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Ask Slashdot: If Public Transport Was Free, Would You Leave Your Car At Home?
dkatana writes: The Estonian capital launched a program of free public transport to encourage people to leave their cars at home. But they never did. When Tallinn launched the program ridership numbers did increase, but not by the 20% the city had projected. Instead, they grew by a modest 3%, and by people already using public transport. What happened is that more pedestrians and bike users started to use public transit instead of walking and cycling. But car users continue to drive to work. Do you think the same would hold true in the U.S. if a similar program was started?
If public transport would be free in all of Germany, I would not use this car thing again.
If you make routes that are not useful - or have non-useful time tables - free, people still won't use them. A lot of driving that is done now is done in part because people are making commutes that are not easily - if at all - accommodated by existing public transportation infrastructure. If it takes two hours to get from A to B by public transport because you have to travel to C first - covering at least twice the total distance along the way and waiting for connecting buses or trains - people won't do it.
The other thing is the availability of parking. If parking in the city is affordable and available, that reduces the appeal of public transportation.
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We don't drive cars only because they are cheaper than public transit, but faster too.
People will respond from very high density cities and point out what I say isn't true for them. They don't need free rides for motivation, because in their situation, public transit is actually better. They should take the moment to get some insight; the world isn't waiting for their advice and doesn't want their lives.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
1) I can get anywhere I want with public transportation as it is right now. The problem is that it takes literally four to eight times more time (in my specific circumstances), and my time is far from free.
2) The notion that it's free is, frankly, dishonest and disingenuous. *Somebody* is paying for it, and that somebody is me, in one form or another. Just because the money is not coming directly from your wallet at that instant doesn't mean it's not happening.
3) It ignores subjective value. I often enjoy driving. I don't enjoy being crowded into a bus or tram / trolley. Trains aren't too bad from a comfort standpoint, but still not as fun as driving.
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The closest public transportation is about 35 miles from my house. So no.
Free of drunk people, or homeless people who smell so bad it's unpleasant to be near them?
Free of limitations in when I can depart, or how much longer the ride takes than driving?
Free of the inability to easily stop to grab a coffee or use the bathroom?
In my neck of the woods, I have been told there are these things called "buses" that come around and pick people up... I often see people waiting under signs that indicate they are "places of bus stopping" - yet I rarely see these elusive contraptions actually on the road, or picking up passengers.
Public transportation is a great idea in theory, but poorly run in practice, even in metropolitan areas. As for Michigan, it might as well as be non-existent. Rural and suburban areas are always poorly serviced. The solution, of course, is for people to move to areas closer to work and other required destinations - but that only works well for people who do not put down roots somewhere with a mortgage.
Free or not, I simply don't have the option. My current employer used to be willing to let me telecommute, now they expect me to commute an hour or more every day, each way, to satisfy some CEO's bizarre notion of esprit de corps (though most of my team members are in other states). I'd gladly ride a bus if it was convenient, both in timing and within a reasonable distance to my destination, but it doesn't even exist.
A car usually costs you several hundred dollars/euros per month. A ticket for public transportation is usually a fraction of that, maybe 100 dollar/euro. Why would you think that reducing that cost would make a significant difference?
I frequently ride public transit in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. It is the largest fare free system in the US. It is used by many people but growth in usage depends on many factors. Park and Ride lots make a big difference for people who live outside of town and must drive to get even close to their destination. Sidewalks make a difference because people who live close enough to walk to a bus stop have to have a safe place to walk. The Chapel Hill buses have bike carriers on the front so that bike riders can take the bus for part of their trip.
But one of the biggest factor is how easy it is to find parking. Cities use a huge amount of their space just to store cars during the day. The more expensive and hard to find parking becomes, the more people will use free public transit.
And all of this takes time. People have to adjust to the new reality of bus transportation being easier and cheaper than owning and driving a car. Over time, people will make decisions about where to live based in part on the presence of public transit. And if businesses also locate in areas served by transit, then it's easier for people to live and work on a transit line.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
The London tube is an amusing starfish... if you need to go to/from the center, it's great.
