I live in a city where this has recently been implemented. In Tallinn, population 400K, public transportation is free since January 2013, for all residents (not tourists or people living in other cities). You need to have a valid ID and a valid RFID card that is connected with your ID.
I see a lot of people in this thread state unjustified assumptions as if they are proven facts. I'll try and comment on a few of these, judging from my experience with how things transpired here.
* This will make it a shelter for the homeless *
There have always been homeless people on the busses, and I didn't notice a markedly increase. The fact that you still need a legitimate ID card and a fare card might help this point.
* This will multiply users of the buses, and lead to frustration and long queue lines *
Utilisation of public transportation increased by 15% since becoming free. I noticed somewhat more people, but nothing annoyingly so. On the other hand, the main goal as I could see was to get cars off the road. A drop in traffic of 14% was observed.
Because this is a low-wage country, the €12 million in lost revenue this cost is quite low in absolute terms, compared to what it would be in more western, bigger cities, but it's still a large chunk of money relative to GDP here. Due to the requirement that you need to be a resident of this city, 10000 more people have "migrated" to Tallinn from other cities, now paying taxes here, and adding a predicted €9 million in tax revenue for Tallinn.
Personally I love it of course. I use it in ways that others might deem "uneconomically" i.e. take the tram for 2 stops instead of walking 15 minutes, but I also notice I travel further distance more often, exploring the city, because I don't feel annoyed with having to either find parking space, or pay a taxi, or pay a bus fare.
Seattle used to have an area of downtown where you could ride the bus for free. (You could ride within the area free, but paid if you rode out of the area or started your ride outside of the area.)
Busses became makeshift homeless shelters, which probably ended up driving away actual commuters.
Seattle also bought fancy self-cleaning toilets many years ago in order to give tourists a place to go and to reduce public urination by the homeless.
They ended up selling those toilets on eBay a few years later because the toilets had become a place for addicts to shoot up and for prostitutes to take their customers.
Public spaces, aka the commons, is where all of society's problems manifest.
Homeless people sleeping on buses is caused by, wait for it, homelessness. Not free buses.
Sex workers turning tricks in public bathrooms is caused by, wait for it, prostitution being illegal.
Crazy stinky people accosting people in public are caused by, wait for it, kicking mentally ill people to curb to fend for themselves.
Freeride zones and public toilets are currently impractical. Because they're being sabotaged by larger issues. But they're still good ideas, both empirically and morally.
As a different data point, in Manchester (UK) there are 3 free bus routes around the city. They are used quite heavily and work extremely well. There seems to be no problem with homeless people using them as shelters. I would love to see them expanded.
One stark contrast between these busses and the ones that charge is the time it takes to get people onto the bus. After getting used to the free version, getting on a paid bus feels glacial when it's busy. Seeing queues of busses feels wrong. I can't help but wonder how much better the transport system would be if you took out the time it takes to take payment and give tickets to people and just let them on.
The problem wasn't that those things were free, but that homelessness and poverty are systemic issues that aren't actually meaningfully tackled. Even in places with token free transit systems, the homeless still occupy those spaces and will continue to do so.
> Seattle used to have an area of downtown where you could ride the bus for free. (You could ride within the area free, but paid if you rode out of the area or started your ride outside of the area.)
We have this in Perth, Western Australia—we call them "CAT" (Central Area Transit) buses. Any bus within the CBD is also free though ("Free Transit Zone"; FTZ), which is great if you're heading to a client's office and want to take the bus down the Terrace.
Our CAT buses and FTZ have existed for years and have not become makeshift homeless shelters. My evidence is only anecdotal (across ~10 years), but I've never seen any homeless people setting up shop on a bus.
There are obviously other factors at play here (transport police, better welfare system, 1.9m vs 3.9m people) that are likely making it different from Seattle, however (and these also reinforce your argument).
"Busses became makeshift homeless shelters, which probably ended up driving away actual commuters."
As someone who used the free ride busses in Seattle almost every day.... that's really not true. Yes, sometimes homeless people were on them. But you know, sometimes there are homeless people in the subway in NYC - that doesn't really stop people from using it.
And the 358 is a great example of a bus that isn't free, but has lots of homeless/druggies on it.
It definitely did not drive away commuters from using the bus.
I lived in Seattle during the time that you're describing, and you're massively overstating the case.
Even the dirtiest line in the free-ride zone was cleaner than your average SF MUNI line. Maybe that's not a fair comparison, but it's fairer than suggesting that free buses are bad simply because someone might abuse them.
Also, a $2 fare isn't a huge impediment to someone who wants to turn the bus into a shelter. In fact, the worst buses in Seattle for that sort of thing tended to be the airport lines, because you could hop on one of those, and sleep for an hour or two for only a few bucks. By comparison, the free-ride lines were always packed, and made for poor places to sleep. Cost isn't the only consideration.
I have always felt that 1) public transportation should have basic hygiene requirements for all users. 2) one of the most important things that municipalities should provide are hygienic services; showers and scrubs / scrub-like free clothing to homeless.
Providing basic hygiene would go a long way to helping homeless and poor.
Finally, if you're going to provide these amenities, you need to staff for them appropriately - and have them maintained and supported with rules of use enforced.
Given the massive amount of financial waste we have, I don't accept "that's too expensive to do something like this". If it costs money, for things we need, take the money from the damn defense budget.
