Luxembourg to become first country to make all public transport free | Hacker News Reader

Luxembourg to become first country to make all public transport free

theguardian.com

50 pointsjonbaer9 comments

In the context of heavily subsidized roads and freeways, free public transit makes sense on pure balance sheet economics. It costs the state more for someone to drive than the cost for them to take a bus for free.

Also I think free buses potentially means you can design buses for very quick entry/exit.

I assume they are preparing for Self Driven Buses in the future? I don't know about property market in Luxembourg, ( properly not anywhere heated as SV ) but it should gives incentive for people to live further away from City Centre.

Just for reference Luxembourg is about the same population as Minneapolis.

And for the curious, our public transit system isn't anything worth writing about.

I assume you are referring to Minneapolis and not Luxembourg. The comment would seem to apply to either, but have a different impact in each.

'Free' could open up new problems. For example, what about the homeless who decide sleeping on a bus all night is better than the street?

'Free' or 'Unlimited' services can quickly find a small proportion of users use far more than a regular amount of the service, often for no big-picture economic gain.

> 'Free' or 'Unlimited' services can quickly find a small proportion of users use far more than a regular amount of the service, often for no big-picture economic gain.

Pretty much any place that has public transport also has "unlimited" plans, so if there were horror stories related to those, I guess we would know. Maybe you have something concrete to share.

As for the homeless... sure. But to solve that, just solve homelessness and you will have fed two birds with one scone!

Homeless people sleeping on warm buses seems better than homeless people sleeping on the streets?

cool. is that like one bus line?

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