Why are progressives obsessed with “Free Bus Fare”? Who is patient zero for this idea? The bus isn’t expensive. It isn’t a significant portion of a family’s household income. This policy just imposes costs on already struggling transit agencies. Is there some book/article where this idea originates?
Transit agencies all over California are facing a fiscal cliff. Why are foundation funded nonprofits still talking about “free transit” amidst these dire financial conditions?
These dire financial conditions only exist because local and state governments don’t fully fund them. If they were fully funded, there would be no need to charge a fare. Simple!
To me it just kinda seems like a meme. Foundations that fund nonprofits are filled with rich people who don’t understand transit, think they are welfare agencies, told nonprofits to advocate to eliminate fares and prog pundits just followed suit.
Neoliberals hand-waving away any idea of social funding as a meme funded by unaccountable think-tanks is mirror propaganda (blaming others for bad behaviour the accuser is actually guilty of) at its finest.
according to WMATA 34% of metrobus riders don’t pay their fare, so my guess is that the free bus proposals actually have a lot more to do with not putting lower income people in contact with law enforcement over $2.
*$2.25
$2.90 here in NYC! Although low income groups can apply for half fare.
Where are 34% of metrobus riders going that they cannot afford to pay $4 to get there and back?
Fare enforcement is also costly; if we're concerned with fiscal cliffs why are we burdening our systems with extra expenses when we can just replace fares with a $3 per capital tax outlay
On the agencies where the ridership is the cost of enforcement is much less than fares generated.
Because that capital tax isn't popular enough. Wiener tried to push a compromise in CA which would increase local bridge tolls to compensate for transit shortfalls but was unable to due to opposition. Free fares seem popular among donors and the base but not constituents.
It's a combination of that and the cost of maintaining point of sale on every bus, paying for enforcement, etc. Extremely successful farebox recovery is ca. 30% of operating budget. Normal is single digits. And it costs money to bring that in by nickels instead of as one big general fund transfer.
You're talking about tens of thousands of tiny transactions that may, in places that allow pay-by-debit for example, incur transaction fees on top, reducing farebox recovery further. And it means figuring out every system anew when you arrive.
Now, there are solutions I like that include universal plans to avoid these issues. Monthly passes (i.e. for locals) are substantially cheaper than daily passes (I pay $108 for a month, not $168-186 for a month of dailies in Puget Sound). That soaks tourists and one-off users. Kids ride free in WA.
Here, it seems like our reduced fare program (50% reduction) is well integrated into social services. If you sign up for SNAP in this region, you have the paperwork ready. You *should~ immediately get your card. Same with Medicaid. That now reduces costs to under $2 per day.
Part of the issue is that some people want fare evasion to be a useful reason to remove people from transit. Does a person smell bad? Or maybe someone keeps riding end to end? Check their fare and see if that's a way to say they aren't welcome there. (Not an endorsement of this position.)
Another is that the transaction reminds the user of the value of the service and makes them care more about it. I think this is in the nudge school. Also one that I think is kind of garbage (I got introduced to it watching someone get paid $40k to ask people to optionally pay for cheap dentistry.).
I think the cost of transactions is the most important to me for looking toward a future with free-at-point-of-service arguments. I'm going to pay $1,296 POS for my transit this year. I want that to go maximally to service and not bank fees.
or similarly: If collection of fares is a pain point that is causing deficits and problems for the workers, why not consider an alternative funding model, such as integrating it into the municipal tax budget? And if the fares aren't enough to cover cost anyway, why bother with them? (but)
"the" municipal tax budget, ha - the local bus system goes through 44 distinct municipalities.
that's a great reason to avoid trying to create a one size fits all policy across the entire world, or even country. West Virginia and New York City have very different infrastructure and needs in this department, for example.
To me this zooms out to a broader trend of "the left" focusing on policy proposals that sound ridiculous to the general public, feeding the propaganda machine that likes to say we are out of touch with regular people's concerns. And sure we can walk and chew gum but they aren't watching our jaws
Hence, as easy as it may be for engaged people to read up on why a policy like ban the box or harm reduction or reducing means testing cliffs or protecting obscure medical procedures matters, it's even easier for those policies to be twisted as "free mockery" of us. I have no solution...
definitely the case for no fare transit in NYC, iirc there was an incident where a cop slammed someone to the ground over skipping their fare
So since the government is unwilling to hold the police accountable they're going to make transit operations suffer for it instead?
Uh just raise taxes I mean if you have the votes for free transit in this country than that implies you have the votes for basically anything and therefore you simply vote revenue to fund it
If we're raising taxes we should be spending them on much more important priorities.
Transit is important. Promotes economic activity.
I could probably name a million priorities that should be higher than making transit free for middle class folks, including better service.
Read the actual data Owen: The biggest group that saw an increase in ridership during the pilot program were people making less than $28k, not the middle class. 11% switched from driving or taxi, noteworthy reduction in traffic along the routes.
I don't even know what you think I'm saying that is wrong... but that mode shift from driving is absolutely miniscule. It's 11% of the new riders, which was only 12%. 11% of 12% is less than 2%. Those results pretty clearly show this is a worse investment than new service.
Why is it either/or
There is no world where we have literally infinite money and can do every idea everyone thinks of. And even if that world existed, we would still have to prioritize which policies we do first.
Wow you just blew my mind I never knew that. You dumb motherfucker I meant why is not possible to do both in this specific case
Should it be free for poor people? Should they have to go through the expense of certifying how poor they are? Should the transit agencies have to pay for staff to validate that the poor people are actually poor?
Should that be a higher priority than making healthcare free?
Yes
You're against making it "free for the middle class". Should people in poverty have free use of transit?
Means testing tends to be cost-inefficient, mind you
Kind of a flip answer maybe but advocacy is about building political will to get things done and I would imagine most people advocating this policy are well aware that the fare income would need to be replaced somehow
Most transit agencies aren’t getting full cost recovery on fares anyways and fare evasion rates are astronomical in many cities anyways
This isn’t true
Sure it is
When you're making $13.85 / hour. Daily bus fare is expensive.
Oh but THOSE people don’t matter
No it's not? At that rate it's like 10 minutes of work (each way). You probably spent more than twice that waiting for and riding the bus itself, and accordingly would likely benefit more from reducing that with faster & more frequent service than from reducing the work-time it takes to pay for it.
You speculate. Where I live, subway fare is $2.25 to $6.75. Bus Fare is $2.20 to $4.80 one way. A one-day subway-bus pass is $13.50. The seven-day bus pass is $13.50, which is doable A 20-25 hr work week is a policy in many industries. Transportation is expensive. Hell, being poor is expensive.
It’s not about the time, it’s about the money. people working low wage jobs often struggle to get enough hours, or work multiple jobs, requiring many trips a week. $100 month is a huge amount of money for someone who is barely scraping by.
What is the city spending money on?
I feel like it's mostly because it's a small daily expense for many people, bypassing the fare is pretty easy, and enforcing the fare is a significant hassle for everyone. It would be a significant little improvement in riders' lives if transit was free, but that is not a great reason to do it.
My impression is this is a big issue for socialists in less wealthy countries like Brazil where it actually is a huge part of peoples income that just kind of jumped over here
What do you think the word “meme” means
They're using "meme" in the original sense of the word! "A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
What is the “symbolic meaning” of thinking that public transport should be wholly funded by the government instead of a mix of user fees and government spending
Agreeing to this kinda silly policy proposal signifies a progressive allegiance
It's narratively very easy. We're fighting for the little guy. Very easy to call for taxes on the rich for programs to benefit the poor. But on the merits, it just makes things harder for the little guy. You need to crack down on cars. That's the hard work politically.
Are free libraries and free K-12 education silly
What's this zero-based accounting nonsense lol. A call for free transit is a call for transit defunding. For higher ed, free tuition proposals that don't care about funding are also bad and a call for defunding education. The ones I've seen are new tax proposals, not an unfunded goal.
No it is not? It’s obviously a call for replacing user fees with increased funding. You should stop assuming everyone else is stupid
It's not obvious at all. Our transit agencies are in crisis and these non profit bozos idea is to cut their funding, since they care about having something to talk about at their gala speeches and not about transit.
How is City College SF doing? Haven’t checked in on it in a while
It's very silly to compare public education to transit fare. Libraries are a more interesting comparison, but on the whole "thing X is free" is not a real argument for thing Y.
You people love the word “silly”, huh
It's also a meme, as it happens. They got yelled at that calling something "stupid" or "crazy" were both ableist. Not passing judgment as I have mixed feelings on the idea, but that's what it is.
It’s a completely reasonable policy to advocate for, the idea that the status quo breakdown between user fees and subsidies is the only ratio is unreasonable
the idea that capacity constraints and opportunity costs never exist / don't matter, the central doctrine of online leftist subculture
great point diego
Imagine being this big an out of touch douche bag with lower middle class & working poor people🤣🤣
EXACTLY. And then doubling down when called out on it.
Damn that’s crazy. I wonder what transit riders think about problems with service. Oh wait! Many agencies conduct these surveys. Let’s see what metro LA heard from their riders when they asked them in 2022. thesourcearchives.metro.net/2022/10/27/r...
Huh interesting. The cost of transit passes didn’t seem salient. Frequency, timeliness and safety were the top issues cited LA metro riders (most of whom are under the poverty line)
I was dependent on these buses for all my transportation needs for about 4 years. I cannot tell you how many times I was stranded on my commute home because buses were late and I missed my connection. Just a whole crowd of people waiting at a bus stop at 7pm, 8pm or later
These people probably had some combination of: child care/elder care duties, other jobs, personal appointments. But because transit sucks, they might be late! Time is money. Late buses impose costs on riders. The idea fares are the big drag on riders finances and not shit bus service is farcical.
Congrats on really doubling down on your absolute cluelessness 😂 It’s amazing how tone deaf, disconnected from a huge segment of transit users and entitled you sound - made even more obvious by your reliance on study & zero critical thinking about inherent issues of those studies as representative.
LA metro: “We interviewed 12,000 of our riders. Here is what they said” You: “Actually I know better than all these people about what is good for them”
The study they are relying on is a survey of twelve thousand Los Angeles metro riders, most of them poor and Spanish-speaking.
And were there fares accompanying this degraded service?
Unclear what point you’re making. Is your contention that removing the fares would not degrade service further? If more transit funds were made available, should it go to improving service or subsidizing fares? I side with my fellow LA metro riders by saying the former.
LA Metro's 25 budget shows bus fares significantly up(although fares still only 1.9% revenue). Has there been a commensurate improvement in bus service, or are they proposing further service reductions?
Why shouldn't public transit be a public service rather than a business for profit? Not everyone can afford a car but they do need to navigate a car-based city. I think Internet and cell service should be a utility too, because they're also necessary to function in our society.
transit agencies in california are underfunded pseudo-private entities that are poorly managed. the solution to this is to treat transit the same way we treat roads, which are a free public utility subsidized by the state, which youd know if you educated yourself on this subject instead of bitching
lol so much wrong with this thread but all I’m going to chime in on is that we should absolutely charge user fees for roads. That would be great.
Next up pay to use parks!
im really baffled at the idea of pay-to-use roads because like. i hate cars, but if we drastically cut down on car traffic, what, should pedestrians pay to leave their house? what is the logic here? i guess everything should be a microtransaction. deranged rentseeking behavior
Are you unfamiliar with toll roads? Most national roadway systems are funded by tolls.
