My understanding is that one of the serious practical downsides to free public transit in American cities is that lots of homeless people use it. This sounds silly (like, isn't that the goal?), but some fraction of those people are smelly and/or scary, and what tends to happen is that anyone who has a choice stops using those parts of the system. And then however one might feel about that outcome, what tends to happen next is that the transit system loses political support and funding.

There's probably a common sense solution somewhere that includes both free ridership and also fairly strong enforcement around loitering and hygeine, but I don't know if any city has managed to really nail it.

Incidentally, I think a lot of similar problems come up in cities that have free public bathrooms. A small number of abusers tend to make those bathrooms extremely unpleasant for everyone else.

Part of the problem is in being one of the only services that offers itself for free. If the homeless don't have ready access to showers and basic hygiene products, but do have ready access to public transit, then you get a lot of unhygenic people on public transit.

If homeless people do not have ready access to shelter, but do have ready access to public transit, then you get them spending time on public transit for the shelter it provides, which means they use it a lot more then they would if they were using it for transit. Public transit isn't even particularly good shelter, but since most places don't allow loitering (with selective enforcement against the undesirables), you again get them congregating on the few places that do.

Another dynamic I've seen is the effect of every community doing it differently. I live in a community that leans a little more liberal and wealthy than many of the counties around it. For a period some 15 years ago, there was a real public outreach to do better. Facilities were added, taxes were raised a little, but it was mostly good at first. And then word got out that we were where the free stuff was at. This caused a spike in homeless immigration to the area, and then the system wasn't enough. This has led to a real reversal in public attitudes about this. The resources aren't infinite, and being nicer than your neighbors just creates a feedback loop that doesn't stabilize.

The tragedy of the commons in action.

> Part of the problem is in being one of the only services that offers itself for free.

It's worse than that imho.

I live somewhere that provides a fair bit of support and free services (e.g., transitional housing) for the homeless. That doesn't get rid of the homelessness, all it means is that the remaining people without access to shelter and showers are those that are generally incompatible with polite society for a variety of reasons. (Crime, severe drug abuse, severe mental illness, etc.)

Implementing it as "anyone can hop on wherever" implements a weak filter for the worst of the homeless population using it as shelter. Those who've been refused or kicked out of available shelter.

I could see it working more as a "free transit passes" program so they could be revoked and not re-issued for people that were going to cause ongoing issues in the same way someone that shows up to transitional housing and gets high and assaults other tenants and neighbours could be removed.

“A fair bit of support and free services” != a home, so it should be unsurprising that the homeless remain. Getting a job that can afford a home is hard enough if you already have a home. Without a home at all, getting a job is just unrealistic.

You can say all you want about Castro, but he did in fact eliminate homelessness in Cuba.

> “A fair bit of support and free services” != a home

The city provides studio apartments with "daily meals, laundry, showers, housing application assistance, community and health service referrals, skills building, relationship building, connection to volunteer and employment opportunities, and other support services".

It's not a home, but it certainly means that the people availing themselves fully of the opportunities presented to them aren't unwelcome on transit because of their inability to maintain basic hygiene.

So the argument against an interesting idea that has been implemented successfully in some localities is that there is an unrelated problem (homelessness) that has also been addressed successfully in other places.

I agree that potential problems should always be anticipated. But if the conclusion is "well we have homelessness so we can't offer a service that will be taken advantage of by homeless people in unintended ways" we can just as well agree that everyone with a six figure income move into a gated community and leave the rest of society to THE PURGE.

The obvious conclusion for a self-respecting society should be "let's try free public transit and also throw money and mental health support at the homeless population until they don't exist any more."

> But if the conclusion is "well we have homelessness so we can't offer a service that will be taken advantage of by homeless people in unintended ways"

The objection isn't that homeless people will use the service, it's that they'll effectively make it unusable by everyone else.

Yes, in an ideal world that wouldn't happen. But whether or not we should have homeless people, we do, so proposals need to take this reality into account. If you think you can "just fix" homelessness, then do that first and worry about transit after.

