
  I think this would make much more sense in Los Angeles than NYC. But the taxpayers there would never go for it, they love cars too much
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• codereflection 13y ago
  I'd love to see how this would work in the greater Seattle area, where year after year, the King County Metro system has to beg for money to continue operating at their current capacity. For the past two years, the threat has been that Metro will have to cut their service by 17%, which is huge. From their site: "annual revenue will fall $75 million short of what is necessary to maintain current service after temporary funding runs out in mid-2014" http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/Future.aspx http://www.kingcounty.gov/transportation/kcdot/Future.aspx Serious changes would have to occur for something like completely free public transit to become a reality.
  • johnbellone 13y ago
    I have only been in the D.C. area for a little over a year and there is definitely budget problems here as well. The problem may actually be that the people, and by extension the government, do not believe that mass transportation is a replacement for cars (yet - maybe ever) in a metropolitan area. There may also be a whole hell of a lot of other political reasons (oil and car lobbies, etc). But the end result is the same. When I was in New Jersey I heavily took advantage of the NJ Transit Light Rail system in Newark, and between Hoboken and Jersey City. That was absolutely amazing, and the price point was a hell of a lot cheaper than it is to ride the NYC subway or D.C. metro systems. I really think that the northeast just has had a lot more experience and failures here. The main arteries for traffic, at least that I see, come from Amtrak (which again, is amazing in northeast) and local rail systems such as NJT and PATH. In contrast it seems that there are a lot less people in the NOVA and Maryland area that use D.C. metro and the VRE. Some of that may because of the distance, the belt way, but I think a lot of it has to do with the reliability of the systems (at the very least for D.C. metro).
• chris_mahan 13y ago
  I think for me, the opportunity cost of the bus is too high. My travel time in the car is generally half of the bus time. I consider that time lost. Since I am able to use that time to make money, I would have to be compensated for that money in order for me to want to take the bus. At my hourly rate, a bus ride of 1 hour that wasted 30 minutes of my time would cost me $25. (for those thinking that I would waste the time anyway, I would counter that time not spent working is time spent with my wife and son, or learning, or sleeping, and I'd much, much rather do those things than be in a bus.) I live in Los Angeles.
  • emc 13y ago
    What about working on the bus? I've only taken the greyhound but being able to catch up on email or quickly code out so stuff vs having to drive is always nice.
    • danielweber 13y ago
      Working on the bus is great, but you really really need to make sure that it's a comfortable place to work.
    • chris_mahan 13y ago
      It's hard to concentrate, really concentrate on the bus.
  • coldpie 13y ago
    > My travel time in the car is generally half of the bus time. I consider that time lost. I consider it time gained :) I bus to work every day, takes just over an hour each direction. By car, it takes 20-30 minutes each direction. That's about 2 hours I spend catching up on news and reading books every day, as opposed to an hour staring at someone else's bumper. It's definitely a different judgment for every person. I'm in Minneapolis/St Paul. Can't wait for our new East-West light rail line to open next year. It was a major factor in choosing where I purchased my house.
    • johnbellone 13y ago
• pmb 13y ago
  If they are a public good worthy of subsidizing, then yes! For NYC, it has been estimated that every car driving in lower Manhattan incurs ... goddammit I can't find a reference so I'm going with memory here ... at least ~$3 in social costs due to increased pollution, congestion, road wear, etc.. That's in addition to the costs paid by the driver (car depreciation, gas, insurance, opportunity costs, etc.). If that memory is really true, then subsidizing transit to eliminate these social costs ends up being a huge net win! If we want people to do something, we should subsidize it and (in the case of transit) make it free[1]. If we don't want people to do something, we should tax it (Pigouvian taxes FTW!). [1] - Transit will never be as fast as driving due to the extra stops and walk required at either end, so we need to keep it free to minimise the total cost of fare + extra_time_wasted*salary, which corresponds to opportunity cost to riders. Riders whose total cost is too high will not ride, and riding transit is a social good (or is at least much less of a social bad then driving).
