It didn't work out well when the NYC MTA tried fare free rides.
https://www.mta.info/document/147096
Dwell time and customer journey time decreased.
The bus speeds were lower on the fare free routes.
If public transport provides value to people, they should pay for some of it. 30 day unlimited ride pass in only $132.
That's great. It's only around 8 hours of work instead of 16.
Its still a lot of money at $16.50. 12 days a year you labor just for the opportunity to labor. Your point only makes it slightly better and doesn't really take away from my point - it's a lot of money for a good number of folks. You know, the folks that could really benefit.
A 50% discount is probably pretty hard to get - and you are still asking the poorest folks to pay 4 hours of labour for busses.
To get the reduced rate many municipalities will require you to visit an office, somewhere you likely have to take transportation to, during office hours (aka working hours), and provide documentation to prove this.
This isn't really unknown either. There's a very good story anyone can look up about Dr. V in India and what it took for him to actually get the eye care he wanted to provide to the people who needed it.
In the digital world many of us know you want to deeply understand your user and design with them in mind. Same thing here in the meat space.
i will gently point out that new york state and new york city are not the same thing
> Under that metric, the poverty threshold for a couple with two children in a rental household in New York City is now $47,190. The study found that 58 percent of New Yorkers, or more than 4.8 million people, were in families with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty line — about $94,000 for a couple with two children or $44,000 for a single adult. Poverty rates among Black, Latino and Asian residents were about twice as high as the rate for white residents, according to the report.
I dont' know how you reached the "didn't work out well" conclusion, both metrics you mentioned were commensurate with systemwide metrics, meaning fare-free didn't have much of an impact on these routes. Ultimately, ridership increased
Ridership increasing doesn't make it a success. I read that New Yorkers who frequently used the bus system were asked what the city could do to make their experience better. Among those who were polled the top two complaints were that the buses were too crowded and often late. The free bus trial program made these two metrics worse - 30% more riders (aka even more crowded) and longer dwell times (aka more delays). The bus fare being too high was like number five or six on their list of things that riders cared about.
> Registration is like $100 a year for "unlimited" access to roads. Quite a bit cheaper than a yearly unlimited transit pass.
But that's still "some of it".
> And electric cars don't pay a gas tax.
Electric cars' registration fees are much higher to make up for that, e.g., in New Jersey, you owe an extra $260 per year for an EV (which automatically goes up by $10 every year) vs. a gas car.
EVs pay a gas tax in the form of enormously more expensive registration in almost all states. I pay way more for my EV registration than I would have paid in gas tax.
> We’re a quarter of the way through the 21st century, gas taxes have been optional for driving for quite a while now.
States mostly take the equivalent of those taxes out of vehicle registration fees for electric vehicles.
And bicycle usage is nearly a nil cost on the existing public roads, so the costs here would be appropriate to come out of the general sales/property taxes that fun the city/county. If anything you might argue to try to subsidize bicycle ridership more in urban areas, whether with bicycle paths or otherwise, to reduce the number of cars on the roads and reduce congestion for those still on the roads.
The cost of adding one more car to existing public roads is also essentially zero, as is the cost of adding one more rider to an existing bus route. Until you hit some tipping point and need to add more capacity, then it costs a lot. Bicycles can do that too, if a significant number of them shows up.
In any case, the point is that public transit riders pay fares. Not taxes, not registration fees, but fares. The equivalent for roads would be tolls. And it’s pretty uncommon to see any advocacy for charging tolls for all roads.
If public transport provides value to people, they should pay for some of it. 30 day unlimited ride pass in only $132.