I thought most of them were funded by taxes, while tolls help some roads?
Yes. There are countries outside the United States. Most of those are tolled
Can you name a country or two so I can look into it? I tried looking up various ones and only found what I said.
Japan, France, Italy, China
youd be correct. highways are also a fraction of our total roadway network
lol congrats guys you have the same perspective on congestion pricing as the Trump administration. I for one am gonna side with Zohran and other NYC progressives in supporting congestion pricing to fund transit.
the point of congestion pricing is to decrease traffic, increase metro ridership, and use a toll as a means of encouraging this while taxing anyone who chooses to not ride transit. so if you want to do the same thing in reverse, you would increase transit fares. which is what you are proposing
you also totally avoid my point that tolling pedestrians would be insane, which is why we have this idea of public utilities. roads are one, they are just built for cars which is bad. parks are another. transit should be the same way for a number of reasons
mta ridership went up with congestion pricing and no reduction to fares. (highly subsidized) fares are not what keep people from using transit or chosing cars instead.
yeah actually fares play a huge role in ridership, congestion pricing got people taking the subway and commuter rail because the people driving into new york to commute were already well enough off to own a car and park in nyc
...yes? Subway/bus fares did not prevent people these folks taking transit. And thanks to fares coming from this new ridership, the MTA has even more resources to spend on better service. This is good.
It's kept me from doing so
Wait, do you think congestion pricing is the same as "roads are pay to use"?
That’s straightforwardly what congestion pricing is. To access roadways in some parts of Manhattan you have to pay a user fee.
"in some parts of one area" is explicitly not "roads are pay to use" Maybe I misunderstood what you meant, but you misrepresented your stance.
I was glib, but the content is the same. Problems related to traffic, pedestrian fatalities, air pollution, and VMT mitigation could be addressed by pricing road usage on highways and downtown business districts. “Fares for roads” is totally reasonable for similar reasons transit fares are.
I've found it's part of a libertarian fantasy where no one ever has to pay for something they don't want or use.
ugh i forgot libertarians existed. instead of a billionaire tax we should have a libertarian tax
Cars should pay because road cost a lot to maintain and cars have lots of negative external impacts. There are sidewalks and bike paths that are 100 years old and they have no wear from users.
Many parks (particularly national and state parks) have modest user fees, and the revenue from those fees is a key component of sustaining those parks' operations.
It was a bit about how libertarians want to get rid of public parks.
also people skip fare constantly and enforcement is a huge financial burden on the agency, the police, or both that is made up for and then some by making transit free
also there is no amount of individual fare that can be charged that will make a transit agency profitable. places like japan for example have businesses pay for their employees commutes on the train because if they didnt nobody could commute
again youd know all this if you cared and werent just whining and regurgitating chicago school of economics talking points
Fare enforcement isn't just about making money for transit agencies, it's one of the things that helps prevent transit becoming a mobile homeless shelter / drug den I know I sound Republican, but I rely on transit, and when it's a free for all, it is grim Transit can't be transit *and* a shelter
You can call me a fascist for saying so, but the reality is that transit can't be for everyone when open drug use and unpredictable behavior are the norm on every train or bus Transit needs to be for everyone, not just gritty urban young people who don't mind sharing their space with meth/fent use
Give homeless people and addicts somewhere to go without the threat of criminalization and stigma. Safe injection sites and free housing would pull all of that right off the trains.
Sure, but sacrificing transit quality and making these things a problem for the working class people who are most transit reliant while we wait for that to happen is not a good solution
How are you sacrificing transit quality? Removing fare implies (at least from my political camp) a much greater investment in the infrastructure overall and the understanding that maintaining transit is like maintaining the roads or power lines.
That must vary a lot by location. I almost never see cops, open drug users, or disruptive unhoused people on city buses and we have a pretty high crime/poverty rate here. we do not have free fares but we also have very little enforcement.
i take the bus every single day to and from work you weird antisocial freak. please seek help for your maladaptive tendencies
I love this site
sorry but saying weird fascist shit automatically means i dont respect you or anything you say. you can think youre owning the libs all you want but i genuinely feel sorry for you and the starving worms in your skull
What if we built housing and actually tackled the homeless problem instead of trying to solve that through bus fare policy?
I'm going to hold your hand while I say this: Sometimes you have to address the specific affects of larger structural problems before the larger structural problems are completely solved And that doesn't mean you don't care about or don't also try to fix the bigger structural problem
Imagine if someone were like "We need better reentry programs for prisoners" and someone else was like "Why don't you just fix the economy and public education so people don't commit crime, huh?!"
somebody who's gotten as much wrong as you have doesn't get to be condescending here
Keep your hands to yourself, actually.
Sure thing. Let me know when you have a response to the substance rather than just the idiom
read more
I am curious which foundation nonprofits you are talking about. I am not aware of a single org that fits that description in California currently pushing "free transit."
Fair enough, I was thinking about orgs that actually work on transit. It doesn't surprise me that orgs not engaged in transit funding might still be pushing this as a first priority.
I think this is the problem. It’s not transit advocacy orgs! It’s always anti poverty nonprofits trying to shoehorn transit into their policy advocacy suite.
That said, everyone who is engaged on budgets, be they progressive and in favor of long term free fares or not, is not injecting fare free into the current fight.
Every org I am aware of in CA, no matter where they are on "free," short-term, long-term, never, whatever, understands the priority is saving service right now. Many, but not all, put service growth before free.
Foundation nonprofits groups are all funded by the rich. They support kind, rich people's idea of what the working and middle classes need.
When you start generalizing about "progressives" and what THEY are "obsessed with", you instantly lose me. There's a big, fat surplus of your smug, shitty approach to people and ideas in the world today. We sure as fuck don't need more of it - from anyone.
The bus is plenty expensive for certain people. And guess which types of communities only have bus service? Like honestly this is pretty hilariously myopic of you
If you read the replies a few criticisms of FFPT come up. 1. Rider surveys consistently rank improved service of reduced or free fares in systems all over the U.S. 2. Budgets are limited. Even in places with low recovery, every dollar spent on subsidizing faires means less frequent buses.
Buses are cheaper than cars. If you cut service to make fares free, you are pushing folks to the MUCH more expensive alternative once the service is wrecked due to lack of funding.
Who the fuck is cutting service! Did you make that up?
You are taking money that could be used for better service for free fares. So yeah, you are cutting service.
That is not part of the proposal at all. You’re just a dumbass
Look, if a politician comes to me with money and gives me the choice free buses or more buses, the correct response is the later.
You fucking idiot you brought up the options! Making the Staten Island Ferry free didn’t reduce service lmfao
We are talking about buses, not boats. Also, the ferry should not be free.
You’re well over a decade late on that one old timer
I live in Tempe AZ. We have free neighborhood shuttles every 15 minutes that move us around Tempe. We have a free street car that moves students and everybody along a four mile track. We also have light rail to get us to other nearby cities. The goal is no cars. It is starting to work.
Shut up, bitch
I dunno. Eighty dollars a month isn’t nothing.
I see where you're coming from, but on the other hand, I think we need to consider that: a. In a lot of cities with centralised business areas and zone based fare structures, transport fares are a disproportionate expense for low income earners who need to travel the furthest, and pay the most...
...can afford to pay for public transport. It's a question of whether we want to get them out of cars. I realise that doing this costs money, but recently my state government made fixed 50c fares permanent for about 4 million people (South East Queensland) This is a conservative government...
...so I think that where there is a political will do do this, it is possible to fund the transport agency properly.
b. Free or cheap fares have the effect of increasing patronage, which is necessary to reduce car use. From a planning perspective, cars are a huge waste of space and public given all the parking they require and maintenance of roads etc. I don't think it's a simple as asking whether people....
Does free fares decrease car use? I think that there wasn't any conclusive evidence for that. I think frequency and good connections have better results with that but I can't be bothered to check it now.
Interesting question which I had to go and do more reading on. It seems counter intuitive that reduced fares wouldn't have an impact on car use, so it's interesting to learn otherwise. However, I think a couple of things are worth pointing out from what I've read....
a. As you point out, better integration and frequency has more impact than fare reductions alone in reducing traffic, but I'd suggest that if transport agencies are seeing increased patronage that might be an incentive to improve their services. That seems to be the experience where I am...
b. Counter incentives for car use also have more impact on reducing congestion. (Ie. Congestion pricing, higher parking costs). I think there is definitely an argument to be made that these increased costs could find fare reductions. That's what is suggested here: www.pc.gov.au/research/com...
Frequency and good connections are very effective too, but at least in the case of South East Queensland, 50c fares have led to an increase of about 4 million trips in the first year of it being introduced. translink.com.au/about-transl...
Worth noting is that the South East QLD public transport network is very poorly integrated, and nothing has been done (yet) to fix that problem which might otherwise explain the increase.
To put the patronage increase into perspective: there are only about 4 million people living in this region.
That's cool but did it reduce car usage? Cause in some places free fare didn't achieve that even when patronage increased.
Yeah even studies that found increased ridership didn't show decreased car use. You only get decreased car use with better service.
IIRC, the car use in Tallinn increased after the introduction of free public transit.
One very ungenerous reading on this from me is that it comes from a lot of people who rarely/never ride public transit, and the times they do it is a touristy trolley service like the streetcar in Cincy that is free and they just want it everywhere.
I don't even think its that ungenerous honestly, people who don't use a service very often don't want to deal with the friction of figuring out how to get a ticket, its understandable.
It comes from the people who use it the most, and we tend to be the poorest, and we're tired of the fact that fare gates are overpoliced. Why are poor people always the ones facing the most police actions?
- Fare enforcement is extremely expensive and extremely dangerous - The bus is actually that expensive for some people who have to use it as their only form of transportation. - Socialists tend to believe that things should be free at the point of service for those using it to avoid the above
(and by dangerous I mean for bus and subway riders)
When ppl stay at Disney World, they use free (w/cost of admission) public transit bc DW doesn't want ppl driving cars around. How much do cities spend (including non-driver tax payer $) on parking lots/ramps, maintenance, enforcement, car crashes, car infra, ... It's not either-or, it's priorities.
I'm ngl as someone who's constantly broke I've crunched the numbers and bus fares would have to increase by like, 7-fold before they become more expensive than a car for me my main problem rn is there's no bus stops where I live! And I have to drive 25 minutes just to reach the first park and ride!
Fare enforcement is the rare mommy-coded cop because they are toothless, so it scans as waste
Is this the "everything is gender" I've been hearing about?
Commerce, CA in the 60s
Land value tax would fix this
It’s true folks
I do think kids should be free. It would have a disproportionate benefit to communities that have experienced underinvestment AND serve to introduce some to the bus who otherwise will never learn to use it.
There's several parts to it. First of all, a population that can travel more easily is one that can commute, shop, get to hospitals etc. which leads to an overall healthier economy. Every barrier to entry, no matter how small, is enough to keep someone out.
Secondly, it's the idea that public transport shouldn't be a private business run for profit, but a public service. When run for profit, smaller locations suffer, transport is less reliable, less frequent. Fewer people can access it, which leads to economic suffering
And finally, there's not good evidence that it actually makes money. If the transit companies are struggling as you claim, then switching to a taxpayer-funded model keeps them runnign while eliminating the unnecessary expenses of managing tickets, payment processing, shareholder dividends etc.
