Positive: Everyone can get where they need to get (presuming it's a comprehensive system), fewer cars on the roads, less pollution.
Negatives: More taxes??? I don't know that's a negative, as it's going to happen anyway, I'd just like them to go for something that benefits everyone.
People who can't afford it use it and can now get better economic opportunities. At first there will be and uptick in graffiti and low level crime, but only until resources are realigned to deal with that instead of ticketing fare jumpers and maintaining the fare infrastructure.
Maybe you even keep the cards and the gates, and treat it like a library. Still less infrastructure would be needed and time would be saved by not having to reload cards
I have never seen, in my lifetime, taxes go down (unless we're talking a property tax in someplace that loses value quickly). I do, however, see them going up, because incomes are not the only things not keeping pace with inflation AND taxes are essentially how states and countries raise money to do the necessary things like support infrastructure.
I take that back. I've seen one instance of a tax going down, the King County tax for registering cars when from being based on Blue Book value to a flat $35, which sounds great in theory, except that all that tax money went to repair roads, support the public transit system, etc... The guy who proposed it and got people to vote for it, basically proposed it because he is a jerk who works from home and "doesn't use the roads as much as other people so why am I paying for them?"
Ok, I'll stop here because I could go on a several page rant about that particular wanker. But because said asshat's bill bankrupted the state, just as the tech bubble burst. The roads have still not recovered, nor has public transit entirely.
Now, I AM the person who votes yes for school levies, levies for public transportation and infrastructure.
I also voted against the fucking sports stadiums, because I felt we could use the money for more reasonable things... like roads and schools. But THOSE got pushed through in spite of being voted down more than once.
Sorry... I have strong feels surrounding this subject.
Shorter: Taxes rarely drop or go away, if they're going up anyway, can we use the money for things that actually benefit people, all the people, especially the people who need it, like infrastructure and public transit should definitely be considered part of a city's infrastructure.
Homeless people live on buses. This is one of those 'fix-one-thing-and-the-other-broken-things-break-it' issues. Free mass transit will create (minor) problems in the context of other social and economic injustices.
Homeless people already try to live on the buses in the dc area. I get it would happen more, but at least here there is a rule about not riding past the end of the line and no eating drink or defecating (yes we need that rule) and all those things get you kicked off.
William: Do you mean that "all mass transit that gets pushed through the political process is free"? Or the far bigger change of "sensible mass transit is available wherever it is needed, for free"?
Tony Lower-Basch Mostly, I'm thinking of the current mass transit that we have now. And I'm not including Amtrak or planes, "just" the intra-city area transit. Effectively, I mean VRE and Metro and buses, and similar analogy to each of the other cities.
May be a slight tangent. But the biggest problem Seattle has with mass transit, is that they keep trying to do things to limit traffic in certain places WITHOUT the public transit to support those changes in place. And it doesn't work like that. All it does is create bigger traffic snarls.
Example: They've taken a lot of two-lane each way streets, and changed them to one-lane each way with a large bike lane (and more parking, which seems contrary to the purpose, but who knows?) But they haven't increased bus service to those areas, either in frequency or in options. It's just frustrating, and I get it's kind of a chicken-egg thing, but I really do think you need the support there first. I mean, hell, given how expensive parking in Seattle is (there are cheaper apartments, not by much, but still) just create the support, and I think a lot of people will wend that way to save on parking fees alone.
Two weeks ago, it was nearly 100 degrees. I'd left the grocery store with Dianne Harris and gone to wait for the bus for the 4 block transit home, because omg 100 degrees.
The bus showed up, and is air conditioned. Air conditioning on wheels, moving from point of interest to point of interest!
What an astonishing world it is that has such things.
The story of the gentrification near Adams Morgan when the metro line extended out there is illustrative of something, I'm sure, though I'm not sure what.
My fear for a negative is that the cost of "free" public transit gets baked into a regressive system of taxation, while the benefits of the system are disproportionately granted to those who can afford high-cost housing.
Honestly, re: school districts, I think all the money for the whole state should go into one pot and be distributed evenly on a per student basis. But that's just me.
In Nashville, the bus lines are still set up to handle heavy traffic from historically black neighborhoods into historically affluent neighborhoods in the mornings and the opposite in the evenings. (In other words, they're for moving the Help around the town.) This even for neighborhoods that have experienced big demographic shifts (or even aren't residential any longer).
Which is to say, the question of who the bus lines are designed for is an important one.
In the DC metro area, the train lines are all set up to move people into and out of downtown proper. Despite that a lot of jobs are no longer downtown. For ex, I work in one part of Arlington County and live in another; I have to change trains because the system is not setup for this sort of thing.
