Free Transit for Riders Under 18? In Paris, It’s Here
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
One of my daughters did Tri-Met as a 7th Grader because it saved more than 30 minutes over the yellow bus. Taking the bus seems a lot less convenient than driving most of the time but for her it was faster. I took the bus with her the first day and she was fine after that. No bad experiences that I ever heard of.
When we were in Japan, we saw many students of all ages on the trains.
I believe it's done as a cost cutting measure to maximize usage of the bus fleet.
At some point, free Uber /Lyft would be a better deal. But transportation-as-a-basic-service seems to be catching on.
[0] https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/17/21026425/kansas-cit...
while a lot of the pushback is from fearmongerers lashing out at the homeless on transit (which is a problem, but wider than transit, since mayor garcetti has been wholly ineffective for 7+ years at getting the homeless off the streets), i find that an ugly distraction from the real issue of "free" being too easily conflated with "worthless".
we all need skin in the game in the form of paying for our services to feel their worth and make better transit decisions. there's an argument to be made that a certain portion of transit benefits everyone, so everyone, in the form of taxes, should pay that portion (and only that portion). and sure, subsidize the disadvantaged for equal opportunities' sake, but don't make it free for everyone.
[0]: https://thesource.metro.net/2020/08/27/metro-to-study-and-co... [1]: https://thesource.metro.net/2020/09/03/tap-is-now-on-iphone-...
I think you can quibble about means testing, barriers to application, and just “do it through taxes”. Amusingly, we’re quite similar to Paris in that the SFMTA “farebox recovery ratio” (fare revenue divided by costs) is in the 25% range [2].
That low funding rate (75% through taxes then) is despite fairly large increases in the fare over time. IIRC, the youth / senior Pass was $10 in 2007 and is now $40, the regular was $50 and is now... $81 (and set to increase in January [3]). Somewhat rationally, it seems this was all connected to indexing the fares to Bay Area inflation [4], designed so that salary of the drivers keeps up with inflation.
Like Paris though, we have (had) a large tourist contingent that pays full fare when visiting. Some argue that “they’re not taxpayers, make them buy tickets”, but it seems more efficient to just account for that in hotel taxes. Otherwise you never get out of the fare collection inefficiency (in San Francisco, drivers on buses must also be fare enforcers, historically leading to it being a dangerous job) and again it penalizes people who don’t know to apply for their free passes they’re entitled to.
[1] https://www.sfmta.com/fares/free-muni-youth
[2] https://www.sfmta.com/reports/muni-farebox-recovery-ratio
[3] https://www.google.com/amp/s/sf.curbed.com/platform/amp/2020...
[4] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/6/19/18691884/muni-price-inflatio...
I'll just add by the way (since apparently I'm being downvoted for speaking a snarky comment), that fare enforcement seems almost non-existent in both SF and Paris. Something about it being too expensive or dangerous to actually make people buy tickets. But policing your rules is an important thing for having people believe in the system, as unpopular as it may be. And maybe how safe/trustworthy the system is. Which neither SF nor Paris are shining examples of.
I don’t think danger was a problem in Paris. They always work as teams of ~5 people and I’ve never heard of them being specifically assaulted (unlike, say, bus drivers, unfortunately).
In any case, London seem much better, both in terms of (perceived) safety and fare jumping. On the other hand, there are TfL agents everywhere (which is expensive, but you can’t jump the gates), and the fares are much higher.
If there are rules, enforce them. Don't make the law abiding pay and look the other way for the ones breaking the rules.
Why, indeed? This is a logical conclusion.
Let the travelers decide for themselves how to spend their most precious resource: time.
Read Caro's The Power Broker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker
TLDR:
Post WWII, NYC's Robert Moses figured out how to exfiltrate money from the public (subways, buses, rail, autos) and leverage that cash flow to finance his major works projects, thereby funneling capital back to bankers, realtors, developers, contractors. Every other jurisdiction followed his lead. Resulting in today's terrible land use and congestion.
Sure, Moses had help. But he was the criminal mastermind. He orchestrated the wholesale theft of our time, our money, our precious open spaces, our health, our homes, our natural resources.
We have no moral obligation to keep paying for his crimes.
that sounds like a great way to externalize a lot of negative consequences to counter one known corruption problem.
just stop subsidizing oil & gas, including through regulatory capture, and price travel explicitly accounting for comprehensive cost. price in the externalities through multiple measures, like a carbon tax, a use tax, etc., and use those proceeds to counteract the negative externalities.
Alas. We no longer have the luxury of incentives, incrementalism, and relying on emergent behavior. We need aggressive policies and massive investments.
And I'm fresh out of both patience and goodwill.
Today, I agree 100% with Saul Griffith, David Roberts, and a handful of others. Here's two example action plans that I support:
How to decarbonize America — and create 25 million jobs
https://www.vox.com/podcasts/2020/8/27/21403184/saul-griffit...
