The town I live in has a fare-less bus system. It’s very convenient. Not just the fact that it’s free, but also not even having to make sure you have money on hand for it (I rarely carry cash) or get transfer passes or any of that. My understanding is that the local university here subsidizes a large chunk of the cost. I hope more municipalities adopt this model (provided it’s sustainable).
This is such a win-win situation - people get free transit, drivers get reduced traffic and easier parking, everyone gets less air pollution, road maintenance costs likely decline, etc. What’s not to like?
If you want no tolls, move to Connecticut. There have been no tolls there for a few decades, although the present governor wants to bring them back. (The idea is to most heavily toll out-of-state trucks passing through the state.)
As for the free buses in Kansas City, I used to follow a Usenet messageboard on public transit and various people talked about this. Most public transit systems get only a fraction of their revenues from passenger fares. And then they’re spending more on enforcing payments (transit police looking for cheaters and so forth). Mostly I drive myself around in my own car but if I didn’t have deal with figuring out where to get a payment card and making sure I’ve got enough on it, I might use mass transit more often. And certainly a free mass transit system would be great for visitors to the area.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there is a difference between types of cities. In some of our largest, and densest, cities there are hurdles to having a car besides expense. The density also makes for more convenience of public transportation. In areas I have lived with total metro pop in the 100s of thousands instead of multiple millions public transportation is more transportation of last resort for those that can’t afford a car. If that is the user base there is only so much you can charge.
Paradoxically, the cost of paying for transportation for those that are too poor for cars falls most heavily on the poor. That’s thanks to the dominant way that state and local governments raise revenues - sales and property taxes. Both are flat on the surface but end up being regressive in practice. The poorer you are generally the bigger share of income you spend on items subject to those taxes. (Yes even those that don’t own their own homes pay property taxes indirectly. Their landlords pass along a big chunk of the cost of the tax in rent.) In raw numbers the money dominantly comes from those with more income. You can only get so much blood from the stone, after all. In terms of share of income paid in taxes though that regressive tax structure chews up the working poor more than anyone else.
You’re just minutes away from Leonard’s subway
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Satisfaction guaranteed
You’re just minutes away from Leonard’s!
The subway was less than a mile long and was built to bring people to the Leonard’s department store (later, Tandy/Radio Shack campus) but, being underground for 0.2 miles, was indeed the first subway in the area!
What’s not to like is that money doesn’t magically appear out of thin air. That $8 million has to come from somewhere.
How would you like it if you had to have your car’s front end realigned because you hit a big pothole that wouldn’t have been there if your local government had spent $8 million on fixing roads instead of “free” bus service?
Reducing traffic makes road repair less necessary, not more necessary.
That is not how it works. The roads still are out in the weather for one thing. For another the truck traffic is the main driver of vehicle caused damage to roadways.
This scheme will not lower the amount of truck traffic. If anything it will increase the truck traffic. It will definitely increase the bus traffic. That, all by itself will increase the need for road repairs.
Oh and yes, Portland Oregon has/had a downtown fee free zone much like the one in Seattle. I do not recall which one had the fee free zone first, but I think that it was Tri-Met in Portland Oregon. I may be wrong on that though.
Thanks (bus traffic might not increase that much though - buses might just be fuller). Hopefully the other reduced costs (less car traffic will mean fewer accidents, etc.) and other benefits will be enough to compensate.
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What do you mean a big chunk? Do you think they’re in it for their health. Of course they pass it all on. With maybe a little profit. Another reason renters subsidize home owners is that the latter can invest money in their own homes and the return on their investment is never taxed. Renters pay their rent with after-tax money. Note that the largest break goes to the guy with no mortgage.
Although not a big city, Logan, Utah has had free bus service for over 20 years.
They were leading the state in levels of pollution.
Hopefully this solution helped.
The Twin Cities metro area has a heavily subsidized transit system, which now includes both light rail lines and a few select limited stop express routes that are unmetered; that is, you’re supposed to pay for a ride at your stop’s automated kiosk but it’s unpoliced. The general theory being that it’s still cheaper in the long run than more freeway traffic.
Not only do we have no tolls, we also have highways covered in pot holes and a tax on plastic bags.
