I live in a city where this has recently been implemented. In Tallinn, population 400K, public transportation is free since January 2013, for all residents (not tourists or people living in other cities). You need to have a valid ID and a valid RFID card that is connected with your ID.
I see a lot of people in this thread state unjustified assumptions as if they are proven facts. I'll try and comment on a few of these, judging from my experience with how things transpired here.
* This will make it a shelter for the homeless *
There have always been homeless people on the busses, and I didn't notice a markedly increase. The fact that you still need a legitimate ID card and a fare card might help this point.
* This will multiply users of the buses, and lead to frustration and long queue lines *
Utilisation of public transportation increased by 15% since becoming free. I noticed somewhat more people, but nothing annoyingly so. On the other hand, the main goal as I could see was to get cars off the road. A drop in traffic of 14% was observed.
Because this is a low-wage country, the €12 million in lost revenue this cost is quite low in absolute terms, compared to what it would be in more western, bigger cities, but it's still a large chunk of money relative to GDP here. Due to the requirement that you need to be a resident of this city, 10000 more people have "migrated" to Tallinn from other cities, now paying taxes here, and adding a predicted €9 million in tax revenue for Tallinn.
Personally I love it of course. I use it in ways that others might deem "uneconomically" i.e. take the tram for 2 stops instead of walking 15 minutes, but I also notice I travel further distance more often, exploring the city, because I don't feel annoyed with having to either find parking space, or pay a taxi, or pay a bus fare.
My anectodal observation is that these types of social programs tend to be much better received in countries other than the US. In the US, we're all raised on the idea of earning everything you get, and dependence on government is equivalent to surrendering freedom. We're also such a large and culturally diverse place that doesn't have a very long history compared to many counties, so there is more of a sense of "take what's yours" than "we're all in this together". This is a cultural bias which is hard ingrained in people (despite the clearly flawed fundamentals). Consequently, the same benevolent social programs that enjoy successes elsewhere tend to do poorly here.
Thank you for providing this real world feedback. (I am not fond of hot air type remarks but often I do not quite know how to sort the wheat from the chafe.)
No, on top of that, it's probable that a lot of these people were already living in Tallinn, yet registered elsewhere, or are still living in a nearby city, and just registered with a relative/friend with an address in Tallinn. I'm not sure which would be the case more often, but depending on that it might be a positive or negative for the cities.
Also, the 15% increase in public transportation would probably demand more busses/trams to be run. There should be some extra marginal costs.
That would be difficult to compute, but probably less than you might figure. A 15% increase in bus ridership is going to increase either bus weight or bus frequency, and a bus is harder on the road than a passenger car. Not 15% harder, of course, but not 0% harder either.
yes, but a person in the bus weighs (person's weight) but a person in a car weighs (person's weight)+(weight of the car) which is about 10 times more. And since road damage is proportional to (at least) the 4th power [1] of weight you get 10.000 times less damage from person travelling by bus. And that doesn't even count the worse effects - pollution, parking places, streets necessary for the cars to get to downtown, ...
If wear is really weight to the 4th power, than buses are horrible ideas.
A 20 ton bus starts out 160,000 times worse than a 1 ton car.
If you get 13.3 people off the road, and people weigh 150 pounds, then you have taken off 13.3 units of car wear, but added 34,000 units of bus-wear (going from 20-to-the-4th to 21-to-the-4th).
If the argument is "reduce road wear" and damage is proportional to weight to the 4th power, you want lots and lots of smaller units over bigger units.
EDIT: I did some more math. Assuming a very light 5-ton bus, adding a 90-pound person to it is the same road wear as adding a 2.18 ton vehicle to the road. O(n^4) is nasty.
Weren't we talking about an almost empty bus with fare versus almost full bus without fare? Of course buses damage road much more than cars, just look at an asphalt bus stop - sometimes it looks like tracks in the mud (that's why they are sometimes made with concrete surface)
Added to the fact that wear is per tire, it's also per time, thus any vehicle causes more wear when waiting or moving at very small speeds in a congestion.
And the wear increases again at very high speeds, for unrelated reasons.
It's even harder than that to compute, if you're trying to estimate the net value to the city, because you have to account for further effects beyond road wear and tear.
Like increased pedestrian traffic to shops, thus increasing tax revenue. Or less land dedicated to parking.
Seattle used to have an area of downtown where you could ride the bus for free. (You could ride within the area free, but paid if you rode out of the area or started your ride outside of the area.)
Busses became makeshift homeless shelters, which probably ended up driving away actual commuters.
Seattle also bought fancy self-cleaning toilets many years ago in order to give tourists a place to go and to reduce public urination by the homeless.
They ended up selling those toilets on eBay a few years later because the toilets had become a place for addicts to shoot up and for prostitutes to take their customers.
Public spaces, aka the commons, is where all of society's problems manifest.
Homeless people sleeping on buses is caused by, wait for it, homelessness. Not free buses.
Sex workers turning tricks in public bathrooms is caused by, wait for it, prostitution being illegal.
Crazy stinky people accosting people in public are caused by, wait for it, kicking mentally ill people to curb to fend for themselves.
Freeride zones and public toilets are currently impractical. Because they're being sabotaged by larger issues. But they're still good ideas, both empirically and morally.
I don't think the issues are as cut and dry as you make them seem.
I'd be willing to bet many of the prostitutes who are providing their services illegally would never be able to do so legally - as much more desirable people would begin to offer competing services.
Believe it or not, many people also choose to be homeless; whether or not this is a result of another issue like drugs or mental illness is irrelevant. Many mentally ill people would rather deal with the disease than the treatment.
No doubt we could do more to aid societies issues, but it's unlikely that we'll ever fully resolve many of them.
Illegality also leads to a potentially unsafe operation. Without legalizing something, there can't be any regulation of the industry. Prostitutes are obviously wary of calling the cops in the event that they are abused, mistreated, robbed, or whatever else.
Legalizing prostitution allows its workers to fall under police protection.
Illegality also leads to money hiding endeavors and tax fraud. Illegal sex workers are wary of setting up a real shop where they could implement security methods, or a guard to stand at the door in a brothel type operation.
Legalizing prostitution allows for better taxation, and less in the way of illicit venues.
I'm sure you're right in that every woman wouldn't turn to prostitution just because it became legal, but at least part of that should be attributed to the inherent danger of working in an illegal market with zero marketplace or police protections. We (hopefully) wouldn't see a huge spike in legitimate prostitution if it were legalized, but we would almost certainly see an uptick.
Germany fully legalized and regulated prostitution some years ago. The last thing I've heard is that it's lead to an increase in illegal prostitution practices (taffickin, coercion) because the regulation is not enforced well and it's easy to have illegal practices behind a legal front.
Obviously, this should be solvable through better regulation enforcement - but there doesn't seem to be the political will to pay for that...
You'd hear that whether it was true or not, unfortunately; there are a lot of anti-trafficking activists who are ideologically wedded to banning prostitution and don't care too much about facts or whether it's actually benefical.
> We (hopefully) wouldn't see a huge spike in legitimate prostitution if it were legalized, but we would almost certainly see an uptick.
Maybe in the short-term; it would probably somewhat increase the rate of entry. But removing the powerlessness that comes from illegality would probably also make it much more common for people to be able to move up and out of it and one to other things once they'd entered.
I believe the state law is that in any county where the population is under 400,000 residents, prostitution is legal, which rules out the main large cities in Nevada. I live in neighboring Utah, so I learn some interesting factoids about our neighbor once in a while.
Oddly enough, if you read the link that you posted, you'd learn that contrary to your statement, prostitution is illegal in Reno and Las Vegas, and in fact in great swathes of Nevada (in particular, it's illegal in the areas where most NV residents live).
many people also choose to be homeless; whether or not this is
a result of another issue like drugs or mental illness
is irrelevant.
This statement is an oxymoron. If anyone chooses to be homeless their reason is relevant: otherwise they haven't made a choice.
Many mentally ill people would rather deal with the disease than the treatment.
This is hyperbole. It is also plain wrong.
Mental illness is not a lifestyle choice. No-one who has experienced mental illness would choose to live with it. Those that do live with it often don't live for long.
Many mentally ill people are incurable. Many mentally ill people are too ill to find treatment.
Nobody chooses to live on public transport. The mentally ill are vastly more likely to be the victims of crime: assault, battery, rape. If you were confused and persecuted and in fear for your life: where would you go to seek safety?
Seeking refuge from persecution and violence is not my idea of 'choice'.
There's already very "desirable people" working as prostitutes. Most likely, if you're meeting up in a public bathroom, and it's not part of the thrill, it's because of economic issues.
It is legal here in the UK. I have heard that it is common for women working as prostitutes to declare themselves unemployed in order to get free housing.
They use this free housing as their "business premesis".
Paying for sex, and being paid for sex, are not illegal in the UK. But there are some very strict laws that people need to be aware of.
Both people need to be over the age of 18.
There needs to be no element of coercion. The paying person is guilty of an offence if the sex worker is coerced even if the payer is not aware of any coercion.
There needs to be no trafficking. The UK uses a stricter definition of trafficking, which can include someone voluntarily coming to the UK. It also includes travel within the country.
There's some other stuff too about premises used as brothels and about pimps.
Your comments about use of Housing Benefit are weird and wrong and not worth responding to.
Huh? I have claimed housing benefit when genuinely unemployed in the past (though not for some years). All they need is proof of address, some form of ID ,a statement of earnings/benefits and details of any dependents etc.
If you operate a cash only business with no paperwork there will always be a temptation to under report earnings.
So yeah, a certain proportion of those who operate cash-only businesses - gardeners, builders, whatever - fraudulently under-report their earnings. A proportion of those will also fraudulently claim benefits, though less than you might think - if you're going to do benefit fraud it makes more sense to do it on a larger scale, you're risking the same penalties and getting more income. But in any case, it's misleading to talk as though this were in any way specific to prostitution.
It is only illegal to live off somebody else's immoral earnings (i.e pimping / running a brothel). It's also illegal to solicit in a public place (i.e kerb crawling).
It's certainly not illegal to respond to an advert offering paid sex or to place such an advert. I have no idea what the law would be regards propositioning people at random.
Edit: Paying for the services of someone who is coerced into prostitution against their will is also illegal.
Yeah but murder is written into the law directly and so is theft, not some abstract notion of morality that differs from person to person and culture to culture.
So if paying so sex is made illegal, what happens if you pay your wife for sex? Not sure how this works in other countries, I guess it must be clarified somehow? In the UK it's very common for laws to be vague.
If those people can't be legal prostitutes because they are out competed, that doesn't mean that they will continue being illegal prostitutes in public bathrooms. It's certainly plausible that having legal and more desirable options will drastically reduce the number of them using free toilets.
The reason homeless people sleep on buses instead of in hotels is that hotels cost money, while buses are cheap. There are far fewer homeless people clogging the buses now that they cost money again.
You can wax on about how what we really need to solve is homelessness itself, but I am not hearing any solutions to that. We need solutions, not platitudes. Dissolving the free-zone was a solution.
> We need solutions, not platitudes. Dissolving the free-zone was a solution.
Dissolving the free-zone was a solution to the problem of having to deal with homeless people, not the problem of homelessness itself. I agree we need solutions and not platitudes, but we also have to be cognizant of how our "solutions" merely decrease the salience of pervasive ills rather than attempting to tackle them head-on.
Homelessness is a problem for the homeless. Homeless people sleeping on the buses are a problem for commuters. Sometimes you're just looking to get to work without having to put on a show of saving the world.
> Sometimes you're just looking to get to work without having to put on a show of saving the world.
Agreed. You do not need to be in "Save the World!" mode at all times.
> Homelessness is a problem for the homeless. Homeless people sleeping on the buses are a problem for commuters.
Disagreed. Homelessness is a problem for everyone. While homeless people exist, they will necessarily cause problems for the rest of the society. Here are my takes on it:
1. Homelessness is a spot in society. If you take all the non-homeless people in your community and move to a brand new piece of land that is completely isolated from the rest of the world, new homeless people will appear. This is because being homeless is inherent to certain societal setups and the percentage of homeless population can be determined "at compile time" via static analysis of the rules and initial state of the society.
2. The homeless/poor/hungry are a problem for everyone and everyone pays the cost. It is rarely direct (e.g.: not everyone gets mugged), but often indirect. For example, your car or renter's or homeowner's insurance is higher. You have to pay for a security guard in your apartment building. You have to pay for your bus ticket. You have to buy a more expensive bike chain.
3. Given #1 and #2, it is in everyone's best interest to solve the problems of homelessness/poverty/hunger.
I am not saying that we should drop everything and not stop until it is solved. I am saying that it should be a pretty high priority and that the question of whether we tackle it should be "yes".
It isn't the job of transit to tackle homelessness itself. Their priority is transit... because they are transit. Their job is to provide clean, safe, effective transportation, not rolling makeshift homeless shelters.
That being said, transit doesn't operate in a vacuum. Problems like homelessness aren't going to be addressed by only one sector, because every sector can say "it's not my problem".
It was a solution to what? You encountering people that offend you by their very existence? It's not a solution to anything, just a way of making a problem more invisible. One could argue the reverse actually, that the more visible and pervasive and nuisance-causing homeless people are, the more likely it is that actual solutions will be offered (housing first policies, wrap-around social services, etc) (Indeed, this has been explored as a hypothesis: http://www.bridgewaypartners.com/Portals/0/Documents/leverag... )
Countless times I have seen homeless people harass commuters (particularly women), straight up threaten people, "soil" the bus seats, leave unsanitary waste and debris on buses, and occupy more space than a single person requires. Resolving situations typically involves the bus driver pulling over and waiting for a police officer to arrive, though typically situations go unresolved. This is not merely a matter of aesthetics; pervasive abuse of transit systems by homeless people interferes with a transit departments ability to do their job (which is providing safe, clean, and effective transportation to people with places to go).
By all means, dedicate all the effort that you want to solving homelessness. Just don't use transit as your tool, it is preoccupied trying to be transit.
Getting threatened with physical violence by a mentally ill homeless person on the LA Metro (and having the subway operator literally tell me to shut up and get off the intercom when I reported it) is the reason I don't take the subway anymore.
It was a solution to the problem that people couldn't get where they needed to go because downtown buses was always full of homeless people, who needed somewhere warm to get out of the weather, but didn't actually need to go anywhere. Metro's job is to operate a transportation system, not to operate a homeless shelter, and the fact that homeless people were riding back and forth across the downtown ride free zone made it much more difficult for Metro to do its actual job.
It may reassure you to know that a local social services group now operates a free "Downtown Circulator" bus which runs in a loop around the area of the old ride free zone. Any homeless or impoverished people who actually need to travel around the downtown area for free can still do so.
That would basically just be a relocatable homeless shelter. Homeless people apparently don't like homeless shelters because even they don't like being around lots of other homeless people.
Do you have any support for that claim? My experience in Chicago and Baltimore is that homeless shelters are packed. People do the daily 4:30 line-up to get a bunk, and those who don't get in find a place in the alley to try again tomorrow. None of them seem particularly bothered by the smell of their neighbors, they're more interested in the smell of soup.
