In Brisbane, Australia they run a 6-month trial to make all public transport trips to be 50c (that includes buses, metro, ferries). It was so successful and widely loved that it was a no-brainier for it to be extended indefinitely
While I have never lived in a place with free transit, I have lived in places where it was possible to board trains without passing through fare gates and certain busses through the rear exit. It is amazing how much faster boarding is. They probably face some lost fares, but the benefit of faster travel times outweigh the cost.
I also think that those criticizing free fares are disingenuous. None of those cities had problems with (insert stereotypical undesirable group) using public transit. If anything, there were fewer issues because everyone was more inclined to behave since there were more eyes on the trains and busses.
EDIT: it's also worth noting that collecting money costs money. That's especially noticeable when upgrading to (or to new) electronic fare systems, but it's also true when using things like tickets and cash. It probably doesn't mean such in the cities I've lived in ($3+ fares), but I'll bet it accounts for a lot more in cities that charge $0.50 or $1 fares.
In most systems, fares just about cover the cost of collecting fares. They contribute little if anything to operating expenses. Their effect is to limit usage. That could be desirable, but usually not.
I've tried to calculate this for the New York City Metro, but they spend about $1 billion per year collecting $5 billion per year, out of a budget of $20 billion per year. Year so they would need to make up about $4 billion per year if they were to eliminate fare collection, or increase the budget by 20%.
In my mind it would be a no-brainer for all the benefits you would get from free service, but 20% increase in cost is not an easy sell - especially when a lot of people paying tax on it never go to NYC
While we should never expect public transit to be self funding removing fares removes the ability for transit funds to scale with ridership, there is a reason that farebox ratios are correlated with ridership.
Sure, yet it also established a double standard. In my neck of the woods, most busses operate on municipal roads. Municipal roads are funded by municipal taxes, and the municipality does not have the right to charge fuel taxes. The revenue that they collect from drivers is from parking and parking permits in a tiny fraction of the city, as well as property taxes on the low value land used for parking lots. City council would face a bloodbath if they tried to increase revenues for road maintenance directly from road users. Never mind asking those users cover the cost of appropriating land and new road construction, which is being driven by the excessive use of vehicles that are occupied by one or two people. Yet transit users are typically expected to fund about half of transit operations. If they're lucky, the provincial or federal government will throw some money their way for new busses.
Iowa City is in Johnson County. A 2024 point-in-time count of the chronic homeless population--the highly visible population noticeably encountered in public spaces--in Johnson and Washington Counties combined is less than 200 people. See https://opportunityiowa.gov/media/5390/download?inline#page=... There are also only 13 bus routes, and it's a college town with a significant percentage of price-sensitive student ridership (i.e. highly elastic demand) that either wouldn't qualify or wouldn't bother applying for fare subsidies or passes (common in major metro regions). The context is incomparable to major coastal cities.
We know free transit works in many cases. There are plenty of examples. But it's rare to compare and contrast the contexts. (But, see, e.g., this 2012 National Academy of Sciences report: https://cvtdbus.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/2012-07-TCRP-...) It's far easier to promote free transit than it is to address underlying issues, like regulatory barriers to housing production and infrastructure projects, that limit organic improvements to social welfare and which are likely to cause free transit to fail long-term in large, diverse metro areas.
I live there in that city. There are hardly any homeless at all here. Not like other cities at least. I could see it being a major problem in other places.
It does seem that it should be possible to offer "free buses" without having to also offer "free hotels inside of the free buses". As an example, I can go to a local store and experience free parking or go to my nearby town and park for free downtown. I can't, however, park and sleep overnight in my car in that shopping centre or in that town.
Last time I visited New York I was lucky to have a companion who knew all the ways to get around including the free bus lines. The people using these buses were no different from those using buses and other public transportation that charged fares.
Ipso facto, eliminating fare collection eliminates crime. Fare evasion as a crime amounts to make-work for cops. Not all value, and often least of all value in public goods, is derived from charging at the point of use.
Everyone, but especially the working poor deserve a civilized way to get to work. Without screaming, smelly, sleeping, druggies taking up the seats. Or worse.
Bus drivers don't seem too excited to enforce the fare either. They're not exactly law enforcement; it might be dangerous and it would delay everyone else on the bus.
There's nothing "made up" about it. It actually happens. There are areas of this country with endemic homelessness and absolutely no strategy to address it. So, you get the obvious:
Yeah but what are the actual problems? It shouldn’t be a crime to not have a house. We should probably focus on actual problems like peeing or being intoxicated on the bus which are the actual harms.
Whilst it's not a crime not to have a house, providing housing via free buses is a very poor way to address people who don't have houses, and it has an unfortunate side effect of pushing people who would otherwise use public transportation away from using it.
Falling asleep on a bus is a great way to get victimized. The homeless are most likely to be victimized by other homeless. It almost never gets reported to the police.
It's not a shelter and it's not meant to be converted into one. To me it's an indication of an overworked and failing system that leaves people in bad situations because it has nowhere else for them to go.