  • bmmayer1 13y ago
    If something is "Free" people will hoard it which will reduce its value and increase its cost to everyone. There will be massive shortages of available bus space. With a paid system, people are forced to economize--do I really need to pay to take the bus in winter 5 blocks to buy groceries, or can I walk? But if it's "Free," then people will not economize. The people who need the bus the most, to go to work or hospital or whatever, will have to compete for limited space with people who don't need to be taking the bus. In addition, alternative transit options that could relieve excess demand would be driven out of business (because who can compete with free?). So, the city will be forced to massively increase the cost of the program to meet demand, which would lead to higher taxes anyway, likely offsetting the nominal bus fees that were eliminated.
    • wutbrodo 13y ago
      > alternative transit options that could relieve excess demand would be driven out of business (because who can compete with free?). Alternatives don't just compete on price, but also things like convenience. In fact, even in the current system, it's damn hard (impossible?) to find a transportation alternative that's priced lower than a bus. Muni in SF costs $2 a ride (plus free transfers for a few hours), and the only cheaper transport is walking, which can't "go out of business". If I take a taxi, it's not because they're offering $1 fares, it's because it's faster, more direct, and more comfortable, and that advantage will only increase in a free-bus scenario (because presumably buses will be more crowded).
• sarabellumac 13y ago
  of course public transit should be free.
• 6d0debc071 13y ago
  I wonder how many people don't take the bus because of the cost. I know that, even if it were free, I'd rather pay £-whatever a year to use my car than suffer the inconvenience and stress of public transport.
• EarthLaunch 13y ago
  The Economist is worthless when it comes to the science of economics, so it's expected but still amusing to see a sloppily incorrect use of "free" next to a site called "economist.com". What makes it truly great is seeing it on the top of HN, where everyone's straining to evade this meaning.
  • Thrymr 13y ago
    It's a perfectly correct and generally understood use of the word "free": no cost to the end user. Ultimately, somebody paid for your free beer, too, but that doesn't mean it wasn't free to you.
• drcode 13y ago
  I guess I'm one of the few here who disagrees with this article. Maintaining a bus and subway system is extremely expensive in terms of resources, both in terms of equipment expenses, salaries (for employees who could be providing other benefits to society instead of operating a bus) fuel, and use of land. There is no 100% certainty that buses/subways are more efficient than cars. Luckily however, we have a way to tell which is more efficient: The free market! The free market is not perfect, but it is likely that a person who pays a fare to ride a bus is getting significant value from that bus ride, and if the fare CAN COVER THE EXPENSES of running the buses, then we can be confident that buses are an efficient mode of transportation. If you just make the buses free, people may take more roundabout trips to get to where they need to go, just to be able to make use of the free bus, causing inefficiency and waste. Or, it may cause people to take more inefficient taxi trips (because the bus doesn't take them to their precise destination like a personal car would) or they may do a million other things that are damaging to the environment and wasteful (like eating out more because they can take free bus trips to restaurants.) These scenarios may sound silly, but the fact is that removing price signals from public transportation is a terrible idea because it can have a multitude of unexpected consequences. If you read this post and think I'm crazy and say to yourself "What an idiot, cars are obviously guaranteed to be less efficient than buses" I would argue you don't understand how incentives behave in a complex system. If you think cars are so horrible, you should work to stop subsidies to oil companies so that gas prices reflect the true cost of energy. But in my view there is absolutely no way making public buses free is going to make cities more efficient and/or help the environment. EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should get rid of all public transport subsidies (this is a harder argument to make, I'm not sure where I stand on it.) I'm just saying we shouldn't make them 100% free because price signals are valuable.
