Seattle used to have this for an area of the city. It was called the "Free Ride Zone" - and it had some unexpected consequences.
The primary problem is that homeless people would get on the bus because it's warm, and would fall asleep. The busses became rolling homeless shelters.
This caused other people to take the bus less, because of public safety concerns, as well as simple quality-of-life issues like unpleasant smells.
Eventually it was scrapped.
But this issue has been returning as it's now common knowledge that Seattle bus drivers are instructed not to collect fares from anyone that declines to pay.
It's not just the free fare - it's the abysmal lack of shelter options and the attempts by cities to criminalize encampments and force people to find somewhere indoors to avoid arrest.
100% this, I’ve been homeless and slept on the bus or subway to stay warm (and safe) and not once did someone try to help me. And now I’m years out of being in that situation and I am part of the same problem, I almost never take public transportation and use Lyft or my car to get around.
What is it that's preventing us from forcing our politicians to offer better options? I would vote for a solution to this, and even donate money to it, if enough other people were doing the same.
Don't most people feel the same about this issue? What systemic problem is preventing a huge mass of people who agree on this from making a meaningful change happen?
I moved out the year before it was scrapped, but I am not so sure it was because of homeless people. When I lived in Seattle I had literally 0 bad encounters with homeless people on buses. [Definitely nonzero on the sidewalks]
The worst part in my view about the free ride zone was when you would take a bus from downtown to outside the zone. You'd need to pay when you left. Which was hard to enforce, so I think a lot of people walked off. Even if you wanted to play it right, you needed to remember when to pay and when not. I remember hearing from drivers that they didn't care if you pay anyway.
Of course in recent years in towns like Seattle or SF there is always somebody trying to say that the homeless are responsible for the downfall of everything.
That kind of (unintentionally, I'm sure) makes it sound like they introduced the free ride zone, quickly attracted a lot of homeless people, and so cancelled the program.
It actually ran for almost 40 years. It started in 1973, and ended in 2012.
Interestingly, here in Melbourne we have a similar system when it comes to paying fares. It's not the bus/train/tram drivers responsibility to ensure you pay your fare, you can walk onto a bus without tagging on and the driver won't even blink, it's the job of roaming ticket inspectors to enforce fare payment.
In my experience, we don't have a particularly significant problem with homeless people and other "undesirables" on public transport. It probably helps that they have police patrols at most train stations at night.
In Melbourne it had some not so great effects. A lot of people will use it instead of just walking a couple of blocks and the free zone is already the slowest and most congested part of the network, so it made PT worse for everyone else. As a resident of zone 1 I now get to subsidize the free users in the city and zone 2 because they removed zone 1 only tickets.
I have a feeling the people complaining about the homeless would say the same things encountering "undesirables" on our PT though, it's just a disguised "I have to interact with poor people" argument.
Yep, I personally would much sooner use public transportation that charged $10 (with no exceptions) than free public transportation. Sharing close quarters with aggressive, smelly, intoxicated, unstable people is stressful and unpleasant
The Kansas City Zoo has to let people in certain counties visit for free every so often, as part of the agreement by which it receives funding from those counties. This used to be implemented as periodic "free" days, but those became so notorious for outbreaks of violence that they switched to sending vouchers for different days to every household in those counties so the free-day visitors are spread out rather than all there at once.
Wow. Have you ever wondered that may be inequality should be a problem worth solving instead of finding yet another way of isolating yourself from the problem?
The rolling homeless shelter meme is a way to virtue signal against the existence of the homeless. I have been a consistent bus rider in Seattle since the mid 90s, and the bus is not a destination for homeless, much less so than the library. Many homeless people have bus passes legitimately, and are more respectful than the average rider.
The L.A. metro would like to differ. If only sleeping and smelling were all the problems. How about yelling nonstop obscenities?
I still take the Metro but when bringing the wife and kid with me I get an earful of complaints.
Interestingly, this doesn't happen when we take the metro in Rio de Janeiro. Presumably because there are paid barriers to entry, and employees in the stations. Not sure if they have public mental treatment but they have public hospitals.
As a Seattle bus rider, I would have to disagree. A few outlier homeless (e.g. those who shit on the bus) can create irrational triggers among the general public which decrease bus use.
After the fall of the Soviets, I heard that a joke over there was, "Everything they told us about communism was a lie, but everything they told us about capitalism is true."
Arh, is this why why people in US hate public transport and prefer to drive themselves or go by taxi?
For those of us living in the "outside" world where public transport are the norm, it is sometimes hard to understand why public transport is treated so differently in US.
1. Public transit is very slow relative to cars. This is because the U.S. was mostly built after the invention of the car, which means road capacity is higher, parking is easier, and distances are farther. Even in places with decent public transit, it takes 2-3x as long to get somewhere on public transit as driving a car.
2. The U.S. is a rich country and more people can afford their own car or to take a taxi/rideshare.
3. Public transit is less comfortable and convenient. It involves walking and waiting outside, possibly in bad weather, and possibly crowding. If you are carrying things with you or bringing small children, the hassle is magnified trying to maneuver through small spaces with large items quickly.
For me its infrequent and unpredictable bus timings, limited bus stops, long travel times. If I took buses to work it would take 1-1.5 hours to reach my work. When I drive, it takes 30-45min. And the bus is available only once an hour during peak hours.