Most transit systems are taxpayer funded and fare collection does not compare to fare revenue in any system I've seen. What we're advocating for is keeping fares, subsidizing more, increasing route coverage, and improving headways - which for lower income people is more important than ticket price
I will say that even nominal cost becomes a friction point in actual transit use-- it's not the amount of money for most as much as it is the having the ability to make those payments being friction: exact change, passes, cards all have requirements of their own. All slow use.
If it's not expensive why are we bothering trying to collect user fees? Just fund with progressive taxes rather than regressive user fees.
Any regular expense is significant money for a lot of poor people. And bus fares are a minor part of revenues. Free routes increase ridership and increase speed and reliability because you aren’t dealing with the toll-taking at every stop.
nextcity.org/urbanist-new...
I don’t know where this originated but it was definitely partly a response to post COVID dips in ridership—where increasing fares was going to create a death spiral of decreasing ridership/revenues—and partly the idea that in a green and equitable city, transit is infrastructure not a “service”.
This has to be the dumbest possible attempt at a take down of an objectively successful policy that has been implemented in other cities to positive impact Are you gonna say we’re the only first world country that couldn’t have universal healthcare work too? Libs sure do love right wing propaganda
I've traveled the world somewhat extensively and always use public transit. I don't recall any systems that were fare free, even though many (Netherlands, Melbourne, Tokyo, Buenos Aires) were exceptional. What is the evidence for this "objectively successful policy"?
Increased ridership, increased consumer spending, and reduced carbon emissions. Kind of feels like you decided you didn’t like the idea of free buses without doing a single moment of research. www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/...
I've been reading about FFT for almost 10 years. Which is why I'm against it. I am in favor of much bigger programs for providing free and reduced price transit to those in need. medium.com/@philipcrawf...
There’s a pretty extensive white paper that was published detailing the various benefits of free bus fares in NYC: www.komanoff.net/cars_II/Elim...
“Fare free bus routes have been proven to make public transportation more convenient, accessible and affordable for our residents who depend on transit to get to work and school,” said Boston Mayor Wu. www.masstransitmag.com/technology/f...
All things being equal, yes, but improving frequency and reliability of service is generally more effective.
And yet every year folks are jailed and killed because they didn’t pay a bus fare…
Leaving aside the economic argument, public transport produces far less harmful emissions than car traffic so incentivising its usage wherever possible is good environmental policy.
“This thing should be free” has been the locus of lefty politics since Bernie’s 2016 campaign.
It's fairly obvious that this troll has never been broke.
Punishment for bus fare evasion is disproportionately harsh. Roads are “free.” In a society where public transport adoption is particularly low, anything that might induce a bus trip is a win.
In my state the gas tax covers the cost of the roads and subsidizes the transit system. Which is perfectly fair, but it's not "free" - it's paid for by users.
There is no state in the U.S. where the gas tax completely covers the cost of roads. taxfoundation.org/data/all/sta...
The biggest argument in favor of free bus fare, at least in NY, is that the bottleneck caused by people needing to swipe metrocards or find wallets when they board the bus causes 90% of delays and issues with the operation of the bus system. As a commuter who rides the bus, it’s hard to disagree.
Maybe New York should try opening the rear doors on their buses, a feature that they paid for and then refused to turn on for some reason.
If people get on through the rear door, they don’t pay. If busses were free, both doors would be opened freely. The reason they only open the back door for someone getting off is that they’re trying to ensure that people don’t dodge the fare.
Somehow bus agencies in Europe and San Francisco have solved this, New York can try what they tried, it’s not a law of nature that people won’t pay.
Possibly (guessing here) also because they are used to thinking of driving on streets and parking as "free", don't connect fuel prices as part of transportation costs, and don't understand that road and parking development and maintenance has costs.
If you’re earning $7.50/hr and have to pay $2.50 each way to get to work and send kids to school on the bus, it’s a huge portion of income. Making buses free allows low income people to have mobility for more than just work.
Not buses but we have a train service in my area. Its operating expenses are $58 million and its fare revenue is $4 million. When you factor in the costs of fare collection and enforcement it’s just not worth it.
This describes 1 in 100 workers in the country and many of them are people like teenagers or second earners usafacts.org/articles/min...
I have been poor and coming up with public transit fares was a struggle.
Glad you don't mind, but I know people who are so broke it really matters to them.
Patient zero is Tucson and it's horrendous. Check how many murders happen along the bus routes and on the bus themselves.
I think it took off during COVID when a lot of transit was free. To be fair, if we captured land value better, the idea would make sense
When will Tokyo stop with their fare bullshit and learn from true transit pioneers of Kansas City, Missouri
surely that decision won't come back to haunt them-- www.kcur.org/politics-ele...
Maybe it comes once an hour and you have to walk a mile to get to the stop. But hey at least it's free
Deleted my earlier comment. I don't actually think transit should be free. But fare evasion should be policed precisely as much as the laws about tinting your windows, having current registration, etc. have been since 2020--in other words, (next to) zero. They get the honour system then so do we.
Pretty wild how well simply redesigning the gates has worked on BART.
"This policy just imposes costs" Wait until you hear about every single public infrastructure and service.
I don't think there's any economic reality where bus fare is anything except a regressive tax. Especially during commuting times, riders aren't the only one benefitting. Businesses are getting subsidized transportation. Instead, they and wealthy citizens should be paying for access to these people.
Since we bought a bus, paid a driver, paid mechanics to fix it, we should be getting as many people on that bus as possible. One person on the bus means we spent a lot of money on that person. 50 people on that bus makes it very cost effective. Keeping people off the bus is counterproductive.
Tell me you don't know any poor people without telling me you don't know any poor people.
Rider surveys consistently show they prefer more frequent buses to lower fares. This is the consistent finding Metro LA finds every time they poll riders.
False dichotomy. We're not getting free buses OR more frequent buses anyway. In NYC, at least, the fares go up and the service gets worse.
Why not both?
Call me after you seize control of the state in your glorious revolution. Until then, we do actually have to care about where the next $1 is best spent, here in reality.
cuz then you need to find even more money from new taxes and/or cuts to other govt services and all the political obstacles that entails... and you still have the issue that the portion of that new money going to replace fares would probably also be better spent on improving service even more.
Take it out of the police budget.
I'm gonna be honest, this feels like you stopped reading my post midway through the first sentence
I didn't. Practically anything is a better use of funds than shoveling it into the gaping maw of the police at this point.
Reliable public transit pays for itself
because there are not infinite resources and we make budget decisions, and in most urban areas, choosing to make the bus cheaper instead of making it run more places and more often is just choosing to kneecap it
Again, take it out of the police budget. They get way too much money that could be better spent on things that actually help people, like better and cheaper public transit.
we just went through a whole election cycle and it turns out that the answer to “are voters in our most progressive cities willing to even consider limiting police budgets” is “recall everyone”.
I agree that police departments are generally wasteful and money would be better spent elsewhere but unfortunately voters disagree with us!
exactly - if you're politically incapable of very explicitly packaging your plan for free transit with something that actually makes sure it doesn't starve then it's a non-starter. no way.
Yes, yes, I get it. Better things aren't possible, and I'm the bad guy for even suggesting them. Never heard that one before.
_you_ take it out of the police budget. don't hold my transit system hostage to your plan to defund the police. it has not been successful.
Then subsidize it for them. Medium and high wage earners should still pay.
Means testing is usually more expensive, and certainly more difficult, than just giving it to everyone.
I think part of it is that transit is widely desirable, plus it being a complicated issue with supporters having different opinions. You can feel like you're advocating for something important, AND you get a constant flow of people telling you it's a bad idea to feed that contrarianism
And on top of it all, you don't just get to disagree with people, you can preen about how terrible and heartless your opponents are, if that's your particular poison. It's twitter addict catnip
Conversely, this leads me to think that taxing vehicles by miles driven will not get progressive support.
“What if we tax only the Waymos,” is 100% going to be the orthodox position so that “working class drivers who have to drive” can continue to mow down pedestrians.
I got some fun replies when I pointed out how absurd it is that the fine for going 100mph or more in SF (mostly max 25mph) is only $100 if you are on public assistance
Greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people you can oppose all change while being “left” if you yell loudly enough in a left-sounding way
Somebody should write a book about how we’d have more stuff if American liberalism didn’t take this turn in the 70s. I bet it would be well received a cause a lot of people to reflect on their politics.
Would produce a real abundance of discourse
Are you kidding? Where I live, a discounted 3-zone bus pass is over $200 per month. For ME, it's not a hardship really. For someone else who may be making only $1500 a month, $200 is quite a bit of money for commuting.
How about cheaper monthly pass for low income households and/or increasing the minimum wage?
Our transit system is barely able to function with the money it has right now. We were very close to some major route shutdowns because they're running such a deficit ...
The very concept of a transit system running at long term deficit is weird.
Yes, to us as well, believe me. A big problem is the construction of light rapid transit, which is ongoing, is extremely expensive. We need it; but the budgets have BALLOONED since COVID. 😕
Too bad it’s *impossible* to better fund transit agencies.
A small group of people have made this issue central to transportation policy because they're trying to shoe horn every issue into a tax the rich problem.
You're so close. Just a couple more steps...
Rather than effectively building a cross cutting coalition, they want to subsume the transit coalition into the class war coalition.
This is it right here. And it's incredibly annoying, because I am not here for class war.
the class war, however, is here for you
congrats being the “the problems are bad but their causes are good” liberal from the meme
Using liberal as a pejorative 🚩🚩🚩
It’s funny that you made two replies and you fucked up both of them up. do you want to try a third time
Rather than attacking me personally perhaps you'd like to explain why you hate civil and social rights.
You’re not being attacked, you’re just being made fun of you goose
Ok let's try again, rather than making fun of me and brigading this thread, perhaps you'd like to explain why you're against social and civil rights.
Owen I know more about all of this than you, how about instead of wondering why people are turning a “underfunded social resource” issue into a “generate funding through taxing those at the top issue” you just go drink from a toilet you dog-brained simpleton
why would anyone hate things that dont exist
we don’t have public transit by popular demand, not the billionaires
you are here for class war just the wrong side
That's ok, cause the rest of us, will get it done for you unless of course, you're part of the class that gets the wall
I attend budget meetings or read the agenda packets. I don't think we can have nice things like free fare for K-12, low income fare cards (free rides), frequent service, if we don't charge the non poor for transit. We had fare-free buses during covid bc of Fed emergency funding, which ended
There's another question to ask here: whose budget should it be? If we want transit to provide a social service, maybe the money should come from the social services budget. Why don't we give a bus pass to everyone who receives TANF/SNAP, purchased by the social services agency at a bulk discount?
We do that in my region. It is called Clipper START.
Does this come from a social services budget or is it just the usual cross-subsidy between classes of riders? The MTC web site says it comes from state and agency-internal funding sources, which is very nearly the opposite of what I suggested.
"To implement the Clipper START pilot program, MTC committed roughly $17 million from the State Transit Assistance (STA) program, the statewide Low-Carbon Transit Operations Program and CARES Act funds. This will partially offset the loss of fare revenue for transit operators."
GoPass (free multiagency transit in LA County for K-14) is partially funded by CA Department of Education but the school district or community colleges have to kick in the other 60%.
The similar thing here in Boston (called, unfortunately, "Income Eligible Reduced Fares") is for now funded by a direct state appropriation to the MBTA, but like with Clipper START it's only a discount, not just giving monthly passes to people who need them.