  • rayiner 13y ago
    The free market doesn't, at least theoretically, work very well for transit. Transit creates a tremendous positive externality and it doesn't make sense to try and capture all the cost of providing transit at the point of the user.[1] I think the way to go would be to have all transit be funded by a combination of user fees and tax increment districts in the areas served by transit. After all, it's not just the subway rider that benefits from the existence of a subway line, but all the businesses and residential developments near a subway stop too. But the same would have to apply for road construction. Those segments of state highways snaking through suburbia should be entirely paid for by those who live along the route, not from the general tax revenues of the state. And gas taxes should be raised so they cover the capital costs of the interstate system, not just ongoing maintenance. And while we're at it, the Army Corps of Engineers should stop subsidizing the west coast by damming up the rivers of the United States. If you want water move to somewhere that has water. [1] That's without even reaching all the theoretical implications of the use of eminent domain authority, state rights of way, etc--you can't discount from the value equation the opportunity cost of using an existing state right of way for a highway versus a rail line.
• mikepurvis 13y ago
  What about just drastically cutting the cost of a pass? So a single ride still costs $2-3, but you can get a monthly unlimited ride pass for $20?
• bdcravens 13y ago
  Buses can legally only hold so many. Fares are a backstop against uneconomical use (why wouldn't I take the bus to go four blocks? my feet hurt) and overcrowding. If usage increases, and buses can't hold anymore, then what? No stops? Most bus stops aren't proper lines, but people hanging out until the bus comes. I'm certain a free system would be most disadvantageous for those who can't get in line fast enough when the bus does come. I'm certain people can come up with ideas, but usually when I hear these sorts of discussions, it's not from those who rely on public transportation. I think the answers would be different if those having discussions had their licenses revoked until a decision was made :-)
• petercooper 13y ago
  Fares bring in a lot of money, but they cost money to collect [..] Fare boxes and turnstiles have to be maintained; buses idle while waiting for passengers to pay up, wasting fuel; and everyone loses time. A large share of my time at the grocery store is spent scanning and paying for the groceries too.
• conanbatt 13y ago
  This is an interesting idea, but it has its unseen challenges. The very first issue is regulatory. Because the addition of passangers does present a real cost to bus companies, no tracking device on how many passengers it has has difficulties from a regulatory standpoint. This may sound silly, but its a reality of life, such as when you give a free trial product to people owning a creditcard. Currently, buses in buenos aires are ridicolously cheaper than cars, yet by culture, people really love buying cars. An hour's parking lot fee in the center of the city costs more than a week of bus fare. Making it free would not be a change of paradigm. Buses are packed, and so are trains and subways. If subsidizing increased not only to cover fares, but to improve infrastructure and service, you are also servicing people with cars, making those more interesting. (less traffic -> also better to go around in cars). Although this could help a lot, i dont think its a paradigm shift unless people with cars are paying the public transportation. But that of course, present the other challenges, which is, what about people not having public transportation coverage from one point to another, and how would you administer such a route in a way that you dont charge him penalties. I honestly believe that in big cities, cars are an expensive hinderance. Using a cab every single time you go out is still cheaper than buying one.
  • dragonwriter 13y ago
    > The very first issue is regulatory. Because the addition of passangers does present a real cost to bus companies, no tracking device on how many passengers it has has difficulties from a regulatory standpoint. Counting passengers can be done without charging anything.
    • conanbatt 13y ago
      If you use the national ID for it, the encumbrance is still there. Similar to what i mentioned about credit cards and free trials: even people with credit cards dont like to enter those! For truly massive use being free and unregulated for the user is great. For the compnay, however, that could report they had "20 million visitors today" and ask for more funding for that. Maybe im too cynical, but it happens. I still suspect the bus lines as the reason why coins are in shortage since 2007, when coins started to be valued more for their mint value than their nominal one. Charging people means the bus company has to be able to account for it with money (say, we had 1000 passanger, so 1000 fares income), so it is itself a tool for regulation.
