Should public transportation be free?

[Cecelia]

Yes, it should. And we need a more robust system of public transportation.

[The Grand Nudger]

Just as people mention with respect to…say….communism, we might want to actually try free market capitalism before we declare with any certainty what it inexorably leads to.

It’s not free market capitalism that lead to the current situation with respect to fossil fuels, public transportation…or…the price of insulin. As examples. I don’t personally think that the free market can solve our current problems- but that might have something to do with tying bags of sand to our ankles for generations. Public transportation (if any kind) in the us is likely to be wildly inefficient simply because we designed our cities with the assumption of universal private automobile ownership- another example. Think of the headaches involved in Europe with respect to widening roads designed for horses and buggy.

[Anomalocaris]

Just as people mention with respect to…say….communism, we might want to actually try free market capitalism before we declare with any certainty what it inexorably leads to.

It’s not free market capitalism that lead to the current situation with respect to fossil fuels, public transportation…or…the price of insulin.  As examples.  I don’t personally think that the free market can solve our current problems- but that might have something to do with tying bags of sand to our ankles for generations.  Public transportation (if any kind) in the us is likely to be wildly inefficient simply because we designed our cities with the assumption of universal private automobile ownership- another example.  Think of the headaches involved in Europe with respect to widening roads designed for horses and buggy.

The flaw in free market capitalism is every market participant is incentivized above all else to scheme to make the market less free in his own favor.     Your chances of getting ahead any other way is slim and temporary, yet free market capitalism is suppose to work by unleashing the desire to get ahead. 

Free market capitalism is like a person who imagines he would live the longest and happiest if he is surrounded by psychopaths who all desires above all else to personally kill him, because each of their individual desires to kill him will exactly counterbalance everyone else’s as none of them wants to let another have the privilege of killing him first.

Perhaps the person believes he could invite a fast shooting sherif to police the psychopaths while leaving the beneficial aspects of their psychopathy intact.   But whether that will work depends on the psychopaths not also killing the sheriff, or the manage to have one of their own elected sheriff, or the sheriff seeing value in joining the psychopaths.

You can’t “actually” try something if the process of getting there necessarily create ever stronger countervailing effects the closer you get to the ideal.

[The Grand Nudger]

Like I said…we might want to actually -see- a free market before we talk about their inevitabilities. I’m sure there are some.

[Anomalocaris]

You can’t -see- an unachievable ideal anymore than you can see a mass crushed to a singularity.    Effects dismissed in its idealization prevents you from ever getting there.   Trying to get there in the hope of testing the idealized benefits when there is therefore futile.

[The Grand Nudger]

I prefer not to call things unachievable simply because we’re fuck ups, or haven’t achieved them, at present.

Just as with public transportation. Especially as climate change mitigation. I don’t see how we could efficiently arrange for a system of public transportation that respects the realities of climate, market, and underlying design of our communities. That’s just me. It’s not unachievable because I couldn’t do it, or because of any ideological belief that informs my opinions or concerns.

In the current environment, something we can do, is shift our subsidy programs. This, by far, has the largest effect on carbon footprint. We know that, because we already do it, and can quantify every item in the comparison. If we want less fossil fuel, and more rail and ev (including buses) then we’ll have to invest in it. That’s how we got all these cars and fossil fuel products…too.

Horses weren’t taxed out of existence. They just flat out fucking suck. We can do again with internal combustion engines what we did with horses. My mine gripe with fossil fuel use is that we’re wasting in when…just like actual horse power, we’ll need it to build the next system.

That, and…ofc, the idea that punitively taxing joe a home is how good government solves its problems.

[brewer]

Public transportation is basically nonexistent in my neck of the woods. It does exist, but only on primary business routes.

If it becomes free for people with access do I get a tax break for no service?

[onlinebiker]

Public transportation is basically nonexistent in my neck of the woods. It does exist, but only on primary business routes.

If it becomes free for people with access do I get a tax break for no service?

Bwaaahahahaha....


Damn you a funny guy.....

(The buses don' t run here either..)

[The Grand Nudger]

Buses run a tiny fraction of anywhere in the us. It would take a lot just for basic service. That’s not adjusting for time loss due to riders schedules, or conflicting schedules between businesses that would share an employee.

[arewethereyet]

For me to have used public transit when I was working in Dallas would have been quite the juggling act. First of all, DART doesn't reach the 'burb I live in. I'd have to drive at least 10 miles to park in an unsupervised lot to catch a DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) train. Then you have to hope that there is a station near where you are working so that you don't have to fight the weather walking multiple blocks to get to the place of employment. Would not have been an option for me. The US doesn't have the types of transit systems that some other countries seem to have.

On top of that, the DART stations downtown tend not to be the safest places to be at any time of day or night. In fact, they are quite dangerous.