Like most other niche "this should be free for poor people" issues, the easiest and fastest way to fund such things is via universally refundable taxes on motor fuel.
Buses should be free for everyone: unworkable simpleton idea. Gas should be $8/gal for everyone: based, genius material.
What if we taxed rich people more
A refundable gas tax would tax rich people more.
Lol
Poor people burn more gas per dollar they make, so it's a regressive tax, just like every sales tax.
A refundable gas tax means everyone gets a per capita share of the revenue in the mail every month, so if your hypothetical poor person pays no income tax then they also pay no gas tax, and if they burn less gas then the average person it's actually net new income. Thanks for coming to my talk.
Yeah I just gave up at that point
Unsurprisingly, many of us support that and no one in this thread is arguing against that.
And yet
A portion of CA cap and trade taxes on CO2 emissions from gasoline (paid at the pump) do go to transit. I think it should higher. Add VMT taxes. Bus lanes would significantly reduce operating cost of buses network. But the free parking lobby 🤦🏻♀️
then you're dead weight and should go find a hobby somewhere that keeps you out of our way
Oh I do think it's a class war and I am here for it. Class war just isn't engaged on the terrain of bus prices.
this right here
that's right. we wage class war on congestion pricing and abolition of 1031 exchanges
Except the guy proposing this has an overall cost cutting program. It's his entire thing.
Unless you're just referring to the people bitching about this online..
You're talking about Mamdani presumably? Cause there are lots of people who have proposed free buses. Doesn't really matter either way. There are zero agencies where riders would benefit more from making transit free instead of improving service.
He's also improving service. He talks about it all the time.
I didn't say he wasn't.
Well, if it meant no cops shooting people in the subway...
Maybe you should focus on cops not shooting people in general?
Absolutely
How is it not a tax the rich issue, especially in a state like WA with one of the most regressive tax structures in the country? Especially since taxes pay for like, 90% + of operating budgets for our transit agencies? Like, if we want to increase service it will come from tax revenue not fares…
We should tax the rich. We should separately decide the best way to spend that money. Improving service (and a million other things) is much, much, much higher priority than making buses free.
Simultaneously, I should not have to qualify every conversation about policy with, "yes I also think we should tax the rich" because not everything is about taxing the rich.
If you want to improve transit service (making transit fare free *is* a service improvement even if it’s not one you prioritize) the revenue will be tax revenue unless our transit systems are completely restructured. It’s literally a tax the rich issue unless you want to tax the poor!
I'm not playing word games. I'm talking about frequency, speed, coverage and other operational qualities. And yes, you've already made it clear twice that you would like to talk about taxing the rich. If you don't get the point I'm making we can just stop replying to each other.
the revenue conversation and the service improvement conversation are always going to be related 👍 Increasing accessibility (both financial accessibility and removing barriers like trying to navigate payment systems) is a service improvement too even if it’s not one you care about 👍
Anyways, I’d recommend listening to Zohran talk about this in his own words since we both know his incredibly successful campaign why this conversation is coming up. bsky.app/profile/thel...
“If we tax the rich then…umm…they’ll shutter business or layoff workers or ummm they’ll go overseas or ummm…” They always have a reason and it’s always to OUR detriment. They’re going to do all that anyway and then blame us. Lol. The merry go round is fkn exhausting. Pay your fair fkn share.
"household income" There are people who have no income at all, nor a house.
But making transit free for *everyone* is a much less targeted way of addressing poverty than giving these people a check Why should we not just, y’know, fix the problem by fixing the problem?
When is there ever the political will to give poor people a check? "Free stuff" exclusively for the disadvantaged just triggers conservative and gentry backlash. Make it free for everyone, and people across the spectrum can all feel some benefit. It's unifying.
yeah! I'm still not generally sold but this is a good argument for doing it, sometimes might be enough reason to
substantially this logic is what keeps Social Security so untouchable, everybody gets benefits
Exactly. Free buses isn't a high priority for me, but I won't dismiss the idea outright. I think it's something worth trialing, maybe one line at a time, to figure out NYC-specific issues. In Westchester we sometimes have free buses during the summer. More people ride. The system doesn't collapse.
Some other good arguments here for it but “some people are poor” is an argument for giving those people money, not making services free for everyone
Free transit is still better for poor people than a stigmatizing dispensation.
is it stigmatizing to get a free bus pass in the mail that looks the same as the passes everyone else buys?
It can be to the person themself or to the person who refuses "charity" but could stand to benefit.
yeah, ok, I mean, this is where you have to look at tradeoffs avoiding that residual sense of stigma is not worth the foregone fare revenue from everyone else -- money is fungible and that revenue buys more frequent service, better and more comprehensive routes, even other government services
Would undocumented immigrants or any other population face barriers with accessing such assistance? I'm trying to look at all angles. What are some jurisdictions that have implemented such a scheme?
oh probably, yeah, but I can't imagine doing a serviceable job of outreach would cost more than all the remaining fare revenue?
Republicans frequently make assistance to the poor stigmatizing by making it bureaucratic, dysfunctional and conspicuous, but it doesn't have to be!
So we should defund transit? What’s the logic?
Yes, no funding at all, that's clearly what I said.
You’re proposing one of the greatest demolitions of transit funding ever seen. No other way around it
Bus fares generate comparatively low revenue compared to implementation cost and are in fact a large part of household income for many. You can argue that the 10-30% loss in operating cost isn't worth it, even with higher overall ridership, but less an obsession than as a realistic policy proposal.
Arguing the same of intercity rail (with 90%+ of costs coming from tickets) would be something wild, but when you're the MTA with only 15% of your bus costs covered by fares, where those fares are still not affordable at the federal poverty level, it makes sense to consider alternatives.
It sounds like you don't know any poor people
tHe BuS iSnT eXpEnSiVe
My understanding of this in contexts outside the US is that enforcement is difficult, enabling access to public transportation is seen as a public good, esp for women and girls' safety, and that it's a good investment. In the US, enforcement cost/desire to allow kids access to safe transport, maybe?
I've never experienced fare free transit while traveling in other countries and I always use public transit.
India started to implement it a few years ago.
(in some cities/states, and I think started out with just women)
It's just decommidification fetishization. It's purely about pushing some nonsense hippie vision of socialism where the money itself as a concept is the villain instead of *the inequality* that the market itself helps us quantify.
You don’t have to love the idea, but get some facts right: 1. Boston already has a few free bus lines, this didnt come from nowhere 2. The data from free bus pilot program in NYC showed the biggest group of new riders had income under $28k 3. The program is paid for by raising taxes on the 1%
Using millionaires-tax money for the Boston free buses might be a good idea, but the current pilot (on three bus lines) is paid for out of the city's ARPA funds - the city actually pays the MBTA for the lost fare revenue. www.boston.gov/departments/...
Yep, I wasn’t suggesting that this plan was exactly the same, just that there is precedent for free bus lines in other cities, it wasn’t just something that came out of nowhere, it’s an idea that transit wonks have been discussing and investigating for some time.
Apologies, thought you were referring to the actual Mass. millionaires tax.
Alllllll good
How’re those free bus lines working out for you in Boston?
On point 2, what were they doing before that?
There’s a good summary of the results here to nerd out on ;)
Zohran did a write up that is also worth a read if you’re interested in such things,
Doesn't look very encouraging for the free fare advocates.
In what way?
… in what way? I agree the results were a mixed bag: buses didn’t get faster as expected, but rider usage was up significantly, far fewer altercations for bus drivers, 11% switching from taxi / driving is a noteworthy reduction in traffic. Some very good stuff.
Suffering even more
Lol ok
It actually makes things simpler for transit agencies. They spend a significant amount of money in administrative costs to keep track of fares (accountants, handling money, etc.).
Say you don't know any poor people without saying you don't know any poor people
In my city, we have free passes for those that can't afford the bus.
43% of the people in Los Angeles metro's rider survey made below 15k a year, and of the concerns they listed, "Cost" did not even make the list
Stop going by polls, jeez. They probably don't even think lower or no cost is real a possibility, so they are answering based on getting more for the money they figure they have no choice but to spend. "But but the survey says..."
Please go on, Poor People Whisperer.
You neither, huh?
Let's say you have a family of 5. You take the bus 10 times a week at 2.90 per ride. That's ~600 per month. That's not cheap. It is a lot of money.
In my home town Spokane kids ride free and fares are capped at 4 dollars a day and 60 dollars a month. Reduced fares are easy to get if you are a senior or on state Medicaid, disability, etc. Thats very affordable for a family of 5 and the STA still raises millions from fares.
Sounds like Spokane has fareless transit, for kids :)
Yes, and for all students. However, implementing a fully fareless system would mean many millions in lost revenue that would need to be made up in taxes and Spokane is not that blue of a city. I would be very very nervous that completely eliminating fares would seriously degrade service.
That's awesome. The fare revenue would need to be filled from elsewhere for sure.
An important detail is the state pays for free fares. If the money was coming from local taxes I think it would always be in jeopardy or have more negative effects on service. It is awesome though, it got me riding the bus young and now I'm very happy paying for buses (via both fares and taxes).
The sheer classist ignorance of this comment 🤦♀️ Tell me you’ve never been working poor without telling me…
I am in a Red State and we have free bus fare in my city for students as a way for them to get to school, as their parents may lack reliable transportation options. It works to reduce truancy
we already have that for students
omny.info/students
Transit agencies should be a public service like street lights, and sidewalks. paid by taxes to increase traffic for comemrance and allow free ride for users. not sure why anyone thinks they should be run as a for profit company
Nobody is arguing they should be for profit. They are saying that reducing fares is extremely far down the list of things that money should be spent on in most public transit systems. Yet for some reason a lot of leftists with little understanding of public transit think it’s number one.
It’s a fast target because enacting it requires literally less effort than not
Enacting it requires, for my city at least, just to replace the lost revenue: over $50 million dollars, every single year going forward. And that’s without increasing service, and without stepping up funding for our transit supervisors and police at all.
You got me— I was being reductive— but pilot programs in NYC (www.mta.info/document/147...) don’t suggest there need to be huge changes to accommodate increased usage. I made the mistake of thinking this was NYC specific, where congestion pricing (new in 2020) could have replaced fares threefold.
I misread the amounts on congestion pricing (it will only cover ~70% of bus fare revenue) and also the current year is 2025, not 2020 😞
Yeah that’s a lot of money! And it should probably be spent mostly on fixing some of the major issues that your transit system has, and maybe in targeted programs for fare reduction (kids is the most obvious one)
The main thing with NYC is that buses are secondary (at a >8:1 ratio) to subway fares. A <12.5% fare rev reduction (amounting to less than 1% of NYC’s total tax revenue, and <1/1000 of GDP) is a lot easier to swallow and compensate for, and only amounts to a 2.8%-5% of the MTA’s annual revenue.
The MTA might be the one situation on the continent where this does make sense for a major city, I’ll give you that. Though I’d be skeptical about it for the subway given that ratio
Yeah, looking at the subway I felt a lot worse, since its fare rev is a full 60% the size of the (bloated, but maybe not *that* bloated) NYPD budget, and that would take some work. Buses are a much smaller lift. I imagine most smaller cities fall somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.
Hey I am a transit planner that has studied fare free service. Is the number you cite accounting for the money saved through not having to collect fares (admin, technology, etc.)? In my experience, a lot of people just look at NTD fare revenues and don’t account for those factors.
