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.
Defecto “free” ridership has really hurt the local public transport system in the SF Bay Area.
Quite a lot of people refuse to take public transit due to risks of being harassed or witnessing open drug use. Easy to dismiss that as a guy personally, but I definitely think that creates an environment that’s hostile to many people who need to use or would otherwise be using public transit.
On the other hand, Margerite bus at Stanford has been free for decades, and it’s never been a significant issue there.
So it’s very difficult to generalize across different systems that have their own unique issues.
We have free transit in Albuquerque. It's basically turned into a rolling homeless shelter. They hired security to manage it. My dad was one of those. He was attacked by someone using drugs on the bus and had the back of his hand bit off in a brutal attack. The busses here are VERY dangerous and I'd never step foot on one again.
Well, there's a sign that you need better housing solutions for homeless than the bus.
I ride the Albuquerque buses to and from work. The worst I’ve seen is an intoxicated guy being thrown off by the driver. I’ve also seen a couple people kicked off for riding a full route, which I guess is how they keep people from riding all day. For reference, I’m a smallish woman, usually carrying a messenger bag. I’ve never been bothered.
What happened to @Dandylion's dad is horrifying, though. That is exactly the kind of stuff that keeps me off public transit as well. "It never happened to me" isn't really a valid argument.
Sure, but "our city handles homelessness poorly" isn't a good argument for not improving public transit either!
I was thinking more like that solving the homelessness problem needs to be a part of improving public transit, and cities in general. Nothing made me want a personal vehicle more than being forced to ride public transit. Every day I'd look at the people passing us by in cars and say to myself "One day, that is gonna be me!"
It is me, now.