Should public transportation be free?

[Anomalocaris]

2 problems:

1.  By paying for free public transportation from general tax revenue it creates common cause for both people who don’t need and those prefer not to use public transportation.  This broadens and solidifies opposition against public transportation policy.

2.   Making it completely free means that part of the incremental cost of largely or totally unnecessary trips is also zero, so it incentivizes low value added travels.

If the goal is to reduce polluting ICE car usage, I think directly penalizing the use of ICE cars via tolls and fuel surcharges makes much more economic and policy sense then reducing the ticke of public trans portion much below incremental cost of carrying the passengers.

In principle, penalizing undesirable behavior directly work better than Penalizing everyone to create incentive to lure wrong doers away from wrong doing.

(bold mine)

In principle, yes. In practical terms, positive reinforcement works better than negative reinforcement in curbing undesirable behaviour. It would be more effective to incentivize people to get them to use public transport than to penalize them for not doing so.

To the OP: Yes.

Boru

I disagree.  Positive reinforcement facilitated by subsidies compulsorily extracted from those innocent of the  undesirable behavior rather unites and creates common cause for both the more dedicated amongst the wrong doers and those who are not guilty of wrong doing but who are not willing to subsidize the wrong prevention agenda.