France making public transport free and madating solar panels and plants on roofs!!!!

[sdifox]

Here in DC region they keep trying to make the metro as self sufficient as it can. Yet its a mess as there is not enough funds to properly maintain the full system and when rates are raised more people just drive and create more mess on the roads.

Mass transit is one thing that should be heavily subsidized as it affects every person and business, esp in larger cities.

DC should have full fed funding for transit.

 

[sdifox]

I don't mind subsidies for public transportation, I mind when people call it "free", as if their tax money aren't really money.

Lulz most countires are spending money they don't have, indebting future generations. If they don't call it free, people might pay attention!

 

[Linflas]

DC should have full fed funding for transit.

Good luck with that. It is hard enough to convince people in places like Wicomico County MD or Wythe County VA that their tax money should subsidize transit for some of the richest counties in the country. Metro's problems have as much to do with poor management and oversight as they do with funding. Then there is the ridiculous fare structure designed to make suburban riders subsidize DC residents. Compare the Metro fare structure with the simple NYC model of $2.75 per trip period with free transfer from bus to subway and subway to bus.

 

[manimal]

Good luck with that. It is hard enough to convince people in places like Wicomico County MD or Wythe County VA that their tax money should subsidize transit for some of the richest counties in the country. Metro's problems have as much to do with poor management and oversight as they do with funding.

That line of thinking a century ago would have been catastrophic as it is now. The people in the big cities have been subsidizing their farms and services for long enough that their cares about infastructure should matter as much as their worry about aliens invading.



someone is always gonna get pissed. Screw them.

 

[sdifox]

Good luck with that. It is hard enough to convince people in places like Wicomico County MD or Wythe County VA that their tax money should subsidize transit for some of the richest counties in the country. Metro's problems have as much to do with poor management and oversight as they do with funding. Then there is the ridiculous fare structure designed to make suburban riders subsidize DC residents. Compare the Metro fare structure with the simple NYC model of $2.75 per trip period.

wouldn't that remove the county level subsidy? That is the point.

 

[Tsavo]

it's a nice idea. They have a much better public transportation setup then the US.

It's impossible not to beat the US for public transport.

City I used to live in moved all the bus routes away from poor neighborhoods in an effort to save money....never mind that most of the users were poor people.

They knew that, of course, but their real plan was to cite a decrease in ridership in order to justify cutting more routes. Now, the service reaches out to less than a quarter of the areas it used to.

City I live in now outright cancelled all public transport...because *uck poor people.

Gotta love Republicans these days.

 

[Ichinisan]

It's impossible not to beat the US for public transport.

City I used to live in moved all the bus routes away from poor neighborhoods in an effort to save money....never mind that most of the users were poor people.

They knew that, of course, but their real plan was to cite a decrease in ridership in order to justify cutting more routes. Now, the service reaches out to less than a quarter of the areas it used to.

City I live in now outright cancelled all public transport...because *uck poor people.

Gotta love Republicans these days.

Yes. Republican politicians are colluding against public transport!

Did you consider that maybe the reason your public transport organization wanted to cut routes so badly is because they had some unsustainable financial problem?

 

[Linflas]

It's impossible not to beat the US for public transport.

City I used to live in moved all the bus routes away from poor neighborhoods in an effort to save money....never mind that most of the users were poor people.

They knew that, of course, but their real plan was to cite a decrease in ridership in order to justify cutting more routes. Now, the service reaches out to less than a quarter of the areas it used to.

City I live in now outright cancelled all public transport...because *uck poor people.

Gotta love Republicans these days.

How about naming those 2 cities? I suspect if they are large enough to have public transit systems they are governed by Democrats.

 

[imagoon]

Everyone understands that "free" in this case does not mean free, right? Tax money are not free money and if you lose income on ticket sale, the cost for the tax payers increase in an equal ammount. What Paris is doing is shifting the cost away from those who actually use the public transportation and dump it on everyone.

I would be curious to see the net effect. No more tickets / ticketing systems means: No more ticket tellers (labor), ticket machines (capital and operation costs), no more need to verify tickets on the buses / trains (here in the US systems like ventra in Chicago are certainly not "free" either.

Basically elimination of all the costs to collect the fares.