Sure, you could argue that because there's currently no obvious major problems, that you could just leave it as is and be entirely unconcerned with it, or even go so far as to suggest that anyone who does want to fix it is doing so in bad faith. I think that's cruel and lazy.
The actual problem? These people need _real_ shelter.
It must not have anything to do with free fares, then, so it seems like an irrelevant thing to bring up here. There are no major west coast cities with free buses.
Homeless already often get access to free or cheap passes, often that allow unlimited rides.
Insisting that we charge everyone a bus fare because we think otherwise it might make it eaier to homeless people to use the bus is not only uninformed, but also heartless.
If you have problems with homeless people on buses, then figure out why those people aren't in a better shelter and solve that problem.
which is all low income housing on top of a conference center with maybe 1/4 of the units for people who had been unhoused. I think most of the people there are not criminally minded and keep to themselves but there are a few people there who are starting fires, dealing drugs, and causing damage. (Note a few windows in that image are busted out) Many homeless people have dogs that are important to them and wouldn’t be housed if they couldn’t bring their dogs, but… last year they had an outbreak of parovirus because dogs were having puppies and the puppies weren’t getting shots. A friend of mine got bit by a dog across the street from that place and thought it belonged to someone who lived there.
Some of it is people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can be almost impossible to live with if they aren’t getting treatment and I’m worried that deinstitutionalization will have a even more profoundly negative legacy seen 50 years from now than it already does. Not least, a 20 year old today spent many years of their life in a classroom where a ‘special’ kid sucked all the air out of the room and will probably be highly receptive to the notion that if we ‘get rid’ of 5% of people we can live in a utopia. If being in public means being in a space dominated by someone screaming at the demons they hallucinated then people will move to the suburbs instead of the downtown, they will not support public transit, they will order a private taxi for their burrito instead of eating out. They’ll retreat to Facebook.
They're not, and it's not really an HN thing to respond like you did. The guidelines ask you to assume best intent and engage in good faith.
Here good faith curiosity would have led you to where peer replies are pointing you: that free transit in big metros tends to come with loitering issues, and if they become too extreme, it can make the transit system pretty inhospitable and uninviting for the families and working people meant to be using it, undermining the purpose of making it free.
It's a genuine challenge that metros of a certain scale need to address, although the OP is maybe (or maybe not) wrong in assuming that it would be an issue in a fairly small/high-trust college metro like Iowa City. But, in best interpretation of their comment, that's why they were asking it as a question.
What do you mean made-up problem? This is an extremely common problem in many areas. Sketchy characters will definitely stay on the bus and create unsafe environments for the bus driver and the customer unless there are systems in place.
All public transport should be like $1. You need to charge something to keep the crackheads out, but it should not be enough that people think 'oh I better walk/cycle/drive instead to save money'
This would happen naturally except that most US cities have made it illegal to build anything without gobs of parking attached, so car drivers like myself get a government handout.
In Tokyo, parking is managed by the market, so it’s incredibly expensive. So it’s always cheaper to take public transit without artificially low public transit prices.
Downtown any big city is accessible by car, but parking fees keep most people away. At least, I won't willingly drive to destinations inside downtown of a big city, unless it's something special that can't be managed otherwise.
Which means suburban style businesses have an advantage, and eventually downtown merchants form an association and start pushing for free parking so they can get customers to show up.
From experience, $1 is not enough to keep out the people who spend the whole trip talking about where they want to go to jail for the winter.
And $1 is already expensive enough that if the destination is within 5-10 miles, driving is cheaper if you already have a car and parking, so you are keeping that class of people out.
Though really I find the main reason people don't take the bus is that there aren't enough buses (in time or space) for where/when people really want to go. This is an `m×n` problem.
How are you calculating driving any distance as being cheaper than $1? Surely if you factor in wear-and-tear on the car, you couldn't even get out of the driveway without eating that $1.
Let's say a gallon of gas costs $4 and your car gets 40 MPG. So $1 gets you 10 miles if you only consider gas (which very many people do, even if you think they shouldn't - much maintenance is imagined as time-based, and this is not entirely wrong - cars do decay even if you don't drive them, and insurance only rarely considers your odometer and only coarsely if so).
Wear and tear is generally assumed to be roughly equal to gas costs on well-maintained roads, depending on a lot of varying assumptions of what to include. So, 5 miles.
Adding depreciation, recurring costs such as insurance, parking, perhaps even opportunity cost from capital allocated in a depreciating asset. It starts to not look that cheap.
It really doesn't, though, especially if you've already decide to drive 10 or 20 miles for some other reason. Marginally, the cost of driving 5 miles is quite a bit less than $1.
That would be amazing and is worth serious effort and resources. However I wonder if you could find one country that's managed to do this successfully (eradication not reduction)? It's often not really about housing and healthcare, it's about addiction, mental health, childhood trauma..
"Homeless" in that sense, however, are not rough sleepers (people who actually sleep outside), which would seem to be what is meant in this context.