In the context of NYC: as it is there is little stopping a homeless person from jumping a turnstile and spending all day or night on the 24 hour subway system. But it's fairly rare to see this (I believe it used to be much more common). I imagine on a bus, where there is always a city employee monitoring things, it would be even more rare.
We had a fareless area in downtown Portland for many years. It was no sketchier than the routes going to the 'burbs, and it wouldn't have made sense as a "makeshift homeless shelter", since the free part was only a few miles. My understanding of why they started charging is that our country suddenly ran itself out of money paying for simultaneous stupid wars and giant tax cuts for wealthy people, and our city couldn't pick up the slack any other way.
You say "homeless people", I say "George Bush", I guess.
Live in downtown Seattle here. Although I enjoyed not paying for bus rides while it was free, I'm much happier with the service now that payment is required.
As a side note, the wait time for paying was reduced drastically once the Orca Card system (rfid based bus pass) went into use. From my experience, with the Orca Card the wait times for paying aren't that much longer compared to the free bus method. It's only when a group of tourists get on the bus and pay with coins is it noticeable.
There's a half way house here. Passenger's could pay a nominal fee for the right to ride the bus. They are issued with a card. If people abuse the bus service the card can be revoked. This way many more people could afford to use the bus but there is still some control on who can use it.
The free ride area also had major consequences for outbound buses during peak hours. If a bus started in downtown and went elsewhere, riders had to pay as they left the bus. Seattle still doesn't allow you to pay at any door on a bus, only at the front with the driver. A crowded bus meant people could not easily get to the front; either the bus sat while people squeezed down the length of the bus, or they simply got off at the rear and didn't pay.
An alternative solution, of course, is to incentivize use of RFID bus passes (already in heavy use), install RFID readers at all doors, and speed up boarding all-around.
Proof of payment systems also attract homeless. They don't have tickets but they also don't have money to pay fine so they don't give damn. They are not a huge problem. Group of normal commuters can stink almost as bad as homeless person. Security is not an issue since all busses have security cameras.
Er, help the homeless get somewhere to live? If they are that much of a problem several useful services are affected, tells me there is a terrible homeless issue that needs dealing with. They are homeless "people" right?
Here in Miami we have a free trolley (school bus size) system that extends along the greater downtown areas and some of the northern and southern suburbs. They are extremely clean and I VERY rarely see homeless on it (we have a rather large population too), I've been picked up at stops where homeless, also waiting (or trying to sleep), people didn't even attempt to get on board. In contrast, our free light rail system is full of homeless. they just ride all day 'cause its air conditioned and unmanned with few security patrols (they mainly utilize cameras on board and at stations).
Perhaps this case maybe the solution is for a harsh rule system and driver enforcement, if they're too dirty/smelly don't let them on, and/or kick them off after X number of stops. I'm not sure what the policies are here, I base my assumptions on the way I've seen driver yell at patrons to pick up their trash etc. it seems like they actually care about the trolley.
That's an interesting point. The problem doesn't stem from things being free as much as from people's perception of free things.
My former professor, who specialized in developing public relations campaigns for social causes, used to say that it's best to avoid words like "public" and "free" because it makes people think of lower-quality things — public rest rooms, for instance.
It's better for campaigns to use language that doesn't conjure these associations — or, in some cases, charge a nominal fee.
For example, a nonprofit whose mission was to give away condoms in Africa ended up charging a small price for each condom; message testing showed that the audience didn't trust free contraception, so, ironically, charging for the product made it more accessible.
The homeless didn't seem to be an issue in the "Fareless Square" in Portland, Oregon, at least the times I visited. (It existed from 1975 to 2012, and was discontinued because the local transit authority was short on cash.)
The problem is when the public "owns" a space, this is the equivalent of no one owning it. This is why public bathrooms are among the most disgusting places you can visit. I remember visiting France where they charge to use the toilets, and they're waaaaay more pleasant to use.
For buses, the solution is simple: Make everyone get off at the end of each route. For crosstown buses in Manhattan, that would mean you get approximately 25 minutes on the bus before you are kicked off. Most homeless would probably prefer to sleep on the streets than move that frequently.
I think it is more an implementation problem. Boston has a couple area with "free" buses, in the senses that Colleges, Hospitals and Businesses in a particular are sponsor those buses and their members ride for "free". In theory you should show your ID card, but they pick everybody. I have not seen homeless or stinky people.
Maybe targeting the workforce, and workers could sponsor their family member, which will have for effect to extend the "free" ride to everyone leaving in a house with at least one person paying taxes.
I don't know, part of this sound discriminating, but it ould be a start
I heard that a similar thing happened in another city, I think it was Sacramento. Maybe they should charge a quarter instead of making things free. This would make things close-to-free, but keep it from attracting lots of homeless.
For what it's worth, there is still a free shuttle "bus" that runs in a loop encompassing Pioneer Square, Downtown and Belltown. It is designed to provide transportation from homeless shelters to drug rehabs, needle exchanges, etc.
Basically the same idea as giving up on detailed long distance billing and going to flat rate. Where in this case the flat rate is about $5 on your property tax bill.
The good news is locally the bus service is approx 75% subsidized anyway, so they'd only "lose" 25% of revenue but the substantial gain of no more cash handling etc would help.
The other problem is you can tell the author lives in California. Where I live, the weather outdoors is at least somewhat foul about 10 months out of the year, so they would become rolling homeless shelters at least 10 months out of the year, maybe more by habit. That leads to even more expensive systems for what amounts to loitering ticketing, enforcement of no sleeping on the bus, etc.