> it is sometimes hard to understand why public transport is treated so differently in US.
It is worth remembering that the US is much larger than all of Europe, is considerably less dense, and much of it was not well-developed until after automobiles were in wide use.
Public transit doesn't make logistical sense in much of the country. It does make sense in some places, of course, but it's less of a part of the national culture because there are so many areas where it's not a good idea.
> Arh, is this why why people in US hate public transport and prefer to drive themselves or go by taxi?
I am an American and I don't get it either. I think it varies by geography, where else you might have lived, etc. I grew up on the east coast and always hated taxis, and didn't like to drive.
It all has to do with investment. LA has one of the largest metro systems and a million people use it a day. 60% of NYC commuters use public transport. In cities that build and improve transport, it gets used. It has nothing to do with culture but rather what is actually built.
It also doesn't help that transit agencies in smaller cities have been degenerate. Their answer for declines in ridership is to consolidate and cut service, not improve the network, which leads to more decline, and more consolidation, until you end up with a place like many commenters in this thread where 1 bus comes every hour, usually following the path of a former streetcar right of way that was ripped out by monied interests 70 years ago.
Look at the history of public transportation in the US. It is notoriously underfunded, and was intentionally starved in favor of pushing car ownership.
That's not actually true. The ride free zone ended because King County has a ton of suburban communities who resent their delusion that they support Seattle through taxes. When the county wanted to pass new car tabs, some of the suburban reps refused to approve it unless the ride free zone was scrapped in return. Luckily for them, they were able to take advantage of the existing biases of people like you to spin their bullshit as "we were making busses better" instead of the actual reason, "fuck off Seattle and busses". https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/warning-seattles-f...
Salt Lake City used to have a free ride downtown zone - don't know if it still does, so it was basically free buses in a very limited number of streets. I think basically 4 or 5 stops away from the 1st Main - so not enough to be interesting to homeless people as a place of accommodation.
Do homeless people in the US really care about tickets?
Here in vienna they take the public transport anyway since the ticket inspectors dont bother with them and the dedicated securities will throw them out anyway if they are forced to bother.
Worst case is that they spent some hours at a warm police station.
> The primary problem is that homeless people would get on the bus because it's warm, and would fall asleep. The busses became rolling homeless shelters.
Many European countries have free monthly passes for poor people and I haven't noticed any problems of that kind.
Nor do I actually see what's particularly "unethical" about riding free public transport when it's cold outside? If capacity on rolling stock is tight, four square feet of floor in a warm room should be eminently affordable for the world's richest country. And, no, the availability of shelters doesn't make homelessness so comfortable that it becomes a lifestyle choice, or do you know anybody who would want to exchange their job & home for a homeless shelter?
That makes me wonder if that would be a viable way to handle homelessness. Build mobile homeless shelters with beds and toilets. Have them stop at places with services for homeless persons like showers and laundry. I wonder if it would cost more than just paying for a rented apartment or hotel room?
> But this issue has been returning as it's now common knowledge that Seattle bus drivers are instructed not to collect fares from anyone that declines to pay.
Is this legal? From where I come, you can be booked if you intentionally refuse to pay fare.
Of course it's legal. Basically bus drivers are told not to hold up an entire bus route just to call police to come and arrest someone who won't pay a fare. Even with that in place I have sat on a bus in peak hour traffic while some jackass bus driver yelled at someone who had accidentally got on the wrong door and made them squeeze through a whole crowded bus to swipe their stupid orca card. As if that was worth holding up everyone on the bus, plus the bus behind that couldn't get to the stop, etc.
In Orlando there is a free Bus system downtown only on certain routes. They don't seem to have the homeless problem on the bus. But I suspect that may be because homeless generally don't need to seek warmth.
Not to be rude, but don't you guys have security to just take them off ? It's a public disorder no ?
I do feel for the homeless, and of course its a refuge etc, but its a public service and so can be removed from the tram/service.
Its not a difficult solution to have to just grab a free ticket which could take you to the end of the line. In which case, no ticket (even free) no pass.
I have a high opinion of Seattle in my mind, not that I've been, but to not think of ways around the problem and just throw it in the bin.. I dare say, it might not have been just the homeless problem.
> not to collect fares from anyone that declines to pay
How is that possible by the way ? Get on without paying ? Why would any driver do that anyway ?
-- Edit 2 -> I am coming from a EU & ASIA experience only
This is where uber progressive US cities, in particular the West Coast, differ from Europe.
You can get away with almost anything that isn't assault. Smoke pot and drink on the street -- no problem. Urinate anywhere you like. Pitch a tent on a sidewalk and stay for weeks. Shoot up in parks and just throw your needles on the ground. Even things like shoplifting are not prosecuted.
I love German transit because it is so quiet and peaceful. Meanwhile in the US, I've seen people bring stereos onto transit and play them at full blast. I've seen people pee on subway platforms in full view of everyone. I've seen people fight on busses. I don't even know how crazy you'd have to act to actually get arrested, because it never seems to happen.
Enforcing laws against the homeless is not the done thing in Seattle. The problem is not thinking of ways to detect their law breaking, but rather that the city chooses compassion over order and consequently ignores their lawlessness instead of enforcing the law.
