At least twice a month the card reader on my Metrobus doesn't work and we get waved through. I get annoyed when the happens because my closest Metrobus route is proposed for removal under the "Better Bus" proposal. If my ride isn't counted, it's easier to cut the route.
People who jump the turnstiles might not love the city, they might just live there because they were born there and haven't found a way out. That being said, pay the fare, it's the right thing to do.
Of course, left unsaid is that police departments choose not to enforce this law, along with speeding, right light/stop sign violations. Why not? I'm more annoyed that the police choose not to enforce the laws.
Also, I agree the Metro pylons are iconic and are the standard for subway entrances. No other system does it as well. I even blogged about it recently. WMATA is testing a new design though at L'enfant Plaza. I don't like it as much.
I have filled out the survey, encouraged others to do so, spoken to the GM in person, spoken to mayor of Alexandria, went to a Better Bus event last year, etc.
Good for you, I admire that! I went to meetings in Memphis about 20 years ago, among others, and was successful in preventing the bus route I depended on from being removed. It was the only bus route for miles!
In Ottawa, as with many other cities, there are calls to end bus fare and make transit free. Currently, even though transit is subsidized, fare box revenue is still significant. If a route runs through a poor or working-class neighborhood, it will be filled with riders at rush hour. This means that transit planners are likely to take these riders' demand into account.
If buses and trains no longer have fare boxes ("free transit"), because the city 100% funds the service, then all decisions on bus routes and schedules will be driven by the bus organization and the city planning bodies that advise it.
This will mean that the low-income commuters who are currently metaphorically "voting" for their preferred routes and schedules via the fares they deposit in the farebox, will have little voice in how routes or schedules are set.
In a fully-subsidized transit system, only the bus organization and the various councils will weigh in on routes and schedules. A posh, well-to-do neighborhood can have a retired transportation engineer do a PowerPoint presentation on why their neighborhood needs more services. They are more likely to have friends on the planned councils that they can influence.
An impoverished neighborhood where people are struggling to make ends meet is unlikely to send a representative to these planning meetings.
"Free transit" seems likely to be a route to focusing on the needs and interests of the best-off and most articulate citizens, and to ignoring the transit needs of poor communities.
Even if it’s revenue-neutral or even operated at a loss, it’s important to charge some nominal amount (and enforce it) for both psychological reasons (people don’t value what they don’t pay for) as well as to keep off people who are so dysfunctional that they menace other passengers. Also, farebox revenue softens taxpayer concerns and justifies these projects.
You have a good point. The city can count riders on each route and capture use by route and time of day. However, ridership data and "money in farebox" don't have the same power in influencing decisions by the bus organization.
Let's say Anytown Bus Service gets $10 million from the city treasury each year. If they make transit use free to users, now they don't have to take rider demand into account, at least from a budgetary point of view. Complaints from neighborhood residents about poor or infrequent service may get fed into the decision-making system, but there may be an over-representation of higher income groups' interests if neighborhood groups and interest groups dominate decision-making.
A posh neighborhood may have a retired engineer or city planner make a presentation to the bus organization's planning committee. A skilled presenter will show how their neighborhood's request for more bus service checks off every box in Anytown's 2024-2029 Strategic Transportation Vision. I doubt Anytown's poorest neighborhoods, where people are struggling with poverty and addiction, will experts to do a presentation.
If fares are free to in Anytown, the bus organization, city transportation planners, and other experts will be able to note that the poor neighborhood has ridership (as collected during the ridership measurement you alluded to) and then not provide service anyway, all without facing much blowback, because poor communities have much less voice.
It's people from well-off neighborhoods who penned op-eds (noting their credentials) on urban issues to the paper). It's people from high-education backgrounds who have the technical knowledge and confidence to speak articulately about public transportation policy at city planning meetings.
If you make public transportation in free, the system may ignore the needs of the poorest communities, because well-off people in elite neighborhoods have a bigger voice and an outsized influence in city decision-making.
Before I published my pieces on retail theft and post-YIMBYtown tension, they felt a bit risky, but both got a lot of readership and positive feedback. I see the same thing is happening here!
This is a problem in Toronto, especially post pandemic. I have friends who make 6-figure salaries and laugh about riding for free, justifying it because they think the service is not as good as it could be. I strongly feel this is wrong. When the inevitable cuts happen due to lack of farebox revenue, these are the people who will just use Uber or drive their cars instead, while the people who rely on transit as their only option will be the ones that suffer. If you value transit, pay for it. You can't steal the service for free and then expect it to magically get better.