The problem is this might even lead to politically sensitive ideas, like having enough homeless shelters to hold our homeless, or even having mental health treatment so our nuts are not just tossed out on the street as human debris until they die, instead we might try actually treating them. The criminal justice-industrial system would protest at the lack of revenue. It would be a little disruptive.
Axiom: Public transportation is a more efficient (in terms of many basic resources valuable to society: first and foremost among them energy and space) way to get around, so it's in society's interest to shift as much mileage as possible towards it.
The central question is two-fold: How much of a shift would result from a given decrease in price? And how do we relate the (primarily:) monetary cost of making it free-to-ride with the (primarily:) non-monetary benefits of any given shift? The result of this question could give you an answer if making it free would be worthwhile.
Some thoughts:
I think decreasing the price per ride from e.g. 1 USD to 0 USD would make for a bigger shift in uptake than decreasing it from 2 USD to 1 USD. Not having to think about whether each single tour is worth the price of admission makes it a viable default way of getting around. This is just the usual flat rate argument that also applies to things like internet usage.
Making public transport free would invariably result not just in a shift towards it from other modes of transportation, it would also lead to an overall increase in mobility, which in terms of some resources reduced the gains in efficiency.
There's a valid argument that the efficiency of public transport is highly dependant on the amount of utilization: big buses and trains carrying single digit amounts of passengers can use up more energy than individual transportation. An increase in overall uptake would tend to reduce such problems since you'd get a small bus load full of people in cases where you'd have only a few now.
Obviously, free to ride public transportation is a particularly huge potential improvement for people who otherwise could not afford to get around. And since mobility is such an important part of life in modern society (minus us nerds who manage to leave the house only once per week), free-to-ride public transport has a massive impact in terms of social equalization.
In SF, BART is pay-per-ride throughout the system, while MUNI is proof-of-payment in many locations. One thing that I've noticed is that there are significantly more homeless people on MUNI than on BART. As a rider, this negatively influences my experience and desire to ride (mostly because of potential for screaming/attacking).
Especially if public transportation is free, I can imagine that the homeless would take shelter there in case of inclement weather. Not a huge issue in SF, but comes into play in other cities.
As somebody from Germany, it's slightly entertaining to see that most comments in this thread have something to do with homeless people seeking shelter on public transport.
I can see how this would be an implementational detail, but I don't think that should be the primary argument.
It's a radical old theory (from 1956), which is still ignored by most of the people who talk about economics. It states, in HN terms, that economic systems can have local optima; and that if the global optimum can't be reached then doing stupid things can actually be smart.
In theory a free market is best. But if a market can't be made completely free (for whatever reason) then making the market freer may actually make things worse, because you're moving away from the local optimal point into a trough.
When you consider any aspect of the system, you can make it more like a free market, or less like a free market. Maybe the internet libertarians are usually right, when they say "make it more like a free market". Or maybe real systems have been optimised towards that local optimum point, then driven away from it by free market advice, and the internet libertarians are usually wrong. But I don't think there's a hard and fast rule.
Whatever the case, imperfect economic systems are a little bit complicated, and there's not always a simple answer.
So it's not a free market. Cities subsidise buses. They subsidise cars. Payments for buses are so annoying that they may outweigh the amount of money changing hands. Unions want to protect their turf. Poor people like buses, while rich people like cars. And buses are much more useful when they are full. Its complicated, so figuring out what the locally optimal solution is isn't really easy.
I guess I'm one of the few here who disagrees with this article.
Maintaining a bus and subway system is extremely expensive in terms of resources, both in terms of equipment expenses, salaries (for employees who could be providing other benefits to society instead of operating a bus) fuel, and use of land.
There is no 100% certainty that buses/subways are more efficient than cars. Luckily however, we have a way to tell which is more efficient: The free market! The free market is not perfect, but it is likely that a person who pays a fare to ride a bus is getting significant value from that bus ride, and if the fare CAN COVER THE EXPENSES of running the buses, then we can be confident that buses are an efficient mode of transportation.
If you just make the buses free, people may take more roundabout trips to get to where they need to go, just to be able to make use of the free bus, causing inefficiency and waste. Or, it may cause people to take more inefficient taxi trips (because the bus doesn't take them to their precise destination like a personal car would) or they may do a million other things that are damaging to the environment and wasteful (like eating out more because they can take free bus trips to restaurants.) These scenarios may sound silly, but the fact is that removing price signals from public transportation is a terrible idea because it can have a multitude of unexpected consequences.
If you read this post and think I'm crazy and say to yourself "What an idiot, cars are obviously guaranteed to be less efficient than buses" I would argue you don't understand how incentives behave in a complex system.
If you think cars are so horrible, you should work to stop subsidies to oil companies so that gas prices reflect the true cost of energy. But in my view there is absolutely no way making public buses free is going to make cities more efficient and/or help the environment.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should get rid of all public transport subsidies (this is a harder argument to make, I'm not sure where I stand on it.) I'm just saying we shouldn't make them 100% free because price signals are valuable.
