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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

#261

Post by asdff »

munificent wrote: post #208
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.

> it is sometimes hard to understand why public transport is treated so differently in US. It is worth remembering that the US is much larger than all of Europe, is considerably less dense, and much of it was not well-developed until after automobiles were in wide use. Public transit doesn't make logistical sense in much of the country. It does make sense in some places, of course, but it's less of a part of the nati…

On the grand scale, sure. That's the conclusion you'd reach if you average all the empty land in the U.S. where absolutely no one lives. But just like europe there are dense places in the U.S.

Much of the U.S. and many suburbs were developed with streetcars in mind that were later removed in favor of private car ownership.

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

#262

Post by sitkack »

julienb_sea wrote: post #64
runarberg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The measure was sold largely as a general flipping of the bird towards King and neighboring counties by the rest of the state. Generally there is opposition from eastern Washington for car tabs going to fund Sound Transit's investments on the western corridor, which doesn't really do anything to benefit those that don't live in the western corridor. And yes, I am aware that King net exports money to the east. I'm not…

You might want to reference [1], as you are flagrantly incorrect.

https://www.dol.wa.gov/vehicleregistration/docs/VehicleFees....

> If you live in the Sound Transit RTA district of King, Pierce, or Snohomish counties, you may be required to pay an RTA tax that helps pay for local mass-transit projects.

Municipalitis tacks on an additional fee, Seattle's is 80, Spokane's is 20. The only way for someone to be paying $500 in Wenatchee is if they owned 4+ cars.

[1] http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_...

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

#263

Post by asdff »

baddox wrote: post #148
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).

> What a lot of those same people don't understand, is that taxes pay for the road systems. I don't think those people are failing to understand anything. They're just people who use the road systems and don't use public transit.

And those same people fail to realize the fact that they are moving at all in their car in traffic is thanks to those 50 people crammed in the bus in the next lane. Could you imagine if the million people who take LA metro daily suddenly switched to cars? The city would functionally break.

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

#264

Post by dint »

g_langenderfer wrote: post #182
opportune wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of the ROI can be captured with fares. For example, public transit takes people off the road and keeps commutes for other people reasonable (or at least makes them less bad). Which is why it makes sense for public transit to be subsidized by people working in a region even if they aren’t necessarily using it. If public transit is good enough, it can even make it so people don’t need to purchase their own cars…

A large portion of routes are low demand and have few passengers. Does an empty bus reduce congestion? I'm not sure what percentage of routes are like this, but I assume it's non-trivial because predicting demand is a tough problem.

By this logic: A large portion of roads are low-demand and have few drivers. Why do my taxes subsidize the upkeep of those roads, and not just the major highways?

Low-demand, niche routes are necessary for a public transit system to work for its users. Sure, 80% of my trips might be on 2 or 3 routes. But without access to the handful of routes I ride the other 20% of the time, the system wouldn’t work for me, and I’d need a car to get around.

For example: when I take the bus later than ~9pm, I’m often one of just a few people riding it. But knowing I have the option to take the bus late at night is critical to the system feeling reliable. This allows me to live without a car.

Hopefully, this effect reduces congestion in my city, as more people are enabled to live low-car or car-free.

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

#265

Post by asdff »

g_langenderfer wrote: post #182
opportune wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all of the ROI can be captured with fares. For example, public transit takes people off the road and keeps commutes for other people reasonable (or at least makes them less bad). Which is why it makes sense for public transit to be subsidized by people working in a region even if they aren’t necessarily using it. If public transit is good enough, it can even make it so people don’t need to purchase their own cars…

A large portion of routes are low demand and have few passengers. Does an empty bus reduce congestion? I'm not sure what percentage of routes are like this, but I assume it's non-trivial because predicting demand is a tough problem.

Feeder lines are important. If they didn't have low demand lines to far flung areas, those people who take advantage of these lines would have to use cars and contribute to traffic by the time they get to the city core with everyone else.

Demand predictions are pretty robust these days. Civil engineering is an entire science.

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

#266

Post by jessaustin »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #120
anon73044 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regressive sales and vice taxes. j/k Seriously though, this year is the first I've ever made over median income and I'm happy to pay taxes if they can actually improve QOL rather than be used to subsidize and oil company or two

Nobody needs to consume alcohol or tobacco to survive. Tax it to what the market will bear.

Nobody needs kale or skateboards either. There are other vegetables and personal transportation available. Why not tax them to "what the market will bear"? What does that even mean? If kale consumption drops by 5% is the market "bearing"? 50%? 98%? Why don't we just tax everything except your favorite things to buy?

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

#267

Post by asdff »

rayiner wrote: post #56
huebomont wrote: post #3

Earlier 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…

> Transit investment has a LOT of catching up to do to even get close to the types of subsidizing and handouts we give drivers in every corner of this country. That’s completely untrue. Yes we spend more on vehicles than transit. But way more people drive than use transit. There is not even a comparison. In 2016 federal and state spending on road, transit, and water infrastructure was $416 billion: https://www.bidnet…

Transit is not something you look to make money on. That's precicely why every private transit agency has failed in the U.S. You invest in transit because it creates economic opportunities, it's environmentally responsible, and it's the best way to move people in and out of a congested city. You ever try driving into Manhattan or through downtown LA?

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

#268

Post by asdff »

noneckbeard wrote: post #136

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 pl…

Pretty asinine of him to back off at that. Homeless people aren't paying fares already. There are also 60k homeless in LA while 1 million people ride ride metro a day; even if every single homeless person boarded metro one day it would be a blip on your radar compared to everyone else.

What fares hurt most are the working families in LA who pay $76 a month to ride the bus to work or school because there is no other choice. The fact that Newsom didn't connect this dot doesn't surprise me.

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

#269

Post by noneckbeard »

carapace wrote: post #251
noneckbeard wrote: post #136

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 pl…

> fare collection cost as much as the revenue generated from fares WTF!? That's freakin insane. If that's true, why do they keep raising the fares and upgrading the fareboxes!? If that's true, the SF city gov is effectively collecting money and lighting it on fire as a way to "throttle" bad behaviour on the bus!?

Could be that they’re trying to turn fare collection into a revenue generator, but not sure. I recommend his book, it’s a pretty interesting read!

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

#270

Post by asdff »

kick wrote: post #16
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…

"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.

Some people struggle paying for the monthly pass that they need. Other people have no idea how to pay for transit at all, and don't take it out of ignorance. Free helps both of these groups.
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