Anecdata: I am homeless. I will not go to a shelter. I have a compromised immune system. I am on the street to get well. I have goals. Etc. I do my best to avoid most other homeless people. They are typically unclean, unhealthy, have super poor boundaries and think I should want a hug merely because I am also homeless...etc..ad nauseum.
I run a small website where I am trying to put together ideas on how the homeless can solve their own problems. I am not looking for a handout. I think one of my biggest problems is the Othering of the label I have. But I had that problem long before I had this particular label. Anyway, I think on that a lot and learning to "behave normally" after a lifetime of never managing that looks to me like one of the big things I most need.
Periodically in my local paper there are articles where the reporter is scratching his head trying to figure out why there are people on the streets when we have open beds in the shelters.
The people on the streets say they'd rather be there than in the shelter. Some of it is because the shelters don't let you bring in weapons and don't allow people in who are under the influence. But some of these guys are homeless because they're an extreme case of a person who doesn't like to be told what to do.
No, only what I have heard claimed, which is mainly that homeless shelters are seen as an absolute last resort because they are typically less safe than the streets.
There is no one on the streets. here in Amsterdam. There are plenty of free shelters (the whole red light district is basically only red light windows and shelters) and it works
> But they're still good ideas, both empirically and morally.
No. They're bad ideas because they don't work, for reasons you mentioned!
Certainly we should strive to resolve all of those issues!
However, until we do, we should be mindful that they are issues and deal with the problems that they cause like adults. For now, free buses are a terrible idea. Once we take care of the issues you mentioned, they might be a wonderful idea. Sadly, we live in the now, not in the future.
San Francisco, CA offers free bus passes to the homeless population, making busses essentially free. Source: I was homeless in San Francisco for a bit.
As a different data point, in Manchester (UK) there are 3 free bus routes around the city. They are used quite heavily and work extremely well. There seems to be no problem with homeless people using them as shelters. I would love to see them expanded.
One stark contrast between these busses and the ones that charge is the time it takes to get people onto the bus. After getting used to the free version, getting on a paid bus feels glacial when it's busy. Seeing queues of busses feels wrong. I can't help but wonder how much better the transport system would be if you took out the time it takes to take payment and give tickets to people and just let them on.
USA has about 6 times UK population, so if their populations were equal the UK would have about 60K, or one tenth of the problem.
Note: This is just guesswork just perusing that article and taking guesses at populations(60mil and 330mil). Also, it looks like countries define homelessness slightly differently, but I don't have time to read through that part of it now, so I'm bookmarking it for later.
Because (most of) the people of the richest country on earth believe that any form of tax-financed welfare is "socialism", which is evil, and the only reason they're the richest country on earth is diligent avoidance of "socialism".
The problem wasn't that those things were free, but that homelessness and poverty are systemic issues that aren't actually meaningfully tackled. Even in places with token free transit systems, the homeless still occupy those spaces and will continue to do so.
Homelessness and poverty are different issues: although some people might not want to ride with simply poor people, that's a miniscule group compared with those who don't want to be in a confined space with a homeless person who is likely unhygienic, drugged up, or (non-exclusive) mentally unstable.
Saying "free would work much better if there weren't homeless people" is probably true, but that is a pretty big supposition in lots of cities. Those cities without a homeless problem should feel free to experiment with free transit.
> Homelessness and poverty are different issues: although some people might not want to ride with simply poor people, that's a miniscule group compared with those who don't want to be in a confined space with a homeless person who is likely unhygienic, drugged up, or (non-exclusive) mentally unstable.
Homelessness and poverty are related, but you are right in that stigma against the homeless and/or the poor makes a barrier in people's perception of taking mass transit. Some places with robust mass transit have better outcomes than others, so this is something that has to have available options to combat that in culture.
> Saying "free would work much better if there weren't homeless people" is probably true, but that is a pretty big supposition in lots of cities. Those cities without a homeless problem should feel free to experiment with free transit.
I'm not saying its a either or proposition, but making free mass transit needs to be coupled with other actions and policies that also help to deal with homeless by providing more stable shelter, facilities, economic opportunity, etc. Of course, there is no city in the US that does not have a homeless population, so that is always going to be a factor.
Those are two separate issues. Few people other than caricature billionaires from 80s movies would care about impoverished people riding the buses. Homeless people camping out on them is another matter entirely.
For anyone in Seattle here -- I'm assuming you're all familiar with the infamous 358; godbless the Aurora corridor between Lynnwood and Downtown
But seriously -- I think the visibility of homelessness on mass transit is a great reminder personally that there is a massive need for policy shifts that continually aim to decrease homelessness, which is otherwise just a statistic to many.
Available public and semi public spaces are very directly related to homelessness and mass transit is such a space. I've lived in a variety of places and people still continue to use mass transit even if occupied by someone who is homeless. The issue is that doing something for members of society by undertaking free transit has to be coupled with tactics that address the inequalities that allow homelessness to be pervasive or to consume resources that aren't really meant to deal with homelessness.
I'm having some trouble parsing your last sentence, but I think I agree. We need to have programs that tackle homelessness, but asking programs that have other mission statements to bear this burden is asking too much. Tackling homelessness itself is not the job of a transit department; their job is providing clean, safe, and effective transportation.
Totally agree. I just like to point out that transit systems do have a relationship with homelessness, but of course they are not suited to completely handle that social problem and there needs to be a more comprehensive approach to address social inequality.
> Seattle used to have an area of downtown where you could ride the bus for free. (You could ride within the area free, but paid if you rode out of the area or started your ride outside of the area.)
We have this in Perth, Western Australia—we call them "CAT" (Central Area Transit) buses. Any bus within the CBD is also free though ("Free Transit Zone"; FTZ), which is great if you're heading to a client's office and want to take the bus down the Terrace.
Our CAT buses and FTZ have existed for years and have not become makeshift homeless shelters. My evidence is only anecdotal (across ~10 years), but I've never seen any homeless people setting up shop on a bus.
There are obviously other factors at play here (transport police, better welfare system, 1.9m vs 3.9m people) that are likely making it different from Seattle, however (and these also reinforce your argument).
"Busses became makeshift homeless shelters, which probably ended up driving away actual commuters."
As someone who used the free ride busses in Seattle almost every day.... that's really not true. Yes, sometimes homeless people were on them. But you know, sometimes there are homeless people in the subway in NYC - that doesn't really stop people from using it.
And the 358 is a great example of a bus that isn't free, but has lots of homeless/druggies on it.
It definitely did not drive away commuters from using the bus.
I lived in Seattle during the time that you're describing, and you're massively overstating the case.
Even the dirtiest line in the free-ride zone was cleaner than your average SF MUNI line. Maybe that's not a fair comparison, but it's fairer than suggesting that free buses are bad simply because someone might abuse them.
Also, a $2 fare isn't a huge impediment to someone who wants to turn the bus into a shelter. In fact, the worst buses in Seattle for that sort of thing tended to be the airport lines, because you could hop on one of those, and sleep for an hour or two for only a few bucks. By comparison, the free-ride lines were always packed, and made for poor places to sleep. Cost isn't the only consideration.
I have always felt that 1) public transportation should have basic hygiene requirements for all users. 2) one of the most important things that municipalities should provide are hygienic services; showers and scrubs / scrub-like free clothing to homeless.
Providing basic hygiene would go a long way to helping homeless and poor.
Finally, if you're going to provide these amenities, you need to staff for them appropriately - and have them maintained and supported with rules of use enforced.
Given the massive amount of financial waste we have, I don't accept "that's too expensive to do something like this". If it costs money, for things we need, take the money from the damn defense budget.
In the context of NYC: as it is there is little stopping a homeless person from jumping a turnstile and spending all day or night on the 24 hour subway system. But it's fairly rare to see this (I believe it used to be much more common). I imagine on a bus, where there is always a city employee monitoring things, it would be even more rare.
Seattle bus drivers (like bus drivers in many places I imagine) do not have enforcement teeth. When I lived there there was an infamous case where several teenagers viciously beat a bus driver. Plexiglass dividers were installed soon afterward to protect drivers from their own passengers.
The homeless aren't scared of a bus driver. Nor are passengers - on some routes in the evenings people would jump on via the back doors and refuse to pay fare. The bus driver would refuse to move the bus until they came forward and paid the fare. The bus driver always lost.
The reason why these problems aren't endemic in NYC is because NYC has actual enforcement via the NYPD. The police is widespread and available enough that no one tries to fuck around with the system too hard. In Seattle the SPD never show up to these things unless violence erupts.
The NYPD also has, for better or worse, a traditionally less soft stance on vagrancy and fare jumping.
Yeah, it's hard to argue against the results. The broken windows theory, by reasonable accounts, has contributed greatly to making NYC a much better place to live than it was before - even when accounting for the general nation-wide crime reduction that occurred in the same era.
As someone who grew up in a very liberal part of the west coast, it's hard to admit, but authoritarianism and ubiquitous police presence has done wonders for this city. It certainly unseats some assumptions.
The trouble with the success of broken windows in NYC though, is that it has created a culture where increasingly authoritarian policies are tolerated, and results proving their efficacy often not provided.
One thing I have noticed is that NYC has a lot more homeless people on the streets than just a few years ago, or at least more such people that are visible in the urban landscape. I don't know why, and my colleagues don't, either, but there seems to be an increase in the number of homeless people in general [1], which may explain it.
One problem is that the theory doesn't necessarily help every city. Seattle for instance is not exactly a city that I would consider to have many "broken windows" that need fixing. At least there isn't visible rampant petty crime. I'm not sure what they would crack down on.
We had a fareless area in downtown Portland for many years. It was no sketchier than the routes going to the 'burbs, and it wouldn't have made sense as a "makeshift homeless shelter", since the free part was only a few miles. My understanding of why they started charging is that our country suddenly ran itself out of money paying for simultaneous stupid wars and giant tax cuts for wealthy people, and our city couldn't pick up the slack any other way.
You say "homeless people", I say "George Bush", I guess.
For whatever reason, Seattle seems to have a particularly huge homeless population. They're far more noticeable (and more aggressive) there than they are in other cities I've lived in. Or maybe they're more concentrated or something, I dunno.
Anyway, although other cities have homeless problems, in Seattle it often seemed like public places would be swamped with virtual armies of them, and dealing with that is a real issue.
[Disclaimer: I haven't actually lived in Seattle for 20 years, and have only visited since.]
The Dalek Ovens (as I call them) in Canberra, Australia, have a regular hourly cleaning cycle. You get plenty of warning to get out, and then they turn on the hoses. I presume it reduces their utility as a form of cheap housing.
Live in downtown Seattle here. Although I enjoyed not paying for bus rides while it was free, I'm much happier with the service now that payment is required.
As a side note, the wait time for paying was reduced drastically once the Orca Card system (rfid based bus pass) went into use. From my experience, with the Orca Card the wait times for paying aren't that much longer compared to the free bus method. It's only when a group of tourists get on the bus and pay with coins is it noticeable.
Yeah, I'm not sure why the Economist built their argument around a problem with payment times that is basically solved on every bus service I've ever used on a regular basis (even the one without RFID had a "no change given" policy and most users had bus passes). There are arguments for subsidising public transport but "inconvenience of paying" isn't one of the more credible ones.
There's a half way house here. Passenger's could pay a nominal fee for the right to ride the bus. They are issued with a card. If people abuse the bus service the card can be revoked. This way many more people could afford to use the bus but there is still some control on who can use it.
I doubt that bus fares are a contributing factor for why some people commute by car instead of bus. Driving a car probably costs more when you count gas and parking costs.
The free ride area also had major consequences for outbound buses during peak hours. If a bus started in downtown and went elsewhere, riders had to pay as they left the bus. Seattle still doesn't allow you to pay at any door on a bus, only at the front with the driver. A crowded bus meant people could not easily get to the front; either the bus sat while people squeezed down the length of the bus, or they simply got off at the rear and didn't pay.
An alternative solution, of course, is to incentivize use of RFID bus passes (already in heavy use), install RFID readers at all doors, and speed up boarding all-around.
Proof of payment systems also attract homeless. They don't have tickets but they also don't have money to pay fine so they don't give damn. They are not a huge problem. Group of normal commuters can stink almost as bad as homeless person. Security is not an issue since all busses have security cameras.
Er, help the homeless get somewhere to live? If they are that much of a problem several useful services are affected, tells me there is a terrible homeless issue that needs dealing with. They are homeless "people" right?
Here in Miami we have a free trolley (school bus size) system that extends along the greater downtown areas and some of the northern and southern suburbs. They are extremely clean and I VERY rarely see homeless on it (we have a rather large population too), I've been picked up at stops where homeless, also waiting (or trying to sleep), people didn't even attempt to get on board. In contrast, our free light rail system is full of homeless. they just ride all day 'cause its air conditioned and unmanned with few security patrols (they mainly utilize cameras on board and at stations).
Perhaps this case maybe the solution is for a harsh rule system and driver enforcement, if they're too dirty/smelly don't let them on, and/or kick them off after X number of stops. I'm not sure what the policies are here, I base my assumptions on the way I've seen driver yell at patrons to pick up their trash etc. it seems like they actually care about the trolley.
That's an interesting point. The problem doesn't stem from things being free as much as from people's perception of free things.
My former professor, who specialized in developing public relations campaigns for social causes, used to say that it's best to avoid words like "public" and "free" because it makes people think of lower-quality things — public rest rooms, for instance.
It's better for campaigns to use language that doesn't conjure these associations — or, in some cases, charge a nominal fee.
For example, a nonprofit whose mission was to give away condoms in Africa ended up charging a small price for each condom; message testing showed that the audience didn't trust free contraception, so, ironically, charging for the product made it more accessible.
The homeless didn't seem to be an issue in the "Fareless Square" in Portland, Oregon, at least the times I visited. (It existed from 1975 to 2012, and was discontinued because the local transit authority was short on cash.)
The problem is when the public "owns" a space, this is the equivalent of no one owning it. This is why public bathrooms are among the most disgusting places you can visit. I remember visiting France where they charge to use the toilets, and they're waaaaay more pleasant to use.
For buses, the solution is simple: Make everyone get off at the end of each route. For crosstown buses in Manhattan, that would mean you get approximately 25 minutes on the bus before you are kicked off. Most homeless would probably prefer to sleep on the streets than move that frequently.
I think it is more an implementation problem. Boston has a couple area with "free" buses, in the senses that Colleges, Hospitals and Businesses in a particular are sponsor those buses and their members ride for "free". In theory you should show your ID card, but they pick everybody. I have not seen homeless or stinky people.
Maybe targeting the workforce, and workers could sponsor their family member, which will have for effect to extend the "free" ride to everyone leaving in a house with at least one person paying taxes.
I don't know, part of this sound discriminating, but it ould be a start
I heard that a similar thing happened in another city, I think it was Sacramento. Maybe they should charge a quarter instead of making things free. This would make things close-to-free, but keep it from attracting lots of homeless.
The point of the whole free argument isn't making it easier to ride, it is to remove the overhead of having to gate access. If the bus just let people on and off and never had to do an exchange over riding it they would be more efficient.
A nominal fee like a quarter might be a good idea. I lived in Santa Monica when their buses were 25 cents and don't recall many issues with homeless or other people abusing it.
It depends on the location. In my neighborhood in SF there was a guy who dressed up like a giant viking warlock with a leather pouch of coins that he would hand out to any homeless person who needed fare for the N-Judah.