It's by no means zero, but in autum 2024, rough sleepers were estimated at less than 4700 in the UK. That might well represent and undercount, but it is certainly nowhere remotely near the people counted as homeless, who would include anyone without a permanent address, such a people e.g. sleeping at friends places on a non-permnanet basis.
What would happen if you had to tap a card/phone to get in to the subway system (and this was enforced, no jumping turnstiles), and then have to tap it to get out too.
Then if someone is habitually in the system for a significantly longer time than it reasonably takes to travel from point A to B, deactivate their access.
iPhone NFC will work for a while even when “dead”, not sure about the android world.
But in the edge case of the edge case, security can let you out. If it becomes a pattern, they’ll note it somehow.
Seems like the most important thing to do is _anything_. The current approach of doing nothing and shaming people who suggest public transport is a poor option because it’s full of druggies doesn’t seem to work.
Do you really think people are homeless because of lack of housing? Have you seen what becomes of a house when homeless people are moved into one? A huge percentage of homeless are homeless by choice.
I'm pro paying for them to get whatever housing and healthcare they need via taxes, just like everyone else. It's not like it's that simple though. Giving someone a house and a doctor will not get them off heroin on its own and may not even help them very much at all honestly.
Most heroin addicts can be remarkably close to a normal functioning healthy person if they don't live in precarious conditions without access to a clean supply.
The proportion of heroin addicts who would still be wrecks with healthcare that extends to prescribing what they need is miniscule.
So the first problem is thinking you need to get them off heroin to be able to start dramatically helping.
> Giving someone a house and a doctor will not get them off heroin on its own and may not even help them very much at all honestly.
Giving someone a house and health care will, though.
Every addict I have ever known (I’ve known many) consume drugs in order to escape something. Addressing this while also treating the user will indeed help them. Mental health care + physical health care = “health care” in my opening sentence.
I don’t know what it is about people in the US, but almost all of us completely reject the idea that someone can be held down entirely by their own mind. Large amounts of people are, and those that don’t seem to understand that this is possible are often people whose own mind holds them down, but not so much that they’re homeless.
People in other countries get this. We do not. I don’t understand it.
Fares end up being a trade off between service area and ridership. Eliminating fares tends to mean cuts to service for the same budget, so your service area would drop. Alternatively, having fares will allow for some more service, to cover more area but some people might not ride. Becomes dependent then on the goals of the transit system.
Whenever this is discussed where I live, drivers come out of the woodwork to oppose it. And of course they also complain endlessly about traffic. It amuses me to no end.
I'm conservative. I think buses should be free. Then they'll actually get used and all the secondary benefits they were supposed to bring will be much more easily realized.
You need public transport in major cities. Not everyone can or should drive.
You need private transportation almost everywhere. Not everyone should be forced to ride public transport just because it exists.
As long as people have an actual choice that's not manipulated in some way then I think the system is fine. It has a public function and it provides immediate and secondary benefits.
That tracks, it's a situation where most people are going to the same place so public transit has a huge advantage.
I am surprised that the bus wasn't already free; in my college town and the one near it (both had their own bus line), fares are free for all undergraduates.
My experience with bus service in college towns is that the routes between campus and student residential areas get heavy use, while the buses serving the rest of the town drive around nearly empty.
That is a particularly fine line to walk for the modern conservative. Government should not be picking winners, except for the very targeted tariffs that just happen to benefit company X or Y.
I would note that based on my experience in Africa, there were a lot of private buses being operated, ridership was high, and the buses were cheap.
In America we have very few private intra-city buses, ridership is low, and the buses are very expensive when you consider how much goes to them in the way of subsidies.
This works really well if you don't have a sizeable drug / crime problem in your community. I can't imagine it's going to work in American cities where women are already being lit on fire and stabbed to death by their fellow commuters. But Iowa City? Sure why not.
The woman who got gasoline poured on her and lit on fire in Chicago last week isn't helping either. It doesn't make people like my wife, for example, excited about the idea of going and riding public transportation alone.
We did this in the seventies too. I get that it’s infuriating but I don’t get how the solution is to charge $3.00. I’ve seen guys on street corners get more in one handout. Meanwhile we’re letting one guy ruin it like Bin Laden did air travel.
It's all probability distributions. A bus driver will usually stop the bus and refuse to move if someone refuses to pay the fair. People who skip fairs are more likely to commit other crimes. If you put these together, you improve the probability that a subhuman doesn't get to commit acts of violence on public transit.
Actually, it was, given that many right wingers who benefit from a sense of unease from existing in society boosted the video to make it seem like more than an a random act of crime, done by a schizophrenic man who wasn't treated properly.
> [The suspect's] mother told ABC News that [the suspect] was diagnosed with schizophrenia [...] and displayed violent behavior at home. His mother said that she had sought involuntary commitment, but that it was denied.
> Elon Musk criticized judges and district attorneys for allowing "criminals to roam free".