If you do come to Seattle, you'll find the streets teeming with the homeless who are completely undisturbed by the police. Just walking around the city, and trying to avoid the homeless, I've witnessed multiple instances of homeless shoplifting, hard drug use (injecting themselves, crack pipe, etc), bodily functions on the street, threatening behavior (homeless people simply screaming invective and threats at passersby), to say nothing of people camped in sleeping bags on sidewalks and tents.
You can absolutely get on buses without paying. Simply ignoring the driver and walking by is all that's required. The police will not be notified, nor would they respond if they were, nor would their response be effective deterrence if they did.
>> not to collect fares from anyone that declines to pay
In LA, the bus driver doesn't want confrontation so just stays silent. People just board without tapping their card, although sometimes in rush hour you can't get to the tap reader so it's not always malicious. Security is only present at larger subway stations, not all, and is just there to break up fights. They don't ride the busses or trains, either.
Actually, SDOT has a pretty good security system. They have a number which you can text so you don't have to make a call on the bus, and they do fare checks on the lines where people can pay on the platforms and board at the rear. But if a passenger isn't being aggressive or intrusive, the worst they're likely to get is a summons for not having a valid fare.
And put yourself in a bus driver's shoes - if someone just walks on the bus, what are you going to do about it? Best case, you cause a major delay for something that is unlikely to be prosecuted. Anyways, from a practical standpoint, I think that Seattle's transit only gets about 1/3 of its funding from fares; at the end of the day their mandate is to move people around with as little friction as possible. Also, even if there was an incentive to be strict, the 'one RFID card to rule them all' system is pretty recent; plenty of people just wave some sort of ID or the paper transfer ticket that you get from paying cash. Checking all of those carefully would mean longer delays.
I guess it might sound odd, but Seattle is not what you might call an ideal city. Evading a bus fare is less criminal than plenty of petty things that the police have a stated policy of ignoring, such as actual theft, and it seems like the public transit agency makes do because it's not their job to deal with that sort of thing.
I live in DC so this might not be comparable, but our bus drivers are too focused on driving to worry about fare collection. How do you keep someone off a bus who refuses to pay the fare, and stay on schedule? There's really no way to make someone cough up $2 on a bus like there is on the Metrorail.
I don’t know about not collecting fares. I’ve been kicked out of bus because my orca card ran out of money and didn’t work. Some drivers are pretty up-stick about it.
Perhaps instead of waving our finger at free buses we should look for the root problem(s) that leave too many ppl with too few choices. Eliminating the no fare might have kept the marginalized off the buses, but it didn't address the problem. There still there. Somewhere.
It's so infuriating to see big cities completely incapable of dealing with homeless people as if they are delicate creatures that can't be touched, and then have the majority of people ignore them even though they are assholes that make a scene every single time. Most of these people act that way because no one has taught them any better and therefore they have no incentive to act otherwise.
Great to see. Our tax money subsidizes car ownership (quite massively) already, glad to see some equity here. Everyone kicks and screams about transit systems "paying for themselves" but nobody asks the same of huge highways in the middle of nowhere.
> Everyone kicks and screams about transit systems "paying for themselves"
If you mean paying for themselves with fares, then no, as most public transportation does not cover the costs with just fares [0]. For example, I'm in Seattle currently and the fares only cover 20-40% of costs [1]. Not that I am complaining as I take the bus to work everyday, but it's not a slam dunk case of invest more because it has a positive return on investment.
I think what the original commenter meant was that people get upset because they don't want to subsidize transit systems, and would rather have them break even or turn a profit.
What a lot of those same people don't understand, is that taxes pay for the road systems.
The people that understand public transit realize that it's hard to recover the costs without assistance (taxes).
Interestingly, in some cases the amount of subsidy required may go down by eliminating fares and the associated collection and ticketing infrastructure. (That doesn't account for changes in ridership level. On the other hand, it also doesn't account for speeding up pickup times by not worrying about fare collection.)
On balance, it's likely more efficient to pay for public transit via approaches like taxes on businesses served by that transit (who will get increased business).
At this point, I don't think fares serve much of a revenue function; they serve as a filtering function, excluding people who can't afford them, and as a PR function, making transit get more votes.
Also, I have a lot of sympathy for "should we subsidize this or not" arguments, but any such argument also needs to take into account how much we subsidize roads. Gas taxes and registration fees don't fully cover the costs of roads, any more than transit fares fully cover the costs of transit.
For example, public transit takes people off the road and keeps commutes for other people reasonable (or at least makes them less bad). Which is why it makes sense for public transit to be subsidized by people working in a region even if they aren’t necessarily using it.
If public transit is good enough, it can even make it so people don’t need to purchase their own cars+gas+insurance, which is a huge cost savings. You can argue that this would be more fairly priced with fares than taxes, but again, cars off the road (less parking infra, less air pollution, etc). Only capturing this value via fares turns this from a global optimization problem for a region into a local optimization problem for each agent
Also some public transit does pretty well with fares anyway. Caltrain covers about 75% of its operating budget with fares (and parking and some other minor income sources).
The problem is there's no additional investment into the system to make it attractive to riders. The KC transit system is poorly designed and making it free isn't going to make it good. Better to keep charging the fare and use the revenue to improve service, then reevaluate when ridership is growing.
Transit investment has a LOT of catching up to do to even get close to the types of subsidizing and handouts we give drivers in every corner of this country.
