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One of the major issues around offering free public transportation is funding. Public purses are pretty strained everywhere and additional taxes are unlikely to be accepted. Physically, there's also a problem in that systems are simply not geared for the expected increase in ridership which in itself is sufficiently large enough to cause problems but not meaningful enough to cause a significant dent in car use. I believe this was one of the rationales behind the decision of Paris not to offer free public transportation to all.

In France, Dunkirk apparently does offer free public transportation for all but it's a small city [0].

[0] https://www.france24.com/en/20171109-france-french-cities-pu...

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There is absolutely no "shortcut" for cities to skimp on having sufficient transit infrastructure to get people where they need to go. If you underbuild, people drive cars. If you overcharge, people drive cars. If you restrict car traffic, people simply don't move or work in your city and your economy dies.

One way to balance between free ride abuse and people not using the trains because they have a car is to give residents the "average" number of rides a commuter would use in a week to them every week for free. Maybe even give people who don't own motor vehicles more free rides as a "thank you" from the city for not making them maintain the road and parking infrastructure for you.

But any city that is not expanding its transit to meet demand is crippling its own economic potential. Its a shame that pretty much every US city is guilty of this but most of the US government is designed to self-sabotage things like publicly run transit anyway.

> most of the US government is designed to self-sabotage things like publicly run transit anyway

What level of US government is sabotaging transit? The federal government doles out at least $2.3B every year for transit projects[0], meanwhile state and local governments throughout the US are approving tax increases for more transit.

[0]: https://www.transit.dot.gov/funding/grant-programs/capital-i...

And 41 billion by the federal government is spent on roads.

168 billion total from state and local.

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

Public transit on the other hand sees only 24.38 billion total.

https://www.bts.gov/browse-statistical-products-and-data/tra...

> The federal government doles out at least $2.3B every year for transit projects

That's about a fifth of what just Paris spends per year. For a 300-million inhabitants country, it seems a bit low.

$2.3b sounds like peanut spending given the scale of the US and the current state of transit in the country.

>$2.3B every year

At this level a couple billion dollars is hardly anything.

Is it the public purse?

Or is it unions? Or maybe something down the chain?

The TTC/Subway in Toronto has 'change collectors' - people at every station who do change, they earn over $100K if they work a lot of overtime.

There are effectively no automatic change booths at the stations, and no automated way to just 'buy a token and get on'.

Can you imagine why it's so inefficient?

Why they can't just get machines for that?

My cousin is senior at a contracting agency that's building out the new stations - everyone from top to bottom is charging huge for government work.

CGI, a Canadian consulting firm billed the US Gov. more than a $ 1 Billion for healthcare.gov - something that Google had to 'come in and fix'.

Governments are much bigger and more powerful than ever before, individual litigation is on the rise, 'special rights and concerns' are at the forefront, and there are a million legal tangles to any major project.

Many of these things, on their own are 'good things', but on the whole, it really creates a tangle.

The reason very little gets done is that we are caught up in our own efficient bureaucracies, public and private.

Your comment reminds me of a very recent hilarity in Austin: the city has set aside $100k to put up a 10 foot fence to prevent crime in a popular shady alleyway: https://www.austinmonitor.com/stories/2019/01/city-hopes-10-...

It has all the hallmarks of the things you bring up in your comment. Contractor was going to build it, but fire department demanded a special lock in case of emergency, screwdriver for a nail problem, etc.

How can you run a fire department and think you need or even have any use for a special key for every fence in the city, when you already have master bolt cutters.

> Why they can't just get machines for that?

That's actually what they do in Toronto now. It's all "Presto Card" automated.

No, you cannot 'just buy' a 'presto card'.

Astonishingly, the 'change collectors', who only sell tokens don't sell Presto cards.

Yet another mind-blowing bit of incompetence.

In Montreal, not only can you buy temporary cards (with money or visa), but you can also put rides on them in a fully automated way.

I will admit that the situation in Toronto may be temporary, but it's still utterly ridiculous.

Actually, you can now buy a Presto Card from machines. There are no more change collectors! And there are absolutely no more tokens. They just transitioned.

I'd encourage anyone down-voting this to suggest why the TTC Subway 'change collectors' who sell tokens to enter the subway (essentially their only function) - do not also sell 'presto cards'.

And why you have to line up, pay, enter the station, and buy 'presto card' passes ... from the newstand in most cases ? ...

It's utter dysfunction.

[1] http://getpres.to/en/gateway-newstands/

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