> U.S. President Donald Trump called the attacker a "madman" and "lunatic", and said that "when you have horrible killings, you have to take horrible actions. And the actions that we take are nothing", before blaming local officials in places like Chicago for failing to stop crime and denounced cashless bail.
> On the same day, the White House released a statement criticizing "North Carolina's Democrat politicians, prosecutors, and judges" for "prioritizing woke agendas that fail to protect their citizens".
> On September 9, the White House released a video in which Trump said that Zarutska was "slaughtered by a deranged monster".
> On September 24, U.S. Vice President JD Vance discussed the killing in a visit to Concord, North Carolina, blaming it on "soft-on-crime policies" and stating he was "open" to deploying the North Carolina National Guard to Charlotte if requested by Governor Stein and Mayor Lyles.
> The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary held a field hearing in Charlotte on September 29 on safety in public transit systems and the treatment of repeat offenders.
Saying that there are cities with endemic violence and anti-social behavior tolerated by left-leaning DAs, which inevitably leads to someone with dozens of priors committing heinous acts of violence, now qualifies as white nationalism? For real???
There are alternatives to dealing with violence and anti-social behavior aside from the boot of quasi-military police on those that struggle.
Some people and places consistently appeal to greater and greater draconian use of force, other places and people resort first to social policy to take tempretures down and to not regard schizophrenics as "subhumans".
I hope you aren't insinuating this is my position? That man is a subhuman. He is lesser than a rat. I wish him nothing but unending torment and fear for many years to come. In no way is my contempt for him universally applicable to all schizophrenics. I judge the man by his actions not his condition.
Iowa city doesn't even run buses on the weekends/holidays. I really don't think this should be a model for real urban centers
I live in the SF Bay Area. For a family weekend day trip to SF, taking BART costs $50+, and we always elect to just drive.
I wonder how much the traffic would improve in/out of SF if BART is cheaper.
So many public transit options just absolutely fall about if you have more than the standard 1.5 kids.
It adds up super fast; even “kids ride free with parent” would go a long way.
If you have any transfers as part of that to muni or other services you'll be happy to know that they'll be much cheaper/free starting in December.
https://clipper2.hikingbytransit.com/
We just need to subsidize public transport like we subsidize roads.
In Brisbane, Australia they run a 6-month trial to make all public transport trips to be 50c (that includes buses, metro, ferries). It was so successful and widely loved that it was a no-brainier for it to be extended indefinitely
The real benefits come from eliminating fares.
While I have never lived in a place with free transit, I have lived in places where it was possible to board trains without passing through fare gates and certain busses through the rear exit. It is amazing how much faster boarding is. They probably face some lost fares, but the benefit of faster travel times outweigh the cost.
I also think that those criticizing free fares are disingenuous. None of those cities had problems with (insert stereotypical undesirable group) using public transit. If anything, there were fewer issues because everyone was more inclined to behave since there were more eyes on the trains and busses.
EDIT: it's also worth noting that collecting money costs money. That's especially noticeable when upgrading to (or to new) electronic fare systems, but it's also true when using things like tickets and cash. It probably doesn't mean such in the cities I've lived in ($3+ fares), but I'll bet it accounts for a lot more in cities that charge $0.50 or $1 fares.
I’ve lived in civilized places, but uncivilized is probably more common: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-14/horror-t...
In most systems, fares just about cover the cost of collecting fares. They contribute little if anything to operating expenses. Their effect is to limit usage. That could be desirable, but usually not.
I've tried to calculate this for the New York City Metro, but they spend about $1 billion per year collecting $5 billion per year, out of a budget of $20 billion per year. Year so they would need to make up about $4 billion per year if they were to eliminate fare collection, or increase the budget by 20%.
In my mind it would be a no-brainer for all the benefits you would get from free service, but 20% increase in cost is not an easy sell - especially when a lot of people paying tax on it never go to NYC
If more people use it, the operating cost will increase. So it'll be a bit more than 20%.
While we should never expect public transit to be self funding removing fares removes the ability for transit funds to scale with ridership, there is a reason that farebox ratios are correlated with ridership.
Sure, yet it also established a double standard. In my neck of the woods, most busses operate on municipal roads. Municipal roads are funded by municipal taxes, and the municipality does not have the right to charge fuel taxes. The revenue that they collect from drivers is from parking and parking permits in a tiny fraction of the city, as well as property taxes on the low value land used for parking lots. City council would face a bloodbath if they tried to increase revenues for road maintenance directly from road users. Never mind asking those users cover the cost of appropriating land and new road construction, which is being driven by the excessive use of vehicles that are occupied by one or two people. Yet transit users are typically expected to fund about half of transit operations. If they're lucky, the provincial or federal government will throw some money their way for new busses.
Paris, Amsterdam, Kopenhagen, Utrecht did it with bikes https://www.ethicalmarkets.com/paris-air-pollution-is-down-5...
I just love cycling in Paris (apart from winter...) the experience is amazing, and the city is beautiful. It's a joy to experience the city this way.
Both bicycles & free transports would be even better !