In case anyone is wondering why this hasn't already been implemented everywhere if it's such a great idea, I have an anecdote illustrating the political and cultural obstacles it faces. I worked with a guy who helped create a proposal to make buses free in Austin in the 1990s. The goal was basically the same as described in the article, based on the observation that collecting fares was surprisingly expensive in both time and money. Little net income would be lost, the buses would run faster and cause slightly less congestion because boarding would be faster, and numbers from experiments in other cities showed ridership going up significantly. It was very simple: voters and taxpayers chose to support the bus program because of the benefits the city gets, and eliminating fares was a straightforward way to increase ridership per dollar, thus deriving more benefit for the tax money being spent [1]. Everybody wins.
As my friend told it, the proposal was made internally inside Capital Metro (the transit agency; my friend was on some kind of committee) and the response from higher up was very simple: not gonna happen, not ever, and please don't ever mention this in public unless you really want to hurt the future of bus transit in this city. The symbolism of fares, he was told, is very important in two ways. First, the public image of bus riders is that they are people who aren't willing or capable of taking care of themselves (why don't they have a car?) The symbolism of giving somebody something for nothing is very different from making them pay to ride. Bus fare is a symbolic way of teaching them that they have to work for what they get, and they can't freeload off of other people. If we're forced to take care of them, we can at least make them play-act like they're responsible people paying their own way, and the lesson might sink in eventually. Second, people tend to incorrectly assume that the operating expenses of the bus system are covered by fares. Many people hate buses and hate the complicated urban society they represent, and the more of those people who became aware that buses run largely on their tax dollars, the harder it is for city bus programs to get the money and political support they need. Charging fares makes it easy for them to make the wrong assumption and prevents them from becoming vocal enemies of public transit.
Those attitudes are from 10-20 years ago, and one hopes they have changed since then. The idea seems fundamentally sound, so I imagine it will keep resurfacing until pragmatism overcomes the bias and stereotypes surrounding mass transit.
In Seattle, the inner-city busses have zero fare. The trouble is that some of our more fragrant hobos use the bus as a rolling shelter to the detriment of those that appreciate bathing.
That would increase the traffic on these buses by some multiples and will increase wait times, frustration and overall dissatisfaction among the public. Then some one will do some napkin math saying the amount of "money" wasted by all these people waiting is not worth the free rides. I guess my point is, free rides probably would have made sense in 1965 when the population was a fraction of what it is in NYC today. Add all the tourists to that and free rides are not sustainable.
I think "free" is the wrong word for it. Howabout "fare free"? Someone is going to have to pay.
I like the idea of pushing the costs more onto the community as a whole, not just users. Make it kind of like most school systems: everyone pays through taxes whether or not they have kids or if they send their kids to private school.
I think for me, the opportunity cost of the bus is too high. My travel time in the car is generally half of the bus time. I consider that time lost. Since I am able to use that time to make money, I would have to be compensated for that money in order for me to want to take the bus. At my hourly rate, a bus ride of 1 hour that wasted 30 minutes of my time would cost me $25.
(for those thinking that I would waste the time anyway, I would counter that time not spent working is time spent with my wife and son, or learning, or sleeping, and I'd much, much rather do those things than be in a bus.)
Operating revenue, 2013, projected
-Farebox revenue 41%
-Dedicated taxes 35%
-Toll revenue 12%
-State and local subsidies 7%
Total operating revenue is $13.5 billion. Budget (expenditures) is basically the same according to the above link.
So dropping fares will cost about $4.7 billion after accounting for fare collection savings but before accounting for any extra costs associated with increased ridership (35% of 13.5b). The total NYC city budget is about $69 billion, in comparison(http://www.nyc.gov/html/omb/downloads/pdf/fp6_12.pdf), so maybe it's possible, but I'd hate to be the financial planner asked to come up with ways to cover the shortfall.
This is an interesting idea, but it has its unseen challenges.
The very first issue is regulatory. Because the addition of passangers does present a real cost to bus companies, no tracking device on how many passengers it has has difficulties from a regulatory standpoint.
This may sound silly, but its a reality of life, such as when you give a free trial product to people owning a creditcard.
Currently, buses in buenos aires are ridicolously cheaper than cars, yet by culture, people really love buying cars. An hour's parking lot fee in the center of the city costs more than a week of bus fare. Making it free would not be a change of paradigm.
Buses are packed, and so are trains and subways. If subsidizing increased not only to cover fares, but to improve infrastructure and service, you are also servicing people with cars, making those more interesting. (less traffic -> also better to go around in cars).
Although this could help a lot, i dont think its a paradigm shift unless people with cars are paying the public transportation.
But that of course, present the other challenges, which is, what about people not having public transportation coverage from one point to another, and how would you administer such a route in a way that you dont charge him penalties.
I honestly believe that in big cities, cars are an expensive hinderance. Using a cab every single time you go out is still cheaper than buying one.
Public transport is an enormous problem in the UK outside of London - the prices are very high, and the service is often dreadful.
In my home town for instance the local operator regularly cancelled buses without notification, ran late all the time and repeatedly made hugely over the top above-inflation/fuel price fluctuation price rises every year. On more than one occasion they cancelled last buses stranding people.
The company would cheat the monitoring of punctuality by having buses wait at certain points along the route (notably the points at which punctuality measures were made) for sometimes 10 - 15 minutes, whereas wherever you actually wanted to catch a bus from you'd often be left waiting 20-30 minutes for a bus to turn up.
The bottom line is, if you want to live there + have any kind of quality of life, you have to own + run a car. Full stop. This is pretty well true for anywhere outside of London (not sure about other major cities, however.)
