Have targeted low fares for the poor etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport
It exists, and it works. And the best bit: all the money spent on the whole administration around tickets, making tickets, enforcing laws, gates and so on can be spent on improving the system.
you mean all the money saved? The unspent money are only a factor in the year following the year when the non-spend started. After that, no one will remember that they used to spend to some big figure on all the things you listed and assume that the operating budget of the transport agency has always been the lower figure.
This is unfortunately not the way many systems in the US are funded. Many have to balance their fares with the service provided because they are reliant on external political factors for their public funding.
> You let people evade fares and then those people go onto stab people like Zarutska.
That has nothing to do with it. The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee. But it is interesting that you should right away jump from the one to the other, effectively using the poor dead girl for your agenda. Crime and homelessness are complex problems some parts of which are easy to solve and some of which are much harder.
You can't simply jump from 'someone got murdered on public transport' to 'public transport can't be free'.
Arguing that modern fare gates lowered crime is a pretty terrible response to the comment to which you responded. It shows a real lack of articulation ("crime bad, crime down here, therefore I don't need to refute what you said").
The original poster said:
> The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee.
I don't see how lower crime on BART due to fewer people hopping the turnstiles refutes that at all. (Huh, I just learned turnstiles is spelled with an I and not a Y. At least your comment led to me learning something.) It just seems defeatist, which is what the people looting this country want.
You're literally making up entire sentences, are you OK?
> The original poster said:
>> The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee.
> I don't see how lower crime on BART...
Maybe you didn't read the link, but it's a 67% reduction in crimes against _riders_. Not property, not soliciting, but crimes against other humans.
The murderer in question was unemployed, homeless and aimlessly riding public transit. We (as a society) should have done a lot more for him, but (see stats above) it seems clear to me that making it easier to be in a confined space with the rest of society wasn't solving his problems and certainly didn't help her.
that's a strange argument.
Perhaps there's something broken about a society that has a significant homelessness issue. The free public transport isn't the problem, it's likely that society has a surplus of citizens that prevent economic progress and/or the deployment of solutions known to be effective against homelessness.
I don't think $2.50 is what's preventing this from happening today.
The problem of persistent disorderly conduct by a small minority of highly disturbed people is either an unfathomably complex psychiatric issue, or a fairly straightforward carceral issue.
It's quite possible that these people would have turned out fine if they grew up provided a path to integrating into society that was less burdensome. It's possible you're right, too, but without controlling for confounding factors there's no way to know.
As for why, two main categories of reasons. First, for the good of the person themselves. By making it illegal, the state then has the authority to compel some sort of action. For a first 'offence' this could simply be sleeping it off in the 'drunk tank' (or in a hospital bed if necessary). For repeat offences, an escalating scale of compulsory treatment. Basically if a person is regularly passing out in gutters, it's likely only a matter of time before they kill themselves, so being nudged, then coerced, then ultimately compelled into treatment would likely benefit them. Of course, this relies on avenues for treatment rather than simple punishment being available.
The other reason is for the rest of society. People do not want to walk down streets where people are passed out in gutters. They will either feel compelled to try to help - which can be, or at least feel, risky, given that intoxicated and/or mentally ill people can be unpredictable - or they may feel badly for not doing anything. Regardless, if it's a regular thing, it will encourage people to avoid the area where they're likely to encounter such things. That will impact local businesses, residences, etc., leading to an overall decline of environment and services for everyone.
Should everything that causes people to feel bad be illegal? Many people are scared by guns.
And that is because it is not polite to take up more than the minimum space needed. (Like using seats for your bag, or putting your feet on the seat across from you.)
Aren't half of these wrong?
NIMBY-ism isn't particularly partisan. Find a suburb and it's probably full of NIMBY zoning rules regardless of which party has the majority there. This is one of the things which isn't red vs. blue, it's "got mine" vs. the people who don't get a vote because they can't afford to live there because they don't get a vote.
You also don't have to "solve housing the societal level" to keep the homeless from using the subway as a bedroom. That's the better way to do that, but you can also do things like build homeless shelters that resemble (and therefore have the density of) college dorms in places where the "neighbors" are auto salvage yards, warehouses, prisons, abandoned buildings or the like and are correspondingly less likely to object to putting them there. And then anyone you catch being disruptive on the subway gets a free one-way ticket to the shelter.
Effectively, to offer free public transport, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money in politics.