It is really going to depend on the nature of the individual housing market in the city. The tax incidence of property taxes is going to vary depending on local market conditions. There are edge cases where either landlords or renters bear all of the tax burden. You would have to make a good case for why landlords are able to successfully pass on all of it.
You might not want to waste the effort to try and make that case. There is quite a bit of debate among economists about who bears how much of the burden of property taxes in the housing market. My “big chunk” was just assuming we were not in one of those edge cases but staying out of where the split of the shared tax burden falls.
Hopefully, except it doesn’t look like anyone bothered to check in this case. Transport economics and civil engineering come in handy now and then.
My personal “potential GD threads” queue has a “why should you pay for my subway ride?” topic. WMATA gets funds from fares, local governments, state governments, and the feds. The local impact is obvious; closing the system down would harm anyone who currently drives. It’s less obvious how subsidizing my ticket benefits someone in Lynchburg. I, personally, don’t need any subsidy. And even if I did, my employer reimburses my fare.
Obviously if you’re making $7-and-change an hour, that $8 round trip can be a hardship. If you want to help those folks, I’m not sure how to weigh subsidizing everyone vs just helping those folks through other means.
I’ve taken public transit in some European cities and was always amazed at how convenient it was. It’s not free, but they don’t collect fares the same way we do in the U.S. You can buy blank, paper tickets in advance, and when you get on a bus or trolley there’s a machine that stamps a time on them. The drivers don’t check them, though. There are roving patrols of inspectors, and when they ask you have to show them a ticket stamped within the last 90 minutes (or a monthly pass, or whatever). If you don’t have it, there’s a fine.
The reason it works so well is that, when the bus or trolley stops, you don’t have to channel everyone through just one door at the front. The trolley stops, all the doors open, people get off, people get on, and the trolley is moving again in ten seconds or so. I’ve never gotten my stopwatch out and timed how long a bus stop takes in the U.S., but I expect it adds up. How many more people would take transit in the U.S. if the trip was just 5 or 10 minutes faster? I’m curious if Kansas City riders will notice a difference.
I should say that I haven’t been to Europe in 15 years. With the ubiquity of RFID cards and smart phones maybe they’ve moved on to a different payment model by now.
I was watching a town-hall-type show about transit improvements many years ago, and someone made an interesting point. He said that transit improvements are pitched to a community for how much they will improve things for the people who are not taking transit. Everyone else, so they say, will be taking the bus and that will reduce traffic, so you can keep driving your car. It’s not universally true, of course, but I do see that argument quite a lot. I think that way of thinking is part of the reason that public transit is so awful in the U.S. When running a transit system, your first thought should be how to serve the people who’ll be using it, not the people who won’t.
[Professor Farnsworth]
Good news, everyone!
[/Professor Farnsworth]
One of the reasons is that you’re subsidizing those people’s driving. Your taxes, at local, state and federal levels, are going to pay for the roads that cars are using. Road use taxes on gas (or often with registration for EVs) do not cover the full cost of providing roads. It isn’t fairness “We each pay a bit of the others’,” but rather that there is both a public benefit to having good roads, and a public benefit to having mass transit. With any distributed tax system, some of your money will go to things that you don’t directly benefit from, but that (hopefully) you indirectly benefit from. A functioning and healthy economy in DC benefits the surrounding areas.
Here on the Colorado frontrange, the transit system raises fares to cover budget shortfalls. Raising the prices decreases ridership (econ 101), which leads to cut services, etc. Like other places, fares only cover a small percentage of the budget, so perhaps lower them to free or $.50 or something to increase ridership. If a 10% budget increase can change empty buses to full, that might be worth it. Of course Denver RTD has other problems, but that’s probably best saved for a pit thread.
I took a mass transit survey recently and one question was interesting. “Would you take mass transit on a regular basis if there was an option for a free Uber/Lyft ride if you had to get home in an emergency?” The point being that some people don’t take mass transit even if it would work for them because they’re thinking about the rare event (medical appointment, illness, etc) where they have to leave work outside their normal schedule, so the mass transit authority is thinking about offering vouchers for taxis or private car services for those rare occasions to encourage more riders.
Yup. They did away with it a few years ago and also raised rates.