
The Tallinn experiment: what happens when a city makes public transport free? - throwaway-hn123
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/11/tallinn-experiment-estonia-public-transport-free-cities
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OskarS
I've thought this for a while, that it's actually quite strange to charge for
public transportation. It's a tax on people who do the right thing, and it
would be much more natural to finance it with congestion taxes or gasoline
taxes, or other taxes targeted at people who don't use public transportation.
Or just from general local tax revenue.

The charge for public transportation is also quite regressive. Everyone who
uses it pays the same regardless of income level (which means poor people pay
a much higher share of their income), and poor people are more likely to use
public transportation anyway.

Also, removing the charge also saves a lot of public transport infrastructure
unnecessary. No more turnstiles, no more ticket-checking people! I guess
additional security would have to be hired, but I think in the end it would
probably lower costs and increase efficiency.

This is a good idea, more cities than just Tallinn should try it.

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dilemma
Agree. In general, administrators want fees for public services to prevent
overuse that causes high costs for taxpayers, i.e. Hypochondriacs visiting
hospitals once per week.

But for public transportation, that doesn't apply. You cannot overuse public
transportation. People have jobs - they don't decide to ride the subway for
ten hours per day just because its free of charge. At most, they can take the
subway instead of biking or walking and there's no harm in that.

Public transportation should be seen as an extension of the sidewalk, free to
access and traverse for anyone that has a place they need to be.

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waqf
Perhaps this is just me, but I would much, much sooner ride free public
transportation in my spare time than check myself into a free hospital.

Moreover, hospitals really ought to be a perfect example of a thing that's
harmless to offer in excess and hence can be made a free public good. All it
takes is for the triage process to do a correct Bayesian evaluation of your
medical history — that is, to take note of the fact that you are known to have
shown up at hospital every week and nothing has ever been found to be wrong —
and then treat you only for what you are likely to have.