For what it's worth, there is still a free shuttle "bus" that runs in a loop encompassing Pioneer Square, Downtown and Belltown. It is designed to provide transportation from homeless shelters to drug rehabs, needle exchanges, etc.
I worked at 3rd and Pine McDonalds in downtown Seattle for about a year while at UW, and I went to grad school at the U of U in SLC.
Downtown SLC is quite different in size from Seattle; you could walk the ride-free area in SLC in about 30 minutes, the ride free area in Seattle is much larger, more like 1.5 hours. Also, SLC didn't have many homeless people, while Seattle attracted most of the homeless people from the PNW, including lots from the nearby reservations and even Alaska (Alaska exports their homeless problems to us and LA).
You can walk the length of the Seattle free ride zone (Jackson to Bell) in less than 30 minutes (1.3 miles). 15 minutes from the waterfront to the convention center.
Try walking Bell Town to the International District station. It was longer north/south than east/west.
I worked there in '94 when it was more rundown than it was today. The smell (malt liquor, unwashed clothes, urine) was difficult to handle at first but I got used to it, my coworkers were also pretty cool (mostly filipino/a immigrants) so it wasn't so bad.
Can you give some citations on this Alaska thing? I don't know whether I can consider that bizarre or a good idea. Having people freeze to death on the streets of Anchorage is pretty awful though.
Alaska actually has a huge homeless problem, they are like #5 or something ranked nationally. Life is very expensive there, and you can quickly fall through all the safety nets (especially but not just native American Indians/Alaskans). It makes sense that many would just give up; and its easy enough to get out by plane.
My mom (a Ketchikaner) told me this, but I can't find any references; my experiences are also about 20 years out of date now.
I lived there for 20+ years, headed up again in a couple weeks. The homeless issue is nowhere near as bad as e.g. Portland, where I am now. Nationally the state is ranked 10th for the percent of its population who are homeless. [0] It is not easy to get out by plane, especially if you don't have a job or an apartment lined up before you want to move. What I wanted citations for is this concept of "exporting" homeless persons; I'm still a resident of the state and if you were not being facetious about the concept, I have more than an academic interest in such a program. Mostly I don't think it's true.
Isn't Portland (where I was born) bigger than the entire population of Alaska? For some reason, Oregon and Washington also score badly on homeless problems along with Alaska, probably given...our great weather?
Search for "blue ticket", it might not be practiced anymore, I'm not sure; but I believe there was still something like that going on in the 80s at least, and it was definitely a thing while my mom was growing up.
I remember some of the homeless in Seattle were from Alaska, how they got there...I'm sure if you ask a charity you can get a bus/plane ticket in winter easily enough, even if the gov doesn't do it for you.
Seattle has relatively affordable airfare to Anchorage.
Some part of it must be cultural. The entire west coast seems to score badly. I can't find a lot on "blue tickets" except to suggest that it hasn't been done since the 80s.
To go from ANC to SEA by bus you'd be taking 3 different bus lines, for a total price of ~$425 and probably a week of travel time.
Vancouver BC also has a large homeless population, so I can see it being a part of west coast culture (and of course, California...). There is something to be said about the boom/bust natures of the logging (skid row!) and fishing industries that probably feed into the problem.
Buses out of Alaska aren't cheap, its much cheaper to fly these days. You can get a ticket to Seattle for < $300. "blue tickets" seem to be ingrained in Alaskan culture, its a word that is understood very well up there; people like Palin use it to trash talk others they want to go. You are right the overt practice is probably not acceptable today, but the philosophy still holds.
The best way to increase ridership is to make buses significantly more expensive than they are, not less. That way the crazy, drug-addicted scum won't be able to afford a ticket, and then decent people can use them without being hassled by dudes who have steel plates in their heads and smell like pee.
Basically the same idea as giving up on detailed long distance billing and going to flat rate. Where in this case the flat rate is about $5 on your property tax bill.
The good news is locally the bus service is approx 75% subsidized anyway, so they'd only "lose" 25% of revenue but the substantial gain of no more cash handling etc would help.
The other problem is you can tell the author lives in California. Where I live, the weather outdoors is at least somewhat foul about 10 months out of the year, so they would become rolling homeless shelters at least 10 months out of the year, maybe more by habit. That leads to even more expensive systems for what amounts to loitering ticketing, enforcement of no sleeping on the bus, etc.
The problem is this might even lead to politically sensitive ideas, like having enough homeless shelters to hold our homeless, or even having mental health treatment so our nuts are not just tossed out on the street as human debris until they die, instead we might try actually treating them. The criminal justice-industrial system would protest at the lack of revenue. It would be a little disruptive.
I really like your last point -- Seattle is pretty "homeless friendly" in the big picture (rumors of other cities buying bus passes for their homeless to send them here have circulated for years).
But there was a big debate when the county eliminated the "ride free" bus zone in downtown, which was a major transportation benefit for the homeless to catch rides to social services. When the county got rid of the ride free service, they stepped up with a transportation van that would loop once an hour between areas where the homeless congregated and loop around to the shelters, food banks, the Urban Rest Stop (free showers and laundry, no questions asked -- http://www.urbanreststop.org/), etc, still offering the homeless ease of access to these services, but also sort of "classifying" them on this bus as being very specifically in need.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on the psychology of class designation, but I'd much prefer the homeless rode with the rest of the people in our city. I think it raises social awareness when you avoid segregation like this.
> Basically the same idea as giving up on detailed long distance billing and going to flat rate. Where in this case the flat rate is about $5 on your property tax bill.
Nope. The streetsblog.com article linked near the end says the MTA brings in three quarters of a billion dollars through bus fares. That's going to cost $100 per person in nyc. Yes there will be efficiency gains, but this will also be a billion dollar transfer from people who don't use the buses to people who do. (And remember, this is just the buses. Many people like myself use the subways everyday without hardly ever getting on a bus.) Yes this can be justified by arguments featuring externalities, but those arguments (being dwarfed by political feelings) will not play a role in deciding whether this plan is ever implemented.
In the US and in NY we non-drivers subsidize automobile usage. The costs of building and maintaing road infrastructure are huge as are the costs of pollution and traffic. It's a form of transfer and a large one at that. As a New Yorker I don't have a car and as a Manhattanite I liked the proposed congestion charge that was nixed by Albany. As an aside, you may recall the revenue from the congestion charge was going to pay for improved transit in NYC.
I'm not suggesting a race to the bottom in terms of justifying one transfer with another but the elephant in the room is private automobiles and their subsidies. Nor am I suggesting pay-for-use for everything. However free buses are a rounding error in that light and we need to seriously approach road pricing, congestion charges as part of a unified transportation system.
I've thought through some of what might happen if you eliminate the effects of the "class system." I think in some ways it would make more sense to artificially create them (while maintaining free services), though only if at the same time you're helping people improve their lives / take care of them. If you have a lot of homeless - uncared for (potentially having mental illness, smell, or other) - riding buses, etc. then less people will use those services - and that probably even happens now to some degree (higher care ownership when people might be okay with riding shared transportation if they knew there wasn't a certain chance of harassment or discomfort).
Most lines have a point that is designated as the "end". It would not be out of line (no pun intended) to say that everybody must exit the bus at the end of the line. For most people taking a bus from point A to Point B, that would not be an issue. But it might be enough hassle to keep some people from just riding it all day. It may not work but something might. Most of us are used to some amount of inconvenience when something is free. If you are taking your price down to zero, it can come with some rules.
Edit: ok... maybe not THIS exactly... but some sort of rules. It is not the bus operator's job to find a place for homeless people to hang out.
You don't have to be a hobo to want to get on the bus before the technical end of the line, just ride it there and back, to avoid waiting in cold or wet weather for the very same bus to arrive at the top on the other side of the street.
Plus, people would just get off, and get right back on again.
Some bus lines also have no defined end, they just go in a circle, making this impractical to enforce. Others have such a long run, taking hours, that it doesn't matter if there's an end or not.
The better thing is to try and shunt the people on the bus to proper shelters, including those that can handle the more difficult variety of homeless person.
That would prevent sleeping, but would have issues with people stepping off and right back on. No particular reason to stop my grandma from stepping off the bus, spend 5 minutes pickup up prescription, then stepping back on, while the driver takes a mandated 15 minute break. The driver could look the other way, until statistical analysis shows a racial difference in rule enforcement or whatever, then it all hits the fan.
The std deviation of utilization is pretty spectacular.
You could play games with pricing where its free at 2pm when the bus usually only has 2 people, but it costs money at 5pm rush hour, or if there's an open seat its free but if you have to stand it costs, or something like that.
Now that I think about it, I'm not a big drinker so I don't pay much attention, but a local brewer pays the fares on new years eve to keep the drunks off the roads, and despite claims that free fare = 20 times utilization, I'm just not seeing it.
I'm not sure about those claims, but I don't think your examples is really a counterexample. The free fare --> drastically higher utilization argument seems like something that would apply more in the steady state; nobody is going to sell their car for the one day a year that fares are free, and one of the main advantages of taking a bus is erased if you already have a car.
You could assume that high traffic areas, at least during peak hours, would be considered healthy and productive environments - and whereby those people involved / using those services would be economic producers - which are needed - and therefore you would / should cover their costs overall with the tax base, as their activities are helping everyone in the society.
The bus is already paid for and needed at rush hour; the driver needs a full-time job not two three-hour shifts at opposite ends of the day. It's probably better to run the bus.
Longer-term what we need is more flexible working to spread out the rush hours, but for some reason that's a hard sell to american businesses.
that would be the point though, wouldn't it? This whole essay is based on the assumption that transit is cheaper overall than personal cars. the cost of providing transit service would increase, but the city's overall transportation budget should be neutral or improved.
Axiom: Public transportation is a more efficient (in terms of many basic resources valuable to society: first and foremost among them energy and space) way to get around, so it's in society's interest to shift as much mileage as possible towards it.
The central question is two-fold: How much of a shift would result from a given decrease in price? And how do we relate the (primarily:) monetary cost of making it free-to-ride with the (primarily:) non-monetary benefits of any given shift? The result of this question could give you an answer if making it free would be worthwhile.
Some thoughts:
I think decreasing the price per ride from e.g. 1 USD to 0 USD would make for a bigger shift in uptake than decreasing it from 2 USD to 1 USD. Not having to think about whether each single tour is worth the price of admission makes it a viable default way of getting around. This is just the usual flat rate argument that also applies to things like internet usage.
Making public transport free would invariably result not just in a shift towards it from other modes of transportation, it would also lead to an overall increase in mobility, which in terms of some resources reduced the gains in efficiency.
There's a valid argument that the efficiency of public transport is highly dependant on the amount of utilization: big buses and trains carrying single digit amounts of passengers can use up more energy than individual transportation. An increase in overall uptake would tend to reduce such problems since you'd get a small bus load full of people in cases where you'd have only a few now.
Obviously, free to ride public transportation is a particularly huge potential improvement for people who otherwise could not afford to get around. And since mobility is such an important part of life in modern society (minus us nerds who manage to leave the house only once per week), free-to-ride public transport has a massive impact in terms of social equalization.
"a massive impact in terms of social equalization."
The folks who don't like that, can prevent the equalization by careful scheduling and have already done so. I live in a nice civilized town/city and the bus routes travel within one block of every square inch of the city hourly. So average transit time is one hour, max theoretical (assuming not missing the bus, etc) is a bit less than three hours. Unfortunately I can drive in my car between any two points in 10 to maybe 15 minutes worst case.
I can, and have, repeatedly out walked the city bus by walking direct pt-pt rather than meandering all over the city. Its really more of a bad weather service, or a service for people who can't walk.
Also I live in a civilized town/city but work in the neighboring uncivilized dump of a city, which has slightly better bus service, but schedules have been "optimized" to keep us separate such that my commute via bus would seem to only take about two hours each way, but careful optimization of schedules increases that to at least three hours with lots of standing around at the transfer point. Of course in a car its about 20 minutes, maybe 40 at rush hour.
And that's how you keep social groups separated even with low subsidized (or even free!) bus fares.
London, UK? Which happens to have one of the best and largest underground system in the world covering almost all areas of the inner city. Then you have the train service to get you out to the outer parts, and then the buses?
Admittedly, once you get to rural parts of the UK the public transport sucks, but day or night, I can get myself around London without too much of a wait.
Even just purely by bus, London is night and day different from any American city. You rarely have to wait more than 10 minutes for a bus, and often they come just a few minutes apart.
Now, like the GP, I also cycle around London, and it is by far the best way to get through central London during rush hour, but bus drivers here are aggressive and they tend to be quite a bit more efficient than their sparsely populated American counter-parts who are brow-beaten into submission by aggressive American sedan drivers who've never heard of public transportation or sharing the road.
That sounds quaintly conspiratorial, however it is incredibly complex to optimize bus routings, especially given financial limits most systems operate under. Any change will always be at the detriment of someone else, and the last mile(s) problem is enormous.
Logistics is hard in general, is my impression. In fact, most of the interesting problems logistics seem to reduce to NP-complete problems, which has some unfortunate consequences for finding optimal solutions.
The generalized form of most logistics problems reduce to NP-complete, but we are also almost always working in a system with much more structure than the general problem, so a polynomial time solution may be available. Also, many NP-complete problems can find 'near' optimal solutions in polynomial time.
For example, consider the traveling salesman problem in a metric space. We can construct a minimum spanning tree in polynomial time, and we know that traversing this tree takes no more than twice as long as traversing an optimal solution to the traveling salesman problem. By using the triangle inequality, we can further optimize our solution, still in polynomial time.
There is also a bit of a self-reinforcing system in play. Good access to mass transit makes an area more desirable and more expensive, so rich people end up living there. Bad access to mass transit makes an area less desirable and less expensive, so poor people end up living there. But then there is less incentive to expand service into those areas, because it's just a bunch of poor people...
Prices also help keep the foul-smelling derelicts off the bus.
Maybe you think "well, foul-smelling derelicts deserve to ride the bus." And you could well be right.
But other people won't ride the bus with the foul-smelling derelicts.
If your goal is have a bus system you can feel happy about, this isn't a problem. If your goal is to have a bus system that people actually use, this is a big problem.
The fix is to provide sanitation and hygiene resources.
I would never want to deter, filter, screen any person (who is not harming others) from public services.
Tolls, fares, fees, onerous parking and impound rules, etc are a way to separate "us" from "them". It's becoming more acute as inequity continues to increase (in the USA).
stinky people aren't caused by lack of access to sanitation and hygiene resources in America. It's much more likely to be a personality or mental disorder.
Mental disorders are caused in large part by lack of access to jobs and housing[]. Do you not think that a lack of access to jobs and housing contribute to a lack of access to sanitation and hygiene?
I would argue that prices don't really keep them off the bus.
Originally from Chicago with a pay-per-ride system and moved here to San Francisco to a (weak)proof-of-payment system, sure it's faster but far more people take the risk of not paying in the proof-of-payment system (even those who can afford it).
Pay-per-ride keeps them off the bus, but as the article pointed out, the latency of the bus stopping until the bus moving is much higher and unacceptable in larger suburban areas.
