Without nominal costs, buses turn into mobile benches for unhoused people and druggies. It’s the same story as what happens with libraries.
Schadenfreude is the dominant feeling of the times, and many if not most Americans would basically celebrate a “purge” of the homeless.
In places with less affordable housing, there is more homeless people. The solution to homelessness is to build more housing.
That's the solution a 5 year old would come up with, too, but it's correct.
Most of the homeless in SF and LA aren't from California. Red states love to "deal" with their homeless by buying them bus tickets to the West Coast (something that Texas used to openly brag about).
If SF and LA shipped the homeless back to where they originally came from, we'd all be talking about the Midwest homelessness crisis.
> no drugs on the train
Nonsense. I'd rather have people carry their illegal drugs on the train and take them at home. The issue is people experiencing the effects of the drug on the train and often times making it unsafe for women, children, and men too (it doesn't really matter what your sex is when the drugged out man vomits on you). I honestly don't care if you carry your illegal drugs everywhere, as long as you make sure the effects of said drugs are dealt with privately. I have major issues with people making the consequences of their drug use other people's problem
what answer could i possibly give to you that would change your response? antarctica?
> Is it possible that what you assume it's normal and default is colored by your personal experience and not representative of the world at large?
of course this is true. what are you going for here. my objection is to standing up a Train Security Panopticon with "modern AI" and locking commuters (in north america) on a train (in north america) who might depend on a schedule (using a north american time zone) stuck at a station until the (north american) cops can come and pull someone (who statistically, but not for sure, would be north american) off of the car for being drunk (off of beer i've had in my personal experience, coloring this example, which may not be the beer that is representative of the world at large) and napping on the seats
In other cultures, being rude and disrespectful to other passengers is simply not done, and transgressors are actually punished.
Americans have a problem with public transportation, but the problem isn't public transportation, it's Americans.
Seriously, other than law enforcement what else can you do to someone who brazenly refuse to follow the rules? Even law enforcement (at least in the US) highly depends on where you live. In left leaning states and cities, DAs are not very likely to prosecute such small crimes like not paying a bus fare because they know it’ll make them unpopular next election. I live in a very left leaning county and state and it swings between center and left every 4 years or so. The swing is always “look how awful that guy was. He prosecuted vulnerable people for petty crimes for no reason”. Cops don’t wanna have to deal with all the paper work to book a guy for a couple of nights before they get released and do it all over again. If they know the person will not get prosecuted because there is no political capital to do so, why bother with the theatrics and all the paper work of arresting them? Brazenly refusing to pay the bus fare and getting in a verbal altercation with the driver and everyone on the bus is a fun afternoon for some people.
Where this happens they arrive promptly. And it doesn’t happen often.
>Where this happens they arrive promptly. And it doesn’t happen often.
Where, other than inside your mind, does this happen? Please, do be specific.
It’s pretty infuriating. I started biking to work 2 years ago and try to bike almost anywhere I can. Mostly to lose weight but also put my money where my mouth is. I voted for every levy and prop to improve bike-ability and public transportation of the city in the last 10 years and figured I’m a hypocrite if I expect others to bike and take the bus and I never do. My tolerance for the homeless on buses has been dropping as I have to deal with them more and more. I was always “It’s our failure in not helping them. If I can’t help, least I could do is let them be” kind of person. Now every other week I end up with a negative interaction with someone on the bus or at a bus stop. Every time I air my grievances with people I know (who never take the bus) I always have to find myself on the defensive somehow.
I mean, you're right in theory, but in the real world things are very different.
And in many places I haven't lived but only visited, too.
Making the buses free isn't going to produce any more of it.
I live in an area that had outdated payment systems on their bus network. They determined that the cost to upgrade the payment systems would be higher than the revenue of fares, so they just made the buses free.
Edit: A lot of replies associate fare payment with behaviors (and smell?) of riders. I think that it's important to recognize that ones ability to pay a fare does not inherently indicate that they are "undesirable" in some way. Could their be a correlation? Possibly. But dedicate the policing to things that actually matter - an unruly passenger should get policing efforts, not a non-paying one (or smelly, really? Obviously homeless people can be putrid but seriously people smelling bad is not a crime).
Huh? I never owned a car and taken public transport all my live, and it's never been much of a problem kicking non-paying people off. What kind of lawless hellholes are you guys living in?
(I lived in Germany, Turkey, Britain, Singapore and Australia.)
Feels like a coy way of getting to say something as inflammatory as "the US a lawless hellhole" on HN: which is fine enough... but there's also a reason YC isn't a Singaporean or Turkish or British or German institution.
The U.S. is a pretty far outlier in this regard. It's strange how many people in the U.S. don't realize this at all, and become appalled at when foreigners are shocked by the way things are done in U.S. cities.