Seattle has several "hubs" of bus activity. I work in one, and live just north of another. It still takes me an hour to traverse by bus what I can in 20 minutes in a car. We've got baby light rail, but right now it just goes from the airport, to where I work, with a couple stops in downtown and a few more along the way. So I can now take a quick trip downtown from my office, stop in at LUSH, and then pop back to the office in under a half an hour if I time it right. But that only works for a small minority of people right now.
They are predicting rollout of two more big light rail stops in the next year, with another opening within a mile of my house after that. But until then, the only thing that makes me take that hour bus ride over the 20 minute drive, is the cost of parking.
When I proposed the idea of free Transit to William last night I was remembering a person who was on our bus. He had to take 4 buses a total of 15 miles as the crow flies for 2 hours each way to get to and from work, just to save the $4 difference in fares, between a bus and the metro. Why is this guy even having to pay a fare at all. There is so much wasted effort trying to keep poor people from using mass transit. Just the fare structure in DC alone you need a phd to figure out, and all of them just throw fistfuls of money at it and hope they put enough on.
Tony Lower-Basch The idea then, if i have it right, is metro is widely used by those who can afford to live close to it, such that if it were free it would benefit those who live close enough and not those who live far from metro?
That's maybe true! Metro is a valuable resource that raises prices, and if it were free it could be even more valuable. That makes sense; its like having a doorman or a pool or whatever, except you aren't paying for it nearly as directly.
I'd suggest this means we need more housing vouchers, and I'm not sure you'd disagree. :-)
If you can make it ubiquitous and free. Sure you'll get some increase in property rates closer to things like train stations, but if there is SOME form of convenient public transit in all areas of the city, I think that would go a long way toward evening out property values a bit.
William Nichols: I feel like there should be a way to get public transit almost everywhere, in the way that water, sewer and electric is (now) almost ubiquitous. That could totally be a product of my own ignorance, though.
Mickey Schulz , Tony Lower-Basch concurring opinion from me: I agree we need ubiquitous transit. I am unconvinced that busses and trains and trams will get it done, at least not where we have high density.
I think it'll be a problem until we have self driving cars, running from place to place picking people up and delivering them as need be. Once the cost to cities of self driving cars becomes obviously lower than other things (no driver), I think its only a matter of time.
Whether those cars are owned by google or uber (hiss) is kinda irrelevant, as I think in the next ten to twenty years, our city management will regulate it to the point of being a city service.
I've just seen that happen as a trend in Baltimore. Hell, they closed a walking path between the Owings Mills Subway station and the mall when a woman got murdered, but I think really, they just wanted to keep "city people" (read: minorities) from coming up to the mall. Now the mall is a dead wasteland and they're shuttering it.
I think, in NYC, you /can't/ move away from public transit, though plenty of folks live out in Greenwich, right?
Positive: Everyone can get where they need to get (presuming it's a comprehensive system), fewer cars on the roads, less pollution.
ReplyDeleteNegatives: More taxes??? I don't know that's a negative, as it's going to happen anyway, I'd just like them to go for something that benefits everyone.
People who can't afford it use it and can now get better economic opportunities. At first there will be and uptick in graffiti and low level crime, but only until resources are realigned to deal with that instead of ticketing fare jumpers and maintaining the fare infrastructure.
ReplyDeleteMaybe you even keep the cards and the gates, and treat it like a library. Still less infrastructure would be needed and time would be saved by not having to reload cards
ReplyDeleteok, question time.
ReplyDeleteMickey Schulz You say taxes are going to happen anyway. Can you expand on that? I don't follow why hires taxes are a necessary.
Dianne Harris What sort of low level crime?
I have never seen, in my lifetime, taxes go down (unless we're talking a property tax in someplace that loses value quickly). I do, however, see them going up, because incomes are not the only things not keeping pace with inflation AND taxes are essentially how states and countries raise money to do the necessary things like support infrastructure.
ReplyDeleteI take that back. I've seen one instance of a tax going down, the King County tax for registering cars when from being based on Blue Book value to a flat $35, which sounds great in theory, except that all that tax money went to repair roads, support the public transit system, etc... The guy who proposed it and got people to vote for it, basically proposed it because he is a jerk who works from home and "doesn't use the roads as much as other people so why am I paying for them?"
Ok, I'll stop here because I could go on a several page rant about that particular wanker. But because said asshat's bill bankrupted the state, just as the tech bubble burst. The roads have still not recovered, nor has public transit entirely.
Now, I AM the person who votes yes for school levies, levies for public transportation and infrastructure.
I also voted against the fucking sports stadiums, because I felt we could use the money for more reasonable things... like roads and schools. But THOSE got pushed through in spite of being voted down more than once.
Sorry... I have strong feels surrounding this subject.