I was just thinking about this when typing up a top level reply. If you make things free, sometimes people will abuse it or do weird things - for example, homeless people taking sponge baths in public library bathrooms. But I doubt homeless people would clean themselves in public libraries at the same frequency if they had convenient access to "public showers" or some such.

But there are a lot of wrinkles to this kind of thinking. What if there is access to shelter, but it imposes some kind of deal breaking restriction like no drug usage? Or no felons? Let's get even more controversial - what if the shelter bans sex offenders, should homeless sex offenders be forced to shower in libraries? Things get complicated, and a lot of politicians aren't willing to die on these hills when their housed constituents have strong emotional reactions to these things.

It's called the tragedy of the commons.

Nuh. None of those fix the problem. They just fix tiny issues around the problem.

The only way to reduce homeless is rebuild traditional value and traditional family structure. Less people get divorced, less kids get abandoned. People always get last resort from the big family and the church and family friends and church friends, etc.

Get help from the government and charity organizations should be rare cases.

But we are on the destructive path for a long time. Part of it is natural consequence of social change, but it's also partly due to some people think they are capable of design a new society from top to bottom.

Yeah, because 100 years ago there were not any tramps, hobos or bums.

> Less people get divorced, less kids get abandoned.

Afaik, most abandoned homeless kids are queers, most often trans. Then kids with behavioral issues (yes, stemming from crappy parents in the first place). I really dont understand how return to traditional values and family structure would improve either.

Many homeless person are facing a little more than a hygiene crisis and it's not something a few free baths around can fix and you don't need that many to ruin the premises of a free service

Back around WWII when most households didn't have warm running water here in Denmark, there were places where you could go and have a shower or a bath for a small fee. Would that be a possibility, or is that as untouchable politically as pay toilets?

I wonder if it's possible to have a multi-tier system where you have a free compartment but also a separate paid compartment with much higher standards (and prices).

The higher prices of the paid compartment would go towards subsidizing the free compartment.

In theory, I think is a good idea. An even better benefit in my mind is that it addresses the original articles complaint by providing a form of means testing without actually means testing. The free compartment is available to everyone weather they need it or not (that is to say, weather they can demonstrate in a satisfactory manner that they need it or not), however the people that don't actually need it will self-select out.

The problem is political. At least in the US, this approach would be opposed by both major political ideologies: the right because it is a government hand out, and the left because it is unfair to have a "poor" section of the bus (see the reaction to mixed income apartments having a separate section 8 entrance, or restricting the amenities that section 8 residents are allowed to use, which is essentially what you are proposing).

Further, the nature of bureaucracies in our economics system (be they for profit or government) is to prioritize profit centers at the expense of cost centers, so it would be difficult to maintain the "poor" compartment to an adequate level. Compounding on this is the fact that the poor and homeless tend to be the least politically powerful groups, and maintaining adequete funding for this scheme would be difficult,

If the prices are too high, that could lead to issues where someone who b can't afford to regularly be taking it might not end up riding if the free compartment is regularly full even if the paid one never is. OTOH, I suppose it's also possible some people might not ride now due to prices but would be able to if there were a way to ride completely for free.

This sounds like a strange idea, but when I traveled in Europe, there were always first and second class carriages on the trains. You could do the same thing with transit. Every other bus is free. People could then choose between hanging out with the people for a few blocks, or paying for a ride.

What an innovative idea! Here in the states, economic indicators are a great proxy for many other aspects. Maybe we could do a trial in Montgomery, Alabama, surely nothing would go wrong.

It would be helpful to us non-US persons if you'd explain what signal you're proxying with "Montgomery, Alabama". As it is this means nothing to a large number of people reading your comment.

I think they are referring to Rosa Parks, where the economic difference would lead to segregation.

That's an incidental effect of not providing proper housing. Blaming homeless people for not having somewhere to go is like victim shaming. Giving homeless people homes is cheaper than not.

As the brother of a homeless person, many do have a place to go, but choose the homeless lifestyle. My brother moved to a big west coast city to be homeless. Cheaper housing there wouldn't have helped him.

Not everyone chooses to be homeless, so painting all homeless with one brush would be disingenuous.

