Why Free Public Transportation Is a Bad Idea

I like trains

One huge part that you missed, when you transfert the cost of public transport from fare to local taxes, you also save on all the expensive measure you use to control that people actually pay their fare. No more ticket machine that need maintenance, no more controler ...

My personal experience: Because of the economic fallout of the pandemic, I lost my job. A friend was able to offer me work at a factory. Public transport was vital and free public transport was very helpful throughout that transitional period. Mirco example

My nephew just left for a vacation in Switzerland. They sent him a free pass for public transport while he was there. He thought it was pretty impressive.

I do agree that the quality of public transportation is more important than the cost.

Me and my mum wanted to go shopping by bus, but because a bus was running very late we went by car instead. So I see that making buses more reliable and frequent would make them more useful to the everyday traveller.

Well as a Luxembourgish citizen i can talk out of expierence: I always take the bus for a ride to the capital but i certainly would take the car if I needed to pay for the bus because it wouldnt be worth the hassle to take public transit

Making a crappy service free is NOT going to significantly improve its adoption so step one would be to improve the quality of the public transportation first and then worry about making it free. I guarantee a high quality low wait time public transportation would be preferred over driving personal cars by most people.

In Denver the light rail used to only be used by rich people because it only went from rich neighborhoods to downtown and back. That backfired because since the cars were mostly empty all the time the homeless started moving in during the pandemic. At least the bus still works.

I think the lesson is quality and convenience matter most. That’s why in places like Hong Kong and Singapore public transit is a wild success that almost pays for itself

safety should also not be overlooked. in some big cities, public transport can be dangerous (especially for womens where htey face a huge risk of harassment and physical agression/assault). people would be more likely to face public transport if they fellt safe doing it

The classic "fixing one issue of an overall problem doesn't fix everything so we should fix NOTHING." Very cool.

I find this rather short-sighted. These studies assume the CURRENT state of public transport, which is disappointing at best in most places. Taking the vast majority of people into public transport also means that the entire transport system would require an overhaul to accommodate these people. Furthermore, looking at this purely economically should still show the meta gains. Also, NOT doing this should conclude that within 1-2 lifetimes, society will have collapsed to the point where economy as we know it will be pointless. Some broader views would be appreciated.

As somebody who was a dirt poor high school student in a city with good public transportation, I would regularly bum rides or pay for gas when I had already sunk the cost for an unlimited bus pass to avoid spending more than 50% longer to get to a destination because of travel time to/from and wait time for a bus, so this video makes a lot of sense to me.

Yes, public transportation is expensive for the state. But what about the costs of private transportation? I think you also need to compare it, the streets and the parking spaces are also expensive for the state

Alot of costs are not mentioned on the private vehicle side: - extra road maintenance cost - Increased amount of lanes on main roads - Effects off its noisr pollution on health - increased taxes on private vehicles per person - cost of obesity So overall this video could use multiple parrs

Being able to just hop on a bus sounds like a dream. No need to look for shops selling tickets, figuring out apps, or worrying about ticket inspectors. But the real problem of public transport is its impracticality. I live in a densely populated area, but i still need to walk a lot just to reach the bus stop or train station, waiting times can be long and unpredictable, vehicle changes are often needed to reach many destinations, and onboard comfort is generally low.

In my town (70k hab) public transport are free. In the city budget it didn't made that much of a difference. The cost for controls and people who's job was to control tickets was almost balancing the cost of transports. It made a huge impact on use. Be it schools, citizens etc... lots of people started using the public transport rather than private bus, cars or others. It may have had a small negative impact on walking and bike but overall I can only see positive impacts (after 30years of use). Teenagers are more autonomous, city center got a lot more attractiv for small businesses, poor workers got a cheap solution to get to work/groceries/etc.

Live in Beijing: bus costs 1rmb (0.14usd) regardless of distance in city limits. Wait times are so short as to not need a schedule. Motorists need to be charged for their externalities (noise and air pollution, injury and fatality, damage to land use planning, etc) and cities should return on-street parking to residents (like Paris is doing).

The biggest problem I see with this kinda stuff, the cities need to be more easily accessible outside of a car, but also that public transportation needs to be updated and made better and the 1st priority over cars when it comes to how streets are built. Ideally the way streets are priorities should be ; walks, bikes/scooters, low weight slow cars/bikes, then heavy cars and trucks, with a separate road made for things like semis.