Let’s be very generous and say that might knock about $2-3 million off the loss, most of which comes from laying off unionized mechanics, which would be a big fight to do. It’s still going to be like $47 million, a year, forever. We could improve the system so much with that money instead.
From my perspective it’s the wrong fight to pick with those who want fare free transit. It’s good to educate how there needs to be fare replacement funding to fare free advocates (it’s not flipping a switch) but I think we do better working together as a united front and building allies.
A Bernie bro meeting in someone’s basement…
And all surveys show people prefer improved services over free fares
I read that it saves money overall because fare collection is burdensome, but I think that only applies to subways where space is at a premium. Also I don't remember where I read it.
Fare enforcement on NYC buses is EXTREMELY burdensome and expensive. I could write a book, and that's before we moved to proof of fare payment when the payment is done via electronic swipe rather than a physical receipt.
Also vaguely remembering past unknown articles, but I think that was saying fare enforcement did not always pay for itself, not having fares in the first place.
We have free buses in Kansas City because at the end of the day, the costs of collecting fares and all of the time and disputes that go with it was more costly than just making it free.
Aht aht aht not anymore you don't www.kcur.org/news/2025-04...
Yeah they’re giving up and it’s sad. Good public transit systems require a whole ecosystem of policies that we just don’t have.
Kansas City also barely has a bus system so there wasn't much of a loss.
No, but it’s a good example of why free bus fare isn’t a crazy idea, but a workable solution for some cities that already has a model.
Do the “model cities” have transit modeshare above the single digits? Or are they mostly smaller suburbs/ college towns with low coverage and frequency?
Like if your model is “free service almost no one uses” that’s fine I guess. But uhh I think for the sake of climate/ air quality/ equity goals we should aim higher.
And they lost a chunk of their pathetic bus service due to budget cuts. Farebox recovery is one way riders can show that they value transit service, and make it politically difficult to cut
Pennies are important. The amount you accumulate is important.
When you don’t have any income it is the decision between buying groceries (ramen, hot dogs, whatever you’re imagining) and rent. I know because ive been there.
This is a problem for the welfare state to solve not transit agencies.
I know nothing I say is going to help whatever shit this freak show is on but however, if someone is reading this shit, getting a bus to buy groceries isn’t a moral thing. If you have to walk to a grocery store doesn’t mean shit about you.
Transit agencies are part of the the welfare state.
Is there *any* good transit system that is free? Tallinn maybe? But they still use fare inspectors (according to Wikipedia) because they charge fares to non-residents. Residents can just show an ID card demonstrating city residency.
It works in many locations - the cost to collect fares (which is only going to be even more expensive in the next generation of automated fare collection) is beginning to outweigh the income from fares.
[Citation needed].
I mean the chief reason the cost of fare collection is rising is pure incompetence from American managers who rarely ride their system or never look for international practices. For all the talk about hard infrastructure challenges, fare tech is at a much worse state
It's not so much American managers...it is Cubic and their a niche (understanding US procurement law/practice).
It's also generally not this way for large systems with sizeable amounts of ridership. Moreso true for systems with like 10k daily riders, not 500k
Major systems also become debatable with next generation fare collection systems' cost. IIRC, the T's fare collection on buses is starting to get to that point -- the cost of expanding new open-loop fares to buses is almost at parity to the incremental cost for bus-only fares.
And this is for the purely techno-financial cost benefit analysis. There's a policy cost benefit analysis that incorporates an understanding of overpolicing and other non-fiscal concerns.
(the other non-fiscal concern being safety of front-line workers, esp., bus operators whom management deem to be both operators *and* fare enforcers.)
I have a fixed income that puts me in the bottom quintile in major metro areas and over half my net goes toward rent. The only reason I'd be able to afford the transit system in Los Angeles is that I'm disabled on top of being poor, which is bad enough that I qualify for the most extreme discounts.
I couldn't afford the "EZ Pass" because $42 is ~7% of my discretionary spending (everything besides rent and utilities), but you get 20 free rides a month for being poor and $0.75 peak/$0.35 off-peak fares for being disabled, and the monthly poor disabled pass for my dad's suburb is only $8.
It helps (a lot) that I'd only need it for shopping, doctor appointments, and other errands, since I can't work, and I'm already well practiced in the art of clustering appointments in the same area on the same day. My cardiologist, rheumatologist, and podiatrist are in one building!
Richmond VA has had free fare since 2020 and ridership went through the roof, even during COVID (although it dipped at the early peak), everyone who uses the bus reports that it is safer, and more useful w/o fare. The program is funded by grants through 2026
What is the transit modeshare of Richmond Virginia? What is the funding plan after the grants end?
I'm not a public planner and idrc tbh the anti-free fare discourse seems predicated on aggreived Planning Professionals learning reality has different features than their models. The State has committed to renewing the grant indefinitely btw.
Yes it’s clearly transit professionals who aren’t contending with reality. Not posters who aren’t familiar with basic facts about ridership or transit agency financials.
Ridership is up. The grant was renewed. That addresses your two concerns. What's your issue?
Richmond Virginia has shitty bus service and is increasingly vulnerable to service cuts.
👍
Like yeah you don’t care about system stability and frequency that’s the whole problem I’m getting at lol People obsessed with this idea for reasons unrelated to the health of transit operations. It’s perplexing!
Again, people who live here and use the bus self report higher satisfaction and GRTC has expanded service in areas that have higher demand, they're rolling out double length buses and adding a second BRT. what else matters but what locals care about?
Transit ridership modestly up (from single digit modeshare lows) not really that impressive. Imagine if the cash infusion just went to improving service instead of going fare free. This is a zero sum interaction here. Every dollar not generated by fares is a dollar not paying more bus operators.
Here are the revenue sheets from their recent budget (the state renewing the grant was left out at the time)
Free public transport is good, actually, and the miniscule amount of your overall taxbill that goes towards it is negligible on an individual level. You just dont like to see "undeserving" people get free public services.
I remember like 20 years ago, during a transit fare increase, an argument some nonprofit was putting out that NYC transit fare was too high is that farebox recovery ratio is much higher than the rest of the country (i.e. transit should be subsidized to that degree).
I think it's probably a bad policy but at this point, whatever, let him have it. It's something that the mayor COULD potentially do, as opposed to the usual "promise things I have no control over" NY politics game
Enforcement and collection of fares imposes costs that evaporate entirely if you just fund them out of taxes. Actual free lunch in economic terms. Added benefits: reduction in unnecessary car trips, psychological difference between cheap and free is significant, encourages focus on service
Everything I’ve seen indicates that spending the money improving service would incentivize mode shift from cars more
Obviously true, but that's more long term. Removal of a fare system is an immediate political hit that pairs well with improving services that often aren't as clear to voters as "my life got better when X was elected" Hence it's good to run on and good economics. As I said, free lunch.
It really isn’t good economics, and is likely to actively worsen the quality of a transit system. Frequency, reliability, and service extent matters far more to most transit riders than cost does, and this will worsen all of those.
I mean it is though. Fare collection and enforcement work and capital is deadweight loss that can be redeployed. Also a little bit: transit rider is self-selecting for people to whom the cost is evidently not a barrier. Run the same survey in Perth where the bus is free and suggest a fare.
Enforcement isn’t needed to charge fares. The bus in my city is already free if you walk on confidently and look like the driver doesn’t want to get in an argument with you. Fare collection really doesn’t cost much.
Alright that's enough now you're just yanking my leg.
? I’m genuinely not sure what you mean. My city spends next to nothing on fare enforcement, our transit supervisors only show up if someone is being actively disruptive, and operators are actively instructed to not try and enforce fares on buses because that’s how most assaults on operators happen.
All reasons it is more efficient and otherwise beneficial to raise revenues elsewhere. Remember money is only an abstraction, taxing authorities are its source. Collection and dispensation of revenues are means of achieving policy goals, no particular form is necessary the way it is for a business
I think the guy who is on the city council and has already been running pilot programs on this understands it better. He also talks about them being on time and moving faster
Who, the Pokémon avatar guy? OTP and speed are going to be more a factor of having all door boarding or removing enforcement that was done before. Both of those can be done without fare abolition
Don't crack wise about me moustachio.
Getting more people out of cars by providing free bus routes also helps speed. In a time of massive rise in cost of living this is a good thing. It doesn't have to be permanent.
If you want to get people out of cars then that money would be way better spent increasing frequency, reliability, perceptions of and real safety, and extent of service. Those are the barriers that keep people driving, not the cost of transit. It is already so, so much cheaper than owning a car.
And it absolutely would be permanent. We would never get that money back, and it would worsen the financial issues of our transit system.
This!
defund the police and put that money into the community. there. i fixed the issue
my city pays 7.2 mil a year on transit and gets 13.1 in grants. we spend almost 90 mil on racist cops
Because unlike you we actually care about helping people, you motherfuckers. Were you bullied as a child? Did you have absent parents? Cause there’s sure as shit something deeply wrong with you. Get some help asshole.
Because transportation is a necessary public service and should be handled like one.
Leftists don't understand how costly it is to run public transit, because they don't seem to understand how costly it is to run, well, anything. There is significant overhead when it comes to operating public transportation. And much of it is already funded through tax revenue and grants.
Except the guy proposing it already understands the costs because he's on the city council and piloted free bus lines.
...and yet, can't seem to explain any of these costs or where he'll find the tax revenue to pay for his socialist agenda. I'll pass.
Damn maybe we should prioritize funding our transit system and making it free. Richest country in the world, I’m sure it’s possible
Prioritize it over *what*? Budgets are finite. You can't fund everything. What would you deprioritize to invest in making transit free? Also, are you aware of other transit-related issues outside of fares that need to be addressed, and their cost?
I love this measured “you’re not a grown up, once you have perspective like me you’ll understand why we all have to eat our vegetables” when the reality is the second you have a broader scope of how much fucking money is wasted on nonsense it makes a pitch like free buses seem quaint.
How much would you defund law enforcement to pay for free fares on public transit?
Most of it. Police are practically useless and just dangerous to have around. We could have fewer, mostly public safety officers with no arrest powers, and smaller combat teams to deal with reports of violent crime. Businesses should hire private security and pay for it themselves.
NYPD. Eric Adams’ fundraiser dinners. Some earmark for some upstate alderman’s above ground pool. There’s lots of things I’d personally love to do without. You can use your imagination too, if you try.
It costs money to install fare gates. It costs uber money to police said fare gates, more than the fares that would have been collected. This leads to an increase in police budgets, at a time when crime rates are declining. Fares make up only a small portion of the budget.
This person appears to be full of shit and trying to kneecap the actual idea.
Fares • *are* significant expense for the most disadvantaged • are inefficient - collection & enforcement cost time & money • are irritating & humiliating • create an opportunity to criminalize poverty • get phased out where ridership is overwhelmingly rich people bsky.app/profile/zohr...
Metro in LA spends more on fare enforcement than it collects in fares. This is a no brainer. Public transits should be free.
Riding the bus every day costs several hundred dollars per month.
This is true. I'm not even an everyday rider, but I am refilling my Metrocard and Omny with about $35-$40 each week.
"Tell me you live in a gated suburb community without telling me you live in a gated suburb community."
In NYC, I pay $132 for a monthly fare card. $4.40 per day. $1,584 per year. A *single* bus ride is cheap, sure… If I bought single tix, and only used them to commute, it would be $1,479. But what about grocery shopping?