A lot of the issue is the monopolistic nature of any bus service, and the lack of teeth of the government regulator. Personally I think it ought to be run as a public service with some means of ensuring quality (ok so that's a tough problem :) or at least improve the regulator's ability to fine companies that fail to provide a decent service + have some oversight over (already subsidised!) fares.
If they are a public good worthy of subsidizing, then yes!
For NYC, it has been estimated that every car driving in lower Manhattan incurs ... goddammit I can't find a reference so I'm going with memory here ... at least ~$3 in social costs due to increased pollution, congestion, road wear, etc.. That's in addition to the costs paid by the driver (car depreciation, gas, insurance, opportunity costs, etc.). If that memory is really true, then subsidizing transit to eliminate these social costs ends up being a huge net win!
If we want people to do something, we should subsidize it and (in the case of transit) make it free[1]. If we don't want people to do something, we should tax it (Pigouvian taxes FTW!).
[1] - Transit will never be as fast as driving due to the extra stops and walk required at either end, so we need to keep it free to minimise the total cost of fare + extra_time_wasted*salary, which corresponds to opportunity cost to riders. Riders whose total cost is too high will not ride, and riding transit is a social good (or is at least much less of a social bad then driving).
The cost of the bus is not keeping me off the bus; the speed and comfort are keeping me off.
While not collecting fares would decrease the stop times, it isn't going to get anywhere near what I would need to ride the bus more often.
To go about 7.5 miles on one bus in San Francisco (basically from the bay to the ocean) takes 56 minutes on a bus. There are marathon runners who can literally run the route and arrive nearly 20 minutes before the bus!
The light rail is considerably better at 42 minutes for roughly the same route (the more your trip is underground, the more it makes sense to take). In fact, the only time I take public transit is when heading downtown in the subway since it is actually fast.
The same trip takes 28 minutes in a car (less if you know where the timed lights are).
Now, if we had Personal Rapid Transit* instead of buses, then at least the comfort level and speed might be high enough for me to switch over.
The Economist is worthless when it comes to the science of economics, so it's expected but still amusing to see a sloppily incorrect use of "free" next to a site called "economist.com". What makes it truly great is seeing it on the top of HN, where everyone's straining to evade this meaning.
If people own cars, they are going to tend to use them even if public transit is available. Long term, we need public transit that is good enough that people will decide they don't need to own a car.
The thing that has stopped me from ever reaching that point is not the cost of public transit, but the long term reliability. When I buy a house or rent an apartment, I need to be able to base that decision partly on the mass transit options, and then rely on those options not changing out from under me--no bean counter deciding that the bus that comes by my house does not have enough riders and canceling it. That bus needs to keep running, even if it has few riders. Even if it is often completely empty. Bean counting has to be done at the level of the complete system, not the individual bus line.
[+] [-] relix|12 years ago|reply
I see a lot of people in this thread state unjustified assumptions as if they are proven facts. I'll try and comment on a few of these, judging from my experience with how things transpired here.
* This will make it a shelter for the homeless *
There have always been homeless people on the busses, and I didn't notice a markedly increase. The fact that you still need a legitimate ID card and a fare card might help this point.
* This will multiply users of the buses, and lead to frustration and long queue lines *
Utilisation of public transportation increased by 15% since becoming free. I noticed somewhat more people, but nothing annoyingly so. On the other hand, the main goal as I could see was to get cars off the road. A drop in traffic of 14% was observed.
Because this is a low-wage country, the €12 million in lost revenue this cost is quite low in absolute terms, compared to what it would be in more western, bigger cities, but it's still a large chunk of money relative to GDP here. Due to the requirement that you need to be a resident of this city, 10000 more people have "migrated" to Tallinn from other cities, now paying taxes here, and adding a predicted €9 million in tax revenue for Tallinn.
Personally I love it of course. I use it in ways that others might deem "uneconomically" i.e. take the tram for 2 stops instead of walking 15 minutes, but I also notice I travel further distance more often, exploring the city, because I don't feel annoyed with having to either find parking space, or pay a taxi, or pay a bus fare.
[+] [-] nostromo|12 years ago|reply
Busses became makeshift homeless shelters, which probably ended up driving away actual commuters.
Seattle also bought fancy self-cleaning toilets many years ago in order to give tourists a place to go and to reduce public urination by the homeless.
They ended up selling those toilets on eBay a few years later because the toilets had become a place for addicts to shoot up and for prostitutes to take their customers.
Free is probably a bad idea...
[+] [-] specialist|12 years ago|reply
Homeless people sleeping on buses is caused by, wait for it, homelessness. Not free buses.
Sex workers turning tricks in public bathrooms is caused by, wait for it, prostitution being illegal.
Crazy stinky people accosting people in public are caused by, wait for it, kicking mentally ill people to curb to fend for themselves.
Freeride zones and public toilets are currently impractical. Because they're being sabotaged by larger issues. But they're still good ideas, both empirically and morally.
[+] [-] IanCal|12 years ago|reply
One stark contrast between these busses and the ones that charge is the time it takes to get people onto the bus. After getting used to the free version, getting on a paid bus feels glacial when it's busy. Seeing queues of busses feels wrong. I can't help but wonder how much better the transport system would be if you took out the time it takes to take payment and give tickets to people and just let them on.