For example, I know 6 sane, smarter-than-average, old guys who drift around the SF Bay Area mid-Peninsula region who don't drink or do drugs, but are poor and cannot afford housing on their own. 2 have managed to get accommodations, 1 by the COVID lockdown. That's 4 left looking for 24-hour coffee shops, laundromats, bus stops, and diners.

But giving all homeless homes isn't the solution either, lest you want crime and drug filled ghettos.

The solution in my mind requires everything, at once. Homes for those who need it. Mental support for those who need it. And enforcement for those who merely want to abuse and corrupt the system.

The homeless problem lumps everyone together into one camp and while they do suffer equally, their reasons are vastly different. There is no single solution, and it certainly will be difficult.

Unfortunately i see the friction involved in _actually_ solving this problem as so great that it will never be done. Though some extreme measures may be taken.

> But giving all homeless homes isn't the solution either, lest you want crime and drug filled ghettos.

Doesn't ghettos implies that they're all in the same place? Maybe having a few everywhere would avoid that problem.

There are bigger problems that won't ever get solved. This small one won't be the first.

Hate and demonization of homeless people is entirely inappropriate. I suggest you look at yourself before judging people you don't know.

There is no hate at all here. What about what i said makes you think that?

Furthermore, what about being homeless is good? Since all i said is a way to resolve homelessness, in my eyes, yet you perceive that as hate. To me it is hateful to leave those people in this state.

You are the one that painted all homeless with one brush when you said:

> That's an incidental effect of not providing proper housing.

There are many causes, it is not only an effect of not providing proper housing, which I think was GC's point.

But free housing in that west coast city could have reduced the amount he cost that city.

Yep. It's also important that free housing doesn't turn into concentration camps (defined as collecting people into areas separate from communities) to hide former homeless people. Expanding Section 8 and similar with rapid SRO placement would be an easier solution in the short-term, while there is a need for dedicated/incentivized Section 8 and true affordable housing inventory against the wishes of NIMBYs.

Unlimited access to housing, medicine, and food does not make you a responsible adult.

This is it exactly - in areas without a "homeless problem" however you want to define that - you have a completely workable solution (example: airport shuttle trains, etc).

Where you have an issue the fare requirement is often used an excuse to enforce a minimum level of "cleanliness" if you will.

That's a symptom though; if you don't want homeless people looking for shelter, you should solve the homeless crisis instead of making public transit expensive.

I mean there's a lot of people who would gain a lot of opportunities if they could afford to commute, so free public transit would also reduce the homeless and poverty situation.

What really makes me angry is that it's not a dichotomy; the US is the richest country in the world, they can give free health care, housing and education to everyone. But they refuse, instead (nationally) pumping it into the military while (privately) funneling it upwards to the extremely rich.

That money could be redistributed to raise the minimum wage (and if you get paid minimum wage, your employer is effectively saying "I'd pay you less if I could") and improve the lives of everyone.

But the people in power (and their voters) don't want that, because that means considering those worse off as them as equals. It boils down not to economics, but egoism, classism and racism. It's the "as long as I got mine" attitude.

I hear this a lot, but it isn't as much of a problem as it would seem. The emery go round in Emerville and Oakland, and the Alameda Loop shuttle are both free and don't have this problem. It seems like the solution here is everyone disembarking at the end of the route. And you have areas where public transit isn't free that do have this problem

Nailed it.

I would love to use public transit in SF, but instead I'll just keep using Uber for my own sanity and health.

Perfect. Tax Uber to subsidize free public transit.

This turns into an adverse selection death spiral. The people who abuse the service will be subsidized by those who were driven off by them.

That might work in the short run. In the long run, voters who don’t see value in the service will inevitably tire of paying for it.

Making public transit broadly appealing is the way to sustain it. Finding competing services to tax to pay for it is a minor part of the overall strategy I think.

My relatively small city has free public transit, it's very nice. There isn't a big homeless population though. A quick Google search shows that quite a few bigger cities are also doing it for free.