American exceptionalism is just as silly when it’s “America bad.”
It's obvious nowhere near e.g. Switzerland or Singapore, for example.
But then on the other hand, people obey the rules a ton more than in places like Brazil or India.
Just as many foreigners are shocked at how polite and orderly Americans are, compared to back home.
The world is a vast and diverse place.
Once might be a coincidence, twice might be me overestimating how carefully people read other comments before jumping into conversations.
Some public transit has a much more rigid fare collection structure - trains are typically much more controlled entry points. But buses? It's in their best interest to get everyone on as quickly as possible and get everyone off as quickly as passive. Are you going to have gates that block you if you don't scan your card/phone from exiting? Same for boarding. Do you dedicate policing resources to ensuring the collection of what is certainly less than the cost to employ the police officer? Seems wasteful until you hit a very high ridership.
I see fare evasion almost every time I take the tube
Anecdotally, the bart gates seem to have improved the riding experience.
Some data from LA:
> Of the 153 violent crimes perpetrated on Metro between May 2023 and April 2024, 143 of them — more than 93% — were believed to be committed by people who did not pay a valid fare and were using the transit system illegally.
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/metro-violence-largely-perp...
Well, it's also a matter of fairness: I'm a law-abiding citizen, and I pay for my bus fare. It's the Right Think to do. But if I'm paying, I want the other guys to pay as well.
My claim is letting trash act like, well, trash and street people wild out on the system drives lots of commuters off. And ime, the worst riders are disproportionally fare thieves.
Depends on prevailing social norms, I guess?
In Germany it's typically something like max(2 * regular fare price, 60 Euro).
I know you asked a 'should' question and this is an 'is' answer, but I hope it's still useful.
Google Translate on https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bef%C3%B6rderungserschleichung... might be useful.
It's fascinating seeing your questions about something that's an everyday thing in all of the places I lived.
So in Germany it's typically the (public) companies running the transit systems that have teams that check that you've paid. Gates are almost unheard of for neither bus nor train. (I couldn't name one place in Germany that has gates for public transport at the top of my head.) The police would only get involved, if a passenger is getting violent or threatening to get violent, or won't get off the bus.
In Britain (and Singapore etc) you board the bus at the front, where the bus driver checks your ticket and otherwise will kick you off the bus. The bus driver itself won't get into a physical fight with you. But the bus driver can definitely call for backup and will (presumably) stop the bus and refuse to drive until a recalcitrant passenger has been dealt with. The social contract seems to that all the other passengers will blame the would-be fare evader for the stoppage and back up the driver. But I've never actually seen that acted out completely.
Trains in Singapore and many parts of Britain have gates, and there are usually either some people monitoring the gates for jumpers or at least cameras.
> Do you dedicate policing resources to ensuring the collection of what is certainly less than the cost to employ the police officer? Seems wasteful until you hit a very high ridership.
It's all pretty similar to how parking regulations are enforced: there's some dedicated people who write tickets (not police officers), and the tickets are typically a few dozen dollars.
The bus driver's union doesn't want drivers engaging in fare enforcement -- they're hired to drive, not to get into physical altercations. This was especially after a bus driver was stabbed to death in 2008 in a fare dispute.
There are fare enforcement teams that partner up with cops to catch people evading the fare, that are trained for this kind of thing. But obviously the chances are miniscule you'd ever encounter them on any single bus trip, and all that's going to happen is you get a summons with a $50-100 fine. So it's quite rational not to pay.
And I mean, as a bus rider, the last thing I want is my bus being delayed by 15 minutes while the driver stops and waits for the cops to come to evict someone who didn't pay. I just want to get to where I'm going.
So how do they handle it in the cities you've lived in? How do they kick them off without putting the driver in danger and without massively delaying the bus for everyone else? (And to be clear, we're talking about buses, not trains where monitoring entry and exit turnstiles is vastly more realistic.)
I told him my boss is an asshole and was paying. That made him happy, he said “f that guy” and wished me a good day.
There's absolutely no need to wait for the cops. They can drive to a stop in front of the bus.
Not to mention, you know, the person might have gotten off by that point since they got to their destination already.
If they get off the bus right away then no big deal in the first place.
Like, if there's a serious crime is being committed in a moving vehicle then sure they'll have someone constantly monitoring and redirecting in order to intercept. It's possible, with high enough priority. But someone not paying a fare does not have that priority.
And the point is the person refuses to get off the bus right away. They stay on it till they get to their destination and then get off.
It was noticeable in that as a tourist, it seemed like a chill place, but there are lots of police of various stripes and they seemed very serious when enforcing things.
This is very basic economics of public transit. I completely agree with the comment about having a minimum payment and enforcement.
Do they also not use the streets in that case? There's nothing preventing "mentally ill people or hucksters" from being there.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/san-franciscos-union-square-...
