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Comment by jimnotgym | Hacker News Reader

$2.75 sounds really cheap to my British ears. How far can you go on that?

It's a flat rate to get to any transit station in the city, no matter how far away. In NYC, the neighborhoods at the edge of the transportation network have historically been less wealthy, so this is a nice pro-economic mobility thing, and pretty unique among transportation networks. I expect people to say that this should change, but I think it's probably part of new york's secret sauce for economic success.

Same in Stockholm. There was zone based fees for some time.

Public transit shouldn't be expensive. It shouldn't pretty much ever run outside the red. The whole point of it is to incentivize its use and promote efficient means of travel. The only reason to charge at all is to disincentivize unnecessary consumption of it.

If you are doing city planning you want as many people on the Subway as you can get. It enables greater density at ground level and is much cheaper to maintain (if you maintain it) than overcongested road networks and the required parking.

It's an odd and funny argument to make that your product is working well if it's always on fire or broken, which you would think an HN commenter like a sysadmin would understand.

It just seems the margins for error get ever thinner as your system scales. Other systems have figured this out, like Tokyo where they change over a major-use track in one night. Meanwhile, MTA shuts down the L for 15 months.

But someone has to pay? Broadly speaking either

1) The businesses pay to get their human resources to work

2) The travellers pay or

3) Central taxation pays

So who should pay in New York?

Obviously taxes. Those who benefit most from public transit are those least able to afford it, but making the cost baked in to the wealth of the people can driven even someone with a personal driver to maybe fathom using the tube instead once in a while if its borderline free.

It's not so obvious who you are going to tax. Are you going to do it from income taxes, local property taxes,local business taxes, corporation taxes?

The NYC system isn't composed of "zones" like the systems in such cities as London and Paris. Essentially, once you pay your $2.75 you're free to travel to any subway station in the system. There's also a bus system with limited transfers.

DC metro has zones, as an example of a US train system with it.

No zones effectively on the Métro. There are zones in Paris but that’s if you want to go suburban and then you don’t take the Métro. You take RER.

Toronto and London have zones. I'd bet the farm that Byford does the same when the MetroCard replacement is fully deployed.

Up to 31 miles: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/nyregion/10atrain.html

You can transfer from the A to other services too, so you're not just limited to that.

It's not a zoned system. $2.75 gets you in, then you go wherever you want within the system.

Unlike the tube it's not zone based pricing. One price no matter the distance or time.

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