Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

citylab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 401 posts

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

#71

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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…

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.

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

#72

Post by julienb_sea »

reaperducer wrote: post #60
edmundsauto wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've seen people speculate about homeless use of transit as a deterrent to ridership, but I've never seen any actual numbers on that, and I think it's mostly overblown. Either way, homeless people making homes on transit isn't a transportation issue, it's a law enforcement/social services issue.

When people abuse the transportation system, its definitely a transportation issue. Introducing and enforcing fares does mean people will think twice before abusing the system. Reduced or free-fare cards can easily be issued to people who seek them out, expanding availability while maintaining enforceable usage guidelines.

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

#73

Post by madengr »

jcranmer wrote: post #61
ksec wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of the distaste for public transit in the US is ultimately motivated by a "fuck poor people" mentality, especially in regards to bus transit (rail systems tend to attract a somewhat wealthier clientele).

All you have to do is search “KC bus shooting” on YouTube.

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

#74

Post by petermcneeley »

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…

We can't have free transit because people without homes will use it to get out of the cold.

It's like a USSR joke.

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

#75

Post by nimbius »

proc0 wrote: post #53
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…

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.

>Most of these people act that way because no one has taught them any better

Have you seen homeless people? they are elderly invalids and the mentally ill who were brought upon us by Reagans neoliberal policy of deinstitutionalization. They are destitute former criminals barred from any future gainful employment by the checkbox on the job application. They are addicts who since Nixon have been stacked like cordwood as casualties of the US war on drugs, and since the stabilization act of 1942 unable to afford treatment. These arent people who've simply forgotten the golden fucking rule, they are the last rungs of society that America as a whole has chosen to intentionally ignore. Investment housing in the US and NIMBY laws basically mean sidewalks in the summer and busses in the winter to keep from freezing to death, as no city is daring enough to cross the third rail of homeless housing to which their constituents so ardently object.

On the rare chance these homeless people are just loud and rude, this is possible. In a world where you have to scrape dumpsters for meals and risk getting mugged on the streets you call home...in a world where you're in constant filth and every passer-by has collectively decided to shun you instead of help you...yeah, you can lose a bit of your sense of civic duty in the process.

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

#76

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #66
jcranmer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the distaste for public transit in the US is ultimately motivated by a "fuck poor people" mentality, especially in regards to bus transit (rail systems tend to attract a somewhat wealthier clientele).

I'm sorry, I have to push back here. Is it a "fuck poor people" mentality, as you state, to not want to be near people who smell of urine, excrement, BO, stale drug smells? This is simply the modern nose being accustomed to sanitary smells, can you really say it's a "fuck poor people mentality" if it's down to literally never smelling those smells except on public transport?

There is some of that, but some of it is just snobbery...meaning kids are made fun of if they take the bus rather than driving in their own car or getting a ride from their parents. It starts from an early age, and isn’t entirely related to disgust.

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #76
Dumblydorr wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I have to push back here. Is it a "fuck poor people" mentality, as you state, to not want to be near people who smell of urine, excrement, BO, stale drug smells? This is simply the modern nose being accustomed to sanitary smells, can you really say it's a "fuck poor people mentality" if it's down to literally never smelling those smells except on public transport?

There is some of that, but some of it is just snobbery...meaning kids are made fun of if they take the bus rather than driving in their own car or getting a ride from their parents. It starts from an early age, and isn’t entirely related to disgust.

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by jeromegv »

papreclip wrote: post #68
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…

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

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?

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

#79

Post by seanmcdirmid »

runarberg wrote: post #54
milkytron wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I think exactly that happened in the last Washington state election. The state legislator put on the ballot a measure that would limit the amount the state could tax each car owner. Proponents would claim that the tax was going towards public transit infrastructure (like Sound Transit 3) and that it was unfair to tax car owners for that. The measure was approved.

It wasn’t the state legislators who put that on the ballot, but anti-tax activist Tim Eyman. We’ve been down this route before with property taxes and even car tabs. Note that a previous county-wide initiative approved the car tabs in the first place (in those counties only), they were then repealed by this state-wide one. Amazing how the vote can swing when sampling grows beyond King and parts of Snohomish and pierce county.

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

#80

Post by smileysteve »

exabrial wrote: post #70

> “I believe that people have a right to move about this city,” KC Resident here. Of course you have a right to move about the city! You don't have a right for someone else to pay for it though. Interesting choice of words.

There's significant thought that by helping people get to where they want (by not requiring a car, by not needing insurance to get somewhere, reducing traffic strategically) that transportation in many ways helps pay for itself.

Much like how main streets with sidewalks get random foot traffic but mini-malls promote driving to a store, picking up and leaving. (this very much extends to uber eats and delivery canabalizing even mini malls)

Post reply on HN