It's not rocket science and other countries figured out how to do it.
You'll never have enough police for regular enforcement on buses. The numbers don't add up, not even remotely.
Other countries do a better job when they're able to keep people off the streets in the first place. Which then becomes a much more complicated question about social spending and the civil liberties of mentally ill people who don't want to be institutionalized.
And that, of course, does not include all the unpriced externalities of roads. For example, if you value a life at $1M, then the 40,000 people killed by drivers each year cost us collectively another $40B.
At the risk of feeding the trolls, I have to object to this ignorant, callous, brutal bs. Please, read this account^1 of NBA player Chris Boucher staying alive by riding public transit, and try to put yourself in his shoes for a moment.
[1] https://www.theplayerstribune.com/chris-boucher-nba-boston-c...
Statistically you're just a few days of bad luck from being both homeless and carless. What's your plan for getting to work to not be in that situation?
What makes you think so? The poster you replied to might be sitting on a decent nest egg, have supportive friends and family, and insurance against all contingencies.
And some people are willing to bite the bullet and even say: 'Well, in that case, I shouldn't be on the bus, either.
Though it's fairly clear from context that the commenter you replied to doesn't want to check every person's home address before they are let on the bus. They want to ban anti-social behaviour on the bus, and 'homeless' is just a short hand for that, unfortunate as it is.
And a few days of bad luck might make you lose your home, but won't necessarily turn you into a drunk who shouts a lot.
"In effect, more than half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and one crisis away from homelessness." https://www.usich.gov/guidance-reports-data/data-trends
I don't know the commenter specifically - that's why I said statistically.
> Though it's fairly clear from context
Ah, the classic "didn't mean the well presented part of group X when I said X". That's a cliche way to mask prejudice. No, if they didn't actually mean homeless, I'm calling them out on writing "homeless".
They say that, but they don't really substantiate that on the page you linked to.
That's a bit silly. I have sympathies for your views, but you can't have a policy of literally 0. Even spotless places like Singapore don't achieve that, even though they come pretty close.
A big problem now is people playing loud music, loud TikToks, phonecalls and videocalls on speaker phone (almost the default), feet on seats, vaping, bags on seats etc.
There are now no staff who enforce the norms and laws (Yup some of that legally could land you a prosecution if the railway chooses that).
Yes, society was less anti-social 20-30 years ago but IMO with strict enforcement of heavy punishment, the issues could be stamped out.
What's interesting is that one fairly large section of the railway does still have lots of staff who enforce anti-social behaviour (Merseyrail – they operate somewhat independently) and from what I've read and heard is that there tend to be far fewer issues in that network than the rest of the network. It's interesting to have the two areas to compare.
Unfortunately this governments want to continue defunding the railways, and so are happy with the cycle of managed decline and people opting to drive instead.
I used to be extremely pro public transport but it's fighting a losing battle. Trains are overpriced, delayed, cramped and anti-social
Tragedy of the commons is real, even a nominal stake in a service, thing or place impacts behavior. If you’ve ever shopped at Aldi, they make you put a quarter in each shopping cart. Most people wouldn’t pick a quarter up from the ground, but they almost always put their carts back at Aldi.
Personally, I could care less if a dude smells or is poor. We’re all the same. But I have tolerance for boorish behavior that scares people who are trying to go about their business.
I'm strongly in favour of free transit, but this boggles my mind. If your payment system is just a box where people drop in tickets/change, it's pretty low cost, never gets outdated, and pretty high compliance.
And it doesn't raise compliance at all. Why would it?
The boxes in my city of ~1.7 million don't do this. They're just boxes. Presumably they have some big box at the bus HQ they dump them in to sort the change.
> And it doesn't raise compliance at all. Why would it?
I'm not saying they raise compliance over other systems, I'm saying that observationally, compliance is pretty good. When I take the bus, I see basically everyone either put something that looks like a fare/ticket in the box or show a transit pass to the driver.
Do you have to show the coins to the driver that they add up to the fare, before putting them in the box?
I've only ever seen systems that count and display the amount of coins dropped in, until it adds up to a fare, and then there's an indication that it's sufficient and it beeps and then resets for the next person.
There’s nothing stopping you from putting half the fare amount in nickels in, but really, there’s nothing stopping you from putting nothing in and just taking a seat - bus drivers aren’t equipped to police fare evasion in either case.
In practice, 80-90% of riders have monthly passes that are just pieces of paper that you wave in front of the driver as you get on.
I’m not oblivious to the downsides of such a system, but there are real upsides around low cost, and no technology to ever go out of date.
What about transfers? Transfers between buses are supposed to be free, but how would you track that? There is also a reduced price from going from train -> bus. How would you track that? Obviously the system is significantly more complex than "drop some change in a bucket."
