Yes, going fare-free can make transit better

The simple answer is yes.

Cities like NYC gets their money from the economic activity of their people. Free transit is a profitable investment in the economic activity of people.

Extraction, agriculture, and tourism economies that can't afford transit aren't viable and paying a fare on a company bus is something an unethical company town would do.

You don't have to believe that climate change is real. It is not a matter of faith. It can be scientifically supported and the scientific consensus is that climate change is real and caused by humans.

My car is out of commission and I can’t afford to get it fixed so I had to learn to use the bus system where I am – which is fare free. Holy shit why aren’t all cities doing it?

Great video, watched it while I was on the bus and then the train

Re "problem riders": It seems to me that making poverty more visible, while unpleasant, should force us to face other obvious conclusions such as providing more universal basic services, such as housing, healthcare, education, sanitation, food, etc. I'll bet if we had those things too, we'd see fewer "problem riders."

If you really want public services to be good, rich people have to be required to use it. Sort of like Finland's school system making it illegal to charge tuition for education.

I'm what you would call a far right person and honestly the fare free idea seems to have a lot of merit. The fare prices in NYC seem to me to be so low already that I imagine it's probably a waste of effort to even collect them. So stop, get rid of fare gates and tickets and all these systems and just let people walk onto the transit and ride it to where they are going.

I am all for new ideas to make less traffic on our roads. Some problems I see with free Transit is our trains and buses becoming a place for the homeless to sleep, take drugs, increase muggings needing more security officers and police to ride the trains to keep control of these issues. . Making it a dangerous place for others. Having our public transit smelling like urine is a big turn-off for people.
On the other hand making public transit. Cheap, affordable or even free can keep having more cars off the road, getting more people out to spend money at restaurants, stores, sports events, concerts, etc. can definitely increase tax revenue.

‘In the hypothetical midsize American city that exists in a windless, gravity-less, frictionless void, fare free transit networks are good!’ Well I mean yeah I didn’t think anyone was arguing against that…

Here is an alternitve question "Should roads be fared like faired transit?"

A) Put money into society
B) Put money in a bank account of an old guy who will just look at it until they die at age 110

What would happen if you take all the money and use it

As someone who lived through the era of Portland, Oregon’s Fairless Square, which was a citywide free transit system, public transit was far safer because it was utilized by everyone not just the poorest who had no other option. Everyone use the bus and the street car and the max because it was free, and therefore it was safer and more “normalized” Now the more the fares have increased, people who have access to cars think, “well, it’s going to take three dollars in gas to get downtown anyway and six dollars round trip to take transit I might as well drive. “

The fewer people use it and it becomes less safe for people who do use it. Because why would I pay 7 dollars for a round trip on transit when it might just be me and the crazy drug addict who is menacing me. True story.

Public transit should be free for the public.

F automated syncroniztion hard!!!

Unsubscribed & don't recommend channel...

This is a very American focused video. In Europe things are just difference. The problem is, in the US is that ridership and fare recovery is already so low. But this mostly isn't the case in Europe.

And experiments like those in Estonia have shown that free fares didn't really lead to a huge rush of new rides. And countries with expensive fares, like Switzerland, have really high ridership. As you quoted, in the US ridership went up, but it went up a small amount from an already pathetically low base. And this is a huge long term cost that now needs to be carried for a system that has still very low ridership.

Overwhelmingly what determines how many people use transit, is how efficient it is compared to alternative. So if you can recover 50-60% of revenue in fares and plow the same amount of tax $ into network expansion, you will end up with far, far more riders overall. And that's exactly what successful countries with actual high public ridership do. You need constant capital investment into the system that's what you need to finance.

And you have to build a system where people have monthly or yearly cards. People will do work and leisure travel on public transit if they have such cards. Or simply have daily cards as well, if you know you want to do other stuff, buy a day-pass. Usually where I live, if you take more then 2 trips, its already a day pass anyway. Creating a society where most people have such cards is a more beneficial use of money. See Switzerland success with Halb-Tax and GA.

In general, look around the world, at all the most successful public transit countries, even lower income countries, you will see none of them do it with free fares. No Japan, not Switzerland, not Spain, not Korea. Not Taiwan. Not the Netherlands. Not the Nordics. And so on and so on. There is a reason for this.


Just going fare will further limit any capital expenditures. Just saying, sure but we need to invest more isn't realistic. Any future increase isn't politically realistic. Funding should go to the most important capital investments, that can drive ridership. If you focus on free fares first, you will see short term increase and then a long term stagnation as capital investment dries up.

