There's an argument that making people pay a fare improves cleanliness and security to an extent. I don't know if there are studies about it. But it's a persuasive argument.

At that point just make separate no fee, low fee, and high fee train cars with varying levels of poor people and/or cleanliness.

The class system… such a classic!

You kid, and it would be kinda horrible in certain ways, but I genuinely think it would increase ridership significantly.

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.

Do you not take flights to travel between cities because they are classist?

Now that you mention it, I don’t fly much, and would do so more if airlines standardized on a single level of service somewhere around business class in terms of convenience and basic comfort, but with lower prices in exchange for unbundled luggage, food, and beverage options.

Have you considered that first class passengers may be subsidizing fares for other tiers?

Ah yes, a caste system on tracks. That will surely work

Surely you're aware airplanes and cruise ships have different ticket classes and no one considers it a caste system.

Your comment might be deeply offensive to people who have suffered in actual caste systems.

long distance trains too. and in germany even some local trains have (or used to have) first class compartments.

We paid for a first class ride (but through a discount website, for like $10 difference? I still don't understand the pricing) that had us on a regional train then a local train in Germany. It was a new experience for us and came after about 20 hours of flights and layovers so we didn't want to have a challenge to arrive.

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 long distance trains first class seats are wider and usually only three per row instead of four.

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.

A fellow aficionado of German trains, I see.

> But it's a persuasive argument.

Persuasive to what type of people?

Even to a lefty liberal like me. But I'm open to data that, actually, it'll turn out fine.

What doesn't work is laws that aren't enforced. Either enforce them or repeal them.

> Even to a lefty liberal like me. But I'm open to data that, actually, it'll turn out fine.

So conclusion before evidence?

At least the founders had the foresight to codify innocent-until-proven-guilty.

People are allowed to have gut feelings about how things will turn out, based on their internal "world model". Nowhere did I say I had reached a conclusion. Since we don't have data either way, you're doing the same thing as me, but in the other direction.

This isn't anything like innocent-until-proven-guilty.

People who understand budget constraints. Economics applies even outside of capitalism and democratic states.

I don’t find this claim persuasive in the least. I could just as easily assert without evidence that fees reduce cleanliness because patrons feel they’ve prepaid for their messes to be cleaned up, and security because resources that could be applied to safety and reducing crimes against patrons are used to enforce fare collection and secure methods of payment instead.

For a first order argument, yes, because people won't use free very often.

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.

This is a great way to destroy public transit!

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.

> It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare

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

Your argument is like saying I won't put a basic privacy lock on my gym locker because, you know, a creep wanting to sift through my things is going to do it anyway.

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.

> There is a cost benefit analysis that even serial offenders go through to pick a victim

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.

I’m saying that knowing that you’re being (potentially) being watched for fare evasion has a deterrent effect on wanting to commit a crime.

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.

This claim seems suspect.

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 think the issue is loitering. Target and Costco can remove people from premises who loiter, but a public transportation system might not be able to do that *assuming no loitering statutes for the stations are in place.

I would personally be surprised if violent attacks are differentiated in rate between the two.

> I think the issue is loitering

Why is loitering an issue/crime? Should it be?

It's not always. I think there are cases where it should be. A transit center probably should have some wait areas, but generally should not be for loitering. Similar to airport pickup/dropoff.

> generally should not be for loitering.

What does loitering mean? Why is it a problem?

Loitering is well defined topic, I think if we bog ourselves into a semantic wrestling match we'll lose valuable time from our lives for little value trying to convince the unpersuadable.

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.

Looks like there isn't anything critically important in the definition.

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.

> Why is loitering a problem?

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.

> I’m saying that knowing that you’re being (potentially) being watched for fare evasion has a deterrent effect on wanting to commit a crime.

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!

It means you can kick out an unstable person who has not paid $2.50 before they become violent.

Why not? Surely you can have defined intervention protocols and standards of care for mental health that don't require violence to initiate. Also, mental health issues is not equivalent to "poor."

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.

Ah, yes, the cost of the price is rarely considered. Think of the money society would save just in not having to pay up for the payment system!

There is too much communism in this sentence.

I take your comment in the sardonic humor it conveys, hopefully it matches your intent.

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.

> Capitalism, done right, actually can have good outcomes

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).

So we capture and enslave the conductors and everyone needed to run that free operation? Sounds like an excellent plan. A free, slavery based transportation system.

Or fund it fully through taxes, like roads, schools, etc...

A lot of roads have tolls. Don’t forget more specific taxes like gas taxes or vehicle registration and sales taxes.

What exactly is your definition of free? Do you mind explaining your thought process on that?

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.

I thought we were making it free? Are you paying for this idea since it is going to be free to me? Where and when do you sign up to pay for it so it can be free to me?

Hi! Like most people in the world, I don't normally respond to bad faith arguments like the ones you have posted in this thread regarding enslaving people for providing a "free" (clearly tax-funded) government service. Responding below the dead comment to let you know that. Have a good weekend.

Or you know run it as a public service like the roads. We are able to do that without enslaving road maintenance employees.