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.