First we do not have the luxury to provide free transit at the expense of reduced service. We’ve already and will have transit cuts because of reduced tax revenues. If we were to raise taxes for transit, we should restore these cuts. We have more transit in 2000 than we will have in 2010.

Of course free transit will create security issues. Muni is pretty bad with gangsters-like folks boarding through the back door, not paying the fare, and start bothering people. BART ended all-day free rides for spare the air days after the first year just because the same gangsters could ride all the way to the suburbs and steal/vandalize cars.

Idea of free transit assumes that the price is the only barrier to transit use. I don’t agree. Most people in this area (especially those who own cars) aren’t that poor. What it kept them away from transit is the lack of transit and poor quality transit. Free transit doesn’t nothing to address both. Would someone give up their cars because they can ride free on the 14-Mission, but have to put up with slow travel time and gangsters on the back of the bus bothering others?

Instead of broad free fares, improving transit payment will help increase transit use by reducing the upfront cost barrier. Things like day pass, Translink will go a long way. Downtown fareless zone can encourage people to park in one place and use transit to go to different areas to shop, and reduce cost for those who ride regional transit into downtown but need feeder transit to areas aren’t directly served by regional transit.

Institutions can also buy eco passes. That way “free transit” could be done locally without severe impact on the rest of the transit system, and allow those institutions to address transportation problems locally. Those institutions could pay the transit agencies rather than spending the same if not more money on additional parking facilities.

In other words what is a “metro” and what is “commuter rail” and “intercity rail”. Do the advocates for free metro also advocate for free inter city rail? Where do you draw the line?

In the Bay area, imho, free MUNI Metro could not be construed as encouraging sprawl, whereas free BART could definitely be construed as encouraging urban sprawl.

(BTW, in the Bay Area, we have no metro metro, just commuter rail (BART,CALTRAIN and ACE) and light rail (Muni Metro and VTA LRT)

Then there is the whole concept of FARE COORDINATION, which is another key ingredient to making transit affordable, and that they have down pat in Italy and Germany: one ticket one fare, usable in the entire metro area, regardless of transit operator, (and they have many!!) I have this info as a powerpoint, not on my blog yet).

Oh no!
“Bah, those pesky kids, riding for fun!” =)

Well, if someone enjoys riding the subway, then hey, go for it I say.. for some reason, I have a hard time imagining someone finding it fun to ride during peak hours.

And therein lies part of the problem, why should the citizens be bound to, or tempted to use one specific mode of transportation? I can normally bike all around the city but do not want to do so in minus degrees due to the high probability of skiddy roads and thereby an accident.

I don’t believe in full tax financing: i think this would lead to blatant overuse of the public transport system. Whatever company runs the PT systems must focus on (1) basic services (thereby cutting costs) and (2) a pay-as-you-go model.

Students used to ride transit for free and after that ended (students still paid a discounted fare), the student organization introduced an insurance similar to what the article describes.

The best way to reduce sprawl is to combine free or very inexpensive public transit with well planned high-density mixed-income housing located near job centers. And I’m not talking about BART to Livermore here, I’m talking about systems like MUNI, VTA, and AC.

not sure what you mean by this. as far as i understand it, commuter railers and BART folks already enjoy bigger subsidies than bus folks, and all of them more than cyclists (arguably). so…what? are you saying that making existing transit systems fare-free will increase sprawl somehow? or help maintain it? or…?

If you provide transportation for free, people will consume more transportation.

this might just be a Europe/US language issue, but ‘public transports’ does not mean ‘transportation’ — it means ‘public transit’. we’re not talking about further subsidizing cars, here, we’re talking about making transit slightly more attractive to potential riders by making it free — that’s it. i think this nullifies/makes inapplicable a couple of your other points.

- Therefore, the best policy is to reduce subsidies for transportation. Removing subsidies to the automobile will do far, far more to pull back sprawl than adding larger subsidies for transit.

removing subsidies for cars is a tough task, politically, because many (most?) voters are car drivers, but adding subsidies for public transit is probably a bit more plausible, imo.

in the context of the American consumer economy, there is nothing less radical than demanding to consume more for free

seems like ‘consumer’ is the new favorite buzzword lately. did someone just publish a book talking about consumerism or something? what is a ‘consumer economy’? it seems like a meaningless buzzphrase to me.

in any case, ‘free’ is shorthand for ‘fare-free, but paid for by all with taxes’. this was explicitly addressed in the article.

and not stuffed to the gills would do far more to attract riders than making public transit free

this is the one caveat i’d have to a free public transit plan — we’d have to have a way to control overcrowding. i think decongestion pricing is worth a shot, but i’m not sure how to handle different directions of travel — some of which are peak, but others, not — except maybe with electronic cards of some type. we’ll see what nyc comes up with for their off-peak pricing. i think at least one or two other US transit systems already do peak/decongestion pricing, but i’m not sure.

But yes, offering more subsidies to transit won’t work nearly as well as taking away the huge subsidies offered vehicle travel.

this may or may not be true — i say we give it a try and find out. some of the ‘free public transport’ campaigns around the world seem to have had astonishing success.

No Fare Is Fair! — i like the sound of that.

I’m on BART regularly, and I see a lot of fare jumpers and no cops running around. I’d like to know what other people have seen in this regard. I think large numbers of people have taken this issue into their own hands. The hoisting maneuver takes a certain athleticism, but it’s easily mastered.

I spoke to a BART employee in downtown Oakland once, who said that the Bay Area population is seen by the workers as much more pleasant and easy to get along with than in other cities – security is generally not seen as a big problem. I’m curious about other people’s thoughts on this as well.

I was in Zurich a few years ago, and although the mass transit wasn’t free, it was cheap and there were always trains, buses, you name it coming. And you could rent bicycles for free. Zurich is one of the most affluent cities in the world, and I think their transit policies are a big reason why.

I certainly agree that a ‘no fare’ approach would be a lot more effective for transit worker strikes, but I don’t think it can keep a transit system working effectively indefinitely.

At a minimum, a fare lets system operators try to understand where the demand for their service is, and start to supply resources for that need. There are certainly cleverer technologies for getting that information now, but a token or some currency is the lowest-common-denominator.

Also, while fares will never cover total system costs, a ‘free rider’ system could only begin to work in a system that’s already been built, not one that is expanding (as even BART and MUNI have). Calgary’s light rail, for example, can maintain free riding downtown (subsidized by downtown businesses), but no where else in their expanding network.

I don’t think we should treat 25 year olds as “youth” either. That is unless we also plan to suspend the driving age to 25. Then I’m all for it.

If I recall a metro ticket in Stockholm is 35 Kronor which at the time was 7 Kronor to the Dollar, making the ride cost $5. Denmark is 11 Dk Kroner/Zone, with with a minimum of 2 zones, Last I knew it was 5.5 Dk Kroner to the dollar making their cheapest fare $4, at those prices I would jump fares more often myself.

But yes, offering more subsidies to transit won’t work nearly as well as taking away the huge subsidies offered vehicle travel.