> Transit investment has a LOT of catching up to do to even get close to the types of subsidizing and handouts we give drivers in every corner of this country.
That’s completely untrue. Yes we spend more on vehicles than transit. But way more people drive than use transit. There is not even a comparison.
In 2016 federal and state spending on road, transit, and water infrastructure was $416 billion: https://www.bidnet.com/resources/business-insights/us-govern.... Water is about 1/3 of that, leaving $276 billion for transportation. Spending on transit was $65 billion, or 1/4 the transportation spend.
Transit, however, accounts for just 5% of commutes: https://www.bts.gov/content/commute-mode-share-2015. 85% is driving alone or in a car pool. So we spend 3x as much on road infrastructure, but 17x as many people drive to work as take transit.
If you run the numbers on a cents of subsidy per passenger mile basis, busses and subway trains come out to $0.50+ per passenger mile. Roads are just $0.02 per passenger mile. Even adding in CO2 footprint and pollution (assuming that cars are all ICE) puts you at about $0.25.
> The problem is there's no additional investment into the system to make it attractive to riders.
It seems to me that public transit probably follows the law of demand fairly strongly, and reducing the price will almost certainly make it more attractive to riders. Of course this won't fix all problems with public transit, and I don't think that's the goal. It sounds like the goal is to increase ridership (and specifically to increase access to people who cannot easily afford the fares).
> Better to keep charging the fare and use the revenue to improve service
Or...use tax revenue to improve the service. That's the point, and is exactly what happens with most public roads.
Past experience shows generally that things like tolling or road pricing only become politically palatable if an alternative with existing capacity already exists. But funding such alternatives is hard and usually road pricing is proposed in part for the funding. So it's a very chicken vs egg situation.
it's true that public transportation has a net societal benefit, and that portion of the benefit should be paid for by all (through taxes or whatnot). however, fares shouldn't be zero.
riders should pay too, not just because we should bear our portion of the direct benefit (we should), but also because it gives us a sense of ownership for the system. those fare revenues give transit agencies funds to improve service, and riders legitimacy in demanding better service. public transit needs to get better in every dimension: frequency, timeliness, coverage, capacity, cleanliness, etc.
> but nobody asks the same of huge highways in the middle of nowhere.
Building roads should move from government to fully private entities for the same reason. California has built roads from nowhere to nowhere for no reason other than local assemblyman was focused on getting them done. On other hand critical roads that would have helped commute distance, improved public transporation systems are in a bad state.
Well, marginal dollar on road yields greater than marginal dollar to economy. Current political structures in the US means that marginal dollar on passenger rail is absorbed by the agents in charge of ensuring the rail existence. i.e. the $500 million railway and the $1 billion version of (say) the Central Subway will both yield probably the same economic benefit. Rent-seekers know that they can extract a large amount of economic rent because of government propensity to spend and political reasons that require governments to chase sunk costs.
Because of the large amount of roadway in America, the number of parties you can call to get more road built is pretty big (as Thiel says, competition is the enemy of profit). And the primary place you put more road is out where there's nothing. Because of the existence of a large network of roads, you could build roads where there is nothing and it's easy to get to where there's something.
Personally far prefer public transit so I'm pretty interested in ideas that change the structure of the interactions to pursue efficient construction.
Are you really willing to give up affordable transport (outside of your metropolis, anyway) and commercial goods? I know cars are Not Very Utopian or whatever, but public infrastructure has to have one of the better returns on investment with respect to tax dollars.
If you want to help the poor afford public transit, lower their taxes. Maybe not taking a substantial their working capital and giving it back to them when their old isn't such a bright idea either.
More than half of Americans end up not paying taxes, because their income is too low. If you're saying make it negative, sure, I'm all for that, but I think you are underestimating the poverty situation in America.
Low wage earners pay very little in taxes. I honestly thought that was common knowledge. Reducing their tax burned would have a negligible impact on their net income. It solves absolutely nothing.
One could cease to provide social security as it is structured if one replaced it with an alternative. We already know from US history that it is unwise (in a humanitarian sense) to trust the public to just save enough to retire comfortably (including having the foresight to keep their savings in assets that don't diminish in value before they are needed to offset continued life without labor into the system).
> The hope among lawmakers and transportation officials is that the city will recoup that expense, and more
A poor goal that's hard to quantify and often not met (especially for social services at smaller community levels). Just consider it a sunk cost up front and be honest about it. Then the debate can at least be about whether it's a worthy cost socially. Putting a monetary recoup hope unhelpfully moves the debate away from the social obligation side.
Compare this to Intercity Transit in Olympia, WA, which is going fare-free mostly because it needs to replace the fare collection system on older buses and install them on new ones, but
- the regional pass is on a path of deprecation in favor of a new system. So they'd need to buy two sets of fare collection systems in the span of a few years
- the cost to install these fare collection systems even once is more than what the agency currently collects in fares
- the fares only make up 1.5% of revenue anyways, so the impact is not as large as it would be in, say, New York where fares are north of 40% of revenue
It's hardly "public" transportation at all, if it's only useful to 1% of residents.
If public transportation is going to make any impact on the lives of Kansas City residents, it first has to be providing a useful service to them. That probably means expanding its reach, and putting more vehicles on existing lines. Making it free means that any expansion has become more expensive, and is now less likely to happen.