This is literally how my city of ~1.7 million operates now, and it seems... fine? Like it's obviously worse than free transit or a snazzy FeLiCa-based system, but it clearly works to collect fares and move people around.
> What about transfers?
The bus driver tears off a paper slip with a time on it that's good for 90 minutes.
> There is also a reduced price from going from train -> bus. How would you track that?
You don't, all routes/transfers are the same cost.
Again, I'm not saying this is the best system, but it's a false dichotomy to assume that "expensive new fare system" and "no fare system" are the only options. For some cost-value analysis, a basic/cheap fare system beats an expensive system even if it has fewer capabilities.
Why? We are excluding non-paying passengers from planes just fine. Why not busses and trains?
And over in many other parts of the world, they also manage this just fine, too. It's not exactly rocket science.
(Careful: I'm not suggesting that collecting fares would make streetcars widely profitable again. I am merely suggesting that whatever mechanisms they used to enforce fares can be learned from.)
> [...] and conversely people would then hitch a hike on roller skates behind the bus.
I assume there's not much overlap between the really problematic passengers (often loud, drunk, aggressive and/or mentally ill) and the skaters? Mostly just because you need a minimum level of physical fitness to pull this feat off, and you need to be organised enough to both have skates and have them at the ready?
In most places I lived in, the traffic police (if nothing else) would nab you for trying to pull this stunt.
Historically, it wasn't even the driver's job - the bus would have 2 employees: the driver and the conductor. The driver would drive, and the conductor would go around collecting fares after everyone gets on the bus. The conductor could have the angry discussion with the fare-evader without interrupting the driver, and if need be, the driver and conductor could 2v1 the fare-evader.
At some point, before computers were on buses, they got rid of conductors. For "efficiency".
And if you’re from San Francisco and use MUNI, you’ll also know that half the people don’t pay anyway. There’s no reason to make people pay.
Rambling aside, I think it’s unfair to give people shit because they’re homeless. The real issue is we don’t commit people to psychiatric care when they’re clearly a problem in our society.
I’m old enough to remember when we did that. The homeless population absolutely skyrocketed, after all the mental institutions were closed in the 1980s and 1990s.
That said, many of them were hellholes. It’s sort of arguable as to whether the patients were worse off, but one thing’s for sure; the majority of city-dwellers (the ones with homes) are not better off, now. I’m really not sure who benefited from this.
Here, on Long Island (NY), we have some of the largest psychiatric centers in the world; almost all completely shut down, and decomposing.
The campuses are gorgeous, but can’t be developed, because they would require hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup.
Where do you draw that line though? Are you really okay with committing people, i.e. imprisoning and medicating people, because society seems to find those people inconvenient?
Personally I've never understood any justification for committing a person without their consent. The line between being committed and being extra judicially imprisoned seems indistinguishable to me.
What scares me about deinstitutionalization is that there are ways that people can ‘exit’ as in: move to the suburbs, drive instead of take public transportation, order a private taxi for your burrito instead of go to a restaurant. If public spaces can’t protect themselves we’ll have nothing but private spaces.
Puts a different spin on the System of a Down lyrics, "The percentage of Americans in the prison system (prison system) has doubled since 1985" (Prison Song, Toxicity, 2001).
This further reinforces the other complaints (in the song) about drug offences landing people in jail, some of them from self-medicating a mental illness they can't or won't get treatment for
Well, that's what prison is, for some value of "inconvenient".
The problem is that at some point, if someone refuses to abide by laws/social norms, and can't be coerced via fines, etc., then the only options the state, and society has are either imprisonment, or allowing those people to ignore laws/social norms. Clearly some social norms (e.g. serious crimes) we aren't okay with ignoring, so it's really just a question of what the threshold is where we do something vs. allowing people to disregard said laws/norms.
> Personally I've never understood any justification for committing a person without their consent. The line between being committed and being extra judicially imprisoned seems indistinguishable to me.
Presumably the process to commit someone can involve the judiciary, so it wouldn't be extra-judicial.
Prison is for those convicted of a crime by a jury of their peers. There must not only be a criminal law on the books, you must be found guilt by trial.
Involuntary committal involves no laws being broken and there is no jury. I don't know every detail of that process though I am familiar with the general flow, I know multiple people that work in related roles, and my understanding from them is that it is generally not down through a legal proceeding.
I'm talking at a higher level - I'm saying that conceptually, "inconvenience" ranges from mild offences to murder, and society has to decide where to draw some line for inconveniences that it will not permit. If someone is determined to re-offend, regardless of severity, the state's only choices are to either let them re-offend, or to use force to prevent it.
The dangerous people are the ones spreading fear - that leads to horrible things. I've had no problem with unhoused people who I am around almost every day. Why would I?
All the fear mongering is wrong. You have nothing to fear but fear itself.