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Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

citylab.com

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Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

#31

Post by shadowgovt »

stretchwithme wrote: post #19
matchbok wrote: post #2

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.

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.

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).

Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

#33

Post by noobermin »

nostromo wrote: post #23

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…

That is essentially treating the symptoms, not the cause.

Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

#34

Post by freeone3000 »

stretchwithme wrote: post #19
matchbok wrote: post #2

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.

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.

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.

Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

#35

Post by rshnotsecure »

Quick question, has anyone here heard of a very odd company in Kansas City called...https://joesdatacenter.com.

All of the staff on LinkedIn exist...but there are only 3 of them and apparently the founder and CEO just got out of community college?

They claim to have at least a few ten thousands of floor space, so that must be minimum $25 million in server capital assuming all are used.

They also for some reason broadcast incredibly interesting weather data from the top of the building: https://joesdatacenter.com/hvac/

I currently work in San Antonio as a short term contractor for a SOC (many military bases and sizeable banks here) and last night an incident was raised and a breach somewhat close to being declared and we are getting pinged is it Tsinghua? is it APT 17? to which we have to respond seriously on Slack...no it’s “Joes Datacenter” ASN 19969 out of Kansas City.

Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

#36

Post by edmundsauto »

reaperducer wrote: post #18
lacker wrote: post #12

Unfortunately, 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 k…

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.

Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

#37

Post by standardUser »

stretchwithme wrote: post #19
matchbok wrote: post #2

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.

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.

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.

Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

#38

Post by zucked »

stretchwithme wrote: post #19
matchbok wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Lower... what taxes, exactly? Income? Property?

Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

#39

Post by baddox »

bobthepanda wrote: post #15
baddox wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But the point is to offer rides for free and use other money (presumably tax money) to maintain (and hopefully invest in more) infrastructure. I don't see how the current quality of the KC infrastructure is relevant: if it's bad, then they clearly the $9m in fare revenue isn't cutting it, and they already need tax revenue to make it better. If they can't or don't get the tax revenue they need, then that's definitely a problem!

Re: Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

#40

Post by noodlesUK »

downerending wrote: post #10

This is awesome. 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-...

The sad thing is, TriMet (Portland public transit) used to be free downtown as well...
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