If public transportation is going to make any impact on the lives of Kansas City residents, it first has to be providing a useful service to them.
Why does that have to be "first?"
Why not make it free, and also make it useful?
If the goal is to increase ridership, making the rides free lowers the barrier for people in transit-served areas. Then you can subsequently or simultaneously expand it.
It makes no sense to keep charging during the expansion to some mythical point in the future where it will suddenly become free because it's reached a certain number of users.
The quoted sentence is almost a tautology. If it's not providing a useful service, how would it possibly be making a [positive] impact on their lives? (If it's making a positive impact on their lives, that is, by definition, useful I think.)
In this case "first" was used as a matter of logical antecedent. ("If P then Q", rather than "first P, and later Q".)
What if making it free makes it less useful to most people? There's another comment talking about how they became rolling homeless shelters when they went to free, and use dropped because of hygiene issues.
"Free" is an incentive to use it: cities outside of the US have had great results by making public transit free.
Also, you misread the statistic. That's commute to work, and only people who are 16 and up. Work is not the only thing public transportation is useful for.
Some people struggle paying for the monthly pass that they need. Other people have no idea how to pay for transit at all, and don't take it out of ignorance. Free helps both of these groups.
You have to be somewhat careful with statistics like these when dealing with cities like KC. Population information is frequently reported as 'Metro Area' as in the source you provided. The actual population of KCMO is < 500,000 and I'd wager access to public transit is useful to far greater than 1% of the population of KCMO proper.
FWIW, I live in the metro area and the buses are not super useful for me, but I used the streetcar frequently when I was working downtown. The streetcar is 'free' and is funded by a special tax along the streetcar line, that was voted for by the people that live along the line. It has been very popular and the city recently voted to expand it for several more miles. The latest announcement is expanding the 'free' to buses. I don't know if there is really a plan to pay for that yet.
> Making it free means that any expansion has become more expensive, and is now less likely to happen.
Making it free means more people will use it, which grows the interest group who will lobby to have it expanded.
If you think taxpayer groups advocating fiscal restraint have the edge over interest groups who want more spending, you'll need to explain why government budgets continually expand, even after adjusting for population growth and inflation.
1% of commuters is not the same thing 1% of trips.
For a less dense city like KC you can't really expect many commuters to use buses unless the city is carpet bombed with bus lines since the low density makes car ownership not suck (there's probably free parking at your job) and buses suck more (the bus is less likely to go where you need it). Bus lines do however generally do a good job going to places like schools, grocery stores, senior centers, etc, etc, and all sorts of places demographics other than "commuters" want to go.
If 99% of the Kansas City population are apparently getting by fine without public transport then why have it at all?
The problem is people seeing public transport as a virtue in itself rather than as a solution to a problem. I catch public transport every day, but I wish I didn’t have to. If I lived in Kansas City then I could drive to work, but instead I live somewhere that parking is too expensive, so I’m forced to catch a train that goes from somewhere I’m not to somewhere that isn’t where I want to be at a time that isn’t exactly when I want to go, and in the company of people that I didn’t choose to be with.
No public transport is a problem and so are cities where you can only get around in cars.
Places like that suck for pedestrians and also younger and older people and also people with disabilities who can't get around by car. Basically everyone who is reliant on parents or caretakers to drive them around.
Not to mention that compared to European-style cities, the vast plains of concrete parking lots and streets that don't even have sidewalks!? (why is this allowed to even be a thing) that make up some American cities are about as charming as... well... concrete parking lots.
In Gavin Newsom’s book Citizenville he talked about how, after becoming SF mayor, he discovered that fare collection cost as much as the revenue generated from fares. He started the process of making the bus free but was told by so many advisors that the busses would become “dumpsters on wheels,” from a combination of homeless people using them for shelter and people not respecting services that are free, that the plan was scrapped.
Pretty asinine of him to back off at that. Homeless people aren't paying fares already. There are also 60k homeless in LA while 1 million people ride ride metro a day; even if every single homeless person boarded metro one day it would be a blip on your radar compared to everyone else.
What fares hurt most are the working families in LA who pay $76 a month to ride the bus to work or school because there is no other choice. The fact that Newsom didn't connect this dot doesn't surprise me.
I think the argument was more that the bus system was already a pretty terrible experience, and making it more terrible would discourage even more people from taking the bus and create a downward spiral of quality.
The obvious correction is to make the bus experience less terrible, but I’m guessing that’s hard w/o increasing taxes or fares, both or which come w serious political and real world costs.
In Pittsburgh, travel within Downtown and the North Shore is free 24/7 on the "T" (light rail).
Buses still aren't free and the "T" doesn't cover a ton of Downtown Pittsburgh, though. The "T" has been like this for 20+ years and is an awesome resource.
Not really a major city, but Chapel Hill has done this for a long time. Bus service is frequent and reliable, and is used by people from all walks of life. High income professors and scientists will be on the same bus as the poor.
It seems paradoxical that making the service free would lead the rich to use it, but it's good quality and receives substantial funding from the area's high property taxes. There's no stigma to the bus in Chapel Hill since everyone uses it.
Readit News
The primary problem is that homeless people would get on the bus because it's warm, and would fall asleep. The busses became rolling homeless shelters.