• nostromo 13y ago
  Seattle used to have an area of downtown where you could ride the bus for free. (You could ride within the area free, but paid if you rode out of the area or started your ride outside of the area.) Busses became makeshift homeless shelters, which probably ended up driving away actual commuters. Seattle also bought fancy self-cleaning toilets many years ago in order to give tourists a place to go and to reduce public urination by the homeless. They ended up selling those toilets on eBay a few years later because the toilets had become a place for addicts to shoot up and for prostitutes to take their customers. Free is probably a bad idea...
  • Skalman 13y ago
    I agree. The solution is a token fee.
  • king_jester 13y ago
    The problem wasn't that those things were free, but that homelessness and poverty are systemic issues that aren't actually meaningfully tackled. Even in places with token free transit systems, the homeless still occupy those spaces and will continue to do so.
    • scarmig 13y ago
      Homelessness and poverty are different issues: although some people might not want to ride with simply poor people, that's a miniscule group compared with those who don't want to be in a confined space with a homeless person who is likely unhygienic, drugged up, or (non-exclusive) mentally unstable. Saying "free would work much better if there weren't homeless people" is probably true, but that is a pretty big supposition in lots of cities. Those cities without a homeless problem should feel free to experiment with free transit.
      • king_jester 13y ago
        > Homelessness and poverty are different issues: although some people might not want to ride with simply poor people, that's a miniscule group compared with those who don't want to be in a confined space with a homeless person who is likely unhygienic, drugged up, or (non-exclusive) mentally unstable. Homelessness and poverty are related, but you are right in that stigma against the homeless and/or the poor makes a barrier in people's perception of taking mass transit. Some places with robust mass transit have better outcomes than others, so this is something that has to have available options to combat that in culture. > Saying "free would work much better if there weren't homeless people" is probably true, but that is a pretty big supposition in lots of cities. Those cities without a homeless problem should feel free to experiment with free transit. I'm not saying its a either or proposition, but making free mass transit needs to be coupled with other actions and policies that also help to deal with homeless by providing more stable shelter, facilities, economic opportunity, etc. Of course, there is no city in the US that does not have a homeless population, so that is always going to be a factor.
• Skalman 13y ago
  I lived in a city where there were free buses for a few months. It didn't work, since drunks would come sit in the bus for warmth (and drink, despite the rules). My conclusion is that, though I like the idea of free buses, there should at least be a token fee to discourage people taking a ride for the roof.
• Joeri 13y ago
  I don't think making it free is a good idea, because people have no respect for something provided for free, so you'll end up making the service more expensive to maintain and at a lower quality than by charging a nominal amount. However, you can use pricing to discourage paying to the driver. Where I live (belgium) I can pay 2 euro per ride to the driver, or 80 euro for unlimited travel during a whole year (partially subsidized by my employer, which they're legally required to do), or any of a range of payment options in between. Paying cash to the driver is so much more expensive than the alternatives that almost nobody does it.
• singular 13y ago
  Public transport is an enormous problem in the UK outside of London - the prices are very high, and the service is often dreadful. In my home town for instance the local operator regularly cancelled buses without notification, ran late all the time and repeatedly made hugely over the top above-inflation/fuel price fluctuation price rises every year. On more than one occasion they cancelled last buses stranding people. The company would cheat the monitoring of punctuality by having buses wait at certain points along the route (notably the points at which punctuality measures were made) for sometimes 10 - 15 minutes, whereas wherever you actually wanted to catch a bus from you'd often be left waiting 20-30 minutes for a bus to turn up. The bottom line is, if you want to live there + have any kind of quality of life, you have to own + run a car. Full stop. This is pretty well true for anywhere outside of London (not sure about other major cities, however.) A lot of the issue is the monopolistic nature of any bus service, and the lack of teeth of the government regulator. Personally I think it ought to be run as a public service with some means of ensuring quality (ok so that's a tough problem :) or at least improve the regulator's ability to fine companies that fail to provide a decent service + have some oversight over (already subsidised!) fares.