I 100% believe that mass transit should be free for everyone. It is because of that belief that I pay my fare every time. The money has to come from somewhere. I can afford it. I will happily pay so that those who need free transit by necessity can have the same access.
> I felt that these trains crisscrossing the city day and night connected us—they were both a *sign* and a *reality* of the city’s motion and its community.
There's something wonderfully beautiful about that. Is that intentionally or unintentionally similar to one way of describing a sacrament - "that which effects what it signifies"? Either way, you've prompted me to write on that topic.
You are spot on. These entitled brats often express admiration for European welfare. Have they been inspected by one of the checkers in Paris Metro or the OV chip card reader guys in the Netherlands? They do not mess around and one time when I could not find my paid ticket stub (that was 20 years ago) in Paris, it was an automatic fine on the spot.
There’s no faregates in much of Germany, but when I visited recently there were frequently police officers on the trains inspecting for tickets. In one week I saw passengers in both Berlin and Munich barred from exiting the train and fined for not having a ticket. Plus the bus drivers in Germany do NOT mess around with food or noise from passengers.
I encountered that “no-turnstile” system in Berlin and Kraków. Very nice to just board and disembark everywhere without constantly passing through checkpoints. I was never checked by an official for my validated pass despite looking forward to it as a trip experience.
Turnstile jumping is theft from the public coffers. I suppose we could allow people to steal if they're poor - there are in fact good public welfare reasons to do so even if I don't agree - but if you're rich, it's no different from tax evasion. Which I suppose the same rich people justify on the grounds that the government doesn't spend their money the way they would like.
Making it cost something and enforcing it helps keep dangerous schizophrenics and people in psychosis from being on transit somewhat, and that’s a plus, because it isn’t a shelter, and the presence of those people discourages others from riding transit. I think it should be like a buck for poor folks that jump through a few hoops like it is in Seattle for that reason. We just need better enforcement.
The thing about transit is that it is already free if you can't afford it. In Seattle, for example, social services agencies would hand out transit vouchers like candy and bus drivers would let you on for free if you said you couldn't pay. I'm sure other areas are similar.
We did have a fare-free zone downtown for many years but all the riders and bus drivers hated it because the primary beneficiaries were people who used the bus for purposes unrelated to transportation. That's the reality of "free transit" in most jurisdictions.
It’s like a buck per ride with Orcalift though you have to be currently eligible for EBT or Medicaid, not free, though social services places do have bus passes.
A thing that bothers me is not just not paying for it but many times payment is how stations track how many people use it at a given time. This data gets used when they decide on where resources will go.
Where I live, the scanners on the bus frequently don't work (they're a little better with the app now) so I stopped activating my ticket until I was sure I wouldn't just get waved to my seat. My wife mentioned I may as well buy the ticket rather than saving it for later even if there's a decent chance of getting waved on. That way I'm still paying for the service
It's like the "software should be free" "movement" that people use to justify piracy. If you're going to steal something, steal it, but don't pretend you're some kind of freedom fighter.
The genesis of our country in revolution creates a rhetorical device that Americans can always use when they want to break a rule. "Don't Tread On Me!"
I'm disappointed you didn't name your dinner companion. Jackasses like him need to be exposed for who they are. The "solidarity with the poor" rationalization for fare evasion sounds like something that could be used by billionaires who do everything possible to minimize their tax payments. If the poor pay little or no income tax, the rich can claim to show solidarity by withholding theirs.
I actually think this when people try to do things to get out of taxes - taxes are your civic duty. If you love America, put your money where your mouth is.
I said something similar once to a guy who took pride in avoiding his fare, gentle as I could. He was offended and told me I was privileged. Maybe. But if you're gainfully employed at Google, you can afford your fare.
Why is fare evasion seen to be such a criminal act in contrast to not paying for parking at metered spaces, or the people who drive around with "temporary" tags that are months old (or obscure their registration plates)to avoid paying for traffic citations and tolls?
I moved from Northern Virginia to Philadelphia last year, and fare evasion is so demoralizing to society. I feel like a sucker paying for the (disgusting) Philly subway, because the vast majority of people jump the turnstiles. I was back visiting Washington and I used the metro, and the DC one is so clean and genteel by comparison. I know Washingtonians like to complain about it, but it's probably the nicest subway system on the continent.
At least twice a month the card reader on my Metrobus doesn't work and we get waved through. I get annoyed when the happens because my closest Metrobus route is proposed for removal under the "Better Bus" proposal. If my ride isn't counted, it's easier to cut the route.
People who jump the turnstiles might not love the city, they might just live there because they were born there and haven't found a way out. That being said, pay the fare, it's the right thing to do.
