Jesse

@bluemoon Everywhere that has tried free public transport sees a 30℅ increase in ridership, but no reduction in car use. The 30% increase comes out of active transport so it’s a very expensive upkeep cost to get people walking to take the bus instead.

If money is available to make public transport free then that money would be better spent on things that will result in large increases in ridership and actually reduce car usage by expanding the public transport network and running more frequent services.

You can remove the requirement for drivers to enforce fares without removing the fare as most people will still pay it.

@notgold yeah, it’s so easy to see it was bad with hindsight. But it also should have been easy to see at the time with some simple maths.

@notgold The classic second stage of the Car Ponzi scheme. They make a big list of the problems that cars created, ascribe them to population growth and then double down on cars as the solution.