Why would public transportation need to be paid for by "boosted commerce" to be beneficial? Why does it need to be profitable?

As a public service, do we ask fire departments to be profitable? What consequences happen when we try and make other essential services profitable, e.g. police?

Should armed forces be made to be profitable?

How do you define profitability in the first place... how do you define the costs and benefits?

Why does this question only ever seem to come up when we're talking about things that raise quality of life for the poor?

> Why does it need to be profitable?

It doesn't need to be profitable, but if it isn't, then the money to subsidize it needs to come from somewhere. Do you think raising taxes for this would be politically popular, especially if most taxpayers wouldn't use it?

> As a public service, do we ask fire departments to be profitable?

It is politically popular to use tax dollars to fund fire departments.

> Should armed forces be made to be profitable?

This is a textbook example of a public good. You can't give national defense only to people who pay for it. Either the whole country has it or nobody does.

> How do you define profitability in the first place... how do you define the costs and benefits?

This seems fairly obvious: if the income from fares exceeds the costs to pay the drivers, maintain the vehicles, etc.

> Why does this question only ever seem to come up when we're talking about things that raise quality of life for the poor?

Because people don't like paying for things that they don't get value from, even if other people do.

In LA a majority of voters elected to raise sales taxes several times to improve transit, despite only like 20% of commuters using it city wide (transit use is extremely high in certain neighborhoods like Westlake, though). LA metro is considering slashing fares because they make up something like 5% of the operating budget, thanks to these sales tax measures and federal grants. It's not just LA metro that is funded like this, cleveland RTA is also funded by a portion of sales tax revenues.

Why don't we talk about raising taxes when we want to raise spending for ("subsidize") the police, or the military? Why does it only seem to be a concern when we're talking about services like public transportation?

Where are people opposed to taxes being used to fund fire departments, and why?

Why don't we see public transportation as one of your "public goods"?

Is it possible those people who you say are so concerned about value are maybe not seeing how they gain from having public transportation for their community, or are they more concerned about someone else deriving more value from a service than they would?

> Why don't we see public transportation as one of your "public goods"?

By definition, public goods must be non-excludable. Public transportation is excludable.

> Is it possible those people who you say are so concerned about value are maybe not seeing how they gain from having public transportation for their community, or are they more concerned about someone else deriving more value from a service than they would?

The problem isn't that the value to someone else is greater than the value to them. It's that what they'd pay for it in taxes is greater than the value to them.

> Is it possible those people who you say are so concerned about value are maybe not seeing how they gain from having public transportation for their community

The commenter seems to be talking about the part of public transportation that isn’t excludable.

> Why does this question only ever seem to come up when we're talking about things that raise quality of life for the poor?

Because in general people like paying for things that are useful to them and don't like paying for things that aren't. The poor don't pay much in the way of taxes, so things that are only used by the poor are of course less likely to get funded.

The poor pay a disproportionate amount of taxes for what they get back. They certainly pay more than the billionaire class does. Perhaps the lack of funding has to do with power structures more than some subjective measure of utility.

> The poor pay a disproportionate amount of taxes for what they get back

How are you measuring this?

Because if it is profotable whilst being free then its a much easier sell.

No need to get all righteous, I'm not saying all public services need to be profitable, I'm saying we need to stop evaluating public services on strictly on their cashflow as many often are, and instead look at them in terms of the greater economic system they operate in.

> Slight tangent but I've always wondered what the economic impact would be if public transit were just free.

Look at areas where the cost of distance is high. Rural areas. Areas with bad transit. Islands. Then reverse that.

Basically anything you do to decrease the cost (in money or time) of moving from A to B flattens the cost of living. The poor guy who just wants to hang a picture doesn't have to put up with the insane costs of some wire and nails at the local hardware store that mostly caters to yuppies and has the pricing to match. He can justify the cost in time and money of getting on the subway or get in his car and go where it's cheap. Now apply this to every economic transaction from buying milk to getting a job and everything in-between. The second and third order effects are immense. People can afford to stop transacting with bad jobs and bad landlords because they can afford to access the alternative equivalent services.