[+] [-] king_jester|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elithrar|12 years ago|reply
We have this in Perth, Western Australia—we call them "CAT" (Central Area Transit) buses. Any bus within the CBD is also free though ("Free Transit Zone"; FTZ), which is great if you're heading to a client's office and want to take the bus down the Terrace.
Our CAT buses and FTZ have existed for years and have not become makeshift homeless shelters. My evidence is only anecdotal (across ~10 years), but I've never seen any homeless people setting up shop on a bus.
There are obviously other factors at play here (transport police, better welfare system, 1.9m vs 3.9m people) that are likely making it different from Seattle, however (and these also reinforce your argument).
[+] [-] zacharycohn|12 years ago|reply
As someone who used the free ride busses in Seattle almost every day.... that's really not true. Yes, sometimes homeless people were on them. But you know, sometimes there are homeless people in the subway in NYC - that doesn't really stop people from using it.
And the 358 is a great example of a bus that isn't free, but has lots of homeless/druggies on it.
It definitely did not drive away commuters from using the bus.
[+] [-] timr|12 years ago|reply
Even the dirtiest line in the free-ride zone was cleaner than your average SF MUNI line. Maybe that's not a fair comparison, but it's fairer than suggesting that free buses are bad simply because someone might abuse them.
Also, a $2 fare isn't a huge impediment to someone who wants to turn the bus into a shelter. In fact, the worst buses in Seattle for that sort of thing tended to be the airport lines, because you could hop on one of those, and sleep for an hour or two for only a few bucks. By comparison, the free-ride lines were always packed, and made for poor places to sleep. Cost isn't the only consideration.
[+] [-] samstave|12 years ago|reply
Providing basic hygiene would go a long way to helping homeless and poor.
Finally, if you're going to provide these amenities, you need to staff for them appropriately - and have them maintained and supported with rules of use enforced.
Given the massive amount of financial waste we have, I don't accept "that's too expensive to do something like this". If it costs money, for things we need, take the money from the damn defense budget.
[+] [-] rm999|12 years ago|reply
In the context of NYC: as it is there is little stopping a homeless person from jumping a turnstile and spending all day or night on the 24 hour subway system. But it's fairly rare to see this (I believe it used to be much more common). I imagine on a bus, where there is always a city employee monitoring things, it would be even more rare.
[+] [-] jami|12 years ago|reply
You say "homeless people", I say "George Bush", I guess.
[+] [-] nodata|12 years ago|reply
Why are only self-cleaning toilets a bad idea? Again, policing would have solved that. Or a door timer. Or blue lighting.
[+] [-] sauravc|12 years ago|reply
As a side note, the wait time for paying was reduced drastically once the Orca Card system (rfid based bus pass) went into use. From my experience, with the Orca Card the wait times for paying aren't that much longer compared to the free bus method. It's only when a group of tourists get on the bus and pay with coins is it noticeable.
[+] [-] jsmcgd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hazzen|12 years ago|reply
An alternative solution, of course, is to incentivize use of RFID bus passes (already in heavy use), install RFID readers at all doors, and speed up boarding all-around.
[+] [-] saraid216|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotty79|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alan_cx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tbomb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawkharris|12 years ago|reply
My former professor, who specialized in developing public relations campaigns for social causes, used to say that it's best to avoid words like "public" and "free" because it makes people think of lower-quality things — public rest rooms, for instance.
It's better for campaigns to use language that doesn't conjure these associations — or, in some cases, charge a nominal fee.
For example, a nonprofit whose mission was to give away condoms in Africa ended up charging a small price for each condom; message testing showed that the audience didn't trust free contraception, so, ironically, charging for the product made it more accessible.
[+] [-] rst|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|12 years ago|reply
You then put sharps bins in some other toilets in less nice areas of the city.
[+] [-] vijayboyapati|12 years ago|reply
Ownership=>care
[+] [-] oh_sigh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Amygaz|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] re_todd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjore|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clauretano|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monokrome|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Skalman|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etfb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VLM|12 years ago|reply
The good news is locally the bus service is approx 75% subsidized anyway, so they'd only "lose" 25% of revenue but the substantial gain of no more cash handling etc would help.
The other problem is you can tell the author lives in California. Where I live, the weather outdoors is at least somewhat foul about 10 months out of the year, so they would become rolling homeless shelters at least 10 months out of the year, maybe more by habit. That leads to even more expensive systems for what amounts to loitering ticketing, enforcement of no sleeping on the bus, etc.
The problem is this might even lead to politically sensitive ideas, like having enough homeless shelters to hold our homeless, or even having mental health treatment so our nuts are not just tossed out on the street as human debris until they die, instead we might try actually treating them. The criminal justice-industrial system would protest at the lack of revenue. It would be a little disruptive.
[+] [-] morsch|12 years ago|reply
The central question is two-fold: How much of a shift would result from a given decrease in price? And how do we relate the (primarily:) monetary cost of making it free-to-ride with the (primarily:) non-monetary benefits of any given shift? The result of this question could give you an answer if making it free would be worthwhile.
Some thoughts:
I think decreasing the price per ride from e.g. 1 USD to 0 USD would make for a bigger shift in uptake than decreasing it from 2 USD to 1 USD. Not having to think about whether each single tour is worth the price of admission makes it a viable default way of getting around. This is just the usual flat rate argument that also applies to things like internet usage.
Making public transport free would invariably result not just in a shift towards it from other modes of transportation, it would also lead to an overall increase in mobility, which in terms of some resources reduced the gains in efficiency.
