Note that I said local. For trips to other cities it might (or might not) make sense to charge a different price - such trips are not as common.
Note that I said local. For trips to other cities it might (or might not) make sense to charge a different price - such trips are not as common.
Why not make it free? It's a public service after all, and it's hard to "abuse" transportation like one can use "too much" free water/electricity.
French law already has obligation for your employer to pay (at least parts of) your travel fees. You could also have a tax on hotel rooms and airbnbs for tourists to help finance it. There's already cities across the globe practicing free public transport and so far i haven't heard any complaining or finding unexpected difficulties.
Also, specifically about quality of service, we could argue having a service orientation driven by workers and users (a sort of coop if you like) would yield better results than what David Graeber refers to as "manageurial feudalism" sucking public services dry through dehumanizing micromanagement techniques, absurd salaries for the higher-ups, and various forms of corruption such as "private-public partnerships".
Hold on, this is a pretty odd way to frame a public service. By this logic, you could equally say:
- Most road systems are already bankrupt and have to be propped up by taxes collected from other services.
- Most schools are already bankrupt and have to be propped up by taxes collected from other services.
- Most fire departments are already bankrupt and have to be propped up by taxes collected from other services.
Unfortunately, we don't live in a democracy so there's not exactly a choice beyond what brand/color of corrupt overlord we'd like to see ruin our lives for the next 5 years.
All of this combined indeed almost covers the expenses of building and maintaining roads. Unfortunately, it does not cover any negative externalities, such as the environmental ones.
Famously, french social security (healthcare), unemployment and pensions are more or less self-funded (they all have their own line/column on taxes papers), yet the previous 3-5 governments have been relentlessly reforming those essential public services in order to render them useless. It's also important to note that in most instances of such reforms, the government will point out some money is missing to fund the service, which :
- is only partially true, as insane amounts are spent for their disserving bureaucracies, managerial class, and control apparatus, all of which we would do better without
- is still partially true, but benefits fraud represents in all cases less than 1% of participation fraud, where the biggest companies are the ones evading to pay their dues... so if law enforcement were to crack down on big corporations fraud instead of political dissent, the problem would be solved very easily
There is no great answer here, but I still believe that self funding of operating costs is the best answer.