If you're out on an arm, and you need to get to a similar spot on the next arm, it's the bus for you, or even walking would be faster.
I tried to ride the bus, waited almost an hour before one showed up, but it wasn't one bus, it was all seven buses that run that line, apparently they had stopped off at the pub or something and then all hit the road at the same time.
Unless public transit is frequent and ubiquitous, it can't replace a car regardless of price
When I moved to San Francisco, an unlimited Muni pass was so cheap ($35) that it may as well been free, but I still had a car because weekend service is infrequent, and didn't go everywhere I wanted to go. I thought about giving up my car, until I tried an out of town trip on BART one weekend, it would have been an hour (or less) round trip by car, but since it involved a train transfer plus a long wait for a bus (that never came so I ended up walking the 2 miles), the transit part of the trip ended up being being over 3 hours.
Even now an unlimited Muni pass is cheap ($70), much cheaper than owning and parking a car in the city so it's not the cost of transit that makes people hold on to their cars.
On the other hand, when I spent some time in Tokyo, a $170 monthly Metro pass was much better than having a car, few of my friends who lived there full time owned a car.
I'll be busing it in the near future, solely due to it being free. I'll be moving about 35 miles from work. It's an estimated 45-60min drive. The bus is around 75-90min. At 25-30mpg, I'll be saving $8-10/day for the days I can take the bus. That would be about 85% of my net wage per hour. Considering I cannot pick up the extra saved hour at work, it's the only way to save some money on a tight budget. I also get the benefit of being able to read, instead of driving. I'd rather keep my current 1 mile commute, but we make due with the situation.
Public transport in the USA is almost uniformly low-ball, by which I mean to wave my hands at uncomfortable seating, sparse scheduling, sparse pickup and drop-off locations, smelly (nothing like an old diesel engine to get your sinuses in an uproar), and simply old-school -- the number of cities with proper elevated monorail systems that don't impact the streets or create shadowy hangouts for the unsavory is very small, and those (looking at you, Seattle) tend to not actually implement route coverage that is worth even considering for most excursions unless you're one of the lucky few who live, work and shop right along the line itself.
Offering something worth very little for free isn't going to get anyone very far, no pun intended (but I'm always happy when they fall out like that, lol.)
Considering my own use of private vehicles, I use them because:
o It's point to point; I start where I am and I end up where I'm going
o It's considerably more secure; windows up, doors locked, only trusted riders are on-board, and I control the vehicle
o I have my music (and my ham radio gear), in short, the environment is customized for me
o There's no waiting, no calling, and no communications problems
o Joyriding
o Car sex is fun and safe if done thoughtfully, while public transport sex is a direct route to the courtroom
Any of these would be sufficient, but all of them together are broadly decisive. A bright, scenic trip on a monorail appeals on its own merits; very little else does. That's because I have spent an enormous amount of time on public transport and liked it not at all.
My overall impression is that public transport as implemented here is that it is the very least we can get away with, regardless of the harm done.
I don't think we should be looking at it with an eye to making it incrementally better, either. It's a black hole that sucks very large amounts of money and returns nothing of new value. No one with an actual comprehension of the risks prefers public transport -- I think the most common case by far is that people use it because they have to use it.
What we need to be looking at is electric transport in varieties suitable for the individual and the various types of family units. Non-polluting in and of itself, utterly agnostic as to how the power it uses is generated, thus 100% friendly to conversion from polluting power generation to non-polluting. These vehicles can be extremely light and easy to park/store, ranging from tiny electric scooters for good weather use (we have one... awesome fun) through small enclosed commuter vehicles to full-on sedans and SUVs for people who need those. Circumstances and availability are rapidly improving in this regard. I see it as the best place to put our investment, if we are to be putting it anywhere in particular regarding transport itself. Beyond that, public funding should be going to infrastructure maintainance, because infrastructure decay is a very serious problem in this country.