Proof-of-payment does not keep anyone off the bus. Especially the "foul-smelling derelicts". 1) they game it by getting on and then getting off before the proof needs to be presented and 2) if they're caught, the fines are too steep for them to afford anyways. A night in jail may cost the city as much as the fine that would've been issued.
Free public transportation has a lot of benefits, but the elephant in the room is "Who is going to pay for it?". In cities that have a lot of tourists, the residents may complain and prices at businesses may be higher due to passed down costs to consumers. On the other hand, I pay for a monthly pass on a recurring schedule, it might as well be the same as tax, as it would make no difference coming out of my wallet anyways.
Whatever the merits of the argument, that's obviously not it.
A bus full of people commuting to jobs is getting more use than a bus a quarter full of rank homeless men with lice dropping off of them and otherwise empty because no one wants to be near them.
I would argue, though, that a bigger problem is that prices don't wholly fix even that problem. Evidence: a casual ride on the non-free San Francisco area BART, which is full of homeless people who ride it all non-peak hours because it's more comfortable than sitting on the sidewalk.
When I've been in Asian or European cities, that's simply not an issue.
Making transit free isn't going to solve homelessness. Also, plenty of people still ride transit even if someone they dislike is on said transit because they depend on that transit, unpleasant ride or not.
We don't need to encourage people who depend on the bus to ride it, because they depend on it. We need to encourage people who are otherwise riding cars to ride the bus.
Sometimes the strategy for that is to make driving cars suck, but that is a political loser before it even starts.
"Funding" isn't the issue. You want the bus system to be good enough that people want to use it.
I'm sure there are several dozen people who live within 2 miles of where I live that work within 2 miles of where I work. Batch us into groups by pickup time, dispatch small buses to my neighborhood to pick us up, sending texts to give estimates of arrival, drive us to drop off spots. Make the bus climate controlled and with power adapters and WiFi so we can work or play or read while this is happening.
I think there's also an argument that it's not particularly unfair for drivers. One current trend is to charge drivers for access to congested areas: congestion charges in city centers, toll roads along congested routes, and fast-track toll lanes on non-toll highways. An alternate approach is to spend that money on getting other people off the road: subsidize transit so that some percentage of my would-be fellow drivers get off the road and onto buses or trains, leaving a less congested road for me.
Transit subsidies are actually what the generated toll money is supposed to be used for. The point of congestion pricing is to induce a portion of the population to switch transportation modes by making public transit a more attractive option in terms of price and quality. When London implemented the its congestion charge, there were transit improvements in place on day one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge#Public...
In the US, the toll money often goes toward expensive, politically-motivated capital improvements, not operation expenses. In the worse case scenario, the money is used to build more toll lanes, which isn't going to encourage mode shift.
>In the US, the toll money often goes toward expensive, politically-motivated capital improvements, not operation expenses.
There isn't a transit system in the US that isn't subsidized. What difference does it make that toll money goes somewhere else if subsidies come from general funds? Money is fungible.
Being explicitly "paid for" from a specific source vs coming from the general fund is a powerful political symbol, which has significant, real consequences whenever deficit hawks go looking for things to cut. It's easier to convince the public that you should cut something when you convince everyone that their money is being spent ("wasted"), as opposed to having a specific revenue policy to counterbalance specific spending. It's a lot easier for people to assume that massive, massive amounts are being spent/wasted when it's coming from general funds.
Where I live politicians don't demonstrate any unwillingness to raid funding sources like tolls and property taxes whenever they run out of money. That's probably how we got here in the first place.
Exactly. I've never understood why proponents of public transit don't say this more often. The more people that use public transit the fewer people who drive. Which means less traffic for everyone else still driving.
5 => 6 seems odd. The advantage of the bus is basically never that it gets you to your destination faster. Buses stop every couple blocks; they're not going to beat cars taking the same route and not stopping.
The advantage of the bus is 1) it's (hopefully) cheaper; 2) I can put the time to better purpose than staring at the road and listening to NPR; 3) I don't have to be frustrated by parking; 4) if I meander from where I started I don't have to make my way back there; 5) (addendum to 1) for my commute I can spend pre-tax money on it, making it cheaper still.
For me, I find 2 the most important, though sometimes 3 is substantial.
You're forgetting one of they key points of buses in dense places: Parking!
Here in DC I can out-drive the bus on any route in the city, but when you factor in 20+ dollars/day for parking downtown, or spending 30 minutes finding a street spot, the bus wins hands down.
Is this a case study, or a way something "could" go bad? Specifically 6. Bus riders migrate back to cars due to lost advantage of bus seems to encompass some assumptions that aren't necessarily true:
1) Bus riders have cars
In SF, many people don't own cars because the city isn't particularly car friendly. If buses get too slow, I can see some riders using alternate transportation, but I doubt very many would choose to use a car (and most probably don't have one to use).
Note: I don't live in SF, but was born, raises and continue to live an hour North. My primary mode of travel there is in a car, and it's not ever pleasant.
2) Bus riders ride buss primarily because it's quicker
What about being cheaper? What about convenience (it's a different type of convenience, but it's liberating to not have to worry your vehicle is safe and whether you've forgotten keys somewhere).
Think of a suburbs -> downtown commute situation. Houston comes to mind here.
I believe that was the study. I'll have to go look at the source to be sure, though.
Speaking of convenience factor, I can't wait for self-driving cars in this regard. I know it's a topic change, but widespread autonomous transport will clear up much of our traffic problems. Indeed, humans are the weak link when it comes to traffic. Not roads, signs, capacity, mass-transit, etc. but humans. We're just not capable of coordinating our behavior in traffic.
> Think of a suburbs -> downtown commute situation. Houston comes to mind here.
> I believe that was the study. I'll have to go look at the source to be sure, though.
That makes more sense, although I have to imagine some prioritization of public transit would alleviate this somewhat.
> Speaking of convenience factor, I can't wait for self-driving cars in this regard
Imagine self driving mixed with public transportation. Instead of large buses (or in addition to) we could have more, smaller vans, seating 6-10, depending. We could have multiple per prior bus serviced route if replacing a bus, and they could be more accurately dispatched base on load (having a bus service a route when there's few to no riders is a waste). Additionally, these could be used to add less commonly used, but still beneficial routes between farther points.
To really make it next gen, you could allow people to reserve seats online for a small fee, which would give useful information on route usage and upcoming demand, to allow reserve units to be dispatched accordingly.
If the cost of the drivers is removed, and the vehicle cost and repair can be brought down, a lot of really interesting things could be done with public transit.
I found the relevant section in my copy of Traffic:
...congestion pricing can help reverse a long-standing
vicious cycle of traffic, one that removes the incentives
to take public transportation. The more people who choose
to drive to work, the worse the traffic. This raises the
time the buses must spend in traffic, which raises the
cost for bus companies, who raise the fares for bus
commuters -- who are being penalized despite their own
efforts to reduce total traffic. As the bus becomes less
of a good deal, more people defect to cars, making things
worse for the bus riders, who have even less incentive to
ride the bus. (p. 167)
The author cites congestion pricing as the solution, with money raised going to pay for buses.
And this brings us full-circle to the argument that those buses should be free for riders. If a city charged cars to drive during congested times and subsidized bus fares with that money, this might be a solution to ease up congestion.
When I was attending university, there was a big problem with parking. So they built lots of parking space, more or less they tripled the parking lots. Net effect: there was still the same problem with parking, but now there was also a bigger traffic problem. On the other hand, buses were less crowded :)
Personal anecdote. I am a student. In the town where I live, university students (and faculty and staff if I'm not mistaken) can ride the municipal buses for free. This has had an enormous impact on my behavior, even versus a very small charge like 25 cents. I don't often carry cash, and maintaining a fare card is a hassle, so if I had to pay for the bus I probably wouldn't use it very often. But since I can hop on to any bus I happen upon without worrying about paying or figuring out which transfers I need, I use it all the time.
Personal anecdote: it isn't price that is the problem, it is "convenience". Growing up, the only bus I could take came once an hour, and usually only took me halfway to my destination. So I walked, and often beat the bus.
In SF, BART is pay-per-ride throughout the system, while MUNI is proof-of-payment in many locations. One thing that I've noticed is that there are significantly more homeless people on MUNI than on BART. As a rider, this negatively influences my experience and desire to ride (mostly because of potential for screaming/attacking).
Especially if public transportation is free, I can imagine that the homeless would take shelter there in case of inclement weather. Not a huge issue in SF, but comes into play in other cities.
This would indeed happen if the issue of homelessness continues to be brushed aside the way it currently is in many places.
Interestingly, according to this study and others, it is actually cheaper to provide social housing for homeless people than dealing with the side-effects of brushing them aside.
No doubt they would use buses as makeshift shelters. But that's a silly reason to not do a no-payment system. The solution is to improve the city's welfare system (e.g. shelters) since apparently it's inadequate.
The homeless population already exists: changing the metro to proof-of-payment or no-payment just concentrates them into the buses and subways.
SF already has one of the most expensive programs in the country for providing shelter and services to the homeless. Homelessness is a national problem: if one city provides better services than others to get the homeless off the streets, it becomes attractive to homeless from other cities, who then basically get to free-ride on the city doing the spending.
44% of SF homeless have been in the city for less than 90 days[1]; the problem isn't that the city's welfare system is inadequate, it's that it's better than other nearby cities' systems.
It's not a silly reason to not do a no-payment system. It's unfortunate, perhaps, but it's pragmatic. Unless you could somehow organize a massive simultaneous restructure of the city's welfare system and its public transit system, you'll have to concede these problems.
Indeed, many of the "homeless" may have access to shelter-- it is more of a vagrancy problem. Vagrancy is an issue with any free public service or public space, from parks to libraries to train stations to free buses. You'd have to enforce limits to time on the buses and rules against sleeping and eating and that sort of thing.
No, it's pretty silly. It's effectively saying that the proper way to respond to strain placed on services by the homeless is to reduce the services the homeless have access to.
What's the inverse of this? "If we cut welfare, the homeless will go somewhere else." Seems legit, but not everyone thinks it's right to export your problems like that. Especially when your problems are poor, sick human beings.
Some people see a system that attracts the poor and the sick as, if not a fait accompli, at least a damn good start. Now we could talk about the problems SF has with paying for everything, but that's the opposite of homelessness.
This kind of argument is being made all across this thread so let me address it here.
The Economist is advocating free public transportation ceteris paribus. They are not arguing that public transportation should be made free AND that the social welfare state be completely revolutionized. I (and others) are pointing out the problems that will arise if this change is made without making any other changes.
As somebody from Germany, it's slightly entertaining to see that most comments in this thread have something to do with homeless people seeking shelter on public transport.
I can see how this would be an implementational detail, but I don't think that should be the primary argument.
As someone from the USA, you clearly haven't encountered America's homelessness culture. I'd call it a problem, but that would imply that there's a solution - What we actually have is a large population that chooses to be homeless, actively avoiding the social programs that exist. Homelessness isn't an affliction, it is a way of life for them.
In their defence, a lot of the social programmes in the USA are rather demeaning. Food stamps comes to mind.
But that being said; even in a country like mine, where there is larger 'social security net' (as I hear Americans term it) for homeless people, there are still those who choose to be homeless. But they are few and far in between, that I would not consider them a problem here (for public transportation, that is).
My family was on food stamps for a few months after my dad left. This was over 10 years ago and even then they gave you an EBT card, not actual stamps.
At most grocery stores you swipe it yourself, so it looks like you're just using a debit card.
Food stamps are implying that the government doesn't trust you, just because you cannot afford stuff (due to a large number of possible circumstances for being in that situation), I find that prospect demeaning.
I don't see how food stamps are in any way demeaning, compared to, say, visiting an NHS hospital or living in council housing or any other social program?
Visiting an NHS hospital is no different than sending your kids to a public (state) school - the NHS is used by almost everyone, it's not Medicaid.
Food stamps are demeaning because they send the message that those receiving them cannot be trusted to choose how to spend that money wisely. They deny any flexibility to recipients, what if you need to buy new shoes for your kid one week?
>Food stamps are demeaning because they send the message that those receiving them cannot be trusted to choose how to spend that money wisely. //
So your starving and need food, the community has a whip-round [an impromptu collection] someone takes you to the supermarket and buys your shopping.
Your response is what, gratitude or "that's so demeaning".
If one feels embarrassed that one is getting more out of society than they're providing in benefit - I assume that's the source of feeling demeaned by charity - then one can work to improve that position. I don't think I need to start listing things you can do for free that are public goods, do I.
At the moment drug addicts buy groceries and then sell them for drug money. Experiment suggests that on average the poor do better when given cash than more complex/restricted handouts like food stamps.
> I don't see how food stamps are in any way demeaning
Then you probably haven't seen the condescending manner in which people using them are treated by cashiers in many of the places that accept them. (Now, admittedly, the places where this is an issue tend to have generally crappy service for everyone, but the people using food stamps tend to have less choice of where to go.)
Perhaps more relevantly, many of the programs related to homelessness (e.g., shelters) are both of inadequate availability and hazardous; homeless shelters are often, from reports I've seen, a trade-off where you get better protection from the elements in exchange for a higher rate of criminal victimization, compared to being on the streets.
In highschool I volunteered at a homeless shelter. Homeless shelters often had rules about drugs and drinking that people couldn't deal with. The real problem is substance abuse levels that are significantly above the EU.
I have lived in Boston for a 7-8 months and I did notice quite a few homeless people. I always assumed that the american social system is just a bit too demeaning for people to actually use it. (e.g. having to present food stamps and thus showing everyone that you're poor). Then again, I don't know very much about the details besides occasional NPR content.
I just think it would be a shame if you can't solve problem a because of problem b :)
Your comment, to me, is more of a telling condition of the state of social programs in the US. When you have a major national party that believes that social programs are evil, it's clear that it's not an economic, but a political issue.
My impression is that this was much less of a problem in the US before the mid 70s when the Supreme Court decided that people which psychiatric problems couldn't be involuntarily committed if they didn't pose a danger to others[1]. My understanding is that things in Germany work like they did in the US in the 1960s.
I live in NYC, and perhaps German homeless are a better-mannered folk than out here. Should you ever visit however, here is a tip: if, on a busy day, the subway cars are all packed except for one which is suspiciously empty---avoid it. A homeless person is in there and likely soiled himself. The stench is overwhelming, and you don't need to be sitting next to him to feel it.
As someone who has travelled throughout Germany, I can say that there is nothing in Germany that remotely resembles the scope of homelessness that exists in certain parts of the US. So, I can understand why you might find it amusing.
That's a lot of condescension in one sentence. Do you live in an American city with a large homeless population and can argue otherwise? I live in NYC and while I care about the problems of "the poor", I assure you the worries a lot of people on this board raise are legitimate. Even with the fares, the subway cars are often crawling with mariachi bands, hip-hop dance crews and good-ol' fashioned panhandlers pushing their way through crowds. I would love a free public transport system---but it'd be rather pointless if I can't get into a crowded subway car half filled with sleeping homeless. A solution to help the poor needs to be found---but belongs in another discussion thread.
It's a radical old theory (from 1956), which is still ignored by most of the people who talk about economics. It states, in HN terms, that economic systems can have local optima; and that if the global optimum can't be reached then doing stupid things can actually be smart.