  • noss 13y ago
    The local operator does not seem to be taking enough responsibility for the work they are supposed to do. In Stockholm you can get your taxi fare paid for up to 400 SEK (~40 EUR) if you are running more than 20 minutes late because of schedule problems. (Details might have changed, was a long time ago since I used it.) You submit the bill and have your own money on the line until/if it is reimbursed. Monitoring a bus by having a "tamper proof" GPS logger on the bus seem more reasonable than having points where punctionality is measured. The local operator themselves would obviously not be the ones verifying reimbursement requests against these GPS logs.
• nraynaud 13y ago
  we do have a few cities with free bus services (only Chateauroux comes to mind now). It's a bit complicated because it shifts social behavior, (people just loiters in the busses). But the reasoning is that the bus system is a complete taxpayer money think, and the fare collection system is just adding more drag than easing the bill. It's not sure it's always the case, like sometimes the collected fares pays a bit more than the collection system. There is no hope in paying the whole system with fares in a medium size city tho, it's always money coming from somewhere else (mostly taxes).
• troebr 13y ago
  All right, a lot of people have commented about bad experiences with free transportation. I had a good one about free buses: I lived for a couple years in the north of France in Compiegne (where the ww2 armistice was signed). Buses were free, clean of homeless people, and very enjoyed by the student population. The line was not running at night, and Sundays and holidays the fare was 1 euro (pretty damn cheap). Compiegne is also a fairly rich middle-sized town, so the cases are different, but it's just to give an example of a place where it was successfully implemented.
• jstalin 13y ago
  Everyone loves something for free!
• relix 13y ago
  I live in a city where this has recently been implemented. In Tallinn, population 400K, public transportation is free since January 2013, for all residents (not tourists or people living in other cities). You need to have a valid ID and a valid RFID card that is connected with your ID. I see a lot of people in this thread state unjustified assumptions as if they are proven facts. I'll try and comment on a few of these, judging from my experience with how things transpired here. * This will make it a shelter for the homeless * There have always been homeless people on the busses, and I didn't notice a markedly increase. The fact that you still need a legitimate ID card and a fare card might help this point. * This will multiply users of the buses, and lead to frustration and long queue lines * Utilisation of public transportation increased by 15% since becoming free. I noticed somewhat more people, but nothing annoyingly so. On the other hand, the main goal as I could see was to get cars off the road. A drop in traffic of 14% was observed. Because this is a low-wage country, the €12 million in lost revenue this cost is quite low in absolute terms, compared to what it would be in more western, bigger cities, but it's still a large chunk of money relative to GDP here. Due to the requirement that you need to be a resident of this city, 10000 more people have "migrated" to Tallinn from other cities, now paying taxes here, and adding a predicted €9 million in tax revenue for Tallinn. Personally I love it of course. I use it in ways that others might deem "uneconomically" i.e. take the tram for 2 stops instead of walking 15 minutes, but I also notice I travel further distance more often, exploring the city, because I don't feel annoyed with having to either find parking space, or pay a taxi, or pay a bus fare.
  • rossjudson 13y ago
    Great story. Did the increase in tax revenue offset the loss of fare revenue?
    • tomp 13y ago
      No: -12 million + 9 million = -3 million.
      • vkou 13y ago
        What's the dollar value of getting 14% of the city's cars off the roads?
• Dewie 13y ago
  I think that bus fares should at the least be cheaper than the average gas price it would take you to drive the same distance yourself. One could argue that using the bus also might save you from having to buy and maintain your own car, saving more money than just gas. But I would say that for many people, although they could take the bus more often, having their own car is just too convenient to give up on totally.