Of course, left unsaid is that police departments choose not to enforce this law, along with speeding, right light/stop sign violations. Why not? I'm more annoyed that the police choose not to enforce the laws.
Also, I agree the Metro pylons are iconic and are the standard for subway entrances. No other system does it as well. I even blogged about it recently. WMATA is testing a new design though at L'enfant Plaza. I don't like it as much.
I hope you’re writing Metro about that and showing up at hearings. The squeaky wheel is less likely to get their bus taken away
I have filled out the survey, encouraged others to do so, spoken to the GM in person, spoken to mayor of Alexandria, went to a Better Bus event last year, etc.
Good for you, I admire that! I went to meetings in Memphis about 20 years ago, among others, and was successful in preventing the bus route I depended on from being removed. It was the only bus route for miles!
In Ottawa, as with many other cities, there are calls to end bus fare and make transit free. Currently, even though transit is subsidized, fare box revenue is still significant. If a route runs through a poor or working-class neighborhood, it will be filled with riders at rush hour. This means that transit planners are likely to take these riders' demand into account.
If buses and trains no longer have fare boxes ("free transit"), because the city 100% funds the service, then all decisions on bus routes and schedules will be driven by the bus organization and the city planning bodies that advise it.
This will mean that the low-income commuters who are currently metaphorically "voting" for their preferred routes and schedules via the fares they deposit in the farebox, will have little voice in how routes or schedules are set.
In a fully-subsidized transit system, only the bus organization and the various councils will weigh in on routes and schedules. A posh, well-to-do neighborhood can have a retired transportation engineer do a PowerPoint presentation on why their neighborhood needs more services. They are more likely to have friends on the planned councils that they can influence.
An impoverished neighborhood where people are struggling to make ends meet is unlikely to send a representative to these planning meetings.
"Free transit" seems likely to be a route to focusing on the needs and interests of the best-off and most articulate citizens, and to ignoring the transit needs of poor communities.
I'm sure there are ways to count ridership without charging riders.
Making transit free sounds like an efficiency win. Fare transactions take time, fare enforcement costs money.
Even if it’s revenue-neutral or even operated at a loss, it’s important to charge some nominal amount (and enforce it) for both psychological reasons (people don’t value what they don’t pay for) as well as to keep off people who are so dysfunctional that they menace other passengers. Also, farebox revenue softens taxpayer concerns and justifies these projects.
You have a good point. The city can count riders on each route and capture use by route and time of day. However, ridership data and "money in farebox" don't have the same power in influencing decisions by the bus organization.
Let's say Anytown Bus Service gets $10 million from the city treasury each year. If they make transit use free to users, now they don't have to take rider demand into account, at least from a budgetary point of view. Complaints from neighborhood residents about poor or infrequent service may get fed into the decision-making system, but there may be an over-representation of higher income groups' interests if neighborhood groups and interest groups dominate decision-making.
A posh neighborhood may have a retired engineer or city planner make a presentation to the bus organization's planning committee. A skilled presenter will show how their neighborhood's request for more bus service checks off every box in Anytown's 2024-2029 Strategic Transportation Vision. I doubt Anytown's poorest neighborhoods, where people are struggling with poverty and addiction, will experts to do a presentation.
If fares are free to in Anytown, the bus organization, city transportation planners, and other experts will be able to note that the poor neighborhood has ridership (as collected during the ridership measurement you alluded to) and then not provide service anyway, all without facing much blowback, because poor communities have much less voice.
It's people from well-off neighborhoods who penned op-eds (noting their credentials) on urban issues to the paper). It's people from high-education backgrounds who have the technical knowledge and confidence to speak articulately about public transportation policy at city planning meetings.
If you make public transportation in free, the system may ignore the needs of the poorest communities, because well-off people in elite neighborhoods have a bigger voice and an outsized influence in city decision-making.
Rarely do folks in posh neighborhoods request better bus service
I'm referring to upper-middle-class neighborhoods, rather than CEOs gated mansion communities.
Before I published my pieces on retail theft and post-YIMBYtown tension, they felt a bit risky, but both got a lot of readership and positive feedback. I see the same thing is happening here!
This is a problem in Toronto, especially post pandemic. I have friends who make 6-figure salaries and laugh about riding for free, justifying it because they think the service is not as good as it could be. I strongly feel this is wrong. When the inevitable cuts happen due to lack of farebox revenue, these are the people who will just use Uber or drive their cars instead, while the people who rely on transit as their only option will be the ones that suffer. If you value transit, pay for it. You can't steal the service for free and then expect it to magically get better.
I 100% believe that mass transit should be free for everyone. It is because of that belief that I pay my fare every time. The money has to come from somewhere. I can afford it. I will happily pay so that those who need free transit by necessity can have the same access.
