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, th

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.