• ianb 13y ago
  I've been riding and thinking and griping about buses lately. While this notion has seemed very appealing to me in the past, I'm less sure. Even right now, I feel like a major problem with buses is that they really don't need or even want customers. Customers are a liability. Fares don't cover expenses. Political capital is useful, but indirect, and bus systems have lost most customers that might provide political capital. My bus system isn't particularly bad. The drivers are okay, but mostly they just don't want any trouble. The bureaucracy has smoothed out certain edges. The buses are clean. But the crowded bus lines stay crowded, until they get further out then they become empty and useless. Lines don't evolve, they aren't adjusted, there's no attempt to maximize ridership. They can't experiment with pricing; really they can't do much of anything without approval from a political structure that doesn't much care about buses. Customers don't fit into any equation. Oh, and did I mention they are slow? Buses are so terribly painfully incredible slow that only people who place very little value in their own time can justify being on a bus. Door-to-door times on a bus range from 2x a car to 6x, often walking speed, almost never faster than biking. But as time goes on the buses just get slower. Making buses free maybe could help. It might draw customers who actually have a way of effecting positive operational change through the political process. It might diversify the ridership in a way that positively effects social standards of civility on buses. I certainly wouldn't fight it, but it's a long shot.
• tzs 13y ago
  If people own cars, they are going to tend to use them even if public transit is available. Long term, we need public transit that is good enough that people will decide they don't need to own a car. The thing that has stopped me from ever reaching that point is not the cost of public transit, but the long term reliability. When I buy a house or rent an apartment, I need to be able to base that decision partly on the mass transit options, and then rely on those options not changing out from under me--no bean counter deciding that the bus that comes by my house does not have enough riders and canceling it. That bus needs to keep running, even if it has few riders. Even if it is often completely empty. Bean counting has to be done at the level of the complete system, not the individual bus line.
• llamataboot 13y ago
  Basically, this just needs to be sold as beneficial to the region as a whole: less congestion on the roads for people that choose to drive, less air pollution for everyone, more of an ability for businesses to hire people that don't have cars but need a way to work, etc. As long as it is framed as "public transit riders getting something for free" it will never work, especially given the racialized face of poverty in most US cities. But if it as framed as creating a cleaner, less congested, more equitable metro area where people can get around safely, effectively,and freely, it might fly.
• mapgrep 13y ago
  >Fares bring in a lot of money, but they cost money to collect—6% of the MTA's budget "A lot of money" is awfully vague. Especially for a publication called The Economist. Turns out farebox revenue is 41% of the MTA's operating revenue. That is indeed a lot of money to be giving up. Here is a breakdown, via http://www.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/Adopted_Budget_Feb_Financial_Plan2013-16.pdf#page=11 http://www.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/Adopted_Budget_Feb_Financ... Operating revenue, 2013, projected -Farebox revenue 41% -Dedicated taxes 35% -Toll revenue 12% -State and local subsidies 7% Total operating revenue is $13.5 billion. Budget (expenditures) is basically the same according to the above link. So dropping fares will cost about $4.7 billion after accounting for fare collection savings but before accounting for any extra costs associated with increased ridership (35% of 13.5b). The total NYC city budget is about $69 billion, in comparison(http://www.nyc.gov/html/omb/downloads/pdf/fp6_12.pdf http://www.nyc.gov/html/omb/downloads/pdf/fp6_12.pdf), so maybe it's possible, but I'd hate to be the financial planner asked to come up with ways to cover the shortfall.
• rdl 13y ago
  This seems to work really well in high-volume areas, particularly those with a lot of commercial activity, or for connector buses going from other public transit to office parks, etc. The problem is the homeless; I tend to avoid most Muni buses for reasons including the population of homeless/crazy who seem to live on them already. If you could figure out a way to avoid becoming mobile homeless shelters, I'd be happy to increase vehicle registration or (property?) taxes to pay for free mass transit in some areas.
• wallio 13y ago
  This article makes it sound like free public transportation is a new idea. It pops up in Toronto every so often as if it was the first time it was every thought up(1). In fact this has been tried numerous (perhaps hundreds) of times, both in the past and ongoing(2,3). You would think that the pluses and minuses would be well understood by now. Why is it so hard for transportation systems to learn from each other? (1) - http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-transformation-of-urban-life-and-the-social-structure-free-and-accessible-transit-in-toronto/5316887 http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-transformation-of-urban-lif... (2) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport#List_of_towns_and_cities_with_area-wide_zero-fare_transport http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport#List_of_t... (3) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_public_transport_routes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_public_transport_r...
