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Originally Posted by jtown,man
He has a good point though, and this thing in Virginia is a SJ initiative.
If we want to give poor people better access, we can have them apply online for a free or extremely low cost yearly pass (that is paid monthly). We do this in Chicago for the DIVVY bike system (I think they pay 5 dollars a year!).
Besides things that could be fixed with money, like more routes and more buses, the biggest issue in America and public transit is the idea that it just for the poor. This only makes that idea concrete.
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The idea of advocates is that free service for all increases ridership.
My argument is it's likely just the opposite, at least in terms of ridership for the intended purposes. If you want to drive the middle class away from transit, what you do is make it less safe, less comfortable, less efficient and reliable and stress-free. That's exactly what a totally free system would do in a big city. Transit vehicles would become full of the sleeping unwashed, taking up extra seats with their possessions. I would also expect increased numbers of rowdy teens fighting and rough-housing with each other as already happens when school lets out (because they already get low cost rides to and from school). And the panhandlers, scam artists (I have watched "sheep games" in progress on busses) and drug salesman touting their wares.
If you lose middle class ridership, you lose the support of the taxpayers and if that happens public funding--not just firebox revenue--will deteriorate because people and their representatives will not support what they don't use.
Successful systems charge fares that approximate in value what the service provides and they use multiple revenue sources to provide reliable, frequent and safe service. I don't think a service that's free system-wide would be any of those things.