In theory a free market is best. But if a market can't be made completely free (for whatever reason) then making the market freer may actually make things worse, because you're moving away from the local optimal point into a trough.
When you consider any aspect of the system, you can make it more like a free market, or less like a free market. Maybe the internet libertarians are usually right, when they say "make it more like a free market". Or maybe real systems have been optimised towards that local optimum point, then driven away from it by free market advice, and the internet libertarians are usually wrong. But I don't think there's a hard and fast rule.
Whatever the case, imperfect economic systems are a little bit complicated, and there's not always a simple answer.
So it's not a free market. Cities subsidise buses. They subsidise cars. Payments for buses are so annoying that they may outweigh the amount of money changing hands. Unions want to protect their turf. Poor people like buses, while rich people like cars. And buses are much more useful when they are full. Its complicated, so figuring out what the locally optimal solution is isn't really easy.
I guess I'm one of the few here who disagrees with this article.
Maintaining a bus and subway system is extremely expensive in terms of resources, both in terms of equipment expenses, salaries (for employees who could be providing other benefits to society instead of operating a bus) fuel, and use of land.
There is no 100% certainty that buses/subways are more efficient than cars. Luckily however, we have a way to tell which is more efficient: The free market! The free market is not perfect, but it is likely that a person who pays a fare to ride a bus is getting significant value from that bus ride, and if the fare CAN COVER THE EXPENSES of running the buses, then we can be confident that buses are an efficient mode of transportation.
If you just make the buses free, people may take more roundabout trips to get to where they need to go, just to be able to make use of the free bus, causing inefficiency and waste. Or, it may cause people to take more inefficient taxi trips (because the bus doesn't take them to their precise destination like a personal car would) or they may do a million other things that are damaging to the environment and wasteful (like eating out more because they can take free bus trips to restaurants.) These scenarios may sound silly, but the fact is that removing price signals from public transportation is a terrible idea because it can have a multitude of unexpected consequences.
If you read this post and think I'm crazy and say to yourself "What an idiot, cars are obviously guaranteed to be less efficient than buses" I would argue you don't understand how incentives behave in a complex system.
If you think cars are so horrible, you should work to stop subsidies to oil companies so that gas prices reflect the true cost of energy. But in my view there is absolutely no way making public buses free is going to make cities more efficient and/or help the environment.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should get rid of all public transport subsidies (this is a harder argument to make, I'm not sure where I stand on it.) I'm just saying we shouldn't make them 100% free because price signals are valuable.
The free market doesn't, at least theoretically, work very well for transit. Transit creates a tremendous positive externality and it doesn't make sense to try and capture all the cost of providing transit at the point of the user.[1]
I think the way to go would be to have all transit be funded by a combination of user fees and tax increment districts in the areas served by transit. After all, it's not just the subway rider that benefits from the existence of a subway line, but all the businesses and residential developments near a subway stop too.
But the same would have to apply for road construction. Those segments of state highways snaking through suburbia should be entirely paid for by those who live along the route, not from the general tax revenues of the state. And gas taxes should be raised so they cover the capital costs of the interstate system, not just ongoing maintenance.
And while we're at it, the Army Corps of Engineers should stop subsidizing the west coast by damming up the rivers of the United States. If you want water move to somewhere that has water.
[1] That's without even reaching all the theoretical implications of the use of eminent domain authority, state rights of way, etc--you can't discount from the value equation the opportunity cost of using an existing state right of way for a highway versus a rail line.
> The free market doesn't, at least theoretically, work very well for transit.
We actually have some historical record to examine in this area, though you have to look pretty far back in US history to find a time when the government wasn't directly involved in the transit business.
James J. Hill built the Great Northern railroad in the late 1800's without taking any subsidies. He competed directly with subsidized railroads in the mid- and far west, consistently delivering lower prices and superior service to his customers.
As for highways, thousands of miles were created by private for-profit companies during the first half of the 19th century before highways and railways began to be taken over by government beginning with the Lincoln administration.
The point isn't that you can't have private railroads or highways. The point is that the free market creates less than an efficient amount of transit if you put the burden of paying for that infrastructure entirely on people who travel instead of all the people who benefit thereby.
> The point is that the free market creates less than an efficient amount of transit
I understand your point, but am providing a real world example in the form of a privately run railroad that was more efficient than its subsidized competitors.
> put the burden of paying for that infrastructure entirely on people who travel instead of all the people who benefit thereby
I agree with this part of the statement, but it's false to assume the free market can't utilize this payment model.
The bulk of the railways and roads that I cited were paid for not only with user fees but investments by businesses or entrepreneurs who rightly assumed that they'd reap benefits from railways and roads being constraucted in their districts.
Needs a discussion on "efficiency." Transit can be profitable without being socially beneficial - simply cut out everything but the sure wins from your routes. The population of low-volume regions will be under-served, but your company will have a good balance sheet.
I mean "efficient" as it's generally defined: maximum productivity with minimal wasted effort or expense.
In the case of the Great Northern railroad, the efficiencies were passed on to the customer in terms of ever falling costs and an expanding network of service.
> The population of low-volume regions will be under-served
No, it's the opposite! Low-volume regions are underserved with centrally planned government transportation. The planner has limited resources that must be "democratically" administered.
In a free market, any underserved area provides an opportunity for an entrepreneur to serve that need in the market! It's an elegant system that serves the needs of the people faster with less waste.
I agree the best rebuttal to my comment is to argue about positive externalities, as you have done. I fully admit that I don't have all the answers regarding "tragedy of the commons" and that at some levels arguments about "how far we take the free market" is affected by issues that end up becoming ideological without strong evidence/arguments on either side.
However, I would argue that modern technology could go a long way towards capturing these costs in a way that's tractable, at the point of the user.
Public transit is needed most by those who cannot afford a car; placing extra penalties on areas around public transit lines will hurt the poor dis-proportionally.
Not to mention, if your city has good public transit, you should be able to get around anywhere, so I guess what you really mean is 'tax everyone,' which seems reasonable.
Public transit is needed by all who commute in dense areas (like the Bay Area). If you had everyone on the road, it would be a 24/7 parkinglot. A robust public transit option would further help to alleviate driving-only traffic.
> I think the way to go would be to have all transit be funded by a combination of user fees and tax increment districts in the areas served by transit. After all, it's not just the subway rider that benefits from the existence of a subway line, but all the businesses and residential developments near a subway stop too.
At least in Bay Area, being able to walk to public transportation (usually Bart of Caltrain: stuffwhitepeoplelike #147, "public transportation that is not a bus") has a huge rent and property value premium (with property usually being valued as a rental property). Effectively this means people who would benefit most from public transit (e.g., someone who has to commute to downtown SF -- as it's the only place hiring someone with their qualifications -- but can only afford to live in East or South Bay) can't afford to live near it.
I wonder if a progressively priced tax on rent as a way to fund public transport (designed with incentives to make renting at a lower price to families attractive) would help: it would create incentives for apartment complexes to provide more affordable family units (vs. large units designed by to be shared by roommates) and have the effect of automatically providing more funds for public transportation to dense areas with many rentals (i.e., where it's most needed).
I'd also add having states and localities fund interstates would be fair as well: there's no reason for me to force someone living in New York to fund my commute on the US-101 (the national security reason for having interstates is pretty much dead at this point; nor does allowing a missile truck to travel require widening 280 -- a local loop from I-80 -- to six lanes) and it takes away the ability of federal government to bully states into passing questionable laws with a moralistic basis (e.g., raising drinking age to 21) by threatening to withhold highway funds.
You could easily encourage more affordable housing without tax incentives, but by simply repealing zoning restrictions. Let developers build denser structures with less space per person, it would be cheaper. Also remove requirements like offsite parking minimums which also make new construction expensive.
To be fair, Silicon Valley's zoning codes are far too restrictive and don't serve broader public interest. For example, my city (Saratoga), prohibits multi-family dwellings in most places -- meaning affordable housing can't be built -- and sets minimum lot sizes in many zones (a way to raise prices). Palo Alto is also quite bad in this respect (particularly in the transit friendly downtown neighbourhood).
It will actually be against my personal interest if these restrictions go away -- I happen to a own townhouse in one of few places in Saratoga where multi-family homes are allowed and big reason I did this, was to be able to convert it to a rental property (highly desirable in Saratoga -- an area known for its safety and schools -- as they're virtually non-existent) once we decide we want a bigger place. However, I'll be glade to trade a few hundred in rent income for a more dynamic and less grid-locked Silicon Valley.
Maintaining a road system is far more expensive in all of the categories you list than maintaining a transit system is. Yet road systems are maintained almost exclusively without usage fees (the occasional toll highway notwithstanding). The same is largely true of air and rail travel: government spending on airports, traffic control, security, etc... is generally not recouped from either the passengers or the operators.
Literally all the stuff you say seems to be directly contradicted by the way we deal with every other transport mechanism. So maybe you're the one who doesn't "understand how economics work in a complex system"?
It's not universal, but most road maintenance is paid for through fuel taxes. Obviously the BIG projects (new highways, etc) are funded through bonds which are repaid through general revenue.
No. No it is not. Not even remotely close. Road maintenance (at least in the United States and most of Western Europe), is overwhelmingly paid for by property taxes.
>Luckily however, we have a way to tell which is more efficient: The free market!
The free market rewards selfish, short-term impulses. It also doesn't require that individuals have a full understanding about what they're buying into.
I think that image really says it all. Every aspect of city planning that caters to car culture is a detriment to nearly every other aspect of city life. Less space, more noise, more danger, more pollution, greater travel distances, etc.
I'm one of the many here who agrees with the article, but I came to this comment section mainly to figure out why someone might disagree. So thank you.
That said I do have a few nitpicks here:
> Luckily however, we have a way to tell which is more efficient: The free market!
I'm not going to argue this point, as I'm uninterested and others have taken up that torch. Still, it's worth pointing out that it's not self-evident that A) A free market can exist for transportation, or B) That the free market equilibrium would be a desirable situation for anyone in this case.
> If you just make the buses free, people may take more roundabout trips to get to where they need to go, just to be able to make use of the free bus, causing inefficiency and waste.
This one I don't understand at all. A la carte public transportation is the one that encourages roundabout routes, because they often cause travelers to pay multiple fares. All-you-can-eat public transportation encourages planners to serve customers as efficiently as possible, as opposed to making each route as efficient as possible.
> it can have a multitude of unexpected consequences.
I agree that this is true, but why would we assume that these consequences would be bad enough to offset the consequences we know about? Why would we assume that, on the balance, these unexpected consequences would be bad rather than good?
Bus commuter here -- and also a wild advocate for mass transportation expansion
Most commuter buses in Seattle fill up before reaching some main dumping points in downtown. Imagine if 75% of those people were on the road instead, what that would do to traffic, road conditions, pollution, etc.
I think the free market is fine, but subsidizing something like mass transit seems universally beneficial, even those who still choose to drive their evil cars to work every day (like my wife).
Sure you can nitpick at edge cases like people taking taxis more, but I don't think there's much a case for overall arguing that mass transit isn't beneficial for a city.
Seattle did experiment with a free-ride area in the downtown neighborhood a couple of years ago. They ended the experiment instead of expanding it, but I'm not sure why.
Excellent points. I fear we have totally lost price signalling in transportation in general.
Some will make the point that comparing the profitability of cars to buses isn't fair because cars still ride on subsidized roads. Very true. That trend began because it wasn't possible to charge a driver per road he used -- tons of toll booths just wouldn't work. But, times have changed. Things like EZ-Pass allow for totally automated toll collection.
I would like to see drivers charged per use of roads just like bus and train riders are charged per use. Then we can start comparing apples to apples on transit. Plus we can get the pricing right by charging enough to make each system un-subsidized. My guess is that cars will still be far and away more popular, but the consumer's choice would be the final proof.
I disagree with this on the basis of "tragedy of the commons"[0]
For every person acting in their self-interest, it's usually cheaper and more efficient for them to use their car.
However, using their car has a cost of congestion (and a cost to the local and global environment) that is borne by everyone: if everyone makes the same decision, then everyone suffers quite badly and is still more constrained because now the public transport option is unmaintained and even worse than before.
A "Prisoner's Dilemma"-type Nash equilibrium has occurred.
As such, it's important for government to incentivise public transport (which they generally do, as it stands).
Yes, TOC makes this question more complicated. However, my argument wasn't against subsidizing public transport, just that we shouldn't have a 100% subsidy.
So, do you think it would be a good idea to turn all public roads into toll roads? After all, building and maintaining a road system is extremely expensive in terms of resources, both in terms of equipment expenses, salaries (for employees who could be providing other benefits to society instead of building and maintaining roads), and use of land. If you just make the roads free to use, people may take more roundabout trips to get to where they need to go, just to be able to make use of the free roads, causing inefficiency and waste.
Shouldn't this actually be an empirical question? There are wasted costs in extracting a toll: it takes away minutes of time from tens or hundreds of thousands of commuters, costs extra gas which is itself heavily subsidized, increases the chance of getting into an accident, requires an initial capital outlay, maintenance, and salaries for related workers, costs money to enforce penalties for cheaters.
Sometimes the value the road provides heavily outweighs all these costs, in which case a toll makes sense. But every road? I'm skeptical.
We can imagine (expensive!) systems that governments could use to track which cars go where, resulting in a monthly use fee. But some system of satellites visually tracking your every movement or a mandate that you have a GPS tracking device on your car that reports to the government is... problematic in lots of ways.
Much easier to tax gasoline as a proxy for driving on roads, and that has the added benefit of further incentivizing efficiency. Of course, that was the original intent of gas taxes, but they are far too low. Good luck trying to raise them.
The same argument could be made to say the government should be in charge of running all the phone networks.
Instead, I think everyone would agree its better to have a multitude of cell network providers (unfortunately government regulations prevent us from having more than we currently do) that compete for your business.
The same should be true for roads, in my opinion (of course we're drifting away from the OP and there's many arguments that can be made against privatized road networks, we'll have to save that discussion for another day)
Perhaps you should learn to make fewer non-absurd ad absurdiam arguments? It's fine that you have an ideology, but recognize that other people may disagree with your basic premises.
Perhaps because he likes the idea of poverty being a pit that's progressively harder to dig your way out of. Don't have the money to pay for the road access which will get you to your job? Should've thought about that and been rich in the first place!
Fair point, I guess the question is what the causes are for local maxima. If the reason for them are things such as difficulties in microtransactions, or counterproductive government regulations, those might be where we should be devoting our efforts to improve public transportation.
The problem with this reasoning is that the free market tends to optimize efficiency very locally. It optimizes the interests of the two parties involved with a transaction, but notoriously fails to account for externalities.
Public transit is a perfect example of that. There are a ton of ways that availability of transit helps society at large, and approximately zero of those are particularly of concern to an individual when deciding whether or not a fare is worth it, or to a transit provider when deciding how much to charge for a ride.
The free market is not magic. It's just a simple optimization process. And different optimization processes have different limitations. If you try to optimize a problem without accounting for the limitations of the process, you'll get bad solutions.
It's like Free Healthcare: Unless it's expensive, people will be out there breaking bones and getting diseases for the sheer hell of it, and not caring about the consequences because it's free!
It's in Mises somewhere. Cato Institute said it. Or... something.