• wisty 13y ago
  It's time to post up the Theory of the Second Best (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_second_best http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_second_best) It's a radical old theory (from 1956), which is still ignored by most of the people who talk about economics. It states, in HN terms, that economic systems can have local optima; and that if the global optimum can't be reached then doing stupid things can actually be smart. In theory a free market is best. But if a market can't be made completely free (for whatever reason) then making the market freer may actually make things worse, because you're moving away from the local optimal point into a trough. When you consider any aspect of the system, you can make it more like a free market, or less like a free market. Maybe the internet libertarians are usually right, when they say "make it more like a free market". Or maybe real systems have been optimised towards that local optimum point, then driven away from it by free market advice, and the internet libertarians are usually wrong. But I don't think there's a hard and fast rule. Whatever the case, imperfect economic systems are a little bit complicated, and there's not always a simple answer. So it's not a free market. Cities subsidise buses. They subsidise cars. Payments for buses are so annoying that they may outweigh the amount of money changing hands. Unions want to protect their turf. Poor people like buses, while rich people like cars. And buses are much more useful when they are full. Its complicated, so figuring out what the locally optimal solution is isn't really easy.
• Aloisius 13y ago
  The cost of the bus is not keeping me off the bus; the speed and comfort are keeping me off. While not collecting fares would decrease the stop times, it isn't going to get anywhere near what I would need to ride the bus more often. To go about 7.5 miles on one bus in San Francisco (basically from the bay to the ocean) takes 56 minutes on a bus. There are marathon runners who can literally run the route and arrive nearly 20 minutes before the bus! The light rail is considerably better at 42 minutes for roughly the same route (the more your trip is underground, the more it makes sense to take). In fact, the only time I take public transit is when heading downtown in the subway since it is actually fast. The same trip takes 28 minutes in a car (less if you know where the timed lights are). Now, if we had Personal Rapid Transit* instead of buses, then at least the comfort level and speed might be high enough for me to switch over. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit
• tjstankus 13y ago
  The bus system here in Chapel Hill, NC is fare-free.
• unsignedint 13y ago
  It's somewhat of a negative spiral, and IMHO, it's nothing to do with price. If your area has a service where buses are coming in every 15 minutes at least, then there's a benefit to it. I live good sized city in the Seattle area, and to get to my work, 20 minute commute becomes 90 minute commute. Particularly in the Seattle area, what making whole issues nasty is that the lack of transit backbone -- the problem is that are people commuting between the city of Seattle and neighboring city often separated by the lake. I don't know if this is the case for other cities, but as far as my observation goes, making buses free doesn't solve much problem at least where I live.