 

[pete6032]

Wrong. The people that benefit are the people that support (and use) public transportation. What about people that have to commute into the city from outside it? What about people that can't work with the schedules, routes, and limitations of public transport?

Its the same old "progressive" reasoning - "its for the public good". Except for the people that its not good for.

lol.

 

[Linflas]

wouldn't that remove the county level subsidy? That is the point.

Without getting into the arcane mess that is WMATA the burden is actually borne by the jurisdictions served. My point was that both Virginia and Maryland pols have a difficult time if they propose broadening the base by tapping state funds.

 

[sdifox]

Yes. Republican politicians are colluding against public transport!

Did you consider that maybe the reason your public transport organization wanted to cut routes so badly is because they had some unsustainable financial problem?

you understand public transit is a cost item and not revenue item right?

 

[sdifox]

Without getting into the arcane mess that is WMATA the burden is actually borne by the jurisdictions served. My point was that both Virginia and Maryland pols have a difficult time if they propose broadening the base by tapping state funds.

I said Fed. DC is federal.

 

[CZroe]

you understand public transit is a cost item and not revenue item right?

Of course he does. It's likely one more unsustainable program like so much other government waste. Do we expect to get our money back on military spending? NASA? Welfare? No. He's not arguing the merits. Obviously, some expenditures have merit and others take spending too far.

 

[Linflas]

I said Fed. DC is federal.

The DC metro area served by WMATA Metro has a population of 4.5 million, around 650,000 of which actually live in DC so 3.85 million of the customers served live in jurisdictions that are not Federal.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I'm not able to open the first article, but from what I've seen in the past, Paris has made public transit free for only a few days during periods of warm temps and bad air pollution. I'm assuming that's the case here and it isn't a permanent move to make public transport free, right?

 

[PingviN]

I would be curious to see the net effect. No more tickets / ticketing systems means: No more ticket tellers (labor), ticket machines (capital and operation costs), no more need to verify tickets on the buses / trains (here in the US systems like ventra in Chicago are certainly not "free" either.

Basically elimination of all the costs to collect the fares.

In Stockholm, we pay roughly 69 million SEK for our toll systems (hardware and maintenance). The cost for the personnel is about 150 million and other anti-non-paying-fckhead-efforts are another 225 million.

Let's be super-generous and assume 450 million SEK is the total cost of the toll system. The total ticket revenue is over 6 billion SEK. Another 7-8 billion comes from taxes. That means that roughly 3% of revenue goes to the toll system.

 

[sdifox]

The DC metro area served by WMATA Metro has a population of 4.5 million, around 650,000 of which actually live in DC so 3.85 million of the customers served live in jurisdictions that are not Federal.

I am saying it should just go to fed.

 

[mmntech]

Europe's problem is that everybody drives diesel cars. I believe they don't have the same strict emissions requirements that North America has. Which is why they're relatively rare here.

I would be curious to see the net effect. No more tickets / ticketing systems means: No more ticket tellers (labor), ticket machines (capital and operation costs), no more need to verify tickets on the buses / trains (here in the US systems like ventra in Chicago are certainly not "free" either.

Basically elimination of all the costs to collect the fares.

Government jobs never disappear. They just get moved elsewhere. Don't think such a move will actually reduce operating costs.

 

[Linflas]

I am saying it should just go to fed.

And I'm saying that there is no good reason that I see to take taxpayer money from someone in Chicago, New York, Boston, LA, or San Francisco which all have their own locally funded mass transit system or any other state not Virginia or Maryland to subsidize a transit system in one of the nations wealthiest jurisdictions. I can see any proposed Federal funding to get 4 votes in the Senate and 23 in the house and that is about it.

 

[PingviN]

Europe's problem is that everybody drives diesel cars. I believe they don't have the same strict emissions requirements that North America has. Which is why they're relatively rare here.

They're relatively rare over there because diesel isn't a whole lot cheaper than gasoline. If you had the fuel prices we had, you'd go diesel more often as well.

 

[feralkid]

I'm not able to open the first article, but from what I've seen in the past, Paris has made public transit free for only a few days during periods of warm temps and bad air pollution. I'm assuming that's the case here and it isn't a permanent move to make public transport free, right?

I think you're right; I doubt this will last long.