How do you ration limited seats on a train? By charging more at certai times you encourage those who can choose less desirable services to do so.
Do you mean first to book in advance? Then people could squat on tickets, taking more than they need.
Do you mean first to arrive at the station? Then that's a drag on the economy as workers waste time being at the station early so they can get a seat on a train.
For city trams, subways and buses, it is simply first come (to the stop) first served. The solution is to expand capacity, as the economy is helped when large amounts of people are moved efficiently across the city.
Which is exactly what successfully managed cities do. There's usually something like a master plan that outlines the greater strategy for the next 20 years, or so.
Of course there's no expectation that it will be exactly implemented as planned, but is immensely helpful as a general outline and to define the overall strategy of where a city is going with things like housing, population, public and non-public transit, etc.
Or will you ration by saying that one person can only book one train a day?
For long distance train journeys, you
could have named tickets in that scenario.
Unless you can eliminate late and cancelled trains, which would of course be great.
The European train companies I know of are responsible for fulfilling combined ticket trips that are purchased as a single journey. If the first train is late, either the next one waits or they'll have to provide another transportation.
I've had a taxi ride home on the train company's expense when train was late and the last connecting train left already.
Your itinerary is 0930-1000 from A to B, and 1030-1230 from B to D via C.
You have a reserved seat on the 0930 and 1030, but the 0930 runs 40 minutes late and gets in at 10:40.
So you try to get the 1130. Except there's no seats available from B to D because someone has reserved the seats between C and D. The train pulls out empty from B, and you have to wait for the next train with seat available (1630)
Meanwhile the train gets to C, and people haven't turned up for their journey (reservations are free). Half empty train runs from C to D.
Reservation only trains are a terrible idea.
Imagine the chaos if the journey was free too. I'm going to London tomorrow, I'd book 5 different trains depending on what time I get up.
Either you come earlier and wait, or you pay more to secure a seat (and thus work longer to earn the cost but at least you won't compete with the poor), or the town/state pays for more capacity (and you work longer to pay more taxes to order and operate the new capacity).
Or you work longer to pay taxes to build more roads so that you can drive a "private" car instead of this complicated, pooled-cost public transport -- the point is that even a passenger car is anything but private when it comes to maintaining the infrastructure. Or you could only use private, toll-roads in which case you again work longer to pay for the toll.
It's always a drag.
Works fine for sub-30 minute rides (and a seat usually frees up at one point during your journey).
For longer journeys reservations are either part of the ticket, or available seperately if a guaranteed seat is important to you.
In my city, that won't work during rush hour because there's simply no space. The busses are filled to capacity, all seats taken and people standing toe to toe where possible. If you want to avoid intimate contact with strangers, you'll have to sit out a a few; if you don't mind it, you might still have to because there's simply no room.
Charging more so poor people have to choose sub-optimal routes also forces them to wake up way earlier in the morning because their "cheaper" routes take longer to get to their destinations.
First come first served works and, if people are getting anxious because there might not room in the bus/train, increase the frequency. If the costs keep going up then we might want to stop subsidising private companies by transporting their employees to the place of employment for free, i.e. tax them to cover the costs of public transport.
And how do you plan on doing that, once all the paths are taken?
There'll be a thousand challenges before "all paths are taken".
Only if they're losing productive time, i.e. working less. And in any case, most people don't want to maximise total productivity for the sake of it.
Plus, FCFS doesn't actually have to imply waiting in line.
Those arriving at Euston in the peak and getting on the Victoria line to Oxford Circus may choose to save £4 return and walk for half an hour instead of taking 15 minutes on the tube.
If they didn't have the saving they may simply add to the crush
Either strategy would increase peak supply by 20%.
Too often, citizens jump to “we need more subways” without exploiting the low-hanging fruit.
I was wondering how widespread travel cards are, since I never bought one personally. If you don't travel much on the weekends you end up paying more.
In 2017 TfL sold weekly, monthly, and annual travel cards covering year-round flat-rate travel for ~0.8m people. Travel card journeys account for about 39% of all journeys.
Maybe it was more common in the past, since travel card journeys dropped around 10% a year from 2015-2017.
https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transparency/freedom-of-informa...
Old retired folk don't need to get anywhere for 9 a.m. or be in a mad dash to get home at 5.30 p.m. They get a free pass that only works between 10 and 4.
Essential public sector workers, e.g. school teachers get a free pass for the commuting hours or whatever is needed for their shift patterns. They could also have free evening and weekend travel not given to the senior citizens.
School kids get a different pass again.
The incentives can be many, if it is always kept as a perk that is seen as such even if 99% of the population can get it, then you can do the rationing.
Until recently UK police had free passes to use transport networks when off duty. The cost cutting government got rid of this perk. This hacks people off, people in the police are no longer thinking the government is looking out for them. They no longer are made to feel part of a bigger family of public sector useful people because they don't get the guest treatment on the rails. Whether they used the pass or not is irrelevant, it is the treatment that matters.
There were no incidents of off duty police officers travelling for free en masse and causing paying passengers to no be able to get a seat. So rationing is one of those problems that falls into the category of 'nice to have'.
Buses are cheaper but slower. Those who aren’t in as much of a hurry can take the bus or walk.
With no cost differential people will base it just on time, increasing time taken on the rail service.
Same applys on long distance. Sometimes I need to be in London at 9am so will take a more expensive busier peak train. Sometimes I don’t need to be there until the afternoon so I travel on quieter or slower trains, saving money and freeing space for those who do have to be in by 9am.
Building new tracks (and indeed building new highways), even in the countryside where land is cheap, is very expensive and has massive amounts of opposition.
In London, crossrail is adding two new underground tracks to the central line. It's running years behind schedule and costs billions. And underground is crowded too -- there's one point on crossrail where they had a 30cm margin of error between existing tunnels.
Free public transport in London would cost £5b a year. This would mean those who travel a lot on expensive services (like city workers on the tube) will be being subsidised by those who don't travel (like people who walk to work in the local school).
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/01/18/national/tokyo-...
Riders are offered a small reward simply for being on that train. But the size of the reward depends on the size of ridership. More riders, bigger reward to everyone. So there's an appeal to group solidarity.
Flexible working is not just to miss rush hour IME, it's more than that. E.g. ability to take the odd morning/afternoon for personal reasons, or leaving an hour earlier or later than usual etc without clearing everything with your boss. Trust and personal responsibility etc.
You might be thinking about offset-hours rather than flexible hours?
Yes
From Upminster into London, the price is the same on the fast train and the district. The district you get a seat, but the fast train you have to squeeze on. People take the busier train.
Conversely people take cheaper means of transport. If the coach from Exeter to London was the same price as the train, why would you take the coach (2 hours longer)? You'd end up with an empty coach and a full and standing train (I for one would rather stand than take the coach), rather than a mostly full coach and a mostly full train.
Neither of those examples are comparing like for like, they're comparing two different services, not the same service at different times. Congestion pricing on trains is supposed to level out the distribution of travelers, not to move them to different services.
Needless to say, although many office jobs offer ±1 hour of schedule flexibility, few are flexible enough that one can respond to the incentives peak time provides.