https://www.openstarts.units.it/bitstream/10077/5892/1/vanGo...

Prices are useful in that they provide a price signal that regulates demand. If you make the price zero, people will start using it for trips that they wouldn't really need to use public transport for, because why put in the effort to walk or bike when the transit is free? The spike in ridership will force an increase in frequency, making transit even more convenient for walkers and bikers, creating a cycle of having to cater to bottomless free demand.

As far as attracting drivers goes, transit is in many cases already much cheaper than driving. Price is not the main issue keeping drivers on the roads.

Guangzhou tried free transit to reduce pollution and had to stop because it caused severe overcrowding issues. http://humantransit.org/2010/11/guangzhou-abandons-free-fare...

This argument doesn't hold because it already applies to all time-based passes. I have a year pass, so the marginal cost of any particular tram ride is zero. When I'm walking along a road that also happens to have a tram line, I may hop on the tram for a stop if one happens to be coming at the right moment, even if I could easily walk.

Of course, there's also the fact that if you have a well-designed system, free transport should encourage a lot more economic activity that'll pay back into the funding of the system. That's another thing many cities in the US lack.

Exactly!

People say you shoudln't add lanes, build more rail stops, or otherwise subsidize travel because QoS does not improve. The trains are still crowded, the highways are still backed up. It's about capacity, not QoS. If you can't make the pipe faster you can make it wider.

The system doesn't even need to be very well designed (though that's certainly a helpful) because people will automatically load balance based on personal preferences (cost vs time vs inconvenience vs whatever).

It is hard to see how it'll really convince many people not already taking public transit to use it, though. Cars are pretty expensive to have anywhere in Europe with the price of gas and typically more discouraging laws for car ownership (not sure what they're like specifically in Germany), I can't imagine it's a large cross-section of the population that drives because it's cheaper.

When you have a car, but you don't have a transit pass, the cost of completing a particular trip by car is (or at least appears to be) cheaper than doing so by public transit. For example, if I have to go to the city center and back by tram, the cost for two one-way tickets is € 4,60. The cost of one liter of gasoline is somewhere below € 2,00. Public transit only becomes cheaper than going by car if you use it regularly and thus purchase monthly or yearly passes.

They already get paid around $9 billion/year, so I guess the government would just pay more.

I never heard why they stopped, though.

[1] At one point, I was waiting at a bus stop and a man who was either on serious drugs or schizophrenic came up and started talking to me. When the bus arrived, he followed me on but didn't sit next to me while I started reading a book. A few minutes later, he started behaving even more oddly and pulled out a crack pipe. Sheriff's deputies eventually removed him because he was getting threatening.

In SF you can simply not pay,there is no control. In argentina, the bus driver might not start the bus if you don't pay, turning the whole bus people against you. In germany, you get a damn ticket very fast, which you can pay with credit card.

I once didnt pay the ticket and felt like Jason Bourne.

Damn. I really was like Jason Bourne.

StGB means criminal law.

(1) means that using public telecommunication services (eg. public phones, maybe paid public wifi?), public transport or entering an event with the intent not to pay the fee can lead to jail up to one year or a fine, unless there's another law that mandates a bigger punishment.

(2) means that even the attempt is a crime (ie. you don't have to succeed), otherwise them catching you would make you exempt from that law (as long as you paid up).

The first few incidents can usually be settled with the fine set by the transportation authority, both to avoid too much work in the legal system and because you might legitimately forget it every now and then (and that means no intent = not criminal = they'd lose a case based on this law).

After too many occurences they'll claim that you can't forget it that often, which helps build a case in court.

Not to mention that the way to pay for cash doesnt give out change, which means taht if you dont have a clipper card, you just dont pay anything at all.

The operators are adjusting this so that there are just enough controls to have enough payments. This is an optimization problem and they know what they are doing and how much.

Let's take Rotterdam or Amsterdam as an example. Both of these stations are closed off to non-ticket holders. You can access Dutch trains as well as international trains like Thalys to France and ICE to Germany.

Access is granted by individual tickets bought from the Dutch railway kiosks, by Dutch public transport cards, or by printed/digital QR-code tickets from any of the three rail companies. There is only one type of barrier. There are not isolated entrances for particular lines.

Maybe I misunderstand you, because what you say is close to impossible seems to work just fine in the NL.

But you're right, it's actually not impossible just unlikely to happen. And I must say I really enjoyed the Dutch system where you don't have to print paper every time.

Heh, when we went Amsterdam - Berlin and vice versa we had to print our tickets. We even reserved seats. I quite like that system. One has to reserve in advance if one wants to save costs though.

The downside of the Dutch system is its easy for the government and railroad employees to check where you went. There was even a recent scandal about this, where an API was public which showed the transactions. The price of the transactions could be correlated with the cities the traveller traveled to and from.

In Germany, you have more anonymity thanks to being dependent on paying with cash and paper tickets.

Look, if, with exactly the same cost attached, people don't want that by choice... fair enough. However we don't that choice. And if you travel like 3 times a year a long trip through The Netherlands the 40% discount in down time hours is already worth it. Which is not anonymous but linked to your name. The anonymous card is a joke anyway; not my definition of anonymity that is for sure.

Airports have contracts with each airline flying anyway so they can adapt their systems. Since aviation is a for-profit business (at least in theory), there's more money to do this than for tax funded public transport.

They designed a credit-card sized paper ticket. You can buy a ticket from any station in Britain, to a destination that requires you to change in London (e.g. Brighton), and your ticket will work to travel between the main stations in London. Or you can buy a ticket to a destination in London.

However, this does make some more novel ticket types difficult or impossible. In many other countries, you can buy tickets online and print them at home, or buy rail tickets with a smartphone. These aren't possible in Britain.

A typical barrier in London accepts: National Rail (orange) tickets that used to be labelled "Rail Settlement Plan", Oyster (a contactless travel pass used for most public transit in London), the various contactless payment standards (for your VISA etcetera) and its own pink tickets. But a human is always there if you have something else.