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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

stop charging for mass transit if your goal is to make better cities. We waste billions on transit lines no one will use because authorities build overly expensive systems even when studies say don't. Portland and Seattle for example seem hell bent on finding out who can spend the most per mile, estimates put them over 200m per mile on new lines. The top it off with not only do the streets need repairs but light rail lines need them too.

Yet they continue to charge for something they want people to use, if they want to change behavior tax the people in the city and the businesses downtown for it. If they are truly economic benefits they will prove it

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Soundbites like "Stop charging for mass transit" unfairly ignore the complexity of the issue at hand.

In Sydney, IPART (Independant Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal) recently reported that revenue from Sydney's public transport captures about 30% of the cost associated with running it.

The determined that it doesn't make sense to make PT free (fully subsidised by tax) because public transport is doesn't provide significantly enough value for all tax payers. http://www.ipart.nsw.gov.au/Home/Industries/Transport/Review...

All transportation is subsidized. Except maybe my morning trot from my bed to the bathroom.

The argument for eliminating fares is that the revenue more or less covers the cost of administration.

Also, for future, distinguish between capital and operating expenses.

The argument against eliminating fares (at least in Sydney) is that the added costs would vastly outweigh any benefits of a small number of people getting free transport.

That's also ignoring the different ways people would use public transport (and non-public transport) if it were free.

The more people using public transit the less congested the roads become which is a huge benifit.

That does not necessarily follow. If you offer free mass transit, the people who take advantage of it may not be the same people who would otherwise be clogging up the roads in their personal cars.

It does not need to be a 1:1 relationship for my statement to be true. If every 10 rides reduces 1 car trip it's still reducing congestion. The important thing to remember about congestion is at maximum capacity new trips simply increase wait times so a 30 min trip can add more than 30 minutes of wait time spread among all drivers. And removing a 30 minute trip can save people more than 30 minutes of wait time.

Granted as delays reduce people my decide to simply take more trips, but a combination of a car congestion tax, free public transit, and walk-able / bike-able city's are far more efficient say trying to stack highways.

I understand this, but it wouldn't be that simple.

The more people using PT, the greater the operating and capital expenses are

Just like it doesn't make sense to build expensive, high maintenance highways, largely at public expense to subsidize driving. But that's exactly what's been happening in large parts of the world (led by the US example) for the past 50 years or so..

> stop charging for mass transit

That's impossible. We could stop charging per use and just charge through general income taxation or maybe special taxation like car registrations or maybe sales tax. All those methods might work, but there's no way to "stop charging".

That doesn't make better cities, it just makes certain areas less safe. I see no reason for my taxes to be used to send bums and thugs around all over town. Does that make me a bad person?

Yes CamperBob2 you seem like a bad person.

Then I guess I'll own it, and vote accordingly.

You do realize that the highways that you, along with all those same "thugs and bums", are driving on are also largely tax subsidized.

Yep. That's (literally) life in the big city. You are part of others' lives, whether you like it or not. Often that implies subsidizing their activities.

That does not, of course, mean you're not entitled to your opinions about the relative economic and social values of the things you're required to subsidize.

Threads like this always end up full of people who are absolutely convinced that there is only one truth, one valid perspective, one "right" thing to do. The irony inherent in that point of view goes completely unnoticed.

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