Public, thus paid by everybody through taxes.
Yet, for some reason, it can only be taken advantage of by people who can afford to pay the ticket.
Nevermind the fact having the ticket system in the first place does cost money.
Yet, for some reason, it can only be taken advantage of by people who can afford to pay the ticket.
Nevermind the fact having the ticket system in the first place does cost money.
1) Systems and equipment to issue and collect fares -- boxes, kiosks, scanners, currency handling, staff to collect and deposit currency, arrangements with payment providers, educational materials about paying fares, websites with instructions on how to pay fares (often in multiple languages)
2) Systems to enforce fare payment -- humans, typically, to police the fares
3) Systems to analyze fare rates -- are fares too low, too high, are they being paid at the correct rates, do we need to publish new content on how much fares are changing this year
4) Queues to pay fares -- entering a bus or train requires a turnstile, tap, or other impediment that slows access
5) Systems to ensure everyone has access -- either fares price out the poorest, or we provide means for the poor to get reduced and free fares. Provide systems for workers to get fares subsidized through their workplaces.
These systems are really inefficient. I mean, they might be run efficiently, but their existence is itself an inefficiency. If we believe transit is useful and valuable, we could simply pay for it once in taxes. Cutting out all the fare maintenance systems would save a huge amount of money, which could be spent on maintenance, comfort, cleaning, additional routes, etc. and the experience would be much nicer (hop on/hop off whenever you need).
In Hamburg, where I live, there is nothing like that.
In Seattle, we tap our cards on something that looks like this: https://seattletransitblog.com/2011/06/28/dont-tap-orca-here...
It's pretty quick, but on the busiest bus routes it slows things down.
Edit: Reading up, it looks like they don't really have those things, and rely on a combination of very infrequent inspectors (which do slow things and cost money) and the honor system.
You just enter the bus/train/tram vehicle. Maybe a ticket controllant comes, maybe not (most often they dont come and check)
EDIT: To get a ticket you simple open the app and "check in". When you leave the transport you open the app and "check out". At the end of the day the system calculated the cheapest ticket for you based on that 24h period. This works across the entire country. From local buses to high speed intercity rail
That's messed up.
The inspectors don't slow things down. (They do cause other more serious issues, but still far less than anywhere in the US.)
The Berlin F24, on the other hand...
Making us buy a ticket to use transport, while the poor uses it for free would be on another level.
Public transport is already funded through taxes. We already paid for it.
In Germany the local public transport is only partially funded by taxes. Tickets / Taxes is roughly 50 / 50.
The Autobahn is mostly funded by taxes.