Might start with Henry Grabar’s Paved Paradise
Also, I don't understand the obsession with defending fare jumpers.
No one is defending. Simply pointing out that having the infrastructure (police plus personnel to impose and receive fines etc) to go after fare evasion, cost almost as much as the loss from just ignoring it. Why give mostly poor kids criminal records in a make work scheme for cop overtime?
I don't get it. I don't get arguing for "free" anything, it's unrealistic and a bad argument. Even though I support universal healthcare, the term "free healthcare" bugs me. Users of a service, even a heavily subsidized service, should still pitch in some affordable amount.
Are taxes not “pitching in”?
Taxes go to a variety of sources. Fares collected by transit agencies directly fund transit. I'm in favor of subsidizing even to the point of being free for some users, but not a blanket free transit policy.
It makes busses faster by eliminating the need to collect fares and eliminates a regressive fee that disproportionately hits low income people
The actual study found that the increases in speed were unfortunately mostly negatively offset by the number of additional stops because there were more riders, Boston saw the same thing. But it did have a bunch of other good benefits, reduced traffic along the routes, fewer driver altercations…
Interesting, I wouldn’t have guessed it would offset so heavily but I’m glad so many people flocked to the free service from alternative bus routes. Do you think this would diminish if the policy was citywide rather than targeted at pilot routes?
It’s tough to say, and it’s also noteworthy that congestion pricing was supposed to kick in last June, and the extra funding from that was supposed to help improve bus service all around; but because it was delayed, the MTA had cuts that slowed bus service across the board during this period.
One big detail is 22% made a trip they otherwise would not have. That is lot of people who can’t afford the $6 ($3 if they apply for half fare) to round trip across town to visit a friend or family.
I could see that in the system-wide comparison but since the system is there as a control it shouldn’t impact the study no?
The funding for the MTA was cut systemwide because the additional income from congestion pricing wasn’t coming in, and the state did not help make up the difference.
Yeah I get that I’m just saying that this is also reflected in the systemwide numbers so it’s captured by a DID analysis
That doesn’t mean it can be done on its own and it doesn’t mean that the revenue is irrelevant but there are better ways to fund a public service, just as we shouldn’t charge people per use of the fire department
Public transportation in Luxembourg is free for everyone, so it can be done. luxembourg.public.lu/en/living/mo...
Luxembourg is a tax haven smaller than most American metros.
“just as we shouldn’t charge people per use of the fire department” oooh im taking this one!
Inspired by none other than this
Amazing
it works great in Chapel Hill, promotes ridership, great for kids/students, takes pressure off car capacity, etc
it's mostly downstream from the concept of public transport as public good that improves a municipality beyond its cost, rather than service that should be profitable and justify its existence
He ran a pilot on this in his district. The buses on the free route were faster, more reliable, and very popular.
Taking the bus to and from work/school each day can easily add up to over $100/month per person. That is something many families cannot easily afford. It is a public good, and good public transit generates investments of its own
Which is why we should give poor people money, not cut off the virtuous cycle of fare income -> better transit -> more people use transit -> more fare income -> better transit. Overwhelmingly, service levels are the limiting factor preventing people from using transit, not fares
There is nothing virtuous about collecting a transit fare! A library is not immoral because it is free! Actually it’s a moral triumph because it is free! And transit could be the same!
Calling something a virtuous cycle doesn’t mean you think it’s virtuous, same as how calling something a vicious cycle doesn’t mean you think it is vicious.
One way to give poor people money is to make their transit systems free
But how do we feed the bureaucracy if we don't have means testing, forms to fill, specialized fare media and audits?
Means tested transit passes is one way, sure. But people are arguing that transit should be free for everybody, not just the poor.
Means testing is stupid bullshit that just makes middle class people mad at their tax money going to the poor. Make it free for everyone. Save money on not needing the infrastructure to distribute, track, police fares. Erase barriers to entry, normalize it to everyone
The biggest barrier to entry by far is not fares but the level of service, which would be made worse if you eliminated fares. I promise you get more bang for your buck by adding buses etc. than by removing fares I support free transit for children and redistributed wealth for everyone else.
Same thing as libraries getting rid of late fees, it doesn't accomplish what they want and keeps people from using them. How much do fares bring in vs what do they cost to create/distribute/enforce and who do they keep away? All that could go towards the transit infrastructure directly
It varies wildly by system, from like 5% to over 50% of revenue. Some studies have shown fares keep away people from very short trips that they would have otherwise walked, but not commuters. The most successful transit systems in the world, like Tokyo's, get most of their revenue from fares.
Have you ever had to apply for means testing? Now do it for yet another program. Being poor/disabled has a significant paperwork burden.
I don't actually think transit should be means tested so I think we can end this particular argument here.
According to our transit agency, fares only cover 3 percent of their operating budget so not worth the collection hassle.
People in favor of this also favor raising taxes to cover the shortfall, so it's as feasible as the increased tax revenue basically. I'm not ride or die for it, but I think it would be Good, Actually to shift the point-of-service fees of public goods to being covered by tax revenue.
Yes, the revenue can be replaced with other sources. Many transit agencies aren’t getting cost recovery on fares anyways and already are operating on other funding to a substantial extent. One could oppose this but ought to recognize user fees have a regressive incidence usually.
Like even if everybody rode transit it would be regressive but the people who have lots of money usually are not using transit and therefore not paying into it. Even as they speculatively buy up condos next to train stations and so forth.
They could in theory, but in practice, where is that revenue coming from? Higher sales taxes? Well great, that's also regressive. Higher income or property taxes? Good fucking luck.
Where do you think transit funding comes from now? In big systems, operating revenue is usually a pretty small fraction of the total budget. The remainder generally comes from some sort of tax.
BART farebox recovery was 70% prior to COVID. It's still 25%, and that shortfall in revenue may force service cuts very soon. Nobody is clamoring to raise Bay Area taxes.
Maybe they should be
Prop 13 is the root of most of California’s problems
Absolutely right, but I'm pretty sure I won't live to see it repealed.
I get to inherit my family home in the East Bay and keep paying 1986 property taxes on it though, so there's that.
My folks have been in their place (South Bay) almost as long and yeah it definitely saves them substantial amounts of money. I doubt they’d be receptive to the idea to be fair.
Given the existence of Proposition 13, the only taxes that can be raised locally are sales taxes. Which are already some of the highest in the country, and which are purely regressive.
Again, maybe that needs to change. I’m aware that’s a big political lift. But it needs to happen.
not when there are physical capacity limits
Is pricing the correct way to ration access to public transport?
I've been informed by online leftists that the more obviously correct way is "waiting in line for however long it takes" which everyone loves to do, apparently
Free is also a price that rations access
People who ride the bus could use the money or are already poor. The end.
Whenever this comes up it's amusing how many people are like "what do you mean, free fares work great in "
Why would progressives think everyone should be able to access transportation with zero financial barriers? Did you really just ask this?
I remember times when i walked instead of taking the bus because then I would have money to buy lunch. And apparently the buses move much more quickly if they don't have to wait while people pay, even tapping. So it would make a difference to users and non users and be good.
“What could it cost?”
um. “patient zero” is someone who is poor and has to use the bus every day. or someone who knows that encouraging public transport use right now is crucial to fighting climate change?
perhaps this is a joke though, my sarcasm sensor is broken, along with most of my other faculties right now, tbh
no, this person really seems like they're being serious based on the amount of rude replies and badgering
Getting people to their jobs is how money is made. Charging people to make the economy work induces unnecessary friction.
This is the kind of question you have when you refuse to think about a topic for more than 20 seconds.
Have you spent 20 seconds thinking about the downsides?
I can't really think of any that don't already exist or are just based on not wanting to share spaces with poor people, but I'm open to listening.
We don’t just want to maintain the current levels of service and ridership, we want both to grow, ideally a lot. So even if you could replace the current fare revenue with taxes—which is already not gonna be easy—you’d be facing an uphill battle every time you need more money to expand service.
The great thing about fares is that they automatically scale with ridership, so agencies can borrow money for expansions knowing the resulting increase in fares will allow them to pay it off, and not be at the mercy of voters all the time.
Wouldn't taxes provide a more steady revenue stream?
Steady, yes, but the trouble is it doesn’t automatically scale with ridership, so every time you want to expand service you need to raise taxes, which will always be an uphill battle.
None of this is a downside, just challenges of implementation.
If you want ridership to grow by a lot then free fare is a great way to do so. I know I'd ride the bus a ton more.
That will increase ridership up until the point where you reach the limit of the existing infrastructure, or you exhaust the supply of price-sensitive riders. After that, the only way to continue increasing ridership is to expand service, which requires money.
Yes. Is that a point you're trying to make? That things cost money?
The point I’m trying to make is that there are downsides to making transit free, maybe the pros still outweigh the cons, but it’s not simple and there are certainly reasons not to besides “not wanting to be around poor people”.
It's incredibly simple. The only "downside" is that we pay for it through taxes instead of at point of service.
And I have spent several posts explaining that there are important functional differences between paying at the point of service and through taxes. I guess you aren’t open to listening after all.
If the bus "isn't expensive" surely it would be of little consequence to make it free. Paying for the bus is an inconvenience in many more ways than just the amount of money it costs.
Is this a joke?
Transit is a public service. Public transit should be expanded AND be cheaper if not free. There’s plenty of money for this, it’s a matter of allocation, there’s no reason to choose to worsen our infrastructure. Don’t be silly.
"Progressives" want free cheeseburgers with extra pickles. There is no such thing as a "free" anything. ECON 101.
the only way I've seen buses move efficiently in crowded parts of nyc is if half the people don't pay. It takes way too long for everyone to swipe if even 10 people are at a stop. Make buses free and OPEN THE BACK DOOR. Bam, in and out.
It's funny bc AC Transit is legit pretty expensive but there's no discourse around cheap bus fare since they're already cheap most places. And it's always buses because trains are for rich people and buses are for poor people. It's all very classist too.
it’s also much easier to enforce fare compliance at a train station than it is on a bus.
That's, like, not true at all.
the physical barrier of a turnstyle or a gate is not more of a barrier than the nothing on a bus? a driver or a cop can intervene on a bus, but most drivers don’t for safety reasons, and it would be awfully expensive to park a cop on every bus.
No barriers or turnstiles on our local trolleys. Very formidable bus drivers who quickly call transit police on all our buses.
Bus operator just says that guy needs to get off or I'm staying here. Works every time in my experience.
in DC they stopped escalating because people started getting violent
i have literally never seen this happen in the east bay, the driver shakes their head and continues on the route
I see it happen routinely, maybe it depends on the route you take. On the 6 the operator is happy to wait until the college student pays, depending on their mood and schedule I think lol people ask for courtesy trips too. from operators pov it's about respect
The 31 day pass is $90 which seems like an absolute steal. I remember paying $60 back in the 80s. (I also remember paying $20 to the kid who stole them from his private school).
That $60 pass had to have been transbay, there's no way you're comparing apples to apples lol
dunno!
$60 is $190 in 2025 dollars. transbay monthly pass is currently $234, which sounds about right. overall get the impression bus fares have only gone up a notch faster than inflation.
90 bucks is a fucking lot if you make 15$ or under
Six hours' pay over the course of a month? Are you hearing yourself?