The US South could save money by cleaning up its power grid
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/9/1/21407275...
Terrible housing, terrible traffic, tons of homelessness and dodgy people harassing you in the street (trying to sell you drugs or scam you). The situation got progressively worse over the last 10 years.
Other big cities have similar problems.
The rest of France, outside of the main cities, is actually quite nice but incredibly rural and with very little services. And all of this for 33% corporate tax and progressive income tax 5-40%. You'd be better off crossing the sea and staying in the UK, which is much more livable and offers some tax benefits and higher salaries.
I place the USA a bit higher than France in the chart, but not much more. The high level of taxation and the high cost of health insurance + political craziness going on (the latest BLM riots especially) makes me happy I stayed in Europe, despite missing out on half a million salaries in big tech.
In the end I can't say I find France approach to be much different than the American one: it's the old take half of the economical output and redistribute it. The USA may not have public healthcare but they spend more than enough (13 billions per day) maintaining a public army, handing out benefits or what else. I find it ridiculous to picture the states as the land of freedom. That was more than 100 years ago.
I agree with that. It’s not because of the social safety net however; or it is in a way, but only because it got combined with other laxist laws and policies that drew people in for the bad reasons.
And we've finally started to see interest in adopting fare-free in Durham and Raleigh.
This concept itself, is not new. I'd love to see US cities with notorious transit systems (i.e New York City) implement this.
In Toronto, Canada, where I live, allow all children 12 years of age and under to ride the TTC (our transit system here) for free.
This is great, because it enables students to enroll in public (elementary or middle) schools that they normally shouldn't be able to get into (if they win the lottery, or if they apply well in advance and somehow do get in), and gives opportunities to students that they normally wouldn't have access to.
Bigger countries can't afford to do that as their infrastructure costs are higher.
This word has a long history of being used as a racist dog-whistle in discussions over why the US lacks public services.
It's not a good term to use without clarification.
It's a country with very few different people and viewpoints because there's not that many people to form groups. While I certainly would never see a lack of diversity as a general goal for a country, fewer viewpoints to consider significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to get stuff done in governments. The fewer ideals you need to consider, the shorter the debates can be.
A country built up out of immigrants like the USA bring a plethora of viewpoints and cultures, all living inside one general government. This is a valuable source of cultural development and progress but the more groups you have within your borders, the more chances of friction you get and the longer politics should take; there are just more factors to take into account, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Bigger countries still have areas of higher density of wealth. So if that's all there is to it then we should be seeing free transit in those areas.
NYC's subway was originally projected (pre-COVID) to take in $3.6 billion in fares in 2020 [0]. Some 8.4 million people live in NYC. $3.6 billion / 8.4 million residents = ~$429/resident/year would suffice to make the subway free of fares.
Note: this would be for _just_ the subway; it does not include buses/commuter rail/MTA HQ expenses. Additionally, replacing just the fares for the subway would not suffice for balancing the budget since a deficit was planned.
[0]: Page VI-123 of https://new.mta.info/document/15221
(Sorry, looked but didn’t fare collection cost numbers in the MTA budget)
https://www.schools.nyc.gov/school-life/transportation/bus-e...
Finally getting Durham, Raleigh and GoTriangle to consider the same.
Encouraging people to ride transit during a pandemic isn't a particularly bright idea.
"It’s a similar situation in Japan, where researchers failed to connect a single cluster to the country’s commuter trains, said Hitoshi Oshitani, a virologist and public health expert at Tohoku University. The vast majority of the clusters were instead traced to gyms, bars, live music venues, karaoke rooms and similar establishments where people come in close contact with one another,"
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-is-little-e...
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-recent.pag... says that NYC (pop: 8.5M) is averaging about 1650 cases per week. https://new.mta.info/coronavirus/ridership says there were 1.5M subway passengers on 9/3.
Riding transit doesn't seem like the issue. Not wearing masks and respecting social distancing seem more likely problems.
Well, no offense, but things aren't that Manichean in my book. There are upsides and downsides to urbanisation. Obviously, public transport is an up in most cases, but there are also a lot of downsides.
My family comes from a very rural German village. There is no economy, there isn't even a physician any more since the last one retired, everyone commutes over an hour to work in the next big city etc, and this is systemic.
Some people may not see it that way because it's always painful to uproot ways of life but I think the case for the prosperity of those regions is virtually impossible to make, and it's getting worse steadily.
Given the demographics of Paris, I wonder if this will make the transit system the dream of pickpockets.
From what I understand most pickpockets target tourists (lots of cash, cameras, ...) or rich people (expensive watches, necklaces, bags, ...).
The subject was teenagers
It already is. Don’t look like a tourist in Paris if you value your things.
Sounds like a business opportunity.