There's a valid argument that the efficiency of public transport is highly dependant on the amount of utilization: big buses and trains carrying single digit amounts of passengers can use up more energy than individual transportation. An increase in overall uptake would tend to reduce such problems since you'd get a small bus load full of people in cases where you'd have only a few now.
Obviously, free to ride public transportation is a particularly huge potential improvement for people who otherwise could not afford to get around. And since mobility is such an important part of life in modern society (minus us nerds who manage to leave the house only once per week), free-to-ride public transport has a massive impact in terms of social equalization.
[+] [-] lquist|12 years ago|reply
In SF, BART is pay-per-ride throughout the system, while MUNI is proof-of-payment in many locations. One thing that I've noticed is that there are significantly more homeless people on MUNI than on BART. As a rider, this negatively influences my experience and desire to ride (mostly because of potential for screaming/attacking).
Especially if public transportation is free, I can imagine that the homeless would take shelter there in case of inclement weather. Not a huge issue in SF, but comes into play in other cities.
[+] [-] rb2k_|12 years ago|reply
I can see how this would be an implementational detail, but I don't think that should be the primary argument.
[+] [-] wisty|12 years ago|reply
It's a radical old theory (from 1956), which is still ignored by most of the people who talk about economics. It states, in HN terms, that economic systems can have local optima; and that if the global optimum can't be reached then doing stupid things can actually be smart.
In theory a free market is best. But if a market can't be made completely free (for whatever reason) then making the market freer may actually make things worse, because you're moving away from the local optimal point into a trough.
When you consider any aspect of the system, you can make it more like a free market, or less like a free market. Maybe the internet libertarians are usually right, when they say "make it more like a free market". Or maybe real systems have been optimised towards that local optimum point, then driven away from it by free market advice, and the internet libertarians are usually wrong. But I don't think there's a hard and fast rule.
Whatever the case, imperfect economic systems are a little bit complicated, and there's not always a simple answer.
So it's not a free market. Cities subsidise buses. They subsidise cars. Payments for buses are so annoying that they may outweigh the amount of money changing hands. Unions want to protect their turf. Poor people like buses, while rich people like cars. And buses are much more useful when they are full. Its complicated, so figuring out what the locally optimal solution is isn't really easy.
[+] [-] drcode|12 years ago|reply
Maintaining a bus and subway system is extremely expensive in terms of resources, both in terms of equipment expenses, salaries (for employees who could be providing other benefits to society instead of operating a bus) fuel, and use of land.
There is no 100% certainty that buses/subways are more efficient than cars. Luckily however, we have a way to tell which is more efficient: The free market! The free market is not perfect, but it is likely that a person who pays a fare to ride a bus is getting significant value from that bus ride, and if the fare CAN COVER THE EXPENSES of running the buses, then we can be confident that buses are an efficient mode of transportation.
If you just make the buses free, people may take more roundabout trips to get to where they need to go, just to be able to make use of the free bus, causing inefficiency and waste. Or, it may cause people to take more inefficient taxi trips (because the bus doesn't take them to their precise destination like a personal car would) or they may do a million other things that are damaging to the environment and wasteful (like eating out more because they can take free bus trips to restaurants.) These scenarios may sound silly, but the fact is that removing price signals from public transportation is a terrible idea because it can have a multitude of unexpected consequences.
If you read this post and think I'm crazy and say to yourself "What an idiot, cars are obviously guaranteed to be less efficient than buses" I would argue you don't understand how incentives behave in a complex system.
If you think cars are so horrible, you should work to stop subsidies to oil companies so that gas prices reflect the true cost of energy. But in my view there is absolutely no way making public buses free is going to make cities more efficient and/or help the environment.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should get rid of all public transport subsidies (this is a harder argument to make, I'm not sure where I stand on it.) I'm just saying we shouldn't make them 100% free because price signals are valuable.
[+] [-] dkarl|12 years ago|reply
As my friend told it, the proposal was made internally inside Capital Metro (the transit agency; my friend was on some kind of committee) and the response from higher up was very simple: not gonna happen, not ever, and please don't ever mention this in public unless you really want to hurt the future of bus transit in this city. The symbolism of fares, he was told, is very important in two ways. First, the public image of bus riders is that they are people who aren't willing or capable of taking care of themselves (why don't they have a car?) The symbolism of giving somebody something for nothing is very different from making them pay to ride. Bus fare is a symbolic way of teaching them that they have to work for what they get, and they can't freeload off of other people. If we're forced to take care of them, we can at least make them play-act like they're responsible people paying their own way, and the lesson might sink in eventually. Second, people tend to incorrectly assume that the operating expenses of the bus system are covered by fares. Many people hate buses and hate the complicated urban society they represent, and the more of those people who became aware that buses run largely on their tax dollars, the harder it is for city bus programs to get the money and political support they need. Charging fares makes it easy for them to make the wrong assumption and prevents them from becoming vocal enemies of public transit.
Those attitudes are from 10-20 years ago, and one hopes they have changed since then. The idea seems fundamentally sound, so I imagine it will keep resurfacing until pragmatism overcomes the bias and stereotypes surrounding mass transit.
[1] As you can see here, passenger fares cover only a small fraction of expenses: http://www.capmetro.org/transparency/
[+] [-] benjohnson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yalogin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PencilAndPaper|12 years ago|reply
I like the idea of pushing the costs more onto the community as a whole, not just users. Make it kind of like most school systems: everyone pays through taxes whether or not they have kids or if they send their kids to private school.