If you’re that poor most of your income is already eaten by rent
And as you know Sic, if the problem is paying the $90 all at once – that’s what fare capping is for.
90$ from your monthly budget is still 90$ whether it comes out all at once or not dumbass
And/or the Zero Fare program we're piloting here, where the city pays for transit for (today, a fraction chosen by lottery; someday, hopefully, all) of the people already registered for public assistance.
They’re piloting a similar program for large institutions in the Bay Area that’s actually revenue-positive for transit agencies.
The main increase in ridership in the pilots was the people with the lowest incomes who also wouldn't have afforded a train previously. You are all a bit insane bickering about this.
Trains are often expensive yeah. I'd rather all modes cost the same.
I suppose you could do so if you issued a daily / weekly pass that just covered all forms of public transportation within the MTA's network.
zone-based fares is how you do it day to day
Yeah, I mean like limited to within the general city area and not all the lines extending way out into the suburbs etc.
I used to get around the bay by a combination of bike, bus, and BART in the late 90's as a teenager (eventually adding Caltrain as I spent time on the peninsula). Fare-free discourse wasn't around at the time, but there was discussion of the lack of timetable coordination and affordable transfers.
Trying to convince AC Transit to increase service is like pulling teeth. They insist there is no demand, and so cut frequencies and raise fares Only line that has decent service is Tempo. It is effectively fare free and so has the most ridership, which prevents AC Transit from cutting its service
6, 57, both 51s all have decent service imo
Good point. I was too hyperbolic and unfair I recorded the current and proposed frequencies for Realign and most of the lines keep their frequencies I am mainly just bitter about the 72R dropping from 12min -> 30min frequencies
Yeah still salty over the drop in 72R service here too...
At least the 72R now has even headways with the 72 and 72M branches. [As a Bostonian, where there are no rapid or SBS buses, I’m not a fan of rapid (or express) buses. If there’s that much demand, build grade separated rail, and have people take local buses. KISS.]
The other alternative to these Rs that aren't that R tbh is just removing bus stops. My line just had a bunch of stops removed and it's nice, even if I have to walk a block now. Reducing frequency just sucks tho no workaround for that
We’ve tried stop consolidation in Boston on the trams and 28 bus. It aways butts into serious political opposition b/c nobody wants *their* stop to be taken away, particularly the elderly and disabled.
If we were getting a subway in return I would be totally okay with loss of the 72R, but this is just a reduction in frequencies on one of AC Transit's highest ridership corridors without any replacement service
Looking at the map, the increased frequency on the 52 & 18 make it much easier for those further on San Pablo Ave to get to the nearest BART Station and Cal while SPA from DT Oakland to E’Ville has similar amount of useful service. I really appreciate greater coverage of 15 min or better service.
AC Transit doesn't function as feeder to BART with current schedules and fares Uncoordinated 20m BART, 15m Buses, high transfer fare, and no joint monthly pass means transfers between agencies are too rare to design a joint map 52/18+BART doesn't replace 72R trips, which are mostly along San Pablo
I mean RER has 15 minute clockface off-peak schedules for an MSA much larger in population than the Bay Aea and Berlín S-Bahn branches are 20 minute off-peak headways. Embarcadero to W. Oak is a greater distance than Chatalet to Saint Denis, when RER starts branching.
Also remember they AC Transit charges full fare for transfers between buses, so even within agency transfers are not really a thing here
Such a huge miss that SFBA bus operators aren’t doing projects like RapidBus in Vancouver or RapidRide in Seattle – making capital investments to improve the utility of limited-stop overlays
hey buddy are the roads in downtown LA toll roads or are they still funded 100% by tax dollars, I'll take my answer off the air (this is an old radio call-in reference and you're just car brained)
I sincerely hope you muted this.
I think it's ultimately that it's a policy ask that can be chanted at rallies
Public transportation should be for by taxes, asshole. Do you have any idea how difficult it us to look for work while spending what little funds you have on goddamn bus tickets
Why are drivers so obsessed with "free roads"? Road tolls aren't expensive. It isn't a significant portion of a family's income. Having roads without tolls just imposes the building and maintenance costs on already struggling families who don't drive on those roads.
So, fares are simultaneously an insignificant sum for poor people but also a large and irreplaceable amount of money for rich metros in general?
Irreplaceable is an interesting turn of phrase here. Theoretically any fund is replaceable, given the political will. But every dollar going to fare subsidies means a dollar not going to service improvements.
Also yes even low farebox recover systems this can mean millions of dollars in lost revenue or millions not going to more buses, operators etc.
I'm pointing out money is fungible and fares do not lead to political support. There are examples even in the best transit systems in America where politicians use the fare box to offset cutting general funding. There are no statutory requirements that require increased fares to improve service.
Not really relevant to the points I’m making
Corporate Democrats post here! Nothing to see, let’s all move on
I think it is sadly downstream of many Americans just accepting the idea that mass transit is and should only be for poor people (not everyone) so it should be free since they think only poor people use it.
The largest increase in ridership in pilots was those making like less than $30k...reducing cost of living overall is a good thing. It also showed to reduce instances of violence on the buses.
Multiple more direct and more equitable ways to get money/reduce cost of living for low income people.
Hard agree
ur wrong & very silly
So, uh, the bus I commute to work on is $132 a month, more if I ever want to go somewhere for fun. GTFOH
oh no! the transit authorities? say it ain’t so lol you dumbass
It costs more to collect and enforce fares than it does to just provide transit.
I wrote a long piece examining fare-free public transport. Investing in frequency and quality, with targeted subsidies for those who need them, seems to be a better option. foresightmedia.com/story/sBLL8k...
Better depending on the preferred outcome.
In the 70s & 80s people advocated for free transit as an environmental measure to lure people out of their cars, especially in crowded cities. At that time, Amsterdam had free public transit, and was the model. It’s still a good idea!
No being confused by the concept of a public utility in 2025.
i pay for all of my public utilities though
Public utilities have use fees.
I’m interested in the psychological impact on the perceived value of public transit when the cost is zero. In other words—access really matters (for the poor and working classes), but broad utilization also really matters—making it free seems like it could create a perception that it is worthless.
I think the book/article is “basic human compassion,” my dude. The bus is pretty expensive if you have to ride it everywhere and you’re trying to support a family on $10/hr, but go off on how a lease on a 2026 Mercedes is super affordable, I guess.
Fare capping instead of requiring upfront buying passes makes bus systems more affordable 80-100$ for a month is pretty common for the larger systems in California and low income discounts can cut that in half.
it's over a hundred dollars now for a SF MUNI pass that also gets you access to BART within the city (which is pretty important for coverage depending on your routine) you're talking a substantial portion of rent for a family if children didn't ride free
“yes but I looked at the price for one bus ride and since obviously everyone also has a car because it’s Normal they couldn’t be taking the bus more than one, two times a week tops. Hold on, my dog’s therapist is calling me.”
i did fare evasion so many times when i was homeless lmfao
praxis
Hold on now, most systems now have low income discounts available to riders. Also monthly and weekly passes benefit those who ride most frequently. Yes, most can't afford that up front, but that will change as fare capping replaces mostly prepaid psses.
Mass transit should be free, paid for by taxes levied against car drivers.
It's downstream of the "parks and libraries are free" argument except that the marginal cost of an added 10 or 100 people going to the library or park is minimal. If the bestseller has a 10 person waitlist, no one is going to lose their job, but someone will if the bus is full and they can't get on.
Schools are free and have a huge marginal cost. Doesn't mean we should be against new housing!
Also there may be line items for park and library districts in someone's property tax bill, (which is a good way to find transit too, but property taxes are the third rail of local politics)
I know I'm not in your shit hole, the US but the average ticket of where i live is 15 pounds just to get to the city. I don't care what government I'm under in whatever country but first, transport should be public and free, funded by taxes. Have you ever had to worry about bus prices?
Yo, chill the fuck out. It's free buses. If removes vehicle traffic, showed it reduced instances of assault on buses, and is good.
Yeah where I am there's often friction where someone is begging the bus driver for a free ride, or some teens just walk past the thing and the driver yells at them that he's not moving if they don't pay... the drivers always give in, but I hate the frequent scene and delays bc of it.
Why are dorks obsessed with "Free Driving Roads"? Driving isn't nearly expensive enough. This policy just imposes costs on already struggling states. Is there somewhere I can read about why more roads don't have tolls?
You clearly haven’t spoken to enough people among the working poor. Eliminating the cost of transit, when things are so expensive, can mean keeping the lights on, or not sending the kids to bed hungry at the end of the week. Helping people get to work is absolutely a legit use of public funds.
Rider surveys repeatedly show that cost is much less of a factor than frequency. I think many people here are instead undervaluing lower income people's time. Having an extra 20 minutes in your day can mean more than a free fare
so, do both.
Yeah... But if you have money for both that means you have money to make service even better instead. It's always a choice to do on or the other
read more
"The transit should be free" seems like an intuitive belief for a lot of pro-transit leftists. "Patient zero" doesn't make sense here, it could easily have emerged naturally from their first principles, and likely did.
we are just going to tax people who whine about it more to pay for everyone else who isn't a loser
Because we support free and universal public goods. It’s not difficult to understand, and it’s not a principle exclusive to bus fares.
Most transit authorities in the US get the vast majority of funding from non-fare sources, usually from state and federal governments. I totally get opposing free transit in strong transit systems, but it’s a non-issue otherwise.
My biggest concern with funding is actually the ‘how’. We are designing it as a social service for the poor, instead of making it a genuine alternative.
Reduces dwell times, improves bus efficiencies, they’re cheap anyway so why bother with the time that gets sucked out of the economy spent signing into the bus, that’s time I could be buying a goddamn croissant
Improve fare collection with tap and go, make fewer stops. You know, copy best practices from successful transit cities, not Kansas City.
It is expensive when you're not earning minimum wage.
Imagine being this coddled lol
The bus is expensive relative to the income of many bus clients. Finding this out is easier than writing what you wrote.
But the cost of inefficient service is far higher than the cost of a fare — speaking of wasting people's time
San Francisco offers free bus/subway fare for the homeless. This seems like a perfectly good solution to me. I don't see a reason those with means shouldn't pay to use public transit.
The answer might be Charles Komanoff. This was the earliest article I could locate right now, but I'm certain I heard his name significantly earlier than 2017 www.vice.com/en/article/m...
The reason I'm fairly certain is that I remember him advocating for free public transportation prior to Tallin, Estonia's announcement that they'd go fareless in 2013 accting.eu/free-public-...
The good faith argument taken at the time was that the cost of the apparatus to collect fares, and the compliance cost it imposes on the public in terms of time lost (buying tickets, maintaining cards, waiting in turnstiles) outweighs the money generated. I don't know if, when, and where that holds.
This may be true for very small coverage-focused systems with low ridership. In Charlottesville our fareboxes cost $614,000 in 2015 and generated about $539k per year before going fare-free in 2020. Add in cash handling costs & it's pretty minimal net revenue. www.cvilletomorrow.org/cat-farebox-...
Of course, the cognitive load / barrier to riding when you had to scrounge up three physical quarters is a lot higher than an open-loop fare system (at least for people with credit cards). And the hope is that at some point we'll decide to exit the transit death spiral and run some frequent routes.