I also think that in the urban context we tend to separate working- and living-specialized areas. This area is apartment buildings, that area has factories and so on, while shopping has clustered elsewhere. I suspect that's cost us more than it has benefited us. If the majority of people could reasonably live and shop close to their jobs, transport would be considerably less of an issue. But we don't seem to want to swallow that, and so we end up paying for our preference.
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Once people have invested in buying car and already paying for gas, registration and depreciation, they feel like using it. The extra convenience exceeds the marginal cost. So if you make public transport free, the existing car users will continue to use cars, but the sale of new cars will decline. This will take time to show up in ridership statistics. Instead of measuring the ridership of public transport, the city should monitor registration of new cars (old cars registration should not be counted). That trend is a better indicator of long term success.
Another important factor is convenience. How good is the public transport? In my city in USA, public transport is pathetic. It stops at 7 pm on weekdays and no service on Sunday. Long distance (> 10 mile) stop after 9:00 am and do not restart till 4:00 pm. It means that I have to have a car and once I have a car, the marginal cost of operating car is same as the cost of public transport, so obviously I use car.
-- Does public perceive this free public transport continue to be free in future as well?
-- Is it good enough to completely get rid of the car?
If both of the above are 'yes', then it should show up in the new car registration statistics.
The question is flawed. The fact is that most US public transportation is awful. This is quite literally by design. In the 1950's, a conscious decision was made by policy makers to begin neglecting public transportation and to start investing public money in road systems in a big way. This is what built the interstate system, for example. A few places, Portland Oregon, for example, took some of that interstate money and invested in public transportation. Portland's system is actually quite good, now, and if you lived there, you would probably use it quite a bit.
But if you live in one of the countless suburban freeway islands, using public transportation is absurd. The way the roads and infrastructure are laid out make it almost impossible to install an efficient public transportation system. In many suburban areas, the mere act of walking somewhere is almost impossible or illegal.
There is a truism in transportation design: the freeways make the sprawl. And the converse is also true: passenger rail transportation increase creates clusters of density. Evidence of this can be seen in the observation that since the massive reduction of passenger rail transportation in the US, there have been almost no new dense walkable diverse large scale downtown core cities established. The big ones, New York, Chicago, etc. were established during the age of passenger rail. Most new cities are freeway places, and usually don't achieve the density of the older cities. By choosing to build freeways, we chose to create suburban sprawl. The only way to get out of this trap is to slow the building of freeways, and to increase investment in passenger rail.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
"But one of the biggest factor is how easy it is to find parking. Cities use a huge amount of their space just to store cars during the day. The more expensive and hard to find parking becomes, the more people will use free public transit."
Well no, that's not really a big factor. If you can't park at your destination of choice and public transit won't get you there, you won't go.
It won't be free, so the entire thought experiment is pointless. To make the public transportation no charge at time of use, that means somebody else is going to be taxed to provide that. Since I'm always one of the people being taxed for this sort of thing, the real question would be, "If your taxes were raised substantially in order to get rid of fares for public transportation, would you use public transportation in order get some of your tax money back, even though you will lose the convenience, flexibility, speed, and independence that comes with driving?"
... and yet any attempt to use it in order run any sort of errand or outing means lengthy walks and waits outdoors, a dirty and smelly ride, almost without fail some rowdy and threatening teenagers, and a price tag that's roughly the same as typically expensed driving mile. So here in this area we spend literally billions on public transportation, but it's used by only a narrow group of people who happen to have residential and work proximity to the perfect route.
I live in the close-in burbs of a major metro area. There are buses, metro rail, some light rail
I live about 12 miles, as the crow flies, from a datacenter I use. It's normally about a 25 minute drive. There's a metro rail stop just two blocks from that destination, and one (with no parking, and little bus access) about two miles from where I live... but that rail ride costs about $12 (or $20, if you can park), and takes about 70 minutes one way. If somebody's taxes were raised to make that trip "free," it would still be grotesquely expensive in terms of time and flexibility.
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