To promote solar power, you have reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
To promote anti-vaccine ideology, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
To promote a strictly equal society where every person is judged by their abilities and not ethnic history and skin color, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
There are vested interests in every debate and saying we should aim for wholesale societal change for every low hanging result is a recipe for inaction (or at least, very delayed action)
Do you actually though? Or do you just have to do it in a way that they won't stop you?
There are at least three ways to do that. You can do it in a way that it actually doesn't cause trouble for them, you can do it in a way where they can't stop you (e.g. at a different level of government where they have less influence), or you can do it in a way where they can't see what you're trying to do until after it's already done.
"Reduce the influence of lobbyists and money" doesn't even mean anything. If you want something to happen or not happen, you're lobbying. If you spend time or resources trying to achieve your goals, that's money. What people mean is they want to reduce the influence of people they don't like. It's fully generic, you might as well say that in order to win you have to defeat your opponents.
Having other places with a roof, some security and some public amenities should go a long way to avoid other services getting bogged down by homelessness.
an important factor in improving your life is integration in society. but that only works if you live among people already integrated, not if everyone around you is also not integrated.
the same reason why it's hard for people to escape poverty uf everyone around them is poor too.
If giving away free public services could be grifted to increase the bottom line of the ultra wealthy, we'd have a utopian society.
I wish we could get to a point where we default to “yes” and find solutions rather than making it easier to say “no.”
It's not an either-or. We can build more shelter to help homeless people, and at the same time we can dissuade them from using public transportation as de facto shelter.
After all, everybody's perfectly happy to keep homeless people out of their front yard or the local Starbucks. Nobody says "But we need to tolerate bums smoking weed in the middle of our coffee shop, unless we build enough shelter for all of them. ALL OF THEM."
So? Let it.
If people need shelter, it's a shame we are building a ballroom instead of shelter.
Congestion taxes are completely different from ticket fees.
Public transport in the state of Queensland, Australia charges a flat fare of 50 cents. They only reason they charge anything at all is because they want the trip data for route planning purposes.
The notion that transit agencies need to be funded via fares is nonsense to begin with, but it looks even wackier when one looks at how roads are funded.
To prevent this effect, you have to have a well educated population first. That’s actually an even more difficult problem to solve.
Don't give endless free fair, give n free fair per day.
If you ride and pay your fare twice, then every ride after that, for the rest of the day, is free. That is very nice. So if you commute and you have a transfer, and you're taking 4 rides per day, then you're saving half of that in fares.
In the old days, you would pay a cash fare and the bus operator could issue a paper transfer ticket. The transfer would be good for a few hours. So your fare was basically per-trip. But the system couldn't track people paying cash fares like that, so there were no free rides without the transfer ticket. If you took two trips a day, like a normal commute, you'd pay at least two fares. Now, with pre-loaded cards or fares on the mobile app, you can track all that stuff, and reload when necessary.
For disabled people or whoever qualifies for "Reduced Fare", your fare costs half ($1.00 instead of $2.00) and so your daily maximum is only $2.00. A really good deal.
vienna has day tickets that cost as much as two single tickets but you can only buy them on a strip of 8 which you can use one day at a time over an unlimited period
Anyway, that is not how the fare system worked with paper transfers. There were no caps at all. You either paid full fare, or you showed a valid transfer. If you didn't have the transfer, then you paid again and again on any given day. The fare caps only came into use when the system was capable of tracking them, for example a unique preloaded or prepaid card.
Now I have limited experience with American public transit, so perhaps there were some "capped fare" systems in the 1980s or before, but I never saw one that worked that way.
i know the but ticket system from los angeles 25 years ago. you could use each strip only once because you had to hand them in. i think you got a second strip on the next bus so you could potentially make an unlimited chain. if people would throw them away then only because they got one they didn't use. you were also not allowed to use the strip for a return trip on the same route.
Sidewalks are free, but they are usually unpleasant or inaccessible. In places where that isn’t true, they absolutely get trashed by litter; some even spit on the sidewalk.
Libraries are seemingly free, but getting a library card often requires you to provide several forms of proof of address, including evidence of paying rent or property taxes. So they aren’t truly free.
I've visited libraries in a half dozen countries, where I'm not even a taxpayer. I just walked in.
Some services at the library might not be free, including book checkout or making photocopies.
But if you want to make that distinction, then walking around your neighborhood isn't free because in most place you need to wear clothes, and clothes aren't free.
FWIW, I've walked a lot of forest roads without a car or bike. And the biggest littering problem on our sidewalks, by weight, are the escooter riders who simply leave their machines parked in the middle of the sidewalk.