Do they clear out each bus at some end point of the route, so homeless people can't live on the bus?
Iowa City is in Johnson County. A 2024 point-in-time count of the chronic homeless population--the highly visible population noticeably encountered in public spaces--in Johnson and Washington Counties combined is less than 200 people. See https://opportunityiowa.gov/media/5390/download?inline#page=... There are also only 13 bus routes, and it's a college town with a significant percentage of price-sensitive student ridership (i.e. highly elastic demand) that either wouldn't qualify or wouldn't bother applying for fare subsidies or passes (common in major metro regions). The context is incomparable to major coastal cities.
We know free transit works in many cases. There are plenty of examples. But it's rare to compare and contrast the contexts. (But, see, e.g., this 2012 National Academy of Sciences report: https://cvtdbus.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/2012-07-TCRP-...) It's far easier to promote free transit than it is to address underlying issues, like regulatory barriers to housing production and infrastructure projects, that limit organic improvements to social welfare and which are likely to cause free transit to fail long-term in large, diverse metro areas.
I live there in that city. There are hardly any homeless at all here. Not like other cities at least. I could see it being a major problem in other places.
It does seem that it should be possible to offer "free buses" without having to also offer "free hotels inside of the free buses". As an example, I can go to a local store and experience free parking or go to my nearby town and park for free downtown. I can't, however, park and sleep overnight in my car in that shopping centre or in that town.
Why can't buses be regulated the same way?
Last time I visited New York I was lucky to have a companion who knew all the ways to get around including the free bus lines. The people using these buses were no different from those using buses and other public transportation that charged fares.
Ipso facto, eliminating fare collection eliminates crime. Fare evasion as a crime amounts to make-work for cops. Not all value, and often least of all value in public goods, is derived from charging at the point of use.
When I was younger and lived near Iowa City homelessness was nearly unseen. Not sure what it's like these days.
Having a fare wouldn’t affect this much. It’s not too hard to get someone to spot you a couple of bucks at a bus stop.
Honestly it’s not that big a deal if someone sleeps on the bus. Homeless, drunk, tired from work, whatever.
Everyone, but especially the working poor deserve a civilized way to get to work. Without screaming, smelly, sleeping, druggies taking up the seats. Or worse.
If you’re appalled by the idea, you may not be aware: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-14/horror-t...
LAMetro recently woke up and started cleaning this up. Not sure how long it will take before ridership fully returns.
Bus drivers don't seem too excited to enforce the fare either. They're not exactly law enforcement; it might be dangerous and it would delay everyone else on the bus.
Are you having fun concern trolling about your made-up problem?
There's nothing "made up" about it. It actually happens. There are areas of this country with endemic homelessness and absolutely no strategy to address it. So, you get the obvious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVKE2pqUjIA
Yeah but what are the actual problems? It shouldn’t be a crime to not have a house. We should probably focus on actual problems like peeing or being intoxicated on the bus which are the actual harms.
Whilst it's not a crime not to have a house, providing housing via free buses is a very poor way to address people who don't have houses, and it has an unfortunate side effect of pushing people who would otherwise use public transportation away from using it.
Falling asleep on a bus is a great way to get victimized. The homeless are most likely to be victimized by other homeless. It almost never gets reported to the police.
It's not a shelter and it's not meant to be converted into one. To me it's an indication of an overworked and failing system that leaves people in bad situations because it has nowhere else for them to go.
Sure, you could argue that because there's currently no obvious major problems, that you could just leave it as is and be entirely unconcerned with it, or even go so far as to suggest that anyone who does want to fix it is doing so in bad faith. I think that's cruel and lazy.
The actual problem? These people need _real_ shelter.
Do daily commutes by bus in a major west coast city. You'll quickly find this is no made up problem.
It must not have anything to do with free fares, then, so it seems like an irrelevant thing to bring up here. There are no major west coast cities with free buses.
Homeless already often get access to free or cheap passes, often that allow unlimited rides.
Insisting that we charge everyone a bus fare because we think otherwise it might make it eaier to homeless people to use the bus is not only uninformed, but also heartless.
If you have problems with homeless people on buses, then figure out why those people aren't in a better shelter and solve that problem.
It’s not easy to shelter people.
In Ithaca we recently built this place
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115398619308992584
which is all low income housing on top of a conference center with maybe 1/4 of the units for people who had been unhoused. I think most of the people there are not criminally minded and keep to themselves but there are a few people there who are starting fires, dealing drugs, and causing damage. (Note a few windows in that image are busted out) Many homeless people have dogs that are important to them and wouldn’t be housed if they couldn’t bring their dogs, but… last year they had an outbreak of parovirus because dogs were having puppies and the puppies weren’t getting shots. A friend of mine got bit by a dog across the street from that place and thought it belonged to someone who lived there.