This caused other people to take the bus less, because of public safety concerns, as well as simple quality-of-life issues like unpleasant smells.
Eventually it was scrapped.
But this issue has been returning as it's now common knowledge that Seattle bus drivers are instructed not to collect fares from anyone that declines to pay.
https://www.npr.org/2019/12/16/788435163/supreme-court-wont-...
Don't most people feel the same about this issue? What systemic problem is preventing a huge mass of people who agree on this from making a meaningful change happen?
allowing encampments won't probably solve that unless they somehow provide heat?
The worst part in my view about the free ride zone was when you would take a bus from downtown to outside the zone. You'd need to pay when you left. Which was hard to enforce, so I think a lot of people walked off. Even if you wanted to play it right, you needed to remember when to pay and when not. I remember hearing from drivers that they didn't care if you pay anyway.
Of course in recent years in towns like Seattle or SF there is always somebody trying to say that the homeless are responsible for the downfall of everything.
It actually ran for almost 40 years. It started in 1973, and ended in 2012.
In my experience, we don't have a particularly significant problem with homeless people and other "undesirables" on public transport. It probably helps that they have police patrols at most train stations at night.
I have a feeling the people complaining about the homeless would say the same things encountering "undesirables" on our PT though, it's just a disguised "I have to interact with poor people" argument.
Deleted Comment
We could also ban vagrants from being inside the city limits at night. Out of sight, out of mind.
More seriously though, take an Uber (or UberPool) if you want clean, sober public transport.
I still take the Metro but when bringing the wife and kid with me I get an earful of complaints.
Interestingly, this doesn't happen when we take the metro in Rio de Janeiro. Presumably because there are paid barriers to entry, and employees in the stations. Not sure if they have public mental treatment but they have public hospitals.
It's like a USSR joke.
For those of us living in the "outside" world where public transport are the norm, it is sometimes hard to understand why public transport is treated so differently in US.
1. Public transit is very slow relative to cars. This is because the U.S. was mostly built after the invention of the car, which means road capacity is higher, parking is easier, and distances are farther. Even in places with decent public transit, it takes 2-3x as long to get somewhere on public transit as driving a car.
2. The U.S. is a rich country and more people can afford their own car or to take a taxi/rideshare.
3. Public transit is less comfortable and convenient. It involves walking and waiting outside, possibly in bad weather, and possibly crowding. If you are carrying things with you or bringing small children, the hassle is magnified trying to maneuver through small spaces with large items quickly.
It is worth remembering that the US is much larger than all of Europe, is considerably less dense, and much of it was not well-developed until after automobiles were in wide use.
Public transit doesn't make logistical sense in much of the country. It does make sense in some places, of course, but it's less of a part of the national culture because there are so many areas where it's not a good idea.
I am an American and I don't get it either. I think it varies by geography, where else you might have lived, etc. I grew up on the east coast and always hated taxis, and didn't like to drive.
It also doesn't help that transit agencies in smaller cities have been degenerate. Their answer for declines in ridership is to consolidate and cut service, not improve the network, which leads to more decline, and more consolidation, until you end up with a place like many commenters in this thread where 1 bus comes every hour, usually following the path of a former streetcar right of way that was ripped out by monied interests 70 years ago.
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Here in vienna they take the public transport anyway since the ticket inspectors dont bother with them and the dedicated securities will throw them out anyway if they are forced to bother.
Worst case is that they spent some hours at a warm police station.
That's not really unexpected.
Nor do I actually see what's particularly "unethical" about riding free public transport when it's cold outside? If capacity on rolling stock is tight, four square feet of floor in a warm room should be eminently affordable for the world's richest country. And, no, the availability of shelters doesn't make homelessness so comfortable that it becomes a lifestyle choice, or do you know anybody who would want to exchange their job & home for a homeless shelter?
That makes me wonder if that would be a viable way to handle homelessness. Build mobile homeless shelters with beds and toilets. Have them stop at places with services for homeless persons like showers and laundry. I wonder if it would cost more than just paying for a rented apartment or hotel room?
> https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/solvable/solvable-podc...
Is this legal? From where I come, you can be booked if you intentionally refuse to pay fare.
I do feel for the homeless, and of course its a refuge etc, but its a public service and so can be removed from the tram/service.
Its not a difficult solution to have to just grab a free ticket which could take you to the end of the line. In which case, no ticket (even free) no pass.
I have a high opinion of Seattle in my mind, not that I've been, but to not think of ways around the problem and just throw it in the bin.. I dare say, it might not have been just the homeless problem.
> not to collect fares from anyone that declines to pay
How is that possible by the way ? Get on without paying ? Why would any driver do that anyway ?
-- Edit 2 -> I am coming from a EU & ASIA experience only
You can get away with almost anything that isn't assault. Smoke pot and drink on the street -- no problem. Urinate anywhere you like. Pitch a tent on a sidewalk and stay for weeks. Shoot up in parks and just throw your needles on the ground. Even things like shoplifting are not prosecuted.
I love German transit because it is so quiet and peaceful. Meanwhile in the US, I've seen people bring stereos onto transit and play them at full blast. I've seen people pee on subway platforms in full view of everyone. I've seen people fight on busses. I don't even know how crazy you'd have to act to actually get arrested, because it never seems to happen.
