51–60 of 236 posts
Why not make it just free for everybody? Public transportation typically has profit margins of -50% to -90% anyway... just take it to -100% and get a huge boost in ridership! (And probably save some expenses relating to collecting payment/enforcement.)
Everything has a cost, and making something (virtually) cost 0 only transfers the cost elsewhere
Hong Kong makes 2 billion a year on public transportation. They did that by giving the land around the station to the transportation agency, so they lease it out long term, and that pays for all the trains and operations. They charge a token fee for using public transportation. I'd prefer to see real public support, rather than a business/profit justification for lower fares, but in the current greed-valued world I'l…
This system is just amounts to indirectly funding public transportation with taxation, just from taxing local properties via rent instead of funding it from general tax revenue. Perhaps it results in more public support for some reason, I'm unfamiliar with the politics of Hong Kong.
In Slovakia trains are free for students and seniors. [0] Most people see this very negatively. [0] https://www.slovakrail.sk/en/zero-fare.html
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This system is just amounts to indirectly funding public transportation with taxation, just from taxing local properties via rent instead of funding it from general tax revenue. Perhaps it results in more public support for some reason, I'm unfamiliar with the politics of Hong Kong.
Usually the alternative is that the money from building rent is just going into the pocket of some real estate company. So it’s kinda like a big tax on real estate companies (which sounds like a hell of a good policy to me. Rent seekers and all that)
You could similarly run the police at a profit instead of being a cost center by gifting 100 hectares around every police station to the police, and have them collect rent on it. That doesn't make sense either.
For one, it creates a perverse incentive where the government can't let property prices fall for the common good least their public transport (or police) services would go out of business.
Hong Kong famously has a problem with this. It's a relatively low-tax regime with absurdly high housing prices, because they raise a much larger part of their revenue by taxing land than most other similarly developed areas.
Why not make it just free for everybody? Public transportation typically has profit margins of -50% to -90% anyway... just take it to -100% and get a huge boost in ridership! (And probably save some expenses relating to collecting payment/enforcement.)
Except a boost in ridership is absolutely not what you’d want in an overpopulated city like Paris. Subway is so bad i’ve already witnessed people waiting for trains from outside the station itself. in the peak hours you often have to skip two or three trains because they’re packed.
Why not make it just free for everybody? Public transportation typically has profit margins of -50% to -90% anyway... just take it to -100% and get a huge boost in ridership! (And probably save some expenses relating to collecting payment/enforcement.)
One of the major issues around offering free public transportation is funding. Public purses are pretty strained everywhere and additional taxes are unlikely to be accepted. Physically, there's also a problem in that systems are simply not geared for the expected increase in ridership which in itself is sufficiently large enough to cause problems but not meaningful enough to cause a significant dent in car use. I bel…
One way to balance between free ride abuse and people not using the trains because they have a car is to give residents the "average" number of rides a commuter would use in a week to them every week for free. Maybe even give people who don't own motor vehicles more free rides as a "thank you" from the city for not making them maintain the road and parking infrastructure for you.
But any city that is not expanding its transit to meet demand is crippling its own economic potential. Its a shame that pretty much every US city is guilty of this but most of the US government is designed to self-sabotage things like publicly run transit anyway.
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Except a boost in ridership is absolutely not what you’d want in an overpopulated city like Paris. Subway is so bad i’ve already witnessed people waiting for trains from outside the station itself. in the peak hours you often have to skip two or three trains because they’re packed.
Paris had 2.9 million people in 1921 and 2.2 million today. Is it really overpopulated?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris#Historic...
Why not make it just free for everybody? Public transportation typically has profit margins of -50% to -90% anyway... just take it to -100% and get a huge boost in ridership! (And probably save some expenses relating to collecting payment/enforcement.)
Why not aim for 0% profit, and keep public transit self sustaining? Everything has a cost, and making something (virtually) cost 0 only transfers the cost elsewhere
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previous studies done showed that making it free did not result in significant uptick in usage[1]. It really comes down to, does it go where you want from where you want when you want and all this on a timely basis. Hence the big reason buses always win over rail as they can adapt to changing needs. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-can...
> the big reason buses always win over rail A bus from where I live to London takes about 5.5 hours, compared to 2 hours on a train. I can also get a meal served on a train and work comfortably at a large table, which I can't do a bus. Busses definitely don't always win over trains. I think they hardly ever do.
And London has the best bus system in the UK
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Why not aim for 0% profit, and keep public transit self sustaining? Everything has a cost, and making something (virtually) cost 0 only transfers the cost elsewhere
I agree. Let's start charging cars every time they use streets and highway based on their mass and space used.