Some of it is people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder can be almost impossible to live with if they aren’t getting treatment and I’m worried that deinstitutionalization will have a even more profoundly negative legacy seen 50 years from now than it already does. Not least, a 20 year old today spent many years of their life in a classroom where a ‘special’ kid sucked all the air out of the room and will probably be highly receptive to the notion that if we ‘get rid’ of 5% of people we can live in a utopia. If being in public means being in a space dominated by someone screaming at the demons they hallucinated then people will move to the suburbs instead of the downtown, they will not support public transit, they will order a private taxi for their burrito instead of eating out. They’ll retreat to Facebook.
Particular to the US in many ways.
Not an issue for cheap / free public transport in many other countries mentioned.
Perhaps the manner in which the US deals with the distribution of income and basic human needs could use a few tweaks.
Alternately, the US is simply much more tolerant of dysfunction and antisocial behavior.
They're not, and it's not really an HN thing to respond like you did. The guidelines ask you to assume best intent and engage in good faith.
Here good faith curiosity would have led you to where peer replies are pointing you: that free transit in big metros tends to come with loitering issues, and if they become too extreme, it can make the transit system pretty inhospitable and uninviting for the families and working people meant to be using it, undermining the purpose of making it free.
It's a genuine challenge that metros of a certain scale need to address, although the OP is maybe (or maybe not) wrong in assuming that it would be an issue in a fairly small/high-trust college metro like Iowa City. But, in best interpretation of their comment, that's why they were asking it as a question.
What do you mean made-up problem? This is an extremely common problem in many areas. Sketchy characters will definitely stay on the bus and create unsafe environments for the bus driver and the customer unless there are systems in place.
I dont think you have ever regularly rode a public bus before.
that is exactly what homeless people be doing.
Do you live in the real world or a utopian fantasy of your own making?
All public transport should be like $1. You need to charge something to keep the crackheads out, but it should not be enough that people think 'oh I better walk/cycle/drive instead to save money'
This would happen naturally except that most US cities have made it illegal to build anything without gobs of parking attached, so car drivers like myself get a government handout.
In Tokyo, parking is managed by the market, so it’s incredibly expensive. So it’s always cheaper to take public transit without artificially low public transit prices.
Downtown any big city is accessible by car, but parking fees keep most people away. At least, I won't willingly drive to destinations inside downtown of a big city, unless it's something special that can't be managed otherwise.
Which means suburban style businesses have an advantage, and eventually downtown merchants form an association and start pushing for free parking so they can get customers to show up.
From experience, $1 is not enough to keep out the people who spend the whole trip talking about where they want to go to jail for the winter.
And $1 is already expensive enough that if the destination is within 5-10 miles, driving is cheaper if you already have a car and parking, so you are keeping that class of people out.
Though really I find the main reason people don't take the bus is that there aren't enough buses (in time or space) for where/when people really want to go. This is an `m×n` problem.
How are you calculating driving any distance as being cheaper than $1? Surely if you factor in wear-and-tear on the car, you couldn't even get out of the driveway without eating that $1.
Let's say a gallon of gas costs $4 and your car gets 40 MPG. So $1 gets you 10 miles if you only consider gas (which very many people do, even if you think they shouldn't - much maintenance is imagined as time-based, and this is not entirely wrong - cars do decay even if you don't drive them, and insurance only rarely considers your odometer and only coarsely if so).
Wear and tear is generally assumed to be roughly equal to gas costs on well-maintained roads, depending on a lot of varying assumptions of what to include. So, 5 miles.
Adding depreciation, recurring costs such as insurance, parking, perhaps even opportunity cost from capital allocated in a depreciating asset. It starts to not look that cheap.
Lots of those things are relatively fixed, so it’s a “use the car today” question, not a “do I buy a Car” ideation.
If you already have access to a car, the marginal cost of driving an extra mile is low.
Driving 5 miles costs a lot more than $1.
It really doesn't, though, especially if you've already decide to drive 10 or 20 miles for some other reason. Marginally, the cost of driving 5 miles is quite a bit less than $1.
Or maybe you could take serious steps for the homeless as well.
That would be amazing and is worth serious effort and resources. However I wonder if you could find one country that's managed to do this successfully (eradication not reduction)? It's often not really about housing and healthcare, it's about addiction, mental health, childhood trauma..
Dubai (actually all of UAE). Never seen 1 homeless, beggar, panhandler, crackhead or a fent zombie here.
I’d presume because they aren’t tolerated but correct me if I’m wrong.
Been to their graveyards?
Japan is remarkably close.
Cuba, also, but their economic priorities are very different.
every developed country on earth has solved this problem except us
addiction, mental health, childhood drama… only in america would that lead to sleeping on the streets
Sorry from Canada, we haven't solved it either.
Nobody thinks of Canada as a developed nation.
Are you saying Australia isn't developed?
The UK and France have hundreds of thousands of homeless.
"Homeless" in that sense, however, are not rough sleepers (people who actually sleep outside), which would seem to be what is meant in this context.
It's by no means zero, but in autum 2024, rough sleepers were estimated at less than 4700 in the UK. That might well represent and undercount, but it is certainly nowhere remotely near the people counted as homeless, who would include anyone without a permanent address, such a people e.g. sleeping at friends places on a non-permnanet basis.