The problem isn't that the sidewalks are free to use, the problem is one of regulation and enforcement.
That's why libraries are both free and well-loved - they librarians regulate the free space.
>Absolutely not.
I think that having it very cheap compared to quality and service delivered is the best of both worlds.
The main reason why we should charge money for transit is because it makes it easier to kick off people who ruin it for everyone else. It's not important that transit covers its costs, it's important because requiring payment filters out people who don't value it.
It fucking sucks to be on a train with a homeless guy shouting threats into the air, or with a bunch of teenagers blasting music and intimidating other passengers. Once on the way back from work once, there was a guy watching porn at full volume in a car with children at the other end. Sure, you can say "call the police!" but it's much harder to place cops everywhere (purely expensive) than it is to just send out some ticket inspectors (who generally justify their own salaries).
You're right about fares being a useful tool to filter for antisocial behaviour. After becoming a parent I became a lot less tolerant of horrible behaviour on trains and buses. Luckily I rarely encounter it here in the Netherlands (Ireland was worse, but still not atrocious, depending on the area)
MTA serves NYC. People who can't even afford the subway are definitely not driving over there.
Let's face it, classism right now manifests as:
* poor folk use terrible public transit
* med income folk drive cars
* high income/wealth folk get driven around by robots or staff
At least with the classist train you cut down on emissions and public funds spent fixing roads. And I'd argue it's a bit less unequal than the status quo in 95% of the US.
Your comment might be deeply offensive to people who have suffered in actual caste systems.
On the local train we were unable to take luggage into first class (a small number of seats blocked off by a plexiglass entrance), but folks were very accommodating of some clueless Americans just trying to go a few stops down the track.
The regional train was nice, but second class on the way back from our destination was just as comfortable.
Long story short, the claims of comfort and cleanliness between the classes didn't really seem apparent.
on regional and local trains i have to agree the difference is less apparent.
i guess the main benefit is that first class areas are going to be less packed. i am not sure but it may be the case that you are not even allowed to stand in first class if you have a second class ticket.
so if the train is crowded then that crowd won't be allowed in the first class area, and it is unlikely that you buy a first class ticket without a seat. but if the train is only lightly filled it probably makes no difference at all.
Persuasive to what type of people?
What doesn't work is laws that aren't enforced. Either enforce them or repeal them.
So conclusion before evidence?
At least the founders had the foresight to codify innocent-until-proven-guilty.
This isn't anything like innocent-until-proven-guilty.
But if the collected fares are paying for enhanced police brutality or other deleterious second-order system behavior, it's not so cut and dry.
The plan is to let anyone on the subway, with no fares. It turns out that the violent, unstable people who make public spaces unwelcoming are disproportionately represented among those who cannot pay $2.50 for a fare. So they scare off regular transit riders who mode shift to something else. It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare, so it's financially and logistically impossible to actually keep it safe. Then your transit ridership tanks and people who hate funding transit can declare the whole thing a giant waste of money and any new funding dies politically because now there's no public ridership constituency left.
Nobody cares about the revenue gained from $2.50 fares. What matters is the tiny amount of resistance that offers to the small number of people who are largely responsible for making public transit unwelcoming.
Are you making a case that a violent person, who ignores the stringent laws of society against violence, will diligently follow the laws of society requiring $2.50 prior to riding public transport?
LOL
There is a cost benefit analysis that even serial offenders go through to pick a victim. If a transit system insists on fares, it is likely they are watching out for fare dodgers which increases the risk of getting caught even before the offender gets a chance to offend.
Are you making the case that a society unable to protect its denizens from violent offenders in broader society will be able to protect its denizens on public transport from those same violent offenders through the application of a $2.50 fare?
Hmm.
How many times have you heard of road rage incidents which deescalate as soon as one party realises that they are being recorded by a dashcam? People’s behavior under surveillance is different from their private behavior.
Surveillance doesn’t require fee collection.
Is violent crime in Target stores higher than it is in Costco locations because the latter charges an admission fee?
I would personally be surprised if violent attacks are differentiated in rate between the two.
Why is loitering an issue/crime? Should it be?
What does loitering mean? Why is it a problem?
So I'll only go as deep as a quick search for "loitering definition" -- the first hit aligns to what I hold as my personal understanding:
Loitering is the act of standing, lingering, or waiting around idly in a public or private place for an extended period without a clear, lawful, or obvious purpose.Why is loitering a problem?
