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 cul

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/