Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost public transportation

Re:Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost ... by toomanybeersies on Monday December 16, 2019 @06:35PM (#21808767)

Interestingly, here in Melbourne we have a similar system when it comes to paying fares. It's not the bus/train/tram drivers responsibility to ensure you pay your fare, you can walk onto a bus without tagging on and the driver won't even blink, it's the job of roaming ticket inspectors to enforce fare payment.

In my experience, we don't have a particularly significant problem with homeless people and other "undesirables" on public transport. It probably helps that they have police patrols at most train stations at night.

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Re:Kansas City is first major city in U.S. to offer no-cost ... by flukus on Tuesday December 17, 2019 @01:38AM (#21811231)

In Melbourne it had some not so great effects. A lot of people will use it instead of just walking a couple of blocks and the free zone is already the slowest and most congested part of the network, so it made PT worse for everyone else. As a resident of zone 1 I now get to subsidize the free users in the city and zone 2 because they removed zone 1 only tickets.

I have a feeling the people complaining about the homeless would say the same things encountering "undesirables" on our PT though, it's just a disguised "I have to interact with poor people" argument.

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