It's not just oil subsidies that encourage private vehicles - parking is also massively subsidized [1], and of course all infrastructure is payed for from everyone's taxes.
> Maintaining a bus and subway system is extremely expensive in terms of resources, both in terms of equipment expenses, salaries (for employees who could be providing other benefits to society instead of operating a bus) fuel, and use of land.
Mass transit systems are not as expensive expanding and building up roadway systems in favor of automobile transit.
> There is no 100% certainty that buses/subways are more efficient than cars.
Mass transit is more efficient in a variety of ways compared to cars, esp. on cost per rider and utility cost of infrastructure per rider.
> Luckily however, we have a way to tell which is more efficient: The free market! The free market is not perfect, but it is likely that a person who pays a fare to ride a bus is getting significant value from that bus ride, and if the fare CAN COVER THE EXPENSES of running the buses, then we can be confident that buses are an efficient mode of transportation.
The free market has already demonstrated that cars are not as efficient as mass transit systems. Most cities prior to mass car adoption had mass transit systems, typically subways or street trolley systems. A lot of these existing systems were dismantled in favor of expanded roadways and bus systems. The net result is that riders are less able to move about on roads/buses, the cost is greater to riders to take any form of transit, pollution got worse, and roads now consume far more resources than those mass transit systems do.
> If you just make the buses free, people may take more roundabout trips to get to where they need to go, just to be able to make use of the free bus, causing inefficiency and waste.
If buses were free, then there would be not need to take a longer route since the most direct bus route would be free. Further, fee based mass transit does nothing to stop this right now and for most fee systems the fee does not completely cover the operating expense of the system, so this is something that already happens in lieu of free mass transit. Further, longer trips on some types of mass transit are far more environmentally friendly compared to the same trip made in a car or bus.
> Or, it may cause people to take more inefficient taxi trips (because the bus doesn't take them to their precise destination like a personal car would) or they may do a million other things that are damaging to the environment and wasteful (like eating out more because they can take free bus trips to restaurants.)
The people that most need cheap or free transit are unlikely to be able to afford taxis, as they most certainly are not free and wouldn't be scalable as a free transit option. Eating out at a restaurant is not necessarily more wasteful than other options, esp. in locations were food transit and delivery generate pollution due to delivery method, such as trucking (a lot of places do not grow or produce enough food stuffs to avoid importing).
> If you read this post and think I'm crazy and say to yourself "What an idiot, cars are obviously guaranteed to be less efficient than buses" I would argue you don't understand how incentives behave in a complex system.
We have already seen how incentives the car and roadway system work, and that system most certainly is complex. Suffice it to say that this system has not been effective in providing transit needs for the masses and expansion of those system is not working as scalable solution for transit. As density increases, roadways become less efficient for travel period.
> If you think cars are so horrible, you should work to stop subsidies to oil companies so that gas prices reflect the true cost of energy. But in my view there is absolutely no way making public buses free is going to make cities more efficient and/or help the environment.
You can do more than just fight against oil energy policy to attack the public of public pollution from transit systems. If buses can displace a certain amount of cars on the road for a population they are more environmentally friendly and making such transit as accessible as possible is the best way to maximize ridership.
> Mass transit is more efficient in a variety of ways compared to cars, esp. on cost per rider and utility cost of infrastructure per rider.
Agreed, but the question is whether people would be more wasteful with 100% free buses, taking more trips and negating that benefit.
> lot of these existing systems were dismantled in favor of expanded roadways and bus systems.
Sorry, I don't have the citations right now, but much has been written about cities especially in Latin America where new subway systems were built that showed a strong negative impact on efficiency and expenses.
> ... uses can displace a certain amount of cars on the road for a population they are more environmentally friendly ...
All I'm saying is that we have to be careful with subsidies. Subsidies are MONEY and as a general rule spending more money causes more energy use and waste. Saying "We'll save energy by spending money" is always a tenuous argument that needs to made with care.
> Agreed, but the question is whether people would be more wasteful with 100% free buses, taking more trips and negating that benefit.
It's worth mentioning that with public transit, more trips does not contribute linearly to more waste because many riders can take a single bus. Sure, it's probably somewhat more expensive to operate a full bus than an empty one, but there's a net benefit when compared to the cost of operating individual vehicles for all those riders instead.
Hmm... Unless a bus system is initially extremely inefficient, I think the number of buses in a city is always going to have to scale linearly with the number of riders. You shouldn't be having bus routes that are almost all empty to begin with if you're making an efficiency argument about public transportation.
I agree that number of busses will scale linearly with the number of riders, but if we consider a single bus, waste will not scale linearly with the addition of passengers.
The situation I'm trying to capture is one where there's a relatively unpopular route; say we only have one or two busses on the loop. In these cases, more people taking advantage of free busing would only increase the efficiency of the system.
Of course, the utilization of these routes must be high enough to justify the cost; obviously if there is only one passenger for the day it would be cheaper overall for him to just drive.
My city only got buses about five years ago and most times they're empty a lot is due to inefficiency but also the design of the city.
The city streets tend to go away from the city center/harbour but subdivisions are perpendicular to those streets, cross town streets are terribly disorganized.
It all ends up with buses going one way but the people who use it want to go 90 degree angle to where the bus goes. Add to that buses leave at times not suitable for the population e.g. people get to work at 8am but the buses arrive at 6am , it's a joke but at least we have a bus system.
> Agreed, but the question is whether people would be more wasteful with 100% free buses, taking more trips and negating that benefit.
Generally this isn't how bus systems operate. Bus lines will run for a dedicated period of time and constantly run the line. The only way for more buses to be introduced is to expand the hours of operation or introduce more lines. That then becomes a question of capacity and how many people are using those lines. As bus lines become saturated and need to be expanded, we already have an idea of how many riders are using that system and we can directly measure that against changes in density of other forms of transit (car, rail, pedestrian, etc.). To that end, the buses are least wasteful when saturated, so its simply about measuring against cars to determine if there is more resources spent on bus systems compared to the number of cars that would exist without said bus system. We know that buses carry many more people per trip than cars do reducing car volume in favor of bus volume means we are being more efficient per vehicle, which is a bonus for things like more environmentally friendly bus tech while avoiding the externality cost that individual people and families pay when having to purchase and operate/maintain a car.
> Sorry, I don't have the citations right now, but much has been written about cities especially in Latin America where new subway systems were built that showed a strong negative impact on efficiency and expenses.
It is totally possible that a mass transit system will fail to provide any benefit. Its up to each city and locality to determine what transit will for that area. However, in the US we do know that car transit wasn't really considered this way and was expanded without a lot of thought going into density issues.
> All I'm saying is that we have to be careful with subsidies. Subsidies are MONEY and as a general rule spending more money causes more energy use and waste. Saying "We'll save energy by spending money" is always a tenuous argument that needs to made with care.
Owners and drivers of cars are spending money already to obtain and maintain those vehicles. Those drivers are also subsidized in a variety of ways. Spending money in general doesn't guarantee an increase in energy use w.r.t. transit, certain forms of transit are much more energy efficient in comparison to other forms.
>All I'm saying is that we have to be careful with subsidies.
Don't forget the subsidies on the other side of the equation: As the poster above mentioned, building larger roads to handle increased traffic is very expensive.
>Don't forget the subsidies on the other side of the equation: As the poster above mentioned, building larger roads to handle increased traffic is very expensive
And the users of those roads pay tens of billions of dollars per year by paying or the Federal Gas Tax on every gallon of gas they buy:
They also pay local and state tax that pay for the maintenance of local and state roads. They also pay tolls which make so much money that they pay for roads, bridges and a sizable portion of many state's general funds.
Car drivers are more than self-sufficient. Bus riders rely on subsidies or they wouldn't be able to afford bus travel.
I'm not passing a value judgement on this, but let's at least acknowledge reality.
You can't argue that drivers are self-sufficient because they pay taxes and turn around and argue that bus riders aren't because they're tax subsidized. Neither are paying the true cost of their transportation in direct fees.
The state of Colorado just announced that there are some roads that will never be fixed, because there isn't the money in the budget, and at the current rate there will never be (because the higher priority roads that the budget does fix will use up the budget perpetually).
I've heard that at least one big city has a "97 year" road fixing rotation, again because the budget isn't there to keep the roads fixed.
This is not even close to self-sufficiency for cars. If everyone took a bus there would be a small fraction of necessary road surface and wear-and-tear to repair. The reality is that cars have hidden costs paid by everyone, and that shifting some of those subsidies to public transit saves money.
I think most people would be shocked to learn that buses are using more energy per passenger than if the same passengers were transported in cars. Buses are more expensive too. There are very few transit agencies in the US that operate more efficiently and pollute less than private (car) transit. It's a myth that bus public transit is green.
Usage of energy isn't the only metric by which something can be considered green, as you probably realize but fail to cite. What percentage of buses are powered by natural gas or ultra-low-sulfer diesel compared to cars, for example? What percentage of buses are hybrid compared to cars?
You're using a little bit of information to make a big claim.
See, for instance, Table 2.10 of the latest federal Transportation Energy Data Book (page 2-14) showing that, to transport one passenger one mile, cars are using less energy than buses.
My own analysis of my local (mid-sized city) transit data from the National Transit Database, using actual gallons of fuel spent, and comparing CO2 emissions of the average passenger car, the buses are net adding CO2 to the environment. Indeed, hybrid buses are barely more efficient than traditional diesel buses.
The issue isn't full buses, it's the very large number of empty buses that continue to run on non-peak hours on fixed routes.
This is why I'm so optimistic about driverless cars. I think it will obviate the need for public transit because we won't be stuck with inefficient fixed route and fixed schedule service.
My own analysis of my local (mid-sized city) transit data from the National Transit Database, using actual gallons of fuel spent, and comparing CO2 emissions of the average passenger car, the buses are net adding CO2 to the environment. Indeed, hybrid buses are barely more efficient than traditional diesel buses.
Charge a 1% fee for all businesses along the routes. Issue passes that be acquired at designated centers; schools, transit offices, and the like; to anyone with an ID.
Tag the IDs to see how they are used, do not tie them to an individual. The IDs tags would also be detectable by the bus/subway/train and could alert authorities to those who are merely camping out.
I can see more benefits to a free mass transit system than negatives. The boon to businesses along the line should be measurable, especially food businesses. Think about it, if the service was timely, clean, and free, going to lunch or shopping at any time would be a no brainer.
The transit issued IDs simply give a means to track usage and abuse - the staying on the transport too long. Sell ads on the passes, the buses, the whole line.
Just knowing the transit pattern for any particular ID would be a huge indicator of who the individual is.
Imagine the consequences if you looked at my Clipper (SF Bay Area) card. I almost always get on or off at one of two specific transit stops but not any others (which would pinpoint me down to a pretty specific 1-2 block radius if you assume I use the closest stops to my home), if I take the train from downtown SF it's either to the airport or to an East Bay stop, if it's an East Bay stop I take a specific bus that goes to only so many stops...and I chose that particular bus route over others from that train station. You would be able to guess where I live and where I'm going all the time at the bare minimum.
While I'm fine with this data aggregation right now since it's used for payment and proof of payment, in conjunction with your idea of selling ads and maybe a corrupt politician who wants to monetize that data for a free system... I shudder to think about super targeted ads as a result.
Somewhat true: The article argues it may cost more to collect fares if ridership is held constant. However, ridership would probably increase and lead to more expenses.
So now the argument boils down to "Is it efficient or is it wasteful to ferry around all these extra people who didn't think the bus is worth the cost of a fare?"
In case anyone is wondering why this hasn't already been implemented everywhere if it's such a great idea, I have an anecdote illustrating the political and cultural obstacles it faces. I worked with a guy who helped create a proposal to make buses free in Austin in the 1990s. The goal was basically the same as described in the article, based on the observation that collecting fares was surprisingly expensive in both time and money. Little net income would be lost, the buses would run faster and cause slightly less congestion because boarding would be faster, and numbers from experiments in other cities showed ridership going up significantly. It was very simple: voters and taxpayers chose to support the bus program because of the benefits the city gets, and eliminating fares was a straightforward way to increase ridership per dollar, thus deriving more benefit for the tax money being spent [1]. Everybody wins.
As my friend told it, the proposal was made internally inside Capital Metro (the transit agency; my friend was on some kind of committee) and the response from higher up was very simple: not gonna happen, not ever, and please don't ever mention this in public unless you really want to hurt the future of bus transit in this city. The symbolism of fares, he was told, is very important in two ways. First, the public image of bus riders is that they are people who aren't willing or capable of taking care of themselves (why don't they have a car?) The symbolism of giving somebody something for nothing is very different from making them pay to ride. Bus fare is a symbolic way of teaching them that they have to work for what they get, and they can't freeload off of other people. If we're forced to take care of them, we can at least make them play-act like they're responsible people paying their own way, and the lesson might sink in eventually. Second, people tend to incorrectly assume that the operating expenses of the bus system are covered by fares. Many people hate buses and hate the complicated urban society they represent, and the more of those people who became aware that buses run largely on their tax dollars, the harder it is for city bus programs to get the money and political support they need. Charging fares makes it easy for them to make the wrong assumption and prevents them from becoming vocal enemies of public transit.
Those attitudes are from 10-20 years ago, and one hopes they have changed since then. The idea seems fundamentally sound, so I imagine it will keep resurfacing until pragmatism overcomes the bias and stereotypes surrounding mass transit.
To this day in D.C., the Metrorail system doesn't even come close to meeting its operating budget using fares. And it's already more expensive to ride Metrorail than to drive in a surprising number of situations.
I can't find a good reference right now but I remember that in DC the rail fares cover 90% of rail operating costs and bus fares cover 30% of bus operating cost.
The best I could find on page 21 (numbered 15) of pdf "Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for the Fiscal Year Ended 6/30/12" does not seperate bus from rail.
That's not what WaPo's free Metro Express newspaper put out when they were talking about the fare increase last year. I'll see if I can find one of the mentions.
Edit: An example straight from the horse's mouth (the WMATA proposed FY13 budget). Revenue makes up 80% or so of the MetroRail budget, the remaining 20% to be made up by local jurisdictions.
So it does appear indeed that Metrobus is much more subsidized (27% of the budget from fares). Page 67 of the PDF is probably the best overview.
So definitely not as bad as I thought, but $183 million is no small chunk of change either.
In the UK, the rail network is similar - cost to the taxpayer is huge, and since we allowed private firms to operate the trains and collect/set fares, it's actually much more expensive (compared to gas/petrol price for a single trip, at least) to take the train than to drive, especially if you're going a long way (a few hundred miles is a long way in the UK, for reference.)
Of course, the choice is less stark than that because car tax, insurance, and cost of maintenance make trains cheaper for the journey patterns of many people, especially young people and students - who make a few long journeys a year, and also get discounted tickets (1/2 under 16, 1/3 off under 25.)
This is because of multiple reasons that include gross mismanagement, design issues from when Metro was constructed, and the unique situation of being located in 2 states and one quasi-state that has little say in their own affairs and gets hamstrung by the Federal government. In the end everyone just points their fingers at the other person and nothing ever gets fixed.
In Seattle, the inner-city busses have zero fare. The trouble is that some of our more fragrant hobos use the bus as a rolling shelter to the detriment of those that appreciate bathing.
