Great to visualize, even if it is not entirely successful.
Seems like this needs to happen.
Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation
11–20 of 401 posts
Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation
#12Unfortunately, I think this is a step backwards. According to the US Census, about 1% of commuters in Kansas City use public transportation.
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.
Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation
#13Doesn't literal "no cost" public transportation lead to issues with folks abusing the service as a place to hang out? Also, does the service never get congested in other ways? I'd argue that public transportation should be paid for when congested, so that users are incented to shift their use to other times.
Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation
#14> 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…
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
Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
> 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 specif…
The question is whether or not $9M annually would be better off making more useful transit. As it stands, very little of KC is covered by frequent transit throughout the day, and in fact much of it is covered by services that don't run the entire day. https://ridekc.org/assets/uploads/route-maps/SystemMap.pdf
A free bus that runs every hour is still going to screw you over if you mistime your walk to the bus stop and it leaves without you. The bus not being available at noon is not made better because it is free, because there's still no bus to take.
Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation
#16Unfortunately, I think this is a step backwards. According to the US Census, about 1% of commuters in Kansas City use public transportation. 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 s…
"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.
Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation
#17Great 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.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio
[1]: https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/fare-revenu...
Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation
#18Unfortunately, I think this is a step backwards. According to the US Census, about 1% of commuters in Kansas City use public transportation. 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 s…
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.
Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation
#19Great 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.
I'd rather see nothing being subsidized.
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.
Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation
#20Great 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.
> 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.