If you do come to Seattle, you'll find the streets teeming with the homeless who are completely undisturbed by the police. Just walking around the city, and trying to avoid the homeless, I've witnessed multiple instances of homeless shoplifting, hard drug use (injecting themselves, crack pipe, etc), bodily functions on the street, threatening behavior (homeless people simply screaming invective and threats at passersby), to say nothing of people camped in sleeping bags on sidewalks and tents.
You can absolutely get on buses without paying. Simply ignoring the driver and walking by is all that's required. The police will not be notified, nor would they respond if they were, nor would their response be effective deterrence if they did.
In LA, the bus driver doesn't want confrontation so just stays silent. People just board without tapping their card, although sometimes in rush hour you can't get to the tap reader so it's not always malicious. Security is only present at larger subway stations, not all, and is just there to break up fights. They don't ride the busses or trains, either.
And put yourself in a bus driver's shoes - if someone just walks on the bus, what are you going to do about it? Best case, you cause a major delay for something that is unlikely to be prosecuted. Anyways, from a practical standpoint, I think that Seattle's transit only gets about 1/3 of its funding from fares; at the end of the day their mandate is to move people around with as little friction as possible. Also, even if there was an incentive to be strict, the 'one RFID card to rule them all' system is pretty recent; plenty of people just wave some sort of ID or the paper transfer ticket that you get from paying cash. Checking all of those carefully would mean longer delays.
I guess it might sound odd, but Seattle is not what you might call an ideal city. Evading a bus fare is less criminal than plenty of petty things that the police have a stated policy of ignoring, such as actual theft, and it seems like the public transit agency makes do because it's not their job to deal with that sort of thing.
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Perhaps instead of waving our finger at free buses we should look for the root problem(s) that leave too many ppl with too few choices. Eliminating the no fare might have kept the marginalized off the buses, but it didn't address the problem. There still there. Somewhere.
I do think you are being malicious, though, and I think you know that you are just totally incorrect.
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If you mean paying for themselves with fares, then no, as most public transportation does not cover the costs with just fares [0]. For example, I'm in Seattle currently and the fares only cover 20-40% of costs [1]. Not that I am complaining as I take the bus to work everyday, but it's not a slam dunk case of invest more because it has a positive return on investment.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio
[1]: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/fare-revenu...
What a lot of those same people don't understand, is that taxes pay for the road systems.
The people that understand public transit realize that it's hard to recover the costs without assistance (taxes).
On balance, it's likely more efficient to pay for public transit via approaches like taxes on businesses served by that transit (who will get increased business).
At this point, I don't think fares serve much of a revenue function; they serve as a filtering function, excluding people who can't afford them, and as a PR function, making transit get more votes.
Also, I have a lot of sympathy for "should we subsidize this or not" arguments, but any such argument also needs to take into account how much we subsidize roads. Gas taxes and registration fees don't fully cover the costs of roads, any more than transit fares fully cover the costs of transit.
For example, public transit takes people off the road and keeps commutes for other people reasonable (or at least makes them less bad). Which is why it makes sense for public transit to be subsidized by people working in a region even if they aren’t necessarily using it.
If public transit is good enough, it can even make it so people don’t need to purchase their own cars+gas+insurance, which is a huge cost savings. You can argue that this would be more fairly priced with fares than taxes, but again, cars off the road (less parking infra, less air pollution, etc). Only capturing this value via fares turns this from a global optimization problem for a region into a local optimization problem for each agent
Also some public transit does pretty well with fares anyway. Caltrain covers about 75% of its operating budget with fares (and parking and some other minor income sources).
Transit investment has a LOT of catching up to do to even get close to the types of subsidizing and handouts we give drivers in every corner of this country.
That’s completely untrue. Yes we spend more on vehicles than transit. But way more people drive than use transit. There is not even a comparison.
In 2016 federal and state spending on road, transit, and water infrastructure was $416 billion: https://www.bidnet.com/resources/business-insights/us-govern.... Water is about 1/3 of that, leaving $276 billion for transportation. Spending on transit was $65 billion, or 1/4 the transportation spend.
Transit, however, accounts for just 5% of commutes: https://www.bts.gov/content/commute-mode-share-2015. 85% is driving alone or in a car pool. So we spend 3x as much on road infrastructure, but 17x as many people drive to work as take transit.
If you run the numbers on a cents of subsidy per passenger mile basis, busses and subway trains come out to $0.50+ per passenger mile. Roads are just $0.02 per passenger mile. Even adding in CO2 footprint and pollution (assuming that cars are all ICE) puts you at about $0.25.
Transit is incredibly expensive.
It seems to me that public transit probably follows the law of demand fairly strongly, and reducing the price will almost certainly make it more attractive to riders. Of course this won't fix all problems with public transit, and I don't think that's the goal. It sounds like the goal is to increase ridership (and specifically to increase access to people who cannot easily afford the fares).
> Better to keep charging the fare and use the revenue to improve service
Or...use tax revenue to improve the service. That's the point, and is exactly what happens with most public roads.
Cars are massively subsidized.
riders should pay too, not just because we should bear our portion of the direct benefit (we should), but also because it gives us a sense of ownership for the system. those fare revenues give transit agencies funds to improve service, and riders legitimacy in demanding better service. public transit needs to get better in every dimension: frequency, timeliness, coverage, capacity, cleanliness, etc.