They tried it here in Uruguay, happened the same, and also the "Ni-Ni" youth (neither work nor study youth, a huge problem here) used them as amusement rides.
That would increase the traffic on these buses by some multiples and will increase wait times, frustration and overall dissatisfaction among the public. Then some one will do some napkin math saying the amount of "money" wasted by all these people waiting is not worth the free rides. I guess my point is, free rides probably would have made sense in 1965 when the population was a fraction of what it is in NYC today. Add all the tourists to that and free rides are not sustainable.
Wouldn't that demand logically result in an explosion in the amount of "free bus supply" resulting in an implosion in the amount of traffic congestion frustration and delay?
Heck I'd pay money for a bus I don't use just to drive home faster.
You would have to increase the number of buses and their frequency on the routes. The consequence of this is that there will be fewer cars (and maybe bikes) on the roads, which mean that buses can go faster, which means you don't need to add quite so many.
Probably the net result would be to increase the number of buses, decrease the overall traffic, and increase everyone's mobility. It may increase the number of tourists (could be good or bad), and will probably cost everyone a little more than expected.
"will probably cost everyone a little more than expected."
A little less on a large enough system wide scale. Hard to find a cheaper way to move people around, quickly, on land, in any weather, than a properly applied bus.
Tourists in taxis is definitely not cheaper and rentals are even worse.
I admit trains/subways are cheaper if the utilization level is high enough, but it has to be Really high. If "your" subway stop has 50,000 potential riders that'll work. But where I live a subway stop by my house would have about 50 potential riders, which is a bit of a financial problem.
That might happen. However, changes to systems which require "let us change a lot of things, and afterwards, things might even be better!" tend to go nowhere.
I'd love for people to work on making bus riding more convenient for people right now. The fares aren't really the problem. It's the bus going where I need it go in a comfortable fashion.
It's quite easy to get more buses, or only run buses at certain hours of the day. They are extremely flexible.
My comments on this page might make me seem anti-bus, but I'm more anti-bus-proponent. Buses are probably better than trains because they are so much easier to rearrange.
I think "free" is the wrong word for it. Howabout "fare free"? Someone is going to have to pay.
I like the idea of pushing the costs more onto the community as a whole, not just users. Make it kind of like most school systems: everyone pays through taxes whether or not they have kids or if they send their kids to private school.
I think for me, the opportunity cost of the bus is too high. My travel time in the car is generally half of the bus time. I consider that time lost. Since I am able to use that time to make money, I would have to be compensated for that money in order for me to want to take the bus. At my hourly rate, a bus ride of 1 hour that wasted 30 minutes of my time would cost me $25.
(for those thinking that I would waste the time anyway, I would counter that time not spent working is time spent with my wife and son, or learning, or sleeping, and I'd much, much rather do those things than be in a bus.)
> My travel time in the car is generally half of the bus time. I consider that time lost.
I consider it time gained :) I bus to work every day, takes just over an hour each direction. By car, it takes 20-30 minutes each direction. That's about 2 hours I spend catching up on news and reading books every day, as opposed to an hour staring at someone else's bumper. It's definitely a different judgment for every person.
I'm in Minneapolis/St Paul. Can't wait for our new East-West light rail line to open next year. It was a major factor in choosing where I purchased my house.
For the longest time I considered it time-gained as well. When I was working in NYC I had a forty-five minute commute in the morning, and an hour plus in the evening. For the first few weeks that was cool, and then I just wanted to get the fuck home.
In the morning I enjoyed the commute much more than I did in the evening. Now that I live in the D.C. metro area I drive into work. It takes about half as long but definitely costs me a hell of a lot more. I don't mind public transportation, but in D.C. it is horribly unreliable. If it was free I'd probably actually forgive the problems that D.C. has, but its not, and I have a feeling there would many more problems if the transit system was free. Maybe there are other areas of the country/world that could afford this without sacrificing a reliable schedule, but definitely not the U.S. capital.
What about working on the bus? I've only taken the greyhound but being able to catch up on email or quickly code out so stuff vs having to drive is always nice.
Operating revenue, 2013, projected
-Farebox revenue 41%
-Dedicated taxes 35%
-Toll revenue 12%
-State and local subsidies 7%
Total operating revenue is $13.5 billion. Budget (expenditures) is basically the same according to the above link.
So dropping fares will cost about $4.7 billion after accounting for fare collection savings but before accounting for any extra costs associated with increased ridership (35% of 13.5b). The total NYC city budget is about $69 billion, in comparison(http://www.nyc.gov/html/omb/downloads/pdf/fp6_12.pdf), so maybe it's possible, but I'd hate to be the financial planner asked to come up with ways to cover the shortfall.
This is an interesting idea, but it has its unseen challenges.
The very first issue is regulatory. Because the addition of passangers does present a real cost to bus companies, no tracking device on how many passengers it has has difficulties from a regulatory standpoint.
This may sound silly, but its a reality of life, such as when you give a free trial product to people owning a creditcard.
Currently, buses in buenos aires are ridicolously cheaper than cars, yet by culture, people really love buying cars. An hour's parking lot fee in the center of the city costs more than a week of bus fare. Making it free would not be a change of paradigm.
Buses are packed, and so are trains and subways. If subsidizing increased not only to cover fares, but to improve infrastructure and service, you are also servicing people with cars, making those more interesting. (less traffic -> also better to go around in cars).
Although this could help a lot, i dont think its a paradigm shift unless people with cars are paying the public transportation.
But that of course, present the other challenges, which is, what about people not having public transportation coverage from one point to another, and how would you administer such a route in a way that you dont charge him penalties.
I honestly believe that in big cities, cars are an expensive hinderance. Using a cab every single time you go out is still cheaper than buying one.
Are the buses in Buenos Aires cheap for those who live there? I remember it was around 1.70 pesos (about $0.40 at the official exchange rate) which, to me, is ridiculously cheap, but I wasn't sure if it was seen as cheap by the locals due to disparity of income.
On another note, I loved the buses in Buenos Aires. They were cheap and went everywhere, though I could never figure out the Guia T. The 39 was my regular line and I took that thing everywhere.
It is still 1.70 pesos. Just getting on a cab is 10 pesos, parking is between 15-20 pesos the hour.
Buses have their ups and downs here. They are too irregular and unpredictable (you can wait up to 1h for a bus that exists its station every 15 mins). There are many ill maintained ones.
1.70 is ridicolously low in relative terms to other expenditures. A liter of gas is almost 10 pesos. Compared to the base salary with is around 2k, is still a very low part of the wage.
Long time ago, differential buses were common. They cost 3x, but you would always travel seated, with AC and mostly on time.
Bottom line is that for mobility, people LOVE the subway, although it has its issues as well.
> The very first issue is regulatory. Because the addition of passangers does present a real cost to bus companies, no tracking device on how many passengers it has has difficulties from a regulatory standpoint.
Counting passengers can be done without charging anything.
If you use the national ID for it, the encumbrance is still there. Similar to what i mentioned about credit cards and free trials: even people with credit cards dont like to enter those!
For truly massive use being free and unregulated for the user is great. For the compnay, however, that could report they had "20 million visitors today" and ask for more funding for that.
Maybe im too cynical, but it happens. I still suspect the bus lines as the reason why coins are in shortage since 2007, when coins started to be valued more for their mint value than their nominal one.
Charging people means the bus company has to be able to account for it with money (say, we had 1000 passanger, so 1000 fares income), so it is itself a tool for regulation.
Public transport is an enormous problem in the UK outside of London - the prices are very high, and the service is often dreadful.
In my home town for instance the local operator regularly cancelled buses without notification, ran late all the time and repeatedly made hugely over the top above-inflation/fuel price fluctuation price rises every year. On more than one occasion they cancelled last buses stranding people.
The company would cheat the monitoring of punctuality by having buses wait at certain points along the route (notably the points at which punctuality measures were made) for sometimes 10 - 15 minutes, whereas wherever you actually wanted to catch a bus from you'd often be left waiting 20-30 minutes for a bus to turn up.
The bottom line is, if you want to live there + have any kind of quality of life, you have to own + run a car. Full stop. This is pretty well true for anywhere outside of London (not sure about other major cities, however.)
A lot of the issue is the monopolistic nature of any bus service, and the lack of teeth of the government regulator. Personally I think it ought to be run as a public service with some means of ensuring quality (ok so that's a tough problem :) or at least improve the regulator's ability to fine companies that fail to provide a decent service + have some oversight over (already subsidised!) fares.
The local operator does not seem to be taking enough responsibility for the work they are supposed to do.
In Stockholm you can get your taxi fare paid for up to 400 SEK (~40 EUR) if you are running more than 20 minutes late because of schedule problems. (Details might have changed, was a long time ago since I used it.) You submit the bill and have your own money on the line until/if it is reimbursed.
Monitoring a bus by having a "tamper proof" GPS logger on the bus seem more reasonable than having points where punctionality is measured. The local operator themselves would obviously not be the ones verifying reimbursement requests against these GPS logs.
If they are a public good worthy of subsidizing, then yes!
For NYC, it has been estimated that every car driving in lower Manhattan incurs ... goddammit I can't find a reference so I'm going with memory here ... at least ~$3 in social costs due to increased pollution, congestion, road wear, etc.. That's in addition to the costs paid by the driver (car depreciation, gas, insurance, opportunity costs, etc.). If that memory is really true, then subsidizing transit to eliminate these social costs ends up being a huge net win!
If we want people to do something, we should subsidize it and (in the case of transit) make it free[1]. If we don't want people to do something, we should tax it (Pigouvian taxes FTW!).
[1] - Transit will never be as fast as driving due to the extra stops and walk required at either end, so we need to keep it free to minimise the total cost of fare + extra_time_wasted*salary, which corresponds to opportunity cost to riders. Riders whose total cost is too high will not ride, and riding transit is a social good (or is at least much less of a social bad then driving).
If something is "Free" people will hoard it which will reduce its value and increase its cost to everyone. There will be massive shortages of available bus space. With a paid system, people are forced to economize--do I really need to pay to take the bus in winter 5 blocks to buy groceries, or can I walk? But if it's "Free," then people will not economize. The people who need the bus the most, to go to work or hospital or whatever, will have to compete for limited space with people who don't need to be taking the bus. In addition, alternative transit options that could relieve excess demand would be driven out of business (because who can compete with free?). So, the city will be forced to massively increase the cost of the program to meet demand, which would lead to higher taxes anyway, likely offsetting the nominal bus fees that were eliminated.
>If something is "Free" people will hoard it which will reduce its value and increase its cost to everyone. There will be massive shortages of available bus space. With a paid system, people are forced to economize--do I really need to pay to take the bus in winter 5 blocks to buy groceries, or can I walk? But if it's "Free," then people will not economize. The people who need the bus the most, to go to work or hospital or whatever, will have to compete for limited space with people who don't need to be taking the bus.
This is a popular theory with certain economists but has not been borne out by experiment. E.g. my country introduced pricing for prescription drugs (previously free) based on exactly that reasoning. Turns out overall usage barely changed (the very poorest stopped taking their prescriptions because they couldn't afford them, but they're a relatively small proportion of society) and administering the payment system cost far more than the money saved in reduced usage or collected in fees.
> alternative transit options that could relieve excess demand would be driven out of business (because who can compete with free?).
Alternatives don't just compete on price, but also things like convenience. In fact, even in the current system, it's damn hard (impossible?) to find a transportation alternative that's priced lower than a bus. Muni in SF costs $2 a ride (plus free transfers for a few hours), and the only cheaper transport is walking, which can't "go out of business". If I take a taxi, it's not because they're offering $1 fares, it's because it's faster, more direct, and more comfortable, and that advantage will only increase in a free-bus scenario (because presumably buses will be more crowded).
You're making my point. Muni in SF is heavily subsidized, which means there are no transit alternatives available that can compete on price. This makes the only two options for transit very cheap or very expensive, further widening inequality. It's exactly what would be expected by subsidizing transit even more, in fact.
You can't hoard transit. It's a service, not a good.
You can, however, use it. Which is a good thing (a social good!). Even more, transit capital is allocated by use, not by profit. More people using it should (in a non-stupid world) lead to more investment in the infrastructure, which has long term positive benefits for everyone (or, at least, has had them every time in the past in NYC).
Of course you can hoard transit. You can hoard anything with a limited availability. Since Muni buses are not the TARDIS, there's a limited amount of seats to go around. With buses, hoarding means taking the bus way more often than you need to (like in my example, 5 blocks to the grocery store). If something is free, it doesn't change the underlying scarcity, it just increases demand. To your second point, you are careful to qualify that the world needs to be a utopia in order for your system to work. Good luck with that :)
The cost of the bus is not keeping me off the bus; the speed and comfort are keeping me off.
While not collecting fares would decrease the stop times, it isn't going to get anywhere near what I would need to ride the bus more often.
To go about 7.5 miles on one bus in San Francisco (basically from the bay to the ocean) takes 56 minutes on a bus. There are marathon runners who can literally run the route and arrive nearly 20 minutes before the bus!
The light rail is considerably better at 42 minutes for roughly the same route (the more your trip is underground, the more it makes sense to take). In fact, the only time I take public transit is when heading downtown in the subway since it is actually fast.
The same trip takes 28 minutes in a car (less if you know where the timed lights are).
Now, if we had Personal Rapid Transit* instead of buses, then at least the comfort level and speed might be high enough for me to switch over.
The Economist is worthless when it comes to the science of economics, so it's expected but still amusing to see a sloppily incorrect use of "free" next to a site called "economist.com". What makes it truly great is seeing it on the top of HN, where everyone's straining to evade this meaning.
It's a perfectly correct and generally understood use of the word "free": no cost to the end user. Ultimately, somebody paid for your free beer, too, but that doesn't mean it wasn't free to you.
If people own cars, they are going to tend to use them even if public transit is available. Long term, we need public transit that is good enough that people will decide they don't need to own a car.
The thing that has stopped me from ever reaching that point is not the cost of public transit, but the long term reliability. When I buy a house or rent an apartment, I need to be able to base that decision partly on the mass transit options, and then rely on those options not changing out from under me--no bean counter deciding that the bus that comes by my house does not have enough riders and canceling it. That bus needs to keep running, even if it has few riders. Even if it is often completely empty. Bean counting has to be done at the level of the complete system, not the individual bus line.
I'd love to see how this would work in the greater Seattle area, where year after year, the King County Metro system has to beg for money to continue operating at their current capacity. For the past two years, the threat has been that Metro will have to cut their service by 17%, which is huge.
I have only been in the D.C. area for a little over a year and there is definitely budget problems here as well.
The problem may actually be that the people, and by extension the government, do not believe that mass transportation is a replacement for cars (yet - maybe ever) in a metropolitan area. There may also be a whole hell of a lot of other political reasons (oil and car lobbies, etc). But the end result is the same.
When I was in New Jersey I heavily took advantage of the NJ Transit Light Rail system in Newark, and between Hoboken and Jersey City. That was absolutely amazing, and the price point was a hell of a lot cheaper than it is to ride the NYC subway or D.C. metro systems.
I really think that the northeast just has had a lot more experience and failures here. The main arteries for traffic, at least that I see, come from Amtrak (which again, is amazing in northeast) and local rail systems such as NJT and PATH.
