Fees are an effective way to shape behavior. Charge for the things you want to discourage, don’t charge for the things you want to encourage. Charging use based fares discourages people from using the transit.
Because transit and bicycles are the most cost effective and energy efficient ways to move people, those things should be paid for with fees on cars. Toll the roads, and charge congestion pricing. Then use that money to pay for the free to ride transit.
The neoliberal idea that things need to pay for themselves is a cancer. My state really takes the climate seriously, or so they claim. But they actively discourage drivers from reducing their carbon output by using transit, or driving a hybrid or EV, by charging extra for those things specifically.
Make the busses and trains free and the cars costly.
I have tried to have this conversation with people since high school in the 90s and all I get is ‘people will use the services too much’ and ‘but then people are paying for stuff they don’t use’ and never understand they are already paying for things they don’t use and the whole point is for people to be able to use it.
People are stupid.
Imagine paying money that benefits the entire community in multiple ways, even tough you don’t ride on public buses./j
“people will use it too much” is such a hilariously moronic complaint, especially when it comes from the actual public transport agencies themselves
it just reveals that people view public transport as some sort of neccesary evil, and they wish it would just go away, it’s as dumb as american rail freight companies doing everything in their power to not have to run freight trains
They really need to make transit free… Fare enforcement will always cost more than just having it be free, and paying with taxes.
Never heard that argument.
When I mention any transport be free, the only thing people care about is “But won’t it be overrun with the undesirables?”, the last part being described with various levels of political correctness.
And while it might be male privilege that I don’t find the feeling of security a particularly big problem, some people do reject it on the basis of giving homeless people temporary shelter alone. Fuck those guys.
I don’t know how this fits into any off this, but “gendered bus routes” popped into my head. This is definitely something in our society taken to the absurd, but I’m not sure what.
Neoliberal economists want to force everyhing to be priced, even when it makes no sense to do so (often, the administrative cost exceeds the additional revenue gained).
