I.e those not on benefits, over the age of 18, under the age of 60 etc.
Now count how long the bus idles while people line up so the driver can validate their ticket / check they tapped in on their Oyster card.
Now add in all of the infrastructure and staff required to collect fees and account for them.
Then add in all of the external costs of charging for public transport (more cars, less productivity)
The argument for charging isn’t that strong.
You mention Oyster cards so I'll assume you're talking about London in which case the operator (TfL) clearly states that "Fares are the single largest source of our income (projected to be 47% in 2019/20)". [0]
This income more than covers the operational costs, with the difference being used to support new infrastructure projects and upgrades such as the Elizabeth Line (as well as concessions for students, the elderly, etc).
Clearly there is a very strong argument for charging.
[0] https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/how-we-work/how-we-ar...
Although the administration cost is not zero, it is almost certainly negligible enough that moving to a taxpayer funded model would increase these costs. This is particularly true given that transport budgets are operated at the regional level and would require the introduction of new regional taxes rather than simply relying on exiting tax revenue. (The politics of passing any new tax legislation would be a monumental hurdle in the first instance).
Then there is the question of whether a broad tax is more equitable then the current model. I fail to see how this could be the case given the current system retains the price signal and through a system of concessions ensures that those who most benefit from the provision (e.g. professional working in the inner city) contribute the most and effectively subsidise fares for the rest of society.
You're talking about the time it takes as you step onto the vehicle. That's not zero, but it's not half of the cost. You also have to fill the card to begin with, but most importantly it causes people to incur an incremental cost for using public transportation, which discourages its use. That's very bad.
> Although the administration cost is not zero, it is almost certainly negligible enough that moving to a taxpayer funded model would increase these costs. This is particularly true given that transport budgets are operated at the regional level and would require the introduction of new regional taxes rather than simply relying on exiting tax revenue.
There are surely existing regional taxes. The collection cost is therefore sunk and the overhead of adjusting the rate is nominal. Moreover, people don't like paying taxes, but people don't like paying fares either, so it balances out -- or comes out in favor of using taxes because in that case the cost is lower when you don't have the overhead of doing fare collection (and you have the overhead of tax collection either way).
> Then there is the question of whether a broad tax is more equitable then the current model. I fail to see how this could be the case given the current system retains the price signal and through a system of concessions ensures that those who most benefit from the provision (e.g. professional working in the inner city) contribute the most and effectively subsidise fares for the rest of society.
Professionals working in the inner city don't pay different transit fares than janitors working in the inner city (and if they did you're just imposing income tax but calling it something else and paying more overhead to collect it), and you don't want a pricing signal here because pricing is a method of rationing scarce resources but we want people to use public transit as much as possible.
Any bank card works, so does Apple/Android pay. Even the prepaid card can be purchased from a self-service machine in less than a minute and topped up via an app.
> There are surely existing regional taxes.
The only broadly administered regional tax in the UK is the council tax. This only covers property owners. There is no other regional taxation - certainly not one that is broader. You also vastly underestimate the public opposition to taxes versus fare increases.
> Professionals working in the inner city don't pay different transit fares than janitors working in the inner city. ...and you don't want a pricing signal...
People pay different rates based on how close to the centre they commute to. Typically professionals commute further because the white collar jobs are located in the centre, blue collar workers on the other hand tend look for work close to where they live and are more likely to travel outside of peak hours.
As for the price signal, it plays a hugely important part. It enables fares to change depending on demand in order to spread out congestion rather than having everyone commute at rush hour (infrastructure cannot support unlimited travellers and public transport is most certainly a scarce resource that requires rationing). The price signal also provides a strong incentive to cycle/walk by imposing a marginal cost on each journey. This incentive would be completely lost if you'd already been taxed, leading to over-consumption and environmental costs.
Your plan would also mean that residents would effectively subsidise the travel of all outsiders - which for cities like London (which get huge amounts of tourists and external commuters) would impose an unfair cost on the residents.
A little bit here, a little bit there. So easy to tap your card, only then you get a statement at the end of the month with 50 charges on it and have to reconcile each one with your actual usage to make sure none of the charges are fraudulent or in erroneous amounts.
Multiply by a couple million people and you're wasting a whole lot of people's time.
> The only broadly administered regional tax in the UK is the council tax. This only covers property owners.
Tax is tax. If it's property tax then it filters through to rents, which filters through to local consumer prices etc. There is a lot to be said about which ones are better from an economic and efficiency standpoint, but that really has nothing to do with transit -- if you have a bad tax system then switch to a better one regardless of how you fund public transit. But property tax for local services is far from the worst.
> You also vastly underestimate the public opposition to taxes versus fare increases.
Not wanting to do something that benefits people because people oppose it is just begging the question. If it benefits people then they shouldn't oppose it, so then the issue becomes convincing them, which is separate from the question of what the best policy is to begin with.
> People pay different rates based on how close to the centre they commute to. Typically professionals commute further because the white collar jobs are located in the centre, blue collar workers on the other hand tend look for work close to where they live and are more likely to travel outside of peak hours.
Blue collar workers avoid jobs with expensive commutes because they can't afford it -- but that's the problem.
> As for the price signal, it plays a hugely important part. It enables fares to change depending on demand in order to spread out congestion rather than having everyone commute at rush hour (infrastructure cannot support unlimited travellers and public transport is most certainly a scarce resource that requires rationing).
Use of public transport increases efficiency and become more attractive to everyone the more people use it, because then you get e.g. train service every 10 minutes rather than 30 because there are three times as many trains to carry three times as many people. If there isn't enough of it the answer is to increase capacity, not deter usage with pricing.