In public transport? Or are you changing the subject?
What would happen if you had to tap a card/phone to get in to the subway system (and this was enforced, no jumping turnstiles), and then have to tap it to get out too.
Then if someone is habitually in the system for a significantly longer time than it reasonably takes to travel from point A to B, deactivate their access.
Edge case: what if your phone does while in transit, and you can't charge it?
In the UK, the newer trains and tube carriages all have USB ports for charging.
But, it is kind of a non issue. You are responsible for your ticket. Having a dead battery is no different to losing your paper ticket.
iPhone NFC will work for a while even when “dead”, not sure about the android world.
But in the edge case of the edge case, security can let you out. If it becomes a pattern, they’ll note it somehow.
Seems like the most important thing to do is _anything_. The current approach of doing nothing and shaming people who suggest public transport is a poor option because it’s full of druggies doesn’t seem to work.
Tap to enter/exit is already a thing. Rarely enforced here, however. Emergency exits and all that.
In Portland they make the busses free in the central area but charge a bit outside that, partly to stop homeless sleeping in the busses.
This went away years ago
And one reason it went away was because "fareless square" became a synonym for rather extreme levels of drug abuse.
Why do we want to prevent people from walking?
why not go in the other direction and get them housing and healthcare so they can be treated like people and will also not disrupt your ride
people from outside the US often think it’s a land of fabulously rich ppl and are aghast at how we treat our citizens
Easier to charge a dollar. Solve the simple problem first.
Then tackle the more complex.
> people from outside the US often think it’s a land of fabulously rich ppl and are aghast at how we treat our citizens
We can have concern for residents who feel justifiably unsafe and uncomfortable on public transit as well as homeless riders.
Do you really think people are homeless because of lack of housing? Have you seen what becomes of a house when homeless people are moved into one? A huge percentage of homeless are homeless by choice.
Hang on, in another comment you say you’re in Dubai where there aren’t any homeless. So how are you seeing this?
I'm pro paying for them to get whatever housing and healthcare they need via taxes, just like everyone else. It's not like it's that simple though. Giving someone a house and a doctor will not get them off heroin on its own and may not even help them very much at all honestly.
Most heroin addicts can be remarkably close to a normal functioning healthy person if they don't live in precarious conditions without access to a clean supply.
The proportion of heroin addicts who would still be wrecks with healthcare that extends to prescribing what they need is miniscule.
So the first problem is thinking you need to get them off heroin to be able to start dramatically helping.
it's actually highly effective for a majority of people. [1]
Otherwise, what do you propose?
1: https://nlihc.org/resource/new-study-finds-providing-people-...
> Giving someone a house and a doctor will not get them off heroin on its own and may not even help them very much at all honestly.
Giving someone a house and health care will, though.
Every addict I have ever known (I’ve known many) consume drugs in order to escape something. Addressing this while also treating the user will indeed help them. Mental health care + physical health care = “health care” in my opening sentence.
I don’t know what it is about people in the US, but almost all of us completely reject the idea that someone can be held down entirely by their own mind. Large amounts of people are, and those that don’t seem to understand that this is possible are often people whose own mind holds them down, but not so much that they’re homeless.
People in other countries get this. We do not. I don’t understand it.
I guess once the car companies find out about this, they’ll start lobbying the local government and put an end to this
That's how we lost public transit the first time. Here's hoping local government knows their history.
United States vs National City Lines, Inc. 1947.
Is it cheaper to lobby or to create an incompetent monopoly to ruin things?
Fares end up being a trade off between service area and ridership. Eliminating fares tends to mean cuts to service for the same budget, so your service area would drop. Alternatively, having fares will allow for some more service, to cover more area but some people might not ride. Becomes dependent then on the goals of the transit system.
Iowa city is a gem of a college town. Beautiful, vibrant and really nice people.
Maybe this program wouldn't work everywhere. Makes sense it would work there.
Whenever this is discussed where I live, drivers come out of the woodwork to oppose it. And of course they also complain endlessly about traffic. It amuses me to no end.
I am impressed there was no report of conservative backlash.
I'm conservative. I think buses should be free. Then they'll actually get used and all the secondary benefits they were supposed to bring will be much more easily realized.
You need public transport in major cities. Not everyone can or should drive.
You need private transportation almost everywhere. Not everyone should be forced to ride public transport just because it exists.
As long as people have an actual choice that's not manipulated in some way then I think the system is fine. It has a public function and it provides immediate and secondary benefits.
Iowa City is the bluest of Iowa cities. It's a university town.
That tracks, it's a situation where most people are going to the same place so public transit has a huge advantage.
I am surprised that the bus wasn't already free; in my college town and the one near it (both had their own bus line), fares are free for all undergraduates.
My experience with bus service in college towns is that the routes between campus and student residential areas get heavy use, while the buses serving the rest of the town drive around nearly empty.
