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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

#151

Post by nostromo »

epicureanideal wrote: post #142
farss wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the free fare - it's the abysmal lack of shelter options and the attempts by cities to criminalize encampments and force people to find somewhere indoors to avoid arrest.

What is it that's preventing us from forcing our politicians to offer better options? I would vote for a solution to this, and even donate money to it, if enough other people were doing the same. Don't most people feel the same about this issue? What systemic problem is preventing a huge mass of people who agree on this from making a meaningful change happen?

It's just a much harder problem to solve than you realize it is.

The truth is a lot of the homeless people that aren't in shelters choose not to go to shelters. Why? The biggest reason is because shelters don't allow drugs or alcohol, and if you're an addict that's an immediate pass.

There are other reasons too. Sometimes couples want shelter together, but most are separated by gender (and for good reason: to prevent sexual assaults). Sometimes a person has a pet, and pets are generally not accepted at shelters.

So, what do you do? Allow people to shoot up in a shelter? Or deny heroin addicts shelter? As I said, it's not obvious how to fix this. It's definitely not just a "build more beds" situation in most cities.

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

#152

Post by Gabriel_Martin »

dominotw wrote: post #126
buzzkillington wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being assaulted is privilege now? I live down town. There's a homeless man on drugs who screams at the top of his lungs at random people every so often until the police come and pick him up. If you would rather he not be out of sight and out of mind please send me your address, I will buy him a one way ticket so he can camp out in your back yard.

> Not being assaulted is privilege now? wasn't it always?

In the USA, and seemingly most other modern liberal democracies, that being true is the crux. "Equal protection" seems damaged beyond all repair, noting also that now this imbalance has now seemingly blown up in the face of the USA, India, and the UK. The justice systems of these countries are systemically failing with huge miscarriages of justice abounding. So to make a long story long regarding your question.. Yes.

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

#153

Post by mrtweetyhack »

pkaye wrote: post #146
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.

For me its infrequent and unpredictable bus timings, limited bus stops, long travel times. If I took buses to work it would take 1-1.5 hours to reach my work. When I drive, it takes 30-45min. And the bus is available only once an hour during peak hours.

Unpredictable? It's literally on a schedule.

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

#154

Post by AnthonyMouse »

huebomont wrote: post #44
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…

Better and more frequent service is the number one ridership driver. Free transit is a nice perk but there's some convincing argument and survey data indicating that most people aren't avoiding transit because of the price, but because of perceived lack of utility or reliability. (And yes, obviously continue to use tax revenue as well, just like we charge tolls for some roads but that doesn't pay for all their upkeep…

The thing about eliminating fares and having more frequent service is that they're complementary. To have more frequent service you need enough riders to justify it; eliminating fares gives you at least some increased ridership.

Suppose you have an existing A line with 1500 riders and you're considering building a B line, but you need 1000 riders to justify it and you predict there will only be 900, so you don't build it. However, if you eliminated fares then you might expect 1100 riders for the B line. Then the lack of fares also gives you another 300 riders for the A line, and the existence of the B line gives you another 600 riders for the A line since then people can then go from A to B. So eliminating fares allows you to build the B line and add 2000 riders across the two lines, even though only 500 of them were directly from the elimination of fares.

And you get a much better incentive for ridership when you go from something like $1 to zero than you would from, say, $2 to $1, because it increases convenience. You don't have to worry about tickets or exact change or anything, you just go through the door and you're on your way.

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

#155

Post by exabrial »

esoterica wrote: post #90
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.

And yet you believe you’re entitled to drive on the roads for free?

Nice straw man

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

#156

Post by steeef »

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-...

As recently as last week it seems, TriMet's board has been discussing how free fares might work: https://www.oregonlive.com/commuting/2019/12/is-trimet-discu...

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

#157

Post by haberman »

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…

I thought the SoundTransit car tabs were only paid inside the SoundTransit area? Are Eastern Washington voters really paying $500 car tabs to build light rail hundreds of miles away? That would be shocking to me if true.

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

#158

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bobthepanda wrote: post #138
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 general…

> I would argue that KC is nowhere near diminishing returns on transit spending.

The status quo doesn't really have anything to do with it though. If it's optimal for them to spend $X on transit while also eliminating fares, then that's what's optimal whether they're currently spending $X or $0.2X.

> 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.

Which would tend to make it so that you would build more transit before you hit the point of diminishing returns, but that doesn't mean the point of diminishing returns doesn't exist, or that we shouldn't also eliminate fares. They're just two independent questions.

It's like asking whether we should increase the size of the child tax credit or subsidize solar panels. Maybe we should do both. Maybe we should do neither. But the answer to each question has more to do with whether its benefits exceed its costs than how you answer the other question.

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

#159

Post by AaronFriel »

nostromo wrote: post #151
epicureanideal wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it that's preventing us from forcing our politicians to offer better options? I would vote for a solution to this, and even donate money to it, if enough other people were doing the same. Don't most people feel the same about this issue? What systemic problem is preventing a huge mass of people who agree on this from making a meaningful change happen?

It's just a much harder problem to solve than you realize it is. The truth is a lot of the homeless people that aren't in shelters choose not to go to shelters. Why? The biggest reason is because shelters don't allow drugs or alcohol, and if you're an addict that's an immediate pass. There are other reasons too. Sometimes couples want shelter together, but most are separated by gender (and for good reason: to prevent…

I think my "obvious" solution is that you let people use, and provide methods for them to use safely (needle exchanges, etc.), and offer them support to quit using.

By stopping people at the first step, you make it a lot harder to provide the second (safe use) and third (use reduction).

Nitpick: I don't like to use the term "homeless people", because it puts homeless first and the emphasis on them as a fixed group of people. They're just people who at this time have housing insecurity, and I think this framing means we can solve it by providing people with safety and security and resources.

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

#160

Post by thawaway1837 »

wolco wrote: post #144
buzzkillington wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So fuck the middle class because the rich don't want to pay taxes?

The middle class makes up most of the tax payer population. You can't tax income at the top and expect much unless you added 20%.

The top 1% in the US has absorbed nearly the entire economic growth for the last 30 years or so.

The number of people doesn’t really matter. It’s the percentage of wealth that they hold that matters.

Other segments of the population have seen absolutely no economic growth.

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