That said, for American cities were fare recovery is already basically nothing and they have horrible system and organization in place, maybe its fine.

Why spend the whole first half building it up if youre gonna wuss out and say everybody is entitled to their opinion? If the facts are against them, then their opinion is not valid. Seems unresponsible to me.

My main reservation with going fare free (specifically in America, where no politicians outside big cities care about transit) is relying on the government to increase funding when it becomes necessary. I'm in NYC so my context is the MTA, which is a state-level transit agency (although it's technically quasi-private, but that's another discussion). With fares, the MTA automatically gets more money when more people ride. But if we rely only on taxes, then that means lawmakers upstate will need to be convinced to vote for more funding each time we need it. I'm not confident they would always come through, as they already pull a hissy fit over every capital budget. Yes we have Democratic majorities in both houses of the Legislature, but Dems in swingy districts upstate LOVE to vote against funding for the MTA (and other perceived "city issues") to seem more centrist to their constituents.

Omg youre back

the money a city makes from transit is a pittance and it makes transit run much slower and less reliably

I live in a rural area with fare-free transit and our transit system is moving towards electric buses. Our system is replacing all of their buses with electric buses. Our electricity comes from hydropower and ridership is on the increase since c*vid.

Public transit shouldnt be for profit in the first place. At most it should cover expenses and expansions

The fare collection systems are so expensive, that it eats heavily into the collected fares. My city spent hundreds of millions of euros in the last iteration of the IT--heavy fare collection system. Free fare lines also reduce car traffic, and move the cost of the system from being a threshold for travel to static taxation, and that greatly increases welfare over the system.

fare free transit isnt feasible if you dont have an economic system that creates economic flywheels that circulate money constantly in local economies, throught the use of public banks and citizens money for community investment. oh wait thats confluencism 💀

when i was younger i was part of an effort by a fairly large business in our city to partner with the city and change zoning so that more could be built in the gigantic, empty parking lots surrounding most businesses like moats keeping away those without cars. we wanted to build new work places and hopefully bring in some restaurants so the employees had food options they could walk to quickly right there near the office. they were even floating funding extra busses that brought people to work.

it didn't go anywhere, but i've always wondered if that isn't a way to get buy in from businesses that would love to get more out of the land under those massive parking lots they are paying for. our efforts back then died on the vine due to push back from city council, but that was 20-odd years ago. maybe things can be different now.

Great video

Nothing ever happens

Problem riders exist also in racially homogeneous countries. So you saying that it's an attack on black or brown people isn't a valid argument.

Would be great to see the economic impact, including taxes raised (potentially serving public transit) by the increased ridership. That could provide a strong rationale for free or even lower fares

This is great also for people with disabilities and wheelchair users like me. On a macro level, most disabled people are on fixed incomes and paying for transit can be hard. Of course there are programs to apply for but there’s seven million programs and just as many appointments that disabled people have to go through constantly. If you don’t have to fill out a form it is far more accessible.
On a micro level, it’s hard for me to tap my card while getting on the bus because the driver can be in the way/ it’s hard to maneuver up the ramp and the reader is in a weird spot. But I pay on my way out because it’s SEPTA and God knows they need it

The first public transit system I used regularly was the Rutgers University bus system in New Brunswick! And you are right - buses are AWESOME! Love 'em!

The time I used buses the most was during college. Partly this was out of not owning a car and where I was going. But also it was free, just flashed my university id and bam. I really miss that bus system

As long as roads are subsidized and free, so should transit. Why not? The whole reason highways are free is so people have freedom or movement. That should apply to all modes of transit

Making the bus free is what made me want to vote for Zohran. I don't expect it to be made fare free but I would at least want the price to go down.

What's the point of paying 3 dollars for the same quality of service?

Check Montpellier it's a french city were transport is free and from what i ear it's awsome

2:44 Kc is ending their program mainly because the kc transit authority council is terribly constructed, where 80% of the program itself is funded by KC itself, while other smaller municipalities also barely fund it, but have an exaggerated say in the process, because at least half of the council members are not representing Kc but those smaller municipalities across Kansas and Missouri. And for some reason (probs lobbying) so many outside-KC council members are not accepting any budget proposals that keep the fares free. Kc is notoriously over bureaucratic in things like our transit authority, or even our PD that is actually ran by the state of Missouri, even tho the city is the one who mainly funds its giant budget.