> The price signal also provides a strong incentive to cycle/walk by imposing a marginal cost on each journey. This incentive would be completely lost if you'd already been taxed, leading to over-consumption and environmental costs.
The environmental impact of an incremental passenger using mass transit is negligible and completely dwarfed by the efficiency improvement of people getting to their destination faster. The only real trade off is saving time vs. getting exercise, but that's a decision each individual can make for themselves. And you could easily be deterring someone from saving time that they could then use to engage in a more balanced exercise routine than 100% cycling and 0% any other exercise.
Moreover, many of the other alternatives to mass transit are things like driving or accepting a closer, lower paying job with lower overall economic efficiency, or having to waste hours a day to leave for work early and get home late to avoid congestion charges. Which are all costs we don't want to impose when there is a better alternative in building enough mass transit capacity to meet the peak demand without having to ration it.
> Your plan would also mean that residents would effectively subsidise the travel of all outsiders - which for cities like London (which get huge amounts of tourists and external commuters) would impose an unfair cost on the residents.
On the other hand, then it's cheaper to go into the city and patronize businesses there (so business make more money) and cheaper to live a little further outside the city and commute in (which lowers rents for people in the city), which could easily more than outweigh those costs.
Then you have all the ticket machines, barriers, stations, staff etc that would be completely unnecessary.
The only real bonus of collecting fares is that tfl acts as a treasury with millions of pounds in funds to invest.
I have observed that this is false in London at least 30 times.
And let’s say you scope this only to buses (which are used less by commuters, and have real impacts on the environment)
Honestly I think not charging for buses in London would net out positively financially, and be better for all involved (faster, less cars on the road, easier to design buses for disabled access and prams etc.)
Not something I'd want.
What do they do when there's an increase in bad behaviour which was previously addressed by fines?
No, that I didn't say that. I said there are no fines. You cannot check anything out if you have something over due and after a certain number of days it goes to collections. The library doesn't deal with fines. Which part of that policy would you be negatively affected by?
If you are being sarcastic in order to make that point, that may be too subtle to communicate with most people that don't think of it on their own.
Long distance: Paid
Urban FDB: Free
Urban ADB: PaidWhy do you think people claiming benefits get free transport?
Free public transports just mean that you pay it through another way, and most likely mean that you remove the "use tax", thus increasing the contribution from people who don't actually use public transports.
Absolutely, and that is in fact their political stance. They believe that there should be no use tax on public transport and that people who don't use it should still be responsible for financing it. Their reasoning is probably based on the assertion that public transport causes positive externalities even for non-users, and that the resulting benefit to society as a whole outweighs the purported unfairness against individuals. You may or may not agree, it may or may not be a good policy, but it is a legitimate political stance.
A separate issue is whether guerrilla tactics/direct actions such as these can be justified to attain a political goal in a liberal democracy, and yet another debate is whether these methods are even tactically useful in getting closer to their stated goal.
> they believe that there should be no use tax on public transport and that people who don't use it should still be responsible for financing it
I don't know for Manchester specifically but any public transport I'm familiar with is payed in huge part with tax money, so people who don't use public transports are already paying for it. But not the 100%, instead it's balanced with the use tax. So, is that the contention point, that it should be paid only by tax money? I don't understand what benefits that would bring. With this system, people using public transports the most (thus get the most value) would pay the less (if averaged per trip), how do you balance such a system?
Concerning their action, what's the idea behind sharing their exploit other than simplifying the work of free-rider? That it is too expensive to design a use-tax system that works, thus make the 100% government funded solution more attractive?
In other words, free PT could save taxpayers money.
On the whole, this is probably one of the least harmful things they could have released publicly.
Depends the actions you’re thinking about, but I would guess that’s likely to be the case, yes.
> On the whole, this is probably one of the least harmful things they could have released publicly.
Could you elaborate?
Because their position is naive and lacks any serious economic or political justification. Even assuming that their beliefs are sincerely held, this would not be the correct course of action to go about inciting change.
When was the last time that stopped anybody from taking a political stance?
this would not be the correct course of action to go about inciting change
See question above.
It may bring them more publicity though by the media that will talk about them, but they are also labeling this cause as being the criminal side.... which isn't really good (that's actually the strategy that multiple government use to push their agenda, making the opposite side seems like they are infringing the law).
It's said that it's a net benefice for everyone:
- people move more, because it's free
- shop sells more because more people
- less cost induced by individual transport (less car on road = less damages, less pollution..)
Although...just to nit pick a little. If you mean less road damage then keep in mind that road damage is proportional to the 4th power of vehicle weight. So buses cause enormously more road damage than cars.
People who claim to like markets tend these days to subscribe to a quasi-religious faith that markets are maintained by some ethereal force rather than human institutions. Free markets are an absolutely vital and fundamental aspect of the wealth and power of the developed world, but they cannot exist in their highest form apart from the centralized machinery that enables people to trust each other and easily buy and sell. If anarcho-libertarians were to break that down, perhaps society could still function at some level, but it would be vastly poorer until everything was rebuilt in some other form.
Collecting and accounting for payment is overhead. If something is "free", then that overhead can be reduced or eliminated. On the other hand the basic purpose of charging for anything is to allocate limited resources, so the task is how to match supply and demand.
But saying it is "grossly inefficient" not to charge for something makes no sense to me. That's not the issue at all.
The thing that is grossly inefficient is the manner in which services are paid for when it involves doing it indirectly via tax authorities. The overhead can't be eliminated when it is done that way - it requires a contingent of administrators and petty bureaucrats.
The obvious problem with providing stuff at no charge is that it will cost too much to supply it, and people will waste it, but that isn't what I would call overhead, and I don't think you are talking about that.
Presumably you support per-mile metering on public roads then?
This is trolling, right?