Public transport should be free

[Lt. Fred]

All public transport (and roads) should be completely free to access for everyone, financed through progressive income taxation. Making people pay at point of use creates needless costs, such as waiting in line, creating expensive complicated bureaucracies and/or software to enforce payment and wasting police time enforcing them. It also creates a disincentive against the use of a merit good and an incentive to use a demerit good (private cars). If fares were free, people could still choose to drive their personal vehicles, except that traffic would be substantially less jammed.

This is something every country in the world should enact tomorrow.

Discuss.

[dpareja]

Having taken buses regularly for well over a decade, taxes would have to go way up to offset the loss of fares and to handle the extra load on the system from the additional riders.

[davedan]

There is an added benefit to business with free public transport. However I disagree that roads should be free. I wouldn't have a problem with car registration being increased.

Free public transport couldn't be paid for without increased taxation and spending cuts to other areas. However given the utopia of every country enacting it simultaneously it could be paid for by every country simultaneously cutting all funding to defence.

[Lt. Fred]

Spending cuts should not be considered. I'd be happy with a slight income tax increase.

In terms of free roads, I mean untolled. It's silly to degrade the usefulness of very expensive public infrastructure by creating a disincentive under the mistaken belief that people prefer spending money at point of use than through income taxation.

[davedan]

Fred you couldnt pay for it with a 'slight' income tax increase and no cuts/reallocations of spending.

Even in a city like Brisbane public transport would raise millions of dollars in fares per day.

[Lt. Fred]

People would be paying less money to the government. Taxes/costs would be lower. Why would a person prefer to pay the government at point of use than through taxation (unless they're very rich)?

[Joey]

Toll money doesn't go to the government. It goes to private corporations who contracted to build those roads / bridges, most of which are not even US-based. I'm all for not allowing contracts like that to exist in the future, but as for the current toll roads, nothing can be done about it now.

[erictheblue]

Every few years, the local mass transit company (Metro) goes through funding problems. Why? Because much of the funding comes from 2 states, DC (the city, not the federal government), and all the cities and counties within the area covered by Metro. And every time it happens, everyone is fighting over how much funding should come from what source. (Riders also pay fares.)

Metro has been slowly but continually raising fares on riders because funding from the government sources is just not sufficient to cover operating costs. Also, if all the municipalities raised their taxes to cover Metro, the people who don't use Metro would be up in arms! It would not be a small tax increase. As I said, Metro has to charge riders more and more to cover the shortfalls from the governments. If all of a sudden, income from fares disappeared, the costs to the governments would be dramatic.

(And argument can be made that some of the counties could afford the tax increase, and that is true. But not all of them could. It would be a huge burden on some of the counties because they just do not have the tax base to cover it.)

[Lt. Fred]

It costs the same. There's no problem with tax bases, you're just shifting costs around.

[Radiation]

We have had proposals on our ballots for millage for the main GR bus system known as the Rapid and it is hard to get funding for them as people freak out over having their property taxes increase in order to keep the system operational. Fortunately there is one that passed that will install the Silver Line that will run down the Division Ave route and act like a fast train system.

[Distind]

So which level of funding would cover this transport?

At least in the US we have fairly vast swaths of the country with little or no public transport, and it would be completely impractical to implement it. If we're talking a federal tax for this we're placing the weight of urban or suburban convience on the shoulders of people that get no such service and never would.

[Tolpuddle Martyr]

I know some people in rural areas that would love free public transport, people in remote outback areas even more so.

So if you provide free public transport to everyone in the city it's only fair that the people in Bourke (NSW), Ampilitwatja (NT) and St Helens (Tas) get it too.

Which...sort of raises a few logistical issues.

[Art Vandelay]

I know some people in rural areas that would love free public transport, people in remote outback areas even more so.

So if you provide free public transport to everyone in the city it's only fair that the people in Bourke (NSW), Ampilitwatja (NT) and St Helens (Tas) get it too.

Which...sort of raises a few logistical issues.

Free air travel? That'd be quite handy.

[Dynamic Dragon]

I suppose we could pay for this if we dismantled the welfare system and gave money to the poor directly...

[nickiknack]

I suppose we could pay for this if we dismantled the welfare system and gave money to the poor directly...

Like in a Basic Income Guarantee. Though that will never happen in reality given that we're to much into poor shaming, and remember people have to earn their worth.