@ohtheurbanity

So, before attempting to watch it — does this even begin to consider anything beyond money?

The way I always think of it is that once you get a critical mass (pun intended) of people taking mass transit instead of driving in a city, you can start spending a LOT less on road building and repair, traffic enforcement, parking infrastructure, emergency response to car wrecks, and the many other societal costs to car culture, and that would provide a return on investment for the capital expenditure of improving transit and lost fare revenue. Of course that requires something approaching long-term thinking.

@ohtheurbanity it's a bit naughty to compare a single-area transit pass with car ownership. The deal-breaker is often the monthly intercity trip to see family, where even a one-person return ticket can cost about the same as the fuel plus an entire month's fixed costs, and a group ticket is more. I resent spending hours driving but the train is 25% slower and five times the price. Even park and rail would cost slightly more.

@ohtheurbanity so why no discussion of Luxembourg? @notjustbikes seems to think it works well as free there, what with all the expansion going on.

And it sounded like some of those surveys were of existing transit users, who by definition obviously aren't deterred by fares, so that's a biased population. You mentioned surveys of non-users, but not in much detail, with no graphs.

While I largely agree with the thesis and conclusions of the video, one thing to be considered is the pretty non-trivial costs involved with actually collecting the fares. IT infrastructure, gate staff, enforcement, payment provider fees, other potential operational costs such as servicing ticketing machines.

This whole line item in the budget is actively going towards something that has an immediate negative impact on the quality of user experience (having to pay, navigating ticketing rules, passing gates) and service quality (less efficient foot traffic in and out of stations, longer dwell times for buses to wait for fare collection to complete).

The ideal user experience and service quality can only really be reached with a fully fareless system. We should keep this as the long-term vision, while being pragmatic and prioritizing other service investments on the way there.

I think you have a lot of good points but one important thing to consider is that people not taking transit also have cost to the government. In fact it is probable that someone driving costs the government more than someone taking transit. (Because the government pays for the roads with usually no usage-based fee.) So when you look at it that way it is a bit ridiculous to give people a more expensive way to get around for free but charge them for the cheaper alternative. So in isolation every person who takes transit over driving saves the government money, even if they aren't paying a fare.

Of course the real world is very complicated and governments would struggle to account this accurately, and giving up current fare income to save money on additional riders is very unlikely to break even. But I think overall if you think of it less "more funding from nowhere" and instead "funding from what we can save on roads" then it makes more sense overall.

I think your conclusion is still right for most cities, but it is an important aspect to consider.

@ohtheurbanity

- free libraries "sound" great, but...
- free k-12 education sounds great
- free fire department sounds great...

I see 2 sides:
- theoretical: we decide that some things should be free at point-of-use
- practical: we start where we are, and it's hard to get from here to there, so we compromise and say, yeah, we just can't make the jump to good, free transit

A better question than "should transit be free" is "what conditions would be necessary 1st", then work towards those

@ohtheurbanity
Very good video.
I do think that part of the hypothetical extra funding would have to go to fare enforcement, because (1) I find that bus drivers having to enforce fares is very suboptimal and (2) in Montréal at the very least, they cut a lot of ticket booth operators.
Also, I am much more in favor of mass transit subsidies for low-income households, as suggested by Steve Lafleur back then, than for free transit.
#transit #canada #montreal