Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Every transport costs something. Making public transport completely free can be a recipe for a financially troubled public transport company, and since no-one pays anyway (so no one actively decides to use PT over other means) there is little incentive to the public transport company to make it more reliable, higher comfort etc.
Public transport should be very affordable (and for sure way cheaper than private car usage), but not completely free. The only free thing is walking.
The problem you're running into there is you're treating public transport as a capitalistic for-profit business incentivised by making money rather than a public service incentivised by serving the public. When public transport is run purely for profit the goal is to find the maximum people will pay for the minimum level of service.
Regardless, free public transport with privately owned public transport can still work. Where I am there's free public transport by bus for anyone under 22, over 60, or with a disability, funded by the government despite the fact public transport is privately owned. The only complaint I have is that I don't fall into any of those categories. The busses are usually clean enough, regular-ish (usually one every 15 minutes for popular routes at peak times), and you'll usually get wifi and maybe a usb charging port. Modern busses are electric too which makes use of our mostly renewable energy generation. It's like a train that can get stuck in traffic.
It might be a lot to ask in some places but really all you need is a functioning government who work for the people rather than themselves. Enough people use public transport that it puts pressure on politicians to keep services running well otherwise they get voted out.
No I disagree this is not a capitalism problem imo. In order to be able for public transport to work at all, there needs to be some hurdle. Otherwise what you stimulate is healthy pedestrians taking a bus for 1 stop 'cause it's free anyway' and cyclists will transfer to public transport 'cause it's free anyway'. The net results are negative for society: fuller vehicles while it's not necessary, worse service because there is no incentive to PT company to gain/retain/please customers, financial abyss for the company when public funding situation changes with a different political tide.
Absolutely free should only exist very well targeted at certain groups, discounts at certain other groups, but those who can pay should pay a fair price. Of course it should be strongly subsidised (mainly infrastructure building and maintaining) but a healthy PT company has at least 50 % of their exploitation income self-generated from tickets, selling advertisement space etc. A 100 % subsidised PT company is an incredible weak target for political tide otherwise, and will lose touch with their main goal of efficiently moving as many people as possible.
The super heavily subsidised tramways to bumfuck nowhere in the soviet union were just as big a problem there and then as the 7 lane highways with no good PT alternatives is here and now.
You need to be able to measure real demand on routes and you need to stimulate as many people as possible to walk and cycle, only use PT when needed. That combination of subsidies and some pricing creates the sweet spot. "Free!" is just easy slogan, but not the solution for most real situations. Fully free PT will create many other problems. Just the health benefit alone of stimulating people to walk or cycle for short distances is enormous. I stand by my opinion, it should be cheap/affordable, but not free.
People taking the bus is the entire point.
It's also healthier than those people going into a car, since more people in buses means fewer cars on the road, and correspondingly, less pollution, and correspondingly - fewer roads and parking spots are needed. Which in turn frees up space to live, enjoy nature, and life.
If you want to motivate people to walk and bicycle, you will also need to foster a good public transit infrastructure: that'll enable walking and bicycling in other cities. After all, who will walk to another city? You walk to a bus stop, take it, then a train, and then you walk.
Way easier than spending precious minutes on searching a parking spot and being miserable in a traffic jam, stressing about other drivers, and so on.
Subsidised tramlines are a solution. With public transit lines being added, people will also flock to living near those.