*wanking emoji*
> I felt that these trains crisscrossing the city day and night connected us—they were both a *sign* and a *reality* of the city’s motion and its community.
There's something wonderfully beautiful about that. Is that intentionally or unintentionally similar to one way of describing a sacrament - "that which effects what it signifies"? Either way, you've prompted me to write on that topic.
Quasi-intentionally!
You are spot on. These entitled brats often express admiration for European welfare. Have they been inspected by one of the checkers in Paris Metro or the OV chip card reader guys in the Netherlands? They do not mess around and one time when I could not find my paid ticket stub (that was 20 years ago) in Paris, it was an automatic fine on the spot.
There’s no faregates in much of Germany, but when I visited recently there were frequently police officers on the trains inspecting for tickets. In one week I saw passengers in both Berlin and Munich barred from exiting the train and fined for not having a ticket. Plus the bus drivers in Germany do NOT mess around with food or noise from passengers.
I encountered that “no-turnstile” system in Berlin and Kraków. Very nice to just board and disembark everywhere without constantly passing through checkpoints. I was never checked by an official for my validated pass despite looking forward to it as a trip experience.
Turnstile jumping is theft from the public coffers. I suppose we could allow people to steal if they're poor - there are in fact good public welfare reasons to do so even if I don't agree - but if you're rich, it's no different from tax evasion. Which I suppose the same rich people justify on the grounds that the government doesn't spend their money the way they would like.
Making it cost something and enforcing it helps keep dangerous schizophrenics and people in psychosis from being on transit somewhat, and that’s a plus, because it isn’t a shelter, and the presence of those people discourages others from riding transit. I think it should be like a buck for poor folks that jump through a few hoops like it is in Seattle for that reason. We just need better enforcement.
"Nobody should have to..." the slipperiest slope.
Disappointing that this guy is affiliated with Strong Towns. He needs to be excommunicated.
All the others in Strong Towns should get one punch
The thing about transit is that it is already free if you can't afford it. In Seattle, for example, social services agencies would hand out transit vouchers like candy and bus drivers would let you on for free if you said you couldn't pay. I'm sure other areas are similar.
We did have a fare-free zone downtown for many years but all the riders and bus drivers hated it because the primary beneficiaries were people who used the bus for purposes unrelated to transportation. That's the reality of "free transit" in most jurisdictions.
It’s like a buck per ride with Orcalift though you have to be currently eligible for EBT or Medicaid, not free, though social services places do have bus passes.
A thing that bothers me is not just not paying for it but many times payment is how stations track how many people use it at a given time. This data gets used when they decide on where resources will go.
Where I live, the scanners on the bus frequently don't work (they're a little better with the app now) so I stopped activating my ticket until I was sure I wouldn't just get waved to my seat. My wife mentioned I may as well buy the ticket rather than saving it for later even if there's a decent chance of getting waved on. That way I'm still paying for the service
It's like the "software should be free" "movement" that people use to justify piracy. If you're going to steal something, steal it, but don't pretend you're some kind of freedom fighter.
The genesis of our country in revolution creates a rhetorical device that Americans can always use when they want to break a rule. "Don't Tread On Me!"
The software industry are the thieves by making everything a fucking subscription
> If you're going to steal something, steal it, but don't pretend you're some kind of freedom fighter.
Why not? Why stop at stealing material things when you can also steal status and moral superiority?
I'm disappointed you didn't name your dinner companion. Jackasses like him need to be exposed for who they are. The "solidarity with the poor" rationalization for fare evasion sounds like something that could be used by billionaires who do everything possible to minimize their tax payments. If the poor pay little or no income tax, the rich can claim to show solidarity by withholding theirs.
I actually think this when people try to do things to get out of taxes - taxes are your civic duty. If you love America, put your money where your mouth is.
I said something similar once to a guy who took pride in avoiding his fare, gentle as I could. He was offended and told me I was privileged. Maybe. But if you're gainfully employed at Google, you can afford your fare.
Why is fare evasion seen to be such a criminal act in contrast to not paying for parking at metered spaces, or the people who drive around with "temporary" tags that are months old (or obscure their registration plates)to avoid paying for traffic citations and tolls?
I moved from Northern Virginia to Philadelphia last year, and fare evasion is so demoralizing to society. I feel like a sucker paying for the (disgusting) Philly subway, because the vast majority of people jump the turnstiles. I was back visiting Washington and I used the metro, and the DC one is so clean and genteel by comparison. I know Washingtonians like to complain about it, but it's probably the nicest subway system on the continent.