[+] [-] chris_mahan|12 years ago|reply
(for those thinking that I would waste the time anyway, I would counter that time not spent working is time spent with my wife and son, or learning, or sleeping, and I'd much, much rather do those things than be in a bus.)
I live in Los Angeles.
[+] [-] mapgrep|12 years ago|reply
"A lot of money" is awfully vague. Especially for a publication called The Economist.
Turns out farebox revenue is 41% of the MTA's operating revenue. That is indeed a lot of money to be giving up. Here is a breakdown, via http://www.mta.info/mta/budget/pdf/Adopted_Budget_Feb_Financ...
Total operating revenue is $13.5 billion. Budget (expenditures) is basically the same according to the above link.So dropping fares will cost about $4.7 billion after accounting for fare collection savings but before accounting for any extra costs associated with increased ridership (35% of 13.5b). The total NYC city budget is about $69 billion, in comparison(http://www.nyc.gov/html/omb/downloads/pdf/fp6_12.pdf), so maybe it's possible, but I'd hate to be the financial planner asked to come up with ways to cover the shortfall.
[+] [-] conanbatt|12 years ago|reply
The very first issue is regulatory. Because the addition of passangers does present a real cost to bus companies, no tracking device on how many passengers it has has difficulties from a regulatory standpoint. This may sound silly, but its a reality of life, such as when you give a free trial product to people owning a creditcard.
Currently, buses in buenos aires are ridicolously cheaper than cars, yet by culture, people really love buying cars. An hour's parking lot fee in the center of the city costs more than a week of bus fare. Making it free would not be a change of paradigm.
Buses are packed, and so are trains and subways. If subsidizing increased not only to cover fares, but to improve infrastructure and service, you are also servicing people with cars, making those more interesting. (less traffic -> also better to go around in cars).
Although this could help a lot, i dont think its a paradigm shift unless people with cars are paying the public transportation.
But that of course, present the other challenges, which is, what about people not having public transportation coverage from one point to another, and how would you administer such a route in a way that you dont charge him penalties.
I honestly believe that in big cities, cars are an expensive hinderance. Using a cab every single time you go out is still cheaper than buying one.
[+] [-] singular|12 years ago|reply
In my home town for instance the local operator regularly cancelled buses without notification, ran late all the time and repeatedly made hugely over the top above-inflation/fuel price fluctuation price rises every year. On more than one occasion they cancelled last buses stranding people.
The company would cheat the monitoring of punctuality by having buses wait at certain points along the route (notably the points at which punctuality measures were made) for sometimes 10 - 15 minutes, whereas wherever you actually wanted to catch a bus from you'd often be left waiting 20-30 minutes for a bus to turn up.
The bottom line is, if you want to live there + have any kind of quality of life, you have to own + run a car. Full stop. This is pretty well true for anywhere outside of London (not sure about other major cities, however.)
A lot of the issue is the monopolistic nature of any bus service, and the lack of teeth of the government regulator. Personally I think it ought to be run as a public service with some means of ensuring quality (ok so that's a tough problem :) or at least improve the regulator's ability to fine companies that fail to provide a decent service + have some oversight over (already subsidised!) fares.
[+] [-] pmb|12 years ago|reply
For NYC, it has been estimated that every car driving in lower Manhattan incurs ... goddammit I can't find a reference so I'm going with memory here ... at least ~$3 in social costs due to increased pollution, congestion, road wear, etc.. That's in addition to the costs paid by the driver (car depreciation, gas, insurance, opportunity costs, etc.). If that memory is really true, then subsidizing transit to eliminate these social costs ends up being a huge net win!
If we want people to do something, we should subsidize it and (in the case of transit) make it free[1]. If we don't want people to do something, we should tax it (Pigouvian taxes FTW!).
[1] - Transit will never be as fast as driving due to the extra stops and walk required at either end, so we need to keep it free to minimise the total cost of fare + extra_time_wasted*salary, which corresponds to opportunity cost to riders. Riders whose total cost is too high will not ride, and riding transit is a social good (or is at least much less of a social bad then driving).
[+] [-] Aloisius|12 years ago|reply
While not collecting fares would decrease the stop times, it isn't going to get anywhere near what I would need to ride the bus more often.
To go about 7.5 miles on one bus in San Francisco (basically from the bay to the ocean) takes 56 minutes on a bus. There are marathon runners who can literally run the route and arrive nearly 20 minutes before the bus!
The light rail is considerably better at 42 minutes for roughly the same route (the more your trip is underground, the more it makes sense to take). In fact, the only time I take public transit is when heading downtown in the subway since it is actually fast.
The same trip takes 28 minutes in a car (less if you know where the timed lights are).
Now, if we had Personal Rapid Transit* instead of buses, then at least the comfort level and speed might be high enough for me to switch over.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit
[+] [-] EarthLaunch|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|12 years ago|reply
The thing that has stopped me from ever reaching that point is not the cost of public transit, but the long term reliability. When I buy a house or rent an apartment, I need to be able to base that decision partly on the mass transit options, and then rely on those options not changing out from under me--no bean counter deciding that the bus that comes by my house does not have enough riders and canceling it. That bus needs to keep running, even if it has few riders. Even if it is often completely empty. Bean counting has to be done at the level of the complete system, not the individual bus line.