• dkarl 13y ago
  In case anyone is wondering why this hasn't already been implemented everywhere if it's such a great idea, I have an anecdote illustrating the political and cultural obstacles it faces. I worked with a guy who helped create a proposal to make buses free in Austin in the 1990s. The goal was basically the same as described in the article, based on the observation that collecting fares was surprisingly expensive in both time and money. Little net income would be lost, the buses would run faster and cause slightly less congestion because boarding would be faster, and numbers from experiments in other cities showed ridership going up significantly. It was very simple: voters and taxpayers chose to support the bus program because of the benefits the city gets, and eliminating fares was a straightforward way to increase ridership per dollar, thus deriving more benefit for the tax money being spent [1]. Everybody wins. As my friend told it, the proposal was made internally inside Capital Metro (the transit agency; my friend was on some kind of committee) and the response from higher up was very simple: not gonna happen, not ever, and please don't ever mention this in public unless you really want to hurt the future of bus transit in this city. The symbolism of fares, he was told, is very important in two ways. First, the public image of bus riders is that they are people who aren't willing or capable of taking care of themselves (why don't they have a car?) The symbolism of giving somebody something for nothing is very different from making them pay to ride. Bus fare is a symbolic way of teaching them that they have to work for what they get, and they can't freeload off of other people. If we're forced to take care of them, we can at least make them play-act like they're responsible people paying their own way, and the lesson might sink in eventually. Second, people tend to incorrectly assume that the operating expenses of the bus system are covered by fares. Many people hate buses and hate the complicated urban society they represent, and the more of those people who became aware that buses run largely on their tax dollars, the harder it is for city bus programs to get the money and political support they need. Charging fares makes it easy for them to make the wrong assumption and prevents them from becoming vocal enemies of public transit. Those attitudes are from 10-20 years ago, and one hopes they have changed since then. The idea seems fundamentally sound, so I imagine it will keep resurfacing until pragmatism overcomes the bias and stereotypes surrounding mass transit. [1] As you can see here, passenger fares cover only a small fraction of expenses: http://www.capmetro.org/transparency/ http://www.capmetro.org/transparency/
  • 13y ago
• tenpoundhammer 13y ago
  How about an NPR style pledge drive, maybe everyone could win. If homeless people are mucking up the system, we could help them to not be homeless...
• zwieback 13y ago
  Free busrides for everyone in Corvallis, OR. Not a big city but it's a start.
• shawndumas 13y ago
  print version http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/06/fares/print http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2013/06/fares/print
• jcmoscon 13y ago
  Nothing is free. Somebody will have to wake up in the morning and work to pay for the "free" ticket!
  • hawleyal 13y ago
    It could be free to the traveller, provided as a public service.
• sjtrny 13y ago
  The issues of speed that this article mentions are negated by the latest electronic ticketing systems such as Oyster, Myki and Opal. As you walk on to the bus you touch the card against a reader and that's it. Saves a lot of time.
• spikels 13y ago
  Most transit systems have either a fixed or minimum fee. So it usually does not make sense to pay for public transit if you are just going a short distance. If it were free, more people would use public transit for these short trips instead of walking or bicycling. Wouldn't this more sedentary life have a significant negative impact on public health? Studies seem to show that an additional 150-299 minutes of walking each week (20-40 minutes a day) can increase lifespan by 3.5 years [1]. [1] http://www.gizmag.com/physical-activity-live-longer/24972/ http://www.gizmag.com/physical-activity-live-longer/24972/
• dajohnson89 13y ago
  As I write this post, I sit on a bus in Baltimore. My fare card was 10 cents short when I boarded. So, I had to pay $5 cash for a $1.60 ride home (the machine doesn't give change). This whole transaction took 2 minutes, and the bus was moving, causing me to almost lose my balance. There's got to be a better way. Especially considering I pay 4 digits in taxes every year to the city.
• Raticide 13y ago
  We have some free buses but I choose to use the pay buses to avoid the over crowding. Maybe there's room for both.
• hawleyal 13y ago
  Maybe food should be free.
• treelovinhippie 13y ago
  There's a free shuttle bus route in Wollongong (hour south of Sydney) which is also starting to be adopted in Sydney. Buses loop the CBD and outskirts, and arrive every 10-30mins: http://www.wollongong.com/travel-info/free-shuttle-bus.aspx http://www.wollongong.com/travel-info/free-shuttle-bus.aspx
• grimborg 13y ago
  Why not check in with NFC cards?
• guruz 13y ago
  The German Pirate party wants a similar model. Inhabitants of a city have to pay a yearly fee and then can ride for free. This should encourage people to leave their car at home (or not even buy one) and take public transport instead. Another advantage that I did not see mentioned: The pricing systems are often complicated (how long you can ride, how far, are you allowed to change etc.). With a flat fee more people would be encouraged to just take public transport without needing to comprehend a complicated pricing system.