In contrast it seems that there are a lot less people in the NOVA and Maryland area that use D.C. metro and the VRE. Some of that may because of the distance, the belt way, but I think a lot of it has to do with the reliability of the systems (at the very least for D.C. metro).
I don't think making it free is a good idea, because people have no respect for something provided for free, so you'll end up making the service more expensive to maintain and at a lower quality than by charging a nominal amount.
However, you can use pricing to discourage paying to the driver. Where I live (belgium) I can pay 2 euro per ride to the driver, or 80 euro for unlimited travel during a whole year (partially subsidized by my employer, which they're legally required to do), or any of a range of payment options in between. Paying cash to the driver is so much more expensive than the alternatives that almost nobody does it.
The key point that is likely tip the scale in one direction or another is the positive externalities of converting a driver to a rider. This externality will differ by city, line, time of day, etc, and it would include external costs of traffic, parking, car accidents, among others. Economists can approximate this sort of thing.
We are often really bad at accounting for externalities because they aren't immediate dollars in or out of our pockets and lack certainty (pollution controls, infrastructure improvements, etc), but this case may be a bit more straight forward.
I've been riding and thinking and griping about buses lately. While this notion has seemed very appealing to me in the past, I'm less sure.
Even right now, I feel like a major problem with buses is that they really don't need or even want customers. Customers are a liability. Fares don't cover expenses. Political capital is useful, but indirect, and bus systems have lost most customers that might provide political capital.
My bus system isn't particularly bad. The drivers are okay, but mostly they just don't want any trouble. The bureaucracy has smoothed out certain edges. The buses are clean. But the crowded bus lines stay crowded, until they get further out then they become empty and useless. Lines don't evolve, they aren't adjusted, there's no attempt to maximize ridership. They can't experiment with pricing; really they can't do much of anything without approval from a political structure that doesn't much care about buses. Customers don't fit into any equation.
Oh, and did I mention they are slow? Buses are so terribly painfully incredible slow that only people who place very little value in their own time can justify being on a bus. Door-to-door times on a bus range from 2x a car to 6x, often walking speed, almost never faster than biking. But as time goes on the buses just get slower.
Making buses free maybe could help. It might draw customers who actually have a way of effecting positive operational change through the political process. It might diversify the ridership in a way that positively effects social standards of civility on buses. I certainly wouldn't fight it, but it's a long shot.
I wonder if that was a rational decision. Is the cost of authenticating higher or lower than the revenue gained from tourists? If the revenue difference is actually that large, they probably could have just rolled it into the typical "hotel taxes" most places have.
The revenue gained is not from tourists but from people living in neighboring municipalities (but working in Tallinn) registering them as citizen of Tallinn and therefore bringing their tax money.
Impressive. Redstone Arsenal in Alabama only has 40K people or so. At least in the 90s when I was at the Ordnance school. Which has apparently moved to Ft Lee since then. The free buses were rather convenient.
Bangkok keeps on extending its free bus service, and its quite extensive.
Note that the bus system is essentially classed, since only the old, non-airconditioned, slow buses are free (and you can pay for better transit options).
Sydney, Australia does have a fee bus service that runs a certain route for key points. It certainly isn't all buses though. There are other cities in Australia that also do this.
This article makes it sound like free public transportation is a new idea. It pops up in Toronto every so often as if it was the first time it was every thought up(1).
In fact this has been tried numerous (perhaps hundreds) of times, both in the past and ongoing(2,3). You would think that the pluses and minuses would be well understood by now. Why is it so hard for transportation systems to learn from each other?
I take the bus to work everyday I wouldn't want it to be free, since right now those who have a need to take the bus can, whereas if it was free so many people would take the buses that there wouldn't be enough space and the bus company would have no reason to serve any routes.
Here in Brazil (at least in some cities) we have the worst of both worlds... you pay for it, and there is not enough space... it is a complete crap. No wonder so many people are on the streets manifesting against it.
Here in the Faroes (at least in the capital), we have the best of both worlds. Free, and plenty of space.
In 2007, the fare for municipal busses was removes, and at the same time, more frequent trips were introduced (by 50% at day time).
The routes and schedule are managed by the City Council, the operated by the lowest bidding bus company.
So far, it has been successfull, but it had a bit of a bumpy start. The sudden increase in demand for busses, meant that there weren't enough busses to go around and some cheap, old ones were used. But the success has meant that there was a business case to upgrade the busses.
It's payed by tax payers via the Council. The Council is funded via income tax, currently at around 20%.
Buses can legally only hold so many. Fares are a backstop against uneconomical use (why wouldn't I take the bus to go four blocks? my feet hurt) and overcrowding. If usage increases, and buses can't hold anymore, then what? No stops? Most bus stops aren't proper lines, but people hanging out until the bus comes. I'm certain a free system would be most disadvantageous for those who can't get in line fast enough when the bus does come.
I'm certain people can come up with ideas, but usually when I hear these sorts of discussions, it's not from those who rely on public transportation. I think the answers would be different if those having discussions had their licenses revoked until a decision was made :-)
Most transit systems have either a fixed or minimum fee. So it usually does not make sense to pay for public transit if you are just going a short distance. If it were free, more people would use public transit for these short trips instead of walking or bicycling.
Wouldn't this more sedentary life have a significant negative impact on public health? Studies seem to show that an additional 150-299 minutes of walking each week (20-40 minutes a day) can increase lifespan by 3.5 years [1].
It's somewhat of a negative spiral, and IMHO, it's nothing to do with price.
If your area has a service where buses are coming in every 15 minutes at least, then there's a benefit to it. I live good sized city in the Seattle area, and to get to my work, 20 minute commute becomes 90 minute commute.
Particularly in the Seattle area, what making whole issues nasty is that the lack of transit backbone -- the problem is that are people commuting between the city of Seattle and neighboring city often separated by the lake.
I don't know if this is the case for other cities, but as far as my observation goes, making buses free doesn't solve much problem at least where I live.
Basically, this just needs to be sold as beneficial to the region as a whole: less congestion on the roads for people that choose to drive, less air pollution for everyone, more of an ability for businesses to hire people that don't have cars but need a way to work, etc. As long as it is framed as "public transit riders getting something for free" it will never work, especially given the racialized face of poverty in most US cities. But if it as framed as creating a cleaner, less congested, more equitable metro area where people can get around safely, effectively,and freely, it might fly.
All right, a lot of people have commented about bad experiences with free transportation. I had a good one about free buses: I lived for a couple years in the north of France in Compiegne (where the ww2 armistice was signed). Buses were free, clean of homeless people, and very enjoyed by the student population.
The line was not running at night, and Sundays and holidays the fare was 1 euro (pretty damn cheap).
Compiegne is also a fairly rich middle-sized town, so the cases are different, but it's just to give an example of a place where it was successfully implemented.
The US town I last worked in was not at all happy about the traffic externalities of office space. Their attempt to remedy it were complex and entailed a lot of overhead for everyone. Surveys, building restrictions, reimbursement plans, etc.
A tax system could simply charge employers based on the commutes of all employees and offer free to board public transit. Then it could stop allowing commute expense to be deducted in the covered areas..
I find tolls to be a little backward since virtually everyone traveling during the max capacity times can deduct them, while leasure travelers can not.
Why should employers be responsible for the transit habits of their employees? Does this not also increase the cost of employment, thereby decreasing the employee's income?
From what I can see, this would be a hidden tax on the employee, which violates the principle that democracy requires maximum possible transparency.
In a world where we could measure everything for free we would charge employees directly for the externalities of their commute (e.g. the road space they consume). Since this is not practical we make the best approximations we can.
This seems to work really well in high-volume areas, particularly those with a lot of commercial activity, or for connector buses going from other public transit to office parks, etc.
The problem is the homeless; I tend to avoid most Muni buses for reasons including the population of homeless/crazy who seem to live on them already. If you could figure out a way to avoid becoming mobile homeless shelters, I'd be happy to increase vehicle registration or (property?) taxes to pay for free mass transit in some areas.
The German Pirate party wants a similar model.
Inhabitants of a city have to pay a yearly fee and then can ride for free.
This should encourage people to leave their car at home (or not even buy one) and take public transport instead.
Another advantage that I did not see mentioned: The pricing systems are often complicated (how long you can ride, how far, are you allowed to change etc.). With a flat fee more people would be encouraged to just take public transport without needing to comprehend a complicated pricing system.
As I write this post, I sit on a bus in Baltimore. My fare card was 10 cents short when I boarded. So, I had to pay $5 cash for a $1.60 ride home (the machine doesn't give change). This whole transaction took 2 minutes, and the bus was moving, causing me to almost lose my balance.
There's got to be a better way. Especially considering I pay 4 digits in taxes every year to the city.
There's a free shuttle bus route in Wollongong (hour south of Sydney) which is also starting to be adopted in Sydney. Buses loop the CBD and outskirts, and arrive every 10-30mins: http://www.wollongong.com/travel-info/free-shuttle-bus.aspx
I lived in a city where there were free buses for a few months. It didn't work, since drunks would come sit in the bus for warmth (and drink, despite the rules).
My conclusion is that, though I like the idea of free buses, there should at least be a token fee to discourage people taking a ride for the roof.
The issues of speed that this article mentions are negated by the latest electronic ticketing systems such as Oyster, Myki and Opal. As you walk on to the bus you touch the card against a reader and that's it. Saves a lot of time.
we do have a few cities with free bus services (only Chateauroux comes to mind now). It's a bit complicated because it shifts social behavior, (people just loiters in the busses).
But the reasoning is that the bus system is a complete taxpayer money think, and the fare collection system is just adding more drag than easing the bill. It's not sure it's always the case, like sometimes the collected fares pays a bit more than the collection system. There is no hope in paying the whole system with fares in a medium size city tho, it's always money coming from somewhere else (mostly taxes).
I wonder how many people don't take the bus because of the cost. I know that, even if it were free, I'd rather pay £-whatever a year to use my car than suffer the inconvenience and stress of public transport.
Fares bring in a lot of money, but they cost money to collect [..] Fare boxes and turnstiles have to be maintained; buses idle while waiting for passengers to pay up, wasting fuel; and everyone loses time.
A large share of my time at the grocery store is spent scanning and paying for the groceries too.
I think that bus fares should at the least be cheaper than the average gas price it would take you to drive the same distance yourself. One could argue that using the bus also might save you from having to buy and maintain your own car, saving more money than just gas. But I would say that for many people, although they could take the bus more often, having their own car is just too convenient to give up on totally.
No, a straw man is when you construct an easy target to shoot down. This commenter is simply the title for its improper (or possibly vague) use of the word free.
YCombinator clearly believes paying for the servers and bandwidth is beneficial. Commenting is not free, its just paid for by someone else. The buses are already paid for (in part) by taxpayers. So, neither is free. Someone pays.
That is the meaning of the word "free", though: no charge for the exchange. A store gives a "free sample" of cheese, for example, when they offer pieces of cheese to customers without charging them. The Dropbox "free tier" gives you a certain amount of storage space "for free", i.e. without you having to pay a fee. It does not imply that the cheese or the storage space materialized out of thin air without using anyone's resources.
Yes, I read the article. I am just very sick of the concept of "free" being used when it puts an additional burden on everyone. The problem with collecting money is not unique to buses. Many businesses are struggling with higher fees and collection costs.
The government is a paid service of the tax payer, no more holy than paying someone to mow your lawn. The sooner we realize the retroact of free is an illusion, the better. We need to pay for the infrastructure.
> The government is a paid service of the tax payer
Government (including, inter alia, the provision of public transit) is a paid service to the tax payer, but that's not the service we are talking about. We're talking about delivering transit rides to commuters, which is currently also in most places a paid service to the commuter, and the suggestion is to change it to a free service to the commuter. (Largely on the basis that making transit rides a paid service to the commuter is undermining the goal of government provision of public transit as a paid service to the taxpayer by discouraging utilization.)
You're the only one who seems to have a problem with realizing that your taxes pay for government services. Everyone else has figured out that free in this case means you don't either plop some change in a box when you get on or are not buying a monthly pass.
No. They have a problem with the taxes and the services, but they don't have a problem with realizing that taxes pay for services the way protomyth here seems to.
I know taxes pay for services. That is my point. The services must be paid for. You can have the people using the service pay for them, have an alternate revenue stream (e.g. advertising), or have them subsidized by other tax payers. There is no free.
You were bitching about the use of the word 'free city-provided service' as if people didn't realize that meant 'tax-based'. There is no reason to do that. It's arguing that a term everyone already understands is misleading. Just treat it like an idiom or something and stop being a distraction from the actual topic of discussion.
With a tight enough definition, nothing is free, since it's always someone or something that spent resources creating the "thing" or service. And hence the word "free" can be erased from the dictionary.
Much of the proposed funding would come from polluting cars and trucks pay for externalities and this fee would go to ensure mass transit has zero fare.
Taking the money from cars and trucks also takes it from infrastructure. We need that money put back into bridges and roads before more things collapse.
I currently pay a $15 round trip toll for bridges I use in the NYC area. The bridges cost a fraction of that to operate and maintain. The remainder of the toll goes to support public transit in the city. So you are right: TINSTAAFL.
Tolls should go away as well. Everyone in the economy benefits from transportation whether you're on the road or not (people on the road the personal reasons are a fraction of those on the road for business ones.) That plus toll roads hurt local economies everywhere by suppressing the ability for people to start businesses off exits, and giving monopoly to businesses running inside rest stops. I'm sure everyone has driven on roads that become toll roads only to quickly notice the death of all residence and businesses along these roads.
>Everyone in the economy benefits from transportation whether you're on the road or not //
It's more complex than that. If you take journeys that aren't necessary or use transportation in otherwise inefficient manners - ship flowers from halfway around the world in an aeroplane for example - then that's to everyone's detriment as it wastes non-renewable resources.
Everyone benefits from transportation to some extent but that certainly doesn't mean that encouraging more of it increases the benefit.
In places like Manhattan as described above one wants to incentivize people to take the very efficient mass transit over using vehicles because of the traffic as well as the air pollution. The tolls help to do this.
I see a lot of people in this thread state unjustified assumptions as if they are proven facts. I'll try and comment on a few of these, judging from my experience with how things transpired here.
* This will make it a shelter for the homeless *
There have always been homeless people on the busses, and I didn't notice a markedly increase. The fact that you still need a legitimate ID card and a fare card might help this point.
* This will multiply users of the buses, and lead to frustration and long queue lines *
Utilisation of public transportation increased by 15% since becoming free. I noticed somewhat more people, but nothing annoyingly so. On the other hand, the main goal as I could see was to get cars off the road. A drop in traffic of 14% was observed.
Because this is a low-wage country, the €12 million in lost revenue this cost is quite low in absolute terms, compared to what it would be in more western, bigger cities, but it's still a large chunk of money relative to GDP here. Due to the requirement that you need to be a resident of this city, 10000 more people have "migrated" to Tallinn from other cities, now paying taxes here, and adding a predicted €9 million in tax revenue for Tallinn.
Personally I love it of course. I use it in ways that others might deem "uneconomically" i.e. take the tram for 2 stops instead of walking 15 minutes, but I also notice I travel further distance more often, exploring the city, because I don't feel annoyed with having to either find parking space, or pay a taxi, or pay a bus fare.