What's interesting about this article is what it leaves out. It cites experts who claim this is "diverts scarce resources from more pressing priorities: transit service and quality" yet that was far from the case in one of the cities cited in the introduction.
In Olympia, Washington, the city was needing to replace their fare-collection boxes. Fares accounted for 2% of the total transportation budget in Olympia, and when compared to the cost of installing and maintaining the fare-collectors, city officials realized they would only be breaking even. Why even collect fares if you end up with no gain? Is it really "diverting money" when the high cost of implementing the tools to collect fares costs as much or more than you will gain from fares?
Local Olympia Newspaper on Olympia dropping fares in 2019: https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article237257744.html
Those fares net less than 2 percent of IT’s operating revenue. Meanwhile, IT’s fare collection boxes need to be replaced. The agency says it looked at switching to a card-based payment system but most cost at least $1 million to introduce.
It would cost about that for IT to start using ORCA, the payment system used on buses in King and Pierce counties and elsewhere in the region.
“It basically is a wash in terms of what we collect and what we would have to pay for the capital investment and for the operational investment to collect money. Because it costs a lot of money to collect money,” said Ann Freeman-Manzanares, IT’s general manager. “And if at the end it’s pretty much a wash, why are we doing it when we have all these incredible benefits to gain?”
Those include a potential increase in ridership, speeding up service, and attracting businesses to the area with the promise of “free” transit.
Eeh? I'm a woman, I don't have this problem on transit at all, either in Chicagoland or in SF. First of all, witnessing open drug use isn't, like, the end of the world; it might make you uncomfortable, but it's not dangerous.
Being harassed is a real fear, but I find that I'm more often harassed while I'm just walking around than in a bus, train, or the muni, and when I'm on board transit there are cameras and an operator to potentially step in!
Public transit is a public good. If seeing poor people and drug users makes us uncomfortable, the solution is to address the root causes of poverty and addiction, not to force poor people off of public transit.
You might not, and neither do I have a problem with it. I grew up low income and rode plenty of “sketchy” bus lines where fights would break out. I know when to remove yourself from danger.
Plenty of people I know have, or at least have that perception. My S/Os parents visited from out of the country, and they were harassed by someone screaming racist epithets at them and got scared, and ended up taking Uber the rest of the time they were here. They are old, retired, and we didn’t want to risk them getting uncomfortable. Obviously we have the privilege of doing that, but not everyone does.
Again, it’s not about being poor, it’s about antisocial behavior that destroys the public spaces. That goes for rich assholes too.