When I’m saying “apparatus” it’s not just the machine though. It’s maintenance, the dedicated space, the enforcement, accounting. Every single cost that goes into fare collection, setting, police and litigation… everything
thank you for actually answering OP's question
The idea isn't to just make it free and dust your hands of it. You fund it better, you stop paying all of the fare enforcement people, you stop buying all of the ticket purchase and management systems. You make it a public service free at point of use like Universal healthcare.
It's easy, free bus fares have already been successfully implemented in multiple cities and works pretty well. It's not even new, some cities here in France have done it more than 20 years ago to great success. Châteauroux did it in 2001 and doubled ridership in 2 years.
Châteauroux has a population of 43,000
Yes and ? Should we only talk about big cities ? If you want another example look at Montpelier, ridership increased by 33%, also at the same time biking increased 17%. That's a huge modal shift for a city of 500 000
People like you seem to always think the money is gonna disappear, while all these proposals have some way to find alternative funding built into them already. To follow up on the example of Châteauroux, they increased the taxes on business of more than 10 people in the city from 0.55% to 0.6%
Does Kansas City exist in your world?
I don't live in the US so, not really. Please do tell how that negates multiple successful implementations and how these shortfalls will doom all free fare programs
The fact that the systems that lean on better service instead of free fares actually carry more people everywhere.
So you're just gonna gloss over examples of successful implementations bringing a very sharp increase in ridership with the old argument of "no it won't" ?
historically from smaller agencies in the US w/ very low farebox recovery. more recently from fare free during covid and the spike in evasion. but also the 2013 mass protests organized by movimento passe livre no brasil nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/2275...
If Americans invested in shared interest needs, like transportation & health care, instead of treating these as luxury items, we wouldn't be sinking into 3rd world status. But sure, bitch that "it isn't that expensive why should I pay for icky poors" Get correct, bougie brat.
new york has a pretty narrow special case where "fare enforcement" is a pretext to stop a bus, hold everyone for an hour, and then fail to even enforce fairs because the transit cops don't know how to deal with two simultaneous fare systems in place
fare evasion has become the new normal and the responses to fare evasion are so cack-handed that a large number of people just want the nonsense to stop i can't blame them. there's nothing special about fare revenue. there's other ways to skin that cat.
Yeah this is also why the WMATA union wants to get rid of fares - it leads to conflicts with fare evaders that they'd rather just not have happen.
Because the cops use transit fare as an excuse to fine, sometimes arrest, and sometimes fucking SHOOT people.
The mayor of Park City UT did it successfully in the early teens and went out on the speaking circuit bragging about it and that spread the idea in yimby circles
In theory this should actually help bus companies because the fares would be supplimented by taxes. I get the confusion. See, countries that aren’t ridiculous, take some of the money you guys spend on bloated military, and use it to provide services.
Countries with good transit services still make you pay for them. The examples who’ve abolished fares all have fairly middling public transit.
The last country on earth who should be criticizing public transit is the states.
1. I’m Canadian 2. There actually are quite a few places in the US that have abolished fares in public transit, and all of those systems suck and few people ride them. Places in the world famous for transit, where everyone rides it, still charge fares.
Frankly, this is a leftist demand that comes from a lack of familiarity with the specific issue, and way too much dedication to ideology. Actual leftist governments still have historically charged fares, Castro and Stalin made you pay to ride the metro.
Of course it’s leftist. It’s a request for a social program. You know you can do social things differently from Castro and Stalin.
Transit funding in the US is almost entirely separate from the people who determine the military budget. They literally have nothing to do with each other.
It’s almost like that’s part of my point.
Fares make up about 6% of bus system revenue in my city, and for that price you get slower buses and a lot more violent incidents with drivers, which generally are connected to collecting fares. Most roads are free, why not buses too.
Because the fare/billing systems are a massive problem for system efficiency and removing the cost barrier creates huge increases in utilization and helps the poorest who are most likely to need the system. Wash the neolib dogshit out of your brain
www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2025/06/17/b...
"The bus isn’t expensive. It isn’t a significant portion of a family’s household income" It actually is a major expense for many many families. At $2.50 per ride a mother of 4 spends $10 per ride. That can quickly add up to $20, $30, $40+ a day. If she is making min wage or $58 a day, that is huge
Yes, she likely can qualify for discounted or free passes, but to say it isn't expensive is just dismissing those who whom it is expensive.
Why do neo liberals fail to understand the concept of public service?
Right? What benefit would adequately funding public services even provide? A cheap way to access the crappy minimum wage job you dont even want to provide comprehensive Healthcare for? 🤔🙄
How much do you want to see spent on enforcement? Also, congrats on you for being financially stable enough that the bus isn't expensive but it sure as hell is for plenty of people.
If you don't have to enforce transit fares you can significantly down size the police department freeing up far more money than it costs and, given how few cops actually live in the cities they work, removing fascists from the cities.
The vast majority of transit fares are not enforced by cops at all
Actually you just end up losing routes because the money sustaining them dries up.
If you pay for service with taxes instead of fares and treat it as a public good instead of business keeping low volume routes is more viable, not less.
Cops rarely do fare enforcement. Also, ask people in any low income, high crime area if they want fewer cops. (hint: they don't)
I know that on the Sacramento light rail it's exclusively cops that do the enforcement.
A lot of progressives do not take transit, and only conceptualize the bus as a means to separate social classes. So free fares fit very well into that mindset even if it discards quality of service as a result
Do you think people arguing for free fares are also saying they want the quality of bus riding to decrease? Because everyone I've seen argues otherwise
Explicitly no, but when the call is for free service instead of better service, implicitly yes, especially when it becomes fare evasion discussion.
I've never seen it phrased as an either/or. Always as a "yes and"
Sure, who's going to say they don't want better service? But if you look at the quality of transit just about anywhere in the US and emphasize that it should be *free* instead of better or even just cheaper, I think that's foolish.
So wait, cheaper is okay but free is not? Why?
They'd both be OK! Maybe I'm putting words in the OP's mouth, but I read the question as "why are progressives obsessed with FREE bus fare," emphasizing the free. Which kind of answers itself, saying "the bus should be free" is more fun than "the bus should run every 15 minutes instead of every 20"
But if you're taking transit policy seriously and not just waving a hypothetical infinite money wand, increased funding for better service should be the priority.
Most of the arguments I hear for free transit does come down to funding, particularly how much is spent on enforcement and infrastructure compared to how much is generated from fares, but maybe that's my neck of the discourse?
I think saying that fare infrastructure (as opposed to heavy fare enforcement) is more expensive than fare revenue is wishcasting by and large. I just glanced at our agency's budget here in Portland and the revenue administration costs are $12 million to revenue of $96 million.
fare enforcement loses money at the margins (costs more to put a cop on a bus to check tickets than he’ll recover in extra fare revenue) but most transit agencies do make money overall on fares, as far as I know
Why....why would free fares "seperate social classes"?
The argument is that the subway isn’t free and this filters people between the modes.
You've restated the argument. I didn't ask for a restatement, I asked for a justification. For supporting reason(s).and evidence.
bus free, subway cost money. People with no money ride the bus, people with money ride the subway. It’s not much more complex than that.
Also...what are you talking about? OP doesn't pit ... free bus vs non-free subway...? OP talks about both "free bus fare" AND "free transit"
The policy under discussion is just free buses, part of the nyc mayor race. I have no stake in this outside of wanting buses and rail to compliment each other.
I find a lot of the arguments for free good stuff fairly convincing.
Bus slow. Subway fast. Why free subway no mixing.
My 2 cents from a NY perspective, is that the arguments in favor are 1. Faster load times, 2. Bus drivers don’t really enforce it already which leads to 3. Lessens the chance of people assaulting them which is sadly an issue and 4. Many do a free transfer to the subway anyway.
Of course, my rebuttal is that most if not all of this can also be solved with a proof-of-payment system.
Maybe New York should try opening the rear doors on their buses, a feature that they paid for and then refused to turn on for some reason.
Agreed. At the level of dysfunction of our public transportation, any additional money should be focused on increasing actual productivity and efficiency of the service.
Because too many online activist types are building a resume and not a movement
Isn't expensive? It's $2.90a ride or $132 a month in NYC. That's a significant expense for many households. Add in having to get one for each person in the family. We already have ½ of fares for seniors and low income households which helps but that's means tested and a hassle. Free transit is good
$132 is a week's worth of bacon, egg, and cheese in New York. Stop.
I think most places have such a need for more lines and more frequency that should be the focus. But in some rare places like Manhattan where there is good coverage the best way to improve ridership and service is to make it free. In Sacramento, e.g., I dont get it. I want more lines.
I think it's from the NYC mayor race, at least I've seen it associated with that race recently.
You’ve never been homeless before huh?
It’s a key plank of the Abusdance Movement
Where do you live that bus fares are cheap? Sacramento Regional Transit charges $2.50/trip. Most people need RT, so that's $5/day X 20 working days a month=$100, same as monthly pass. That's not cheap for 3-4 family members. Do you realize that a FULLTIME min wage job earns only $1200/mo?
If you rode the bus you would know you don’t pay fares everyday, you buy a pass if you’re a regular rider
The meme that people are actually making the federal minimum wage today has to die. Not only are most state minimum wages far above $7.50 today, but even in states which have no state min wage/are pegged to the federal wage, actual ages for even entry level labor are well above that.
A "minimum wage" worker today, even in the deep south, is someone making in the $10 - 11.00 per hour range. It's the whole reason why there was such a strong lower middle and middle class backlash post COVID. Services got more expensive because entry level workers saw major wage growth.
YES $10 AND $11 IS SO MUCH MONEY THANK YOU YOU ARE SO SMART
Gee thank you for that biting financial analysis you should try living on that
A $100 transit card is more than 5% of income either way. So there’s no difference in that respect
The average driver spends 10-20% of their income on transportation. Just to make it clear how silly it is to complain about. A discount on an unavoidable living expense of 50% or more (with no random price spikes like accidents and repairs) is ridic to complain about.
I’m not complaining about anything—I could afford transit without batting an eye, but I don’t need to because my employer pays for it—I’m sympathetic towards others. You might give it a try sometime
There's nothing compassionate about feeding a starving man poison.
As true a non sequitur as has ever been spoken
The minimum wage in Sacramento is $16.50/hr which is more like $2600/month
Obviously, cheap is relative. Getting a monthly pass at $100/month is a lot less than owning and driving a car of any kind. People in K-12 school pay at most $10 / month, and as little as $0 / month for an SRT pass.
Min wage is $15 in California, so the monthly income is about double what you’re stating
The minimum wage in California is $16.50, which is $2640/mo
Full time is 72 hours a month, or how do you square this with California's $16.50 minimum wage?
Y'all say "pay livable wages" and then sit out elections and let Republicans take us back to the Stone Age because the burrito taxis got intolerably expensive under Democrats for some reason. A little consistency, please.
Can you hear yourself? Can you fucking hear yourself?
"already struggling" so it sounds like doing things differently is an idea worth exploring because clearly something is not working with current ones. Public transport, what if it was treated like roads; not for profit and everyone chips in and has access is the idea I think.
why are libs so fucking dense
are you dishonest or just very dumb?
I would presume they see it as something beneficial for lower income classes, but it seems misguided in application. It's one of those 'seems good, but probably doesn't matter' kinda things.
Opposition to fare increases from “bus should be free” folks blew a $20 million hole in SFMTA’s budget and led to service cuts
opposition to parking meter increases costs more with worse social consequences
Can you be more specific? Are you referring to Free Muni for Youth?
