Comment by itsmek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by itsmek | Hacker News Reader

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Transit source seems fine I think you're just misinterpreting it. That first source says about a third board without paying, not 90%. The 90% number you're quoting is I assume from the <10% farebox recovery which is a different metric from fare evasion. North America generally has low farebox recovery (car centric development therefore transit needs bigger subsidies to compete) and the pandemic made it worse. Don't get me wrong the numbers aren't good but I don't think it's evidence that Seattle is an especially low trust society like you're implying, I think it just indicates a lack of enforcement - a third is in line with fare evasion problems in other places in the world when they lack enforcement. People in Seattle behave no different from people in other places - they estimate risk vs reward in a free ride and some fraction of people lack a moral compass or are so poor that the benefit is significant. There's a reasonable line of thinking that 0 fares are best for society as a whole and I've heard this promoted among PNW urbanites so it wouldn't surprise me if enforcement is intentionally low to make it a sort of sliding scale farebox recovery, in which case a high fare evasion is not evidence of low trust, just of a highly progressive political culture, and something opposing propaganda will not hesitate to harp on.

Theft rings are pretty common in bad neighborhoods throughout north american cities. The existence of a policy to help grocery stores in high crime areas doesn't support your thesis since it's going to be used on a vast minority of stores, not indicative of "rampant" (most stores in Seattle seem fine in my experience), and not indicative of a broader trend in trust.

And here is some data counter to your thesis https://www.pewresearch.org/2025/05/08/americans-trust-in-on... It seems to me that Seattle is an especially high trust society by US standards (largely due to high income I suspect), and the things you're pointing at are evidence of the opposite of your thesis - more likely to be symptoms of high trust than low trust.

From first cite: "Last fall it was down to 14%."

> The existence of a policy to help grocery stores in high crime areas doesn't support your thesis since it's going to be used on a vast minority of stores, not indicative of "rampant" (most stores in Seattle seem fine in my experience), and not indicative of a broader trend in trust.

Grocery stores in Seattle are shutting down, and looting is a major contributing factor to it.

That 14% describes farebox recovery which is mostly low due to subsidized transit, not evasion. They say that number is "funded x% by riders paying fares" which is not the same as "y% of riders pay fares" that you interpret it as. The former is called farebox recovery while the latter describes fare evasion. 14% farebox recovery is not out of the ordinary in north america where we need to subsidize transit more than other countries due to car oriented development. If you subtract 33% fare evasion (from the article) from that 14% recovery you will still be at about 21% farebox recovery and that's on the low side but not out of the ordinary for western North America (it's better than most California systems for example where we usually get 10%). 20% farebox recovery is just fundamental to our transit and urban planning, nothing to do with fare evasion or trust level. Whereas 90% fare evasion would be highly highly unusual, which is why I wanted a source and now I can see where your misunderstanding comes from. In your defense I do think that article is intentionally eliding the two by not explicitly defining terms - maybe deceiving the reader makes the article hit harder. Anyway very few places have fare evasion over 50% since the majority of people will pay based on morals (and their income level) even against zero enforcement whatsoever.

I'm open to the claim that looting -> grocery store shutdowns, especially in bad areas, I just dispute it being "rampant" based on my lived experience, and I dispute that there's a causal link instead of correlation with a low income/low traffic/low staffing death spiral. I did not feel your source adequately supported this claim, and what you say here is a walked back claim from "rampant" to at least one store? I am not convinced Seattle has it worse than other metros (similar things happen where I live in California in bad areas too, and it's been shown to be stores that were underperforming and due to be closed regardless of looting), and I am not convinced this supports your thesis that Seattle has become a low trust society against my counter evidence from Pew.

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