U of I's cambus is free, but it has a limited route in and around the campus. City buses cover a lot more area.
That is a particularly fine line to walk for the modern conservative. Government should not be picking winners, except for the very targeted tariffs that just happen to benefit company X or Y.
I would note that based on my experience in Africa, there were a lot of private buses being operated, ridership was high, and the buses were cheap.
In America we have very few private intra-city buses, ridership is low, and the buses are very expensive when you consider how much goes to them in the way of subsidies.
Shouldn't be picking winners -- unless you can bully them for a cut of the business, of course.
Government should not be picking winners ... the company with the biggest bribe wins.
This works really well if you don't have a sizeable drug / crime problem in your community. I can't imagine it's going to work in American cities where women are already being lit on fire and stabbed to death by their fellow commuters. But Iowa City? Sure why not.
You can tell who actually lives in cities because they're the ones who see through this and go about their lives unafraid of city violence fanfic.
There’s a big difference between someone who happens to live in a city and someone who is reliant on public transit.
There's also a big difference between anecdotes/instances of crime and a statistical reason to live in fear.
Sure, but fear has little basis in statistics. People still worry about plane crashes and instead opt to drive.
Sure thing buddy
- Sent from my corn field
Please stop watching, andd being a pawn of, paid and party propoganda on tiktok et al.
Watching Iryna Zarutska get stabbed in the neck and a bunch of people do fuck-all to help her wasn't anyone's propaganda. Though it was radicalising.
The woman who got gasoline poured on her and lit on fire in Chicago last week isn't helping either. It doesn't make people like my wife, for example, excited about the idea of going and riding public transportation alone.
We did this in the seventies too. I get that it’s infuriating but I don’t get how the solution is to charge $3.00. I’ve seen guys on street corners get more in one handout. Meanwhile we’re letting one guy ruin it like Bin Laden did air travel.
It's all probability distributions. A bus driver will usually stop the bus and refuse to move if someone refuses to pay the fair. People who skip fairs are more likely to commit other crimes. If you put these together, you improve the probability that a subhuman doesn't get to commit acts of violence on public transit.
s/fair/fare/g;
Actually, it was, given that many right wingers who benefit from a sense of unease from existing in society boosted the video to make it seem like more than an a random act of crime, done by a schizophrenic man who wasn't treated properly.
> [The suspect's] mother told ABC News that [the suspect] was diagnosed with schizophrenia [...] and displayed violent behavior at home. His mother said that she had sought involuntary commitment, but that it was denied.
> Elon Musk criticized judges and district attorneys for allowing "criminals to roam free".
> U.S. President Donald Trump called the attacker a "madman" and "lunatic", and said that "when you have horrible killings, you have to take horrible actions. And the actions that we take are nothing", before blaming local officials in places like Chicago for failing to stop crime and denounced cashless bail.
> On the same day, the White House released a statement criticizing "North Carolina's Democrat politicians, prosecutors, and judges" for "prioritizing woke agendas that fail to protect their citizens".
> On September 9, the White House released a video in which Trump said that Zarutska was "slaughtered by a deranged monster".
> On September 24, U.S. Vice President JD Vance discussed the killing in a visit to Concord, North Carolina, blaming it on "soft-on-crime policies" and stating he was "open" to deploying the North Carolina National Guard to Charlotte if requested by Governor Stein and Mayor Lyles.
> The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary held a field hearing in Charlotte on September 29 on safety in public transit systems and the treatment of repeat offenders.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Iryna_Zarutska#Reac...
Oh, they've got drugs there, don't worry about that...
Yeah there's a difference between psychotic dread-heads with knives and college kids on a shroom trip.
Skin color?
You know black people go to college, too, right? Yikes - liberals really do embrace the racism of low expectations. Do better.
Which ones are those?
You know which ones :)
Why are white nationalists like you always Mexcrements from the southern border?
Saying that there are cities with endemic violence and anti-social behavior tolerated by left-leaning DAs, which inevitably leads to someone with dozens of priors committing heinous acts of violence, now qualifies as white nationalism? For real???
There are alternatives to dealing with violence and anti-social behavior aside from the boot of quasi-military police on those that struggle.
Some people and places consistently appeal to greater and greater draconian use of force, other places and people resort first to social policy to take tempretures down and to not regard schizophrenics as "subhumans".
I have a close relative who is a schizophrenic. I also work with one.
Neither of them have been arrested 72 times nor convicted 15 times. Neither of them have set a random woman on a train on fire, either.
I consider someone who does that subhuman, yeah. Schizophrenics can and do experience empathy and go out of their way not to hurt others.
> regard schizophrenics as "subhumans".
I hope you aren't insinuating this is my position? That man is a subhuman. He is lesser than a rat. I wish him nothing but unending torment and fear for many years to come. In no way is my contempt for him universally applicable to all schizophrenics. I judge the man by his actions not his condition.
> You know which ones :)
This is straight up racism right here. Not even trying to hide it.
What on Earth are you talking about?