Of course improving transit never gets much support because the people with the money don't want it spend on the subways they don't use and they don't want to have to compete with the poors for access to car infrastructure so you never see that stuff democratized, just more fees and whatnot to discourage use by those not wealthy enough.

That could also be good for the environment, in that it encourages use of shared transportation and lowers barriers.

I commute on transit and in my experience, those that can't afford transit simply don't pay the fare, so I'd guess impact would be pretty limited for those that might benefit the most from free transit. They either hop on via the back of the bus on the second set of doors away from the driver, walk directly onto the train platform without tapping up a fare card, or for the few stations that do have turnstyles, they use the emergency exit gate which says is alarmed, but in fact is not and swings open freely.

Seattle used to have free transit inside the downtown core, maybe there's some data from the period they were doing that.

Long-time Seattle resident and transit rider here. Seattle's erstwhile "Ride Free Zone" was instituted with the aim of promoting tourist activity and applied solely to rides that began and ended within a tiny part of the city center; for example, if you were a homeless person in the U District making a trip downtown, you would still have to pay, each way. So - except for very short trips - it was not necessarily something that meaningfully benefited poor people nor low-income people.

More recently Seattle's Transit Riders Union (among other groups) has advocated for more substantial free transit. Some baby steps in this direction have been realized with such things as free transit for high school students.

Yes, Seattle discontinued its mobile homeless shelter program, and instead moved it to occupy city parks and sidewalk greenery.

I don't know how much that will matter in the states, but when we tried it in Denmark (in some towns), it meant people took the bus more - but it was those who would otherwise take their bike or walk, not people who would otherwise use their car.

It makes sense too. I can get a 30 day pass to drive with public transportation as much as I want, but it is so much faster to take my car that I essentially only take it (prepandemic).

This has been done, I’ve lived in cities where this was the case for a while. In at least some cities, this turned public transit into a mobile homeless shelter, drug den, etc. So normal people stopped using public transit because it was unsafe and unpleasant.

Free public transport has been researched and it's not clear if it's positive. It's certainly not a slam dunk community good -

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22136... ( https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cstp.2017.10.002 )

Anecdotal: The Dutch government offers students free public transit. This allowed me and millions of others to be able to attend a much better (college, uni level) education than I would otherwise be able to have. Or it would involve a 25 kilometer bike ride every day.

Another anecdotal one: Many companies offer travel / commute expense cover. If my commute wasn't covered by my employer, I'd be spending €250 a month out of pocket just to get to work (in addition to the time spent). It would make me reconsider working for that employer in favor of something more local.

I like these kinds of solutions way better than just removing all fare gates, because then you won't have a huge influx of people who will abuse the service and drive away anyone with the means to avoid public transit.

Abstract from your link suggests that the study was pretty inconclusive.

> Findings suggest certain flaws limit the program’s potential success since the program design is misaligned with its primary stated goals, and several program goals relating to external effects of fare reform cannot be evaluated. Although it would be valuable for transport managers in other cities to learn about this experience, the Tallinn fare-free public transport program provides scant transferable evidence about how such a program can operate outside of a politicized context,

SF public transit is de facto free. I don’t think it’s led to any particular surge of commercial activity.

> SF public transit is de facto free.

Huh? I mean, sure, enforcement is pretty lax, but most people who ride buses in SF do indeed pay. The homeless generally do not, and drivers look the other way. (Frankly, I'm ok with this, as long as they aren't violent or using the bus as a toilet.)

Transport within Melbourne's entire downtown area is free: https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/assets/default-site/Maps-and-Time...

Same in Perth Western Australia

also the current Lab gov has promised to cap Public Transport at a maximum of $4.90.

A pretty significant saving https://twitter.com/MarkMcGowanMP/status/1350648142585217025...

*Goes into effect Jan 2022

Calgary, Canada; has free transit in the downtown core. But not very far, and not to the suburbs. But makes it very convenient when you are in the centre, and don't need to think twice about moving around that core.

In Vancouver it's unenforced, about half of people actually pay for their tickets.

The free tram zone is great, but only covers the CBD which is pretty tiny.