“The reason most public transportation is seen as ‘losing’ money is precisely because it charges for trips. If you don't charge fares, suddenly it can't ‘lose’ money. It just costs money, the same as the roads.”
This random comment has given me my new favourite argument for removing fares from public transit.
If you want to see what a road looks like when it doesn’t lose money, look at the 407 in Toronto, which costs $0.50 per kilometre to drive along (about $0.58 USD per mile in freedom units)
(And that has a lot of mitigating factors even so)
@dx
to be fair, you have to pay taxes on your car and on gasoline, so it's not like cars are necessarily a net negative from an "income for state vs its spending on roads etc" point of view..
(I'm all for free public transit, I just think that this particular argument seems a bit.. simplicistic?)
@dx
that's possible, but if you try to take all factors into account, the calculation is gonna get incredibly complex and thus easier to disregard..
I think there's also calculations that say that free public transportation would be a net-benefit even financially, but those too seem to be too complex to convince anyone in charge :-/
Yes, this sucks: Simplistic arguments don't work well (when their gaps are easily spotted), but neither do complex ones
🚲
Daniel Gibson
Ben Aveling