Quote:
Originally Posted by ssiguy
I have always disagreed with free-fare transit. It can reinforce, especially in the US, the idea that transit is dangerous and a moving homeless shelter as llamaorama noted. Whether that is true or not doesn't matter, the stigma will be there.
It is also can lead to stagnating or even transit usage declines over the long term. In the short and medium terms it will certainly result in higher ridership as people take advantage of it but that success can lead to it's demise. As ridership rises, revenue doesn't. This means that as routes become busier they have no financial ability to improve service or create new ones resulting in packed buses with the same poor service they had prior to the free- fare introduction.
Even a small or nominal fare of, for example, $25/month results in higher revenue and the ability for the system to expand as ridership does.
|
The Canadian model is that the system is generally run by a government agency. The government agency in some cases operates the service and it others contracts a private operator to actually deliver the service.
The one case that comes close to free, is post-secondary education. In many cases the student union negotiates a deal with the transit operator where for a fixed deeply counted fee billed through the student society anyone with a full time student IT gets free access to transit. In reality this is just a bulk buy.