Let's Make Mass Transit Free*

This idea of free mass transit is not as crazy as you might think. Plenty of cities offer free transit to students and seniors. Some systems offer free transit in designated zones or on certain routes. Others, like Seoul (2), offer free transit on days where the air is too smoggy. Only a few cities have gone all the way and done what I’m proposing: free transit for everyone, everywhere, at all times.

Sources:

Produced in sunny Sacramento, California.
Audio and video editing by: Eric Schneider

[Occupant]

How about free transit for everyone except people who listen to music without headphones? They have to pay $1, 000, 000.

[TomPuttemans]

Some more information and conclusions about the city of Hasselt (Belgium) that was mentioned in the video: only the buses were made free for everybody. There was indeed a big increase in ridership, but studies showed that a majority of the users were people who used to walk, bicycle or use a train to get to their destinations before. Making the transport completely free also seemed to greatly devalue the perceived quality of the transport in the eyes of car drivers for some reason. In the end, the conclusion there was that the buses shouldn't be completely free, but the prices should just be very low. Personally I also suspect there just weren't enough bus lanes to make the buses go fast enough compared to private transport.

[Azivegu]

Here in the Netherlands I think that might be a bad idea. The rail network is already at nearly 95% capacity with very little room to grow because it is such a dense country. Even with high prices the trains are usually very busy, so making it available to even more people could cause the whole network to seize up.

[KhAnubis]

Back in Portland, we used to have this area called the „fareless square“, but then we abolished fare zones, so now all MAX journeys need fares. Unfortunately, both Portland and Berlin use the honor system when it comes to fares, so I‘m always at least slightly paranoid that I might not have paid for the right fare, or forgot to buy a new fare (which has happened, since no one‘s there to remind you, until it‘s too late). I feel like the confusion and uncertainty this brings is a good reason to at least abolish the honor system, if we‘re going to pay for transit.

[writerpatrick]

Any place with trains already has enough people using transit that they don't need free transit. It's those areas that have low ridership that need the free transit to get more people using the systems.

And with free transit you could see more budget restraints so that buses were less frequent or restricted to certain routes, requiring less convenient access to the bus. Popular routes would be constantly packed.

Around the GTA there's a Presto card which one can get that works like a debit card for the bus. It eliminates the need to carry change and other problems.

[foralv]

In my city (Frýdek-Místek, Czech Republic) with population around 50k, city goverment made buses free (with card you buy for around 10$ only if youre citizen and have owe no money to the city, and you have it forever). The use of buses increased, but trips made by car didnt decrease (in the whole country car traffic increased, but in our city it stagnates so I guess thats a succes). Its because people who used to walk now take buses because theyre lazy to walk.
But I agree with your point, it is very benefitial, but it just isnt as awesome

[IANinALTONA]

That is a very American perspective, since your main problem is to get People to used mass transit. Over here on europe, some metro or tram systems are already overcrowded. We need the money from fares to expand them. Also, if the metro is free, some people will use it just to have a place to stay and clog up the trains.

What we need is AFFORDABLE and highly reliable transit, not free transit.

[Sonos]

Try walking to a Bus station in -22f(-30c) with wind chill -50f(-45c) which might take 15 mins. then waiting with a heater that just takes the edge off. then waiting for the bus in that cold. The bus ride then takes 30-45 mins. You then need to walk to work in the same temperature since not everyone works in a big city. which could take another 15 mins . And you do this twice a day in the dark because daylight is short in the northern parts of america. Or you can just drive yourself and get to work in 40 mins and stay warm the whole time.

And even if you say that bus service would improve if more people used it we would still need parking garages build in neighbor hoods since you cant have door to door service for everyone. And it wouldnt be fair to tax people who live out of the service area for public transit.

[NeighborSenpai]

I actually read about that idea in an article before and I love the idea of tax payer public transit but one key problem is that when you pay for public transportation you expect it to be good or at least upgrade itself, if you get free public transportation you don't really care whether your service gets better or not (and if it won't get better people will go back to cars), I'm not saying this will 100% going to happen (people do mind about the quality of firefighters and police) but it can be a point

[joshuastarkloff]

In Fort Myers Florida USA, some bus routes are free to use. Specially the ones on Estero island, and in downtown

[Interwebbz]

London buses are £1.50 per journey. Does not matter if its just 2 stops down the road or across the city. There are also multiple ways to pay for it.

[ericjamieson]

One thing you don't really get into is the cases where public transit is already at or over capacity. For example, that's one of the justifications London Underground uses for their high fares into zone 1. Making it free would just add to the capacity issues, unless the city is willing to build a large number of additional subway lines, which is hugely expensive.

[AlexZorach]

I loved this video and I think you are spot-on with the general theme here. I want to offer a new and very strong point that many people may not realize. I've worked in a transit system in the U.S. and done consulting for a second. For some US transit systems, fares represent a small portion of the total budget. Most is already funded directly through taxes or indirectly through tax-funded federal grants. Fare collection systems are costly, and when you consider both the direct cost of fare collection (technology, equipment, processing of money) and indirect costs (slowing down bus routes and thus paying for that employee and equipment time, time management discusses to deciding and changing fare policy, training operators in fare policy, etc) it is not always clear that the fares actually bring in more money than they cost. So in many cases, having free transit could actually save money. It may sound crazy but when you think of how cheap fares are, it makes sense.

Also, you haven't mentioned this, but a low-cost way to recoup some of the lost costs of fare collection is to allow donations. So, you can have an optional, suggested donation for each ride, and you could collect it both through fareboxes on buses or in subway stations, or through monthly donation options throurgh a website. I'd gladly chip in $50 a month or more if I were riding transit daily or near-daily, maybe even if I wasn't, just to support transit and also support a more voluntary-pay rather than coercive-tax system. And I think the cost of such "optional" fare collection would be negligible compared to the cost of collecting conventional fares.

[VampguyN]

My main issue with mass transit is It's slow and the lack of accessibility. I live in the suburbs. So driving to alewife and taking the red into Boston doubles my time pretty much. The trains should be faster and more reliable and they need to expand the network to make it more effecient.

[santiagoweinberger]

I love the idea of encouraging mass transit and everything but I live in a country where it's not free but is 80% subsidized and trust me, in practice it's not as good as you may think

[DaneReidVoiceOver]

A lot of cities and states do charge to use roads through tolls and tickets

[cluelessyanni]

Here in Hong Kong, I think free transit would be a huge problem. People in Hong Kong are already so used to publoc transit, and some services are already beyond 100% capacity during peak hours. That said, I think its a good idea to implement some sort of free transit during non peak hours to incentise people to travel before or after peak hours

[borssamer]

my city hires a private company for bussing and it works very well, idk about large metropolises but for towns of 90k it's functional since it isn't directly state operated

[anindrapratama]

In Jakarta the BRT operator introduced a free bus service along the main boulevard following Half of BRT line 1
And public transport is free on certain days like Independence day here

[ericma]

Its true. Roads are unfairly subsidized while trasiters are forced to collect fairs. That said, free transit would exacerbate the homeless problem here in nyc, bus drivers and station workers being the biggest deterrent to sheltering in those places.