Maybe someone at the transit center is there to enjoy the architecture without needing to go somewhere. We ask artists to design a beautiful space transit space, and then want to exclude someone that wants to just imbibe the vibe. Others may have some other purpose for that space. The spectrum of experience for 7 billion humans is unlikely to be fathomable to allow for enumeration as 'allowed activities'. "Loitering" is a silly, unserious, approach to managing criminality, as is a $2.50 fee. A $2.50 fee isn't going to stop anyone with criminal intent.
Either it is a public space or it isn't. If no harm is being caused, no reason to exclude anyone from public spaces.
Are you pretending to be a space alien unfamiliar with how crime works on Earth? OK, let me spell it out for you.
Various forms of crime require previous periods of observing the target. For example, if you want to rob a shop, you want to know how many employees are inside, whether most of the leave at a certain time for a lunch and leave one of them in the shop alone, whether they leave together at evening or again one of them stays behind and closes the shop. Similarly, if you want to assault a person, you wait until you find someone walking alone, and make sure that the rest of the group is not walking a few meters behind them. If you sell drugs, you need to stay on the street, waiting for the customers to approach you. etc.
On the other hand, there are almost no good reasons to stand for one hour in front of the shop, observing what goes on inside. There are almost no good reason for a group of adult men to stand in front of a school at evening. Etc.
I am not saying that anyone who stands at a weird place should be immediately arrested. But it makes sense for other people to be concerned about that, and call the cops, who will ID the people who stand there, and tell them to go away. Which they cannot do if standing there is perfectly legal. Hence, the "crime" of loitering.
Are you suggesting that society can reduce crime by charging a fee to be out in public and surveilling public spaces for fare evasion?
Brilliant!
I feel like you've argued from a false dichotomy -- we can't do X because of bad things, so we have to put up with Y and bad things.
The robber barons built libraries. Yes, it took some heat off of their reputation, but, they weren't idiots and neither were the people for whom they were driving wages down or driving prices up. They and municipal orgs of the time and other civic minded groups built libraries and schools because society is better off have more education. Capitalism, done right, actually can have good outcomes.
In a similar vein, healthcare makes people healthier as a general outcome. "Socialized medicine" (more properly understand of as healthcare as a publicly-provided good) enables a more healthy population -- business owners benefit because the people they can hire from are healthier, so more productive.
Public transportation in dense areas should be seen similarly. More efficient, lower pollution when expanded and widely available, easier to police, less of the nasties like PM2.5 from tires and asphalt, less road deaths, and so forth.
Elon Musk and the whole capital serving US government is not a good outcome.
There was a fun take on it on r/comics recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1x4toay/the_day_all...
> business owners benefit because the people they can hire from are healthier, so more productive.
As we can see now - capitalism would prefer "stupid", way productive robots running 24/7 in a dark warehouses to a healthier, more productive population. Lighting savings are already cover most of difference (/s but only so slightly).
I am genuinely curious because I simply lack the ability to understand that meme I keep encountering; that things that cost money should be free.
Is it just that you want others to pay for things you like, do, have, or want? Or do you just not really have an idea of where things you like, want, do, or have come from and that things can't be "free" like they were when you lived with your parents?
I am genuinely baffled by this type of mentality. I actually understand my cat better than I understand this mentality, because the human is supposed to have higher order thinking skills that appear to be wholly absent.
It was all very vindicating
Police, Prosecutors, and Judges all openly use their discretion. Each of them could have quashed the charge before it got to a jury. The jury is the last line of discretion. Police, prosecutors, and judges love to call it "jury nullification" but its the same power that police, prosecutors, and judges use multiple times a day.
The only crime I see is that police arrested an innocent person on false evidence, prosecutors charged someone based on false evidence, and a judge is actually allowing this case to proceed all based on evidence that everyone knows is false.
That just isn't true. Not even remotely.
This should just be an established way to pay your fare.
If you think free public transit should exist, do the policy and outreach work, and make it happen.
Reserve civil disobedience for injustices that truly cannot be tolerated, even for a second. Or when the democratic process is not available to you.
As far as nuisance and violence on public transportation, that's a different problem that I agree it has to be dealt with. Apparently police don't do anything about it, they instead hunt for fare jumpers...
I regularly see how people are not paying the bus fare (here in Russia). And the only reason why they do not pay is because the punishment is light (fine of ~25 USD) and chance of being caught and actually prosecuted is close to zero. So paying does not make economical sense.