Building roads should move from government to fully private entities for the same reason. California has built roads from nowhere to nowhere for no reason other than local assemblyman was focused on getting them done. On other hand critical roads that would have helped commute distance, improved public transporation systems are in a bad state.
Because of the large amount of roadway in America, the number of parties you can call to get more road built is pretty big (as Thiel says, competition is the enemy of profit). And the primary place you put more road is out where there's nothing. Because of the existence of a large network of roads, you could build roads where there is nothing and it's easy to get to where there's something.
Personally far prefer public transit so I'm pretty interested in ideas that change the structure of the interactions to pursue efficient construction.
If you want to help the poor afford public transit, lower their taxes. Maybe not taking a substantial their working capital and giving it back to them when their old isn't such a bright idea either.
A poor goal that's hard to quantify and often not met (especially for social services at smaller community levels). Just consider it a sunk cost up front and be honest about it. Then the debate can at least be about whether it's a worthy cost socially. Putting a monetary recoup hope unhelpfully moves the debate away from the social obligation side.
- the regional pass is on a path of deprecation in favor of a new system. So they'd need to buy two sets of fare collection systems in the span of a few years
- the cost to install these fare collection systems even once is more than what the agency currently collects in fares
- the fares only make up 1.5% of revenue anyways, so the impact is not as large as it would be in, say, New York where fares are north of 40% of revenue
https://www.intercitytransit.com/zerofare
https://censusreporter.org/profiles/31000US28140-kansas-city...
It's hardly "public" transportation at all, if it's only useful to 1% of residents.
If public transportation is going to make any impact on the lives of Kansas City residents, it first has to be providing a useful service to them. That probably means expanding its reach, and putting more vehicles on existing lines. Making it free means that any expansion has become more expensive, and is now less likely to happen.
Why does that have to be "first?"
Why not make it free, and also make it useful?
If the goal is to increase ridership, making the rides free lowers the barrier for people in transit-served areas. Then you can subsequently or simultaneously expand it.
It makes no sense to keep charging during the expansion to some mythical point in the future where it will suddenly become free because it's reached a certain number of users.
In this case "first" was used as a matter of logical antecedent. ("If P then Q", rather than "first P, and later Q".)
Also, you misread the statistic. That's commute to work, and only people who are 16 and up. Work is not the only thing public transportation is useful for.
FWIW, I live in the metro area and the buses are not super useful for me, but I used the streetcar frequently when I was working downtown. The streetcar is 'free' and is funded by a special tax along the streetcar line, that was voted for by the people that live along the line. It has been very popular and the city recently voted to expand it for several more miles. The latest announcement is expanding the 'free' to buses. I don't know if there is really a plan to pay for that yet.
Making it free means more people will use it, which grows the interest group who will lobby to have it expanded.
If you think taxpayer groups advocating fiscal restraint have the edge over interest groups who want more spending, you'll need to explain why government budgets continually expand, even after adjusting for population growth and inflation.
For a less dense city like KC you can't really expect many commuters to use buses unless the city is carpet bombed with bus lines since the low density makes car ownership not suck (there's probably free parking at your job) and buses suck more (the bus is less likely to go where you need it). Bus lines do however generally do a good job going to places like schools, grocery stores, senior centers, etc, etc, and all sorts of places demographics other than "commuters" want to go.
The problem is people seeing public transport as a virtue in itself rather than as a solution to a problem. I catch public transport every day, but I wish I didn’t have to. If I lived in Kansas City then I could drive to work, but instead I live somewhere that parking is too expensive, so I’m forced to catch a train that goes from somewhere I’m not to somewhere that isn’t where I want to be at a time that isn’t exactly when I want to go, and in the company of people that I didn’t choose to be with.
Places like that suck for pedestrians and also younger and older people and also people with disabilities who can't get around by car. Basically everyone who is reliant on parents or caretakers to drive them around.
Not to mention that compared to European-style cities, the vast plains of concrete parking lots and streets that don't even have sidewalks!? (why is this allowed to even be a thing) that make up some American cities are about as charming as... well... concrete parking lots.
WTF!?
That's freakin insane.
If that's true, why do they keep raising the fares and upgrading the fareboxes!?
If that's true, the SF city gov is effectively collecting money and lighting it on fire as a way to "throttle" bad behaviour on the bus!?
To pay for the new fareboxes, of course.
Just as Uber is a way to get away from "bus people", fares are away to get away from "free bus people".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-iWBCL12Qg
What fares hurt most are the working families in LA who pay $76 a month to ride the bus to work or school because there is no other choice. The fact that Newsom didn't connect this dot doesn't surprise me.
The obvious correction is to make the bus experience less terrible, but I’m guessing that’s hard w/o increasing taxes or fares, both or which come w serious political and real world costs.
Buses still aren't free and the "T" doesn't cover a ton of Downtown Pittsburgh, though. The "T" has been like this for 20+ years and is an awesome resource.
And also in stark contrast with progressive Portland, which recently hired a gaggle of new fare-enforcement workers: https://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/2019/10/trimet-beefing-...
It seems paradoxical that making the service free would lead the rich to use it, but it's good quality and receives substantial funding from the area's high property taxes. There's no stigma to the bus in Chapel Hill since everyone uses it.