They should make the public transport cheaper. At least as cheap so that gas for driving alone in a car is more expensive. Even among other big cities in the Netherlands Amsterdam per km rate for public transport (€0.162 p/km) is quite high.
And if you reverse the situation, and imagine a city with free public transit that is then considering adding a fare to it, said fare would be extremely regressive and would hit the worst off the hardest.
I never understood why. This study from Talinn, Estonia[1] shows that the overall impact on passenger numbers was very small (+1.2% increase) and that most of it is due to a decrease in pedestrian traffic and bicycle use.
> And if you reverse the situation, and imagine a city with free public transit that is then considering adding a fare to it, said fare would be extremely regressive and would hit the worst off the hardest.
Personally, I believe that cash transfers are more ethical and less paternalistic than in-kind benefits, but if you want, you can still give poor people a high discount on public transport or simply limit free public transport to poor people.
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Oded_Cats/publication/2...
I'm also really curious to know what "less desirable" means, exactly.
https://ftp.fdot.gov/file/d/FTP/FDOT%20LTS/CO/research/Compl... is the research I remember that was more critical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport is also good.
Less desirable means people that other riders are less likely to want to ride with. From the paper above:
> In the Austin, Texas fare-free demonstration, both anecdotal and official data suggest that problem riders increased substantially and drove away other riders. Joy-riding youth and inebriated adults, as well as vagrants, increased. In addition, in both the Mercer Metro and the Austin, Texas experiences, problem riders actually drove away many of the regular bus commuters. In none of the experiments did the increase in transit ridership include automobile commuters enticed by the fare-free service (Connor, 1979; Kounes, 1993; People for Modern Transit Technical Committee, 2001).
And if you compare public transport costs to housing, it's nothing.
Average commute is 22.6km [2]. You need to go there and back again - 45 * 0.162 + 0.96 = 8.25 eur/day * 22 = 181.5. That's almost 13% of your money.
Or anecdote: my wife travels from Amsterdam to Utrecht. Seasonal train ticket is about 180 eur but there is another 200 eur she spends on bus and train of getting to and from train station. Compared to taking the car which costs like 150 eur in gas. It shouldn't be cheaper to take the car alone compared to public transport!
[1] https://www.amsterdamtips.com/salaries-in-amsterdam-netherla...
[2] https://www.iamexpat.nl/career/employment-news/more-half-emp...
I do agree that it shouldn't be cheaper to take the car to work, but you did not take into account two major factors for the cost of commute by car:
1. Depreciation, insurance, maintenance and taxes paid for the car
2. The cost of parking in Amsterdam
A small sales tax hike is palatable to enough people that it is politically viable, whereas a $2.50 fare every time you board a bus or train makes more people not ride transit who otherwise might.
Now admittedly more people would start using it if it were free, but that's a feature not a bug. And the marginal cost of higher ridership is much lower than the sunk capital costs of constructing the system in the first place.
Well, you could always not accept payment at the door. But more passengers doesn't equal faster buses; after a point the service will bog down as the buses bunch up, and increasing the number of buses will not solve that.
A small base fare goes a long way to persuade people to walk short distances instead of catching the bus.
Where is this? 11% would put your system near the bottom of farebox recovery ratios for major systems.
Some recent coverage: https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/05/02/are-utahns-o...
2019 budget: https://www.rideuta.com/-/media/Files/About-UTA/Budget_Book_... page 57
Despite all that, we really have a pretty decent transit system for the metro size. I have reliable 15 minute service to downtown and it only takes me twice as long to take the bus to work than it takes me to drive.
Is the concept of a public benefit collecting fees for its own operations that strange to you?
And of course not everyone is better off the more people use it; regular business commuters will be turned off by "problem riders" (See above comments for details. Having a nominal barrier to entry reduces the percentage of problem riders.
One of the main reasons people elect not to use public transit is personal safety and comfort. ( https://transitcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TC_Whos... )
Yes. This seems to be the thing that kills public services. If you are going to have everyone spend a lot on the initial cost, it seems wild to me that people don't want to spend a little more to make sure their investments are well maintained. Would you buy a car and then not maintain it? That's just asking for things to get broken down sooner.
Public transit cannot just raise prices, as higher prices reduces ridership.
Incidentally, this is one of the reasons public housing in the states has such a different reputation than public housing in the rest of the world - housing is expected to make enough money to maintain itself while also providing housing for the poorest. (Also, maintaining giant buildings is much more expensive than, say, maintaining a bunch of 4 story apartments.)