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

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

#131

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bobthepanda wrote: post #51
baddox wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Or, you could use the tax money that you could use for free rides (that only makes bad service marginally more useful) and put it towards more useful service? It's not as if this money came out of a box labeled "only for free fares." Right now this is a $9M opportunity cost, annually. To get both the free fares and $9M of better transit would double the cost of this, but then you'd have to ask why not use all $18M on…

> To get both the free fares and $9M of better transit would double the cost of this, but then you'd have to ask why not use all $18M on better transit, etc.

But then there is a reason for that -- spending has diminishing returns. If you have some money and you could use it to serve an area with 1500 riders then that may be worth it, but once you've served it, the next best unserved area which costs just as much to serve would only have 750 riders, which may not be worth it. The point where you stop is where the value of the service no longer exceeds the cost.

And the value of eliminating fares has a major comparative advantage because it allows you to eliminate the cost of collecting fares, which is typically a huge fraction of the money collected in fares. Especially when the fares are already subsidized (which they are most everywhere), because then you still have the pay the full cost of the collection infrastructure but generate much less revenue. In some places the cost of collection can exceed the total revenue from the fares. And even if you beat break-even, the little amount left over is hardly worth losing the benefits of having fewer cars on the road.

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

#132

Post by runarberg »

troydavis wrote: post #59
runarberg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need to solve it. But there are numerous tried and proven ways of significantly reducing homelessness. We could start by evaluating and employing some of these.

That statement is the equivalent of inserting “just” into technical advice, as in “It’s just code” or “Just scale out.” If it was that simple, the problem would have been solved. Here’s the laundry list of things Seattle has tried and is trying: https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness , https://www.seattle.gov/homelessness/addressing-the-crisis

Note that homelessness is not a problem of the same scale as Seattle in many cities around the country, and around the world.

These cities have in turn some measures and initiatives that are proven solutions that reduces homelessness. Note that not all of them could work in Seattle, but some of them might.

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

#133

Post by patcon »

astrodust wrote: post #119
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?

That's because your transit system is taking up the slack in other parts of your municipal system that are failing, not because public transit is bad. It's because "fuck poor people" is happening across a broad spectrum.

This. imho transit ridership bears more of the burden of the "fuck poor people" undercurrent of America.

It's maybe the snowy after image of the American Dream: Anyone can make [if they work hard] / It must be their fault if they don't make it.

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

#134

Post by jcranmer »

nostromo wrote: post #63
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).

Ridiculous. Americans are practical like anyone else. Transit in the US tends to be (much) slower than driving, so people drive. In the few places where transit actually works, like New York, Americans use it.

But there's no political will to fix transit, because that would help poor people who depend on it, and that money would be much better spent on all the rich people.

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

#135

Post by runarberg »

nostromo wrote: post #65
CuriousSkeptic wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need to solve all of homelessness, just providing something competitive with a bus could be a start one would think.

Seattle has tried that. People with chemical addictions will not go to shelters because shelters don't allow you to be drunk or high. So shelter beds go unused, and people shoot up and drink in parks, on sidewalks, and on busses.

If true, then there is something wrong with the policy that all shelters need to be sober. Introduce some number of shelters—in parts of the city where high drug usage is a problem—that include safe use spaces (i.e. with medical access, clean needles and dispose boxes, no drug arrest policy etc.)

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

#136

Post by noneckbeard »

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.

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

#137

Post by edmundsauto »

hanniabu wrote: post #116
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.

Yeah, how are we supposed to turn a blind eye and ignore the homeless if those pesky people keep coming into sight /s

People are less interested in using public transit when it smells. That doesn't imply anything other than people don't like to use things that smell bad.

I'm not implying anything about homeless people other than IME they don't have the hygiene of a housed person. And if you read the scope of my comment, I was specifically addressing their strategy suggestion of increasing usage.

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

#138

Post by bobthepanda »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #131
bobthepanda wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you could use the tax money that you could use for free rides (that only makes bad service marginally more useful) and put it towards more useful service? It's not as if this money came out of a box labeled "only for free fares." Right now this is a $9M opportunity cost, annually. To get both the free fares and $9M of better transit would double the cost of this, but then you'd have to ask why not use all $18M on…

> To get both the free fares and $9M of better transit would double the cost of this, but then you'd have to ask why not use all $18M on better transit, etc. But then there is a reason for that -- spending has diminishing returns. If you have some money and you could use it to serve an area with 1500 riders then that may be worth it, but once you've served it, the next best unserved area which costs just as much to s…

I would argue that KC is nowhere near diminishing returns on transit spending. Right now, despite having lower fares and higher metro population than, say, Rochester NY, KC has less than half the transit ridership per capita.

https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/Resources/resources/...

Off peak travel is generally also much less expensive, since you already have the buses and drivers doing peak-only shifts generally spend the middle of the day just sitting around. KC could run a lot more all-day service and garner a lot more ridership.

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

#139

Post by edmundsauto »

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.

Are you doubting that homeless people tend to have worse hygiene? Or that people don't want to use public transit when it smells bad?

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

#140

Post by andys627 »

scarejunba wrote: post #25
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.

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 amoun…

Do you have any sources for this info?
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