Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids • Hacker News Board

Re: Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids

#191

Post by bsaul » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #152

jdietrich wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be inclined to move home to be within walking distance of your office, or to work from home sometimes, or to use the (very good) Velib bike hire scheme, or buy a bicycle or a motor scooter. Metro rail is sexy, but it's only one part of the transport mix.

I move about almost exclusively by bike, but I realize that for many people it's not possible to live close enough to their workplace to do that comfortably. Also, Paris is a terrible city for cyclists (at least that's what it looks like in the videos I've seen) and it takes decades for infrastructure to be built up sufficiently for people to feel safe on a bike. I think that making public transport free in an easy s…

biking in Paris is worse than you think :

it’s dangerous because roads are very narrow ( so protected bike lanes are rare) and there’s a lot of traffic.

the bike city service got changed recently to include electric bikes and as a result nothing worked for months ( not sure it’s back to normal yet).

Even if you manage to get a bike there’s a very high chance your bike will have defects because people like to do stupid things with them, like getting down stairs, or hitting the curbs.

and finally, if you think about buying yourself a bike, expect to have it stolen on average once a year ( depending on its price).

Re: Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids

#192

Post by maxsilver » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

benj111 wrote: post #174

Simulacra wrote: post #169

Public transport should be free for everyone, and that is something I'm willing to pay higher taxes for. If it's free more people will use it, which will justify more investment.

What about induced demand? I agree with the main thrust of what you're saying. But money does serve an important purpose, rationing scarce goods.

> rationing scarce goods

Transportation should never be a scarce good. If induced demand highlights cracks in our transportation infrastructure, our job is not limit that use but to fix it through increased capacity.

Re: Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids

#193

Post by saint_fiasco » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

maxsilver wrote: post #192

benj111 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about induced demand? I agree with the main thrust of what you're saying. But money does serve an important purpose, rationing scarce goods.

> rationing scarce goods Transportation should never be a scarce good. If induced demand highlights cracks in our transportation infrastructure, our job is not limit that use but to fix it through increased capacity.

Increasing capacity might distort the market for other stuff besides transportation.

For example it might cause a company that was going to open an office in a neighboring city to open the office in Paris instead.

Re: Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids

#194

Post by bsaul » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

louiskottmann wrote: post #184

bsaul wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except a boost in ridership is absolutely not what you’d want in an overpopulated city like Paris. Subway is so bad i’ve already witnessed people waiting for trains from outside the station itself. in the peak hours you often have to skip two or three trains because they’re packed.

Please don't take this as a general rule for the subway in Paris. While it is true that some lines (13 is infamous) at some hours are really packed, most of the time it is fine. I was born in Paris and have lived there for 30+ years, and the vast majority of the time I can take the subway just fine.

if you work in IT chances are you’re going to the office a bit after peak hours and coming back home late.

13 is a mess indeed but 4 is also bad , 7 has a lot of trouble, 12 has crack addicts on the dock menacing passengers, etc..

i’m also born and raised in Paris, and lived there for 40 years, but once you take the subway in other crowded cities ( honk kong, tokyo, shanghai, sf , london, etc) you realize having a subway that smells urine and shit , has technical issues every single days, and simply can’t handle the population flow at all, isn’t « normal ».

We can live with it, the whole society has adapted to it, but i wouldn’t call the situation «fine».

Re: Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids

#195

Post by saint_fiasco » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:00 PM UTC

vvillena wrote: post #155

darkpuma wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The alternative to a boost in ridership is a boost in car commutes. Or walking... Do you walk a quarter mile or do you ride the bus? If the bus is free the number of able bodied people using the bus for trivial distances could increase.

You walk. Riding a bus means you have to wait for one first. A 5 minute walk isn't worth the wait unless there are extra conditions (no walkways, ice on the walkways, heat wave...).

That's exactly what paying for services is designed to avoid.

When services are made free, people have to wait longer, paying with their time instead of with money.

People who don't want to wait and are not given the choice of paying for faster service end up having to buy cars instead, making traffic worse for everyone.

Re: Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids

#196

Post by brmgb » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

zhoujianfu wrote: post #2

Why not make it just free for everybody? Public transportation typically has profit margins of -50% to -90% anyway... just take it to -100% and get a huge boost in ridership! (And probably save some expenses relating to collecting payment/enforcement.)

That was considered. A study was commissioned and concluded [1] against for several reasons :

- the projected impact on car use was negligible (around 2%) ;

- the projected increase in the number of users (between 6% and 10%) is above the current infrastructure capacity ;

- the new cost (3.3 billions euros) would be mainly supported by the Paris agglomeration inhabitants through their taxes rather than spread on all users ;

- it's already free for the poorest and heavily subsidised for most of the local.

[1] https://www.iledefrance-mobilites.fr/actualites/conclusions-...

Re: Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids

#197

Post by systemtest » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

Simulacra wrote: post #169

Public transport should be free for everyone, and that is something I'm willing to pay higher taxes for. If it's free more people will use it, which will justify more investment.

I don't think that is fair to taxpayers that don't use public transport because they walk, bike or use a car.

Re: Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids

#198

Post by nolok » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

systemtest wrote: post #197

Simulacra wrote: post #169

Public transport should be free for everyone, and that is something I'm willing to pay higher taxes for. If it's free more people will use it, which will justify more investment.

I don't think that is fair to taxpayers that don't use public transport because they walk, bike or use a car.

I believe the opposite, it's just as fair as when I pay for public healthcare despite being "never sick", when I pay for unemployment compensation despite not needing it, or when I pay for public school despite not having kids.

It makes society better because it means less congestions on the street and less pollution, it makes it fairer for those that don't have a choice (because they're too far from work to bike or walk, because their city does not have have the right bike lanes, etc ...), it's the definition of what taxes should be for in a developped society, imho.

I'm happy to pay higher taxes for it, despite not needing it since I work remotely and have most place I go to within walking distance by living in city center.

Re: Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids

#199

Post by shrewduser » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

nolok wrote: post #198

systemtest wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that is fair to taxpayers that don't use public transport because they walk, bike or use a car.

I believe the opposite, it's just as fair as when I pay for public healthcare despite being "never sick", when I pay for unemployment compensation despite not needing it, or when I pay for public school despite not having kids. It makes society better because it means less congestions on the street and less pollution, it makes it fairer for those that don't have a choice (because they're too far from work to bike or…

Healthcare and unemployment act more like insurance than a service though I don't entirely disagree I just think they're not great comparisons.

Re: Paris Will Make Public Transportation Free for Kids

#200

Post by rtpg » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:31 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #54

rtpg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually the alternative is that the money from building rent is just going into the pocket of some real estate company. So it’s kinda like a big tax on real estate companies (which sounds like a hell of a good policy to me. Rent seekers and all that)

Then just tax that. Effectively giving public transport the ability to collect taxes in small pockets of your land around public transport stations seems like an odd way to go about it. You could similarly run the police at a profit instead of being a cost center by gifting 100 hectares around every police station to the police, and have them collect rent on it. That doesn't make sense either. For one, it creates a p…

The advantage is that by doing this you are only taxing people in opportunity cost and it’s only affecting a small area

There is also strong synergy between the trains and the area immediately around it. Also you have to buy the land anyways for the station.

Don’t think that argument holds as strongly to police statins