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Comment by sourcecodeplz | Hacker News Reader

Free as in a free lunch? I've heard there's no such thing.

I know of places where pensioners (over 65yr olds) get it free but not universal.

There are pros and cons to this of course but overall: people who didn't take the buss before are not going to now all of a sudden.

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I would absolutely take Caltrain more often than ~never if it were cost competitive with driving. But it isn't, so I actually take it low single digit times per year under special circumstances.

Caltrain is definitely cheaper than driving for one person. As an example, Palo Alto to San Francisco caltrain is $7.70 for a 32 mile ride. That's 24 cents per mile. The IRS mileage rate is 62 cents per mile. Even if you add $5.50 for parking at the station, it's 41 cents per mile.

I drive a cheap EV which I charge for free. A marginal mile costs me about 18 cents. On top of that I'm usually traveling to SF to visit friends with my wife. Hard to justify taking the train.

How do you figure 18 cents? a $30k EV amortized across 200k miles is 15 cents alone. Add any maintenance on top of that and you're easily over 18 cents of marginal cost per mile before electricity or any other amortizable costs (risk of accident, tolls, parking, etc).

Don't buy new (and best do it during the early pandemic crash) and don't pay for electricity. Running costs are primarily insurance, registration, and tires. Have a long commute so you strongly amortize those first two.

What about car insurance, tolls, wear and tear, potential tickets, etc?

I don't know of any tolls that would be relevant in the provided SF <-> Palo Alto example, and car insurance is static. Tickets are also easy enough to avoid. Wear and tear is really the main concern.

How much is it in terms of min/$?

Free at point of use. It is paid for by taxpayers, like every other bit of public transit in the country.

Yes and that's absolutely fine. America needs to reevaluate its extreme aversion to investing in collective good.

Like pretty much all transportation systems (roads, trains, airports, etc) in all nations.

Note that generally public transportation funding is already <25% covered by fares and so to the extent that you think "paid for by taxpayers" is positive or negative, this doesn't actually have that much impact on that aspect.

I think it’s great! I’m happy for my tax dollars to go to transit! The net positive of keeping drunk drivers off the road, increased access to work for people and increased access to workers for businesses is great!

Not a big fan of fares though, as somebody that’s dropped my wallet in the dark in the middle of the night in a sketchy part of town.

Where do you see that 25% number? According to Wikipedia, most systems around the world seem to be >50%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio

I feel like your comment is rather disingenuous, given that almost everything there that covers the U.S. is actually well below my generous "25%" and (even beyond the sort of U.S. being the default for HN discussions the topic we are discussing is specifically a U.S. case). The biggest case from your link above that threshold would generally not even be considered "public transportation" (Amtrak, that is). Given how overwhelmingly your source supports my position for the topic at hand, it's hard to assume good intent.

Amtrak also includes State subsidies as 'revenue'. They also don't count depreciation. They then want 45Bn or some such enormous figure for maintenance from the Feds.

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,2183214

> There are pros and cons to this of course but overall: people who didn't take the buss before are not going to now all of a sudden.

I'm sure there are people who would benefit from this, like those carpooling and relying on rides from friends and family, to those who wouldn't be able to afford to work in places that would otherwise require a car to commute to that they don't have, etc.

> people who didn't take the buss before are not going to now all of a sudden.

I suspect a lot would. Some public transit systems are shockingly expensive. And even price-insensitive people would benefit from increased ridership of price-sensitive people if it also led to improved service.

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