Shorter: Taxes rarely drop or go away, if they're going up anyway, can we use the money for things that actually benefit people, all the people, especially the people who need it, like infrastructure and public transit should definitely be considered part of a city's infrastructure.
Homeless people live on buses. This is one of those 'fix-one-thing-and-the-other-broken-things-break-it' issues. Free mass transit will create (minor) problems in the context of other social and economic injustices.
ReplyDeleteHomeless people already try to live on the buses in the dc area. I get it would happen more, but at least here there is a rule about not riding past the end of the line and no eating drink or defecating (yes we need that rule) and all those things get you kicked off.
ReplyDeleteWilliam: Do you mean that "all mass transit that gets pushed through the political process is free"? Or the far bigger change of "sensible mass transit is available wherever it is needed, for free"?
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch Mostly, I'm thinking of the current mass transit that we have now. And I'm not including Amtrak or planes, "just" the intra-city area transit. Effectively, I mean VRE and Metro and buses, and similar analogy to each of the other cities.
ReplyDeleteMay be a slight tangent. But the biggest problem Seattle has with mass transit, is that they keep trying to do things to limit traffic in certain places WITHOUT the public transit to support those changes in place. And it doesn't work like that. All it does is create bigger traffic snarls.
ReplyDeleteExample: They've taken a lot of two-lane each way streets, and changed them to one-lane each way with a large bike lane (and more parking, which seems contrary to the purpose, but who knows?) But they haven't increased bus service to those areas, either in frequency or in options. It's just frustrating, and I get it's kind of a chicken-egg thing, but I really do think you need the support there first. I mean, hell, given how expensive parking in Seattle is (there are cheaper apartments, not by much, but still) just create the support, and I think a lot of people will wend that way to save on parking fees alone.
Two weeks ago, it was nearly 100 degrees. I'd left the grocery store with Dianne Harris and gone to wait for the bus for the 4 block transit home, because omg 100 degrees.
ReplyDeleteThe bus showed up, and is air conditioned. Air conditioning on wheels, moving from point of interest to point of interest!
What an astonishing world it is that has such things.
.... whioch is by way of saying, Mickey Schulz , tangents AOK.
ReplyDeleteThe story of the gentrification near Adams Morgan when the metro line extended out there is illustrative of something, I'm sure, though I'm not sure what.
ReplyDeleteMy fear for a negative is that the cost of "free" public transit gets baked into a regressive system of taxation, while the benefits of the system are disproportionately granted to those who can afford high-cost housing.
See also: School districts.
Honestly, re: school districts, I think all the money for the whole state should go into one pot and be distributed evenly on a per student basis. But that's just me.
ReplyDeleteIn Nashville, the bus lines are still set up to handle heavy traffic from historically black neighborhoods into historically affluent neighborhoods in the mornings and the opposite in the evenings. (In other words, they're for moving the Help around the town.) This even for neighborhoods that have experienced big demographic shifts (or even aren't residential any longer).
ReplyDeleteWhich is to say, the question of who the bus lines are designed for is an important one.
Yeah, Josh Roby
ReplyDeleteIn the DC metro area, the train lines are all set up to move people into and out of downtown proper. Despite that a lot of jobs are no longer downtown. For ex, I work in one part of Arlington County and live in another; I have to change trains because the system is not setup for this sort of thing.
Seattle has several "hubs" of bus activity. I work in one, and live just north of another. It still takes me an hour to traverse by bus what I can in 20 minutes in a car. We've got baby light rail, but right now it just goes from the airport, to where I work, with a couple stops in downtown and a few more along the way. So I can now take a quick trip downtown from my office, stop in at LUSH, and then pop back to the office in under a half an hour if I time it right. But that only works for a small minority of people right now.
ReplyDeleteThey are predicting rollout of two more big light rail stops in the next year, with another opening within a mile of my house after that. But until then, the only thing that makes me take that hour bus ride over the 20 minute drive, is the cost of parking.
When I proposed the idea of free Transit to William last night I was remembering a person who was on our bus. He had to take 4 buses a total of 15 miles as the crow flies for 2 hours each way to get to and from work, just to save the $4 difference in fares, between a bus and the metro. Why is this guy even having to pay a fare at all. There is so much wasted effort trying to keep poor people from using mass transit. Just the fare structure in DC alone you need a phd to figure out, and all of them just throw fistfuls of money at it and hope they put enough on.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch The idea then, if i have it right, is metro is widely used by those who can afford to live close to it, such that if it were free it would benefit those who live close enough and not those who live far from metro?
ReplyDeleteThat's maybe true! Metro is a valuable resource that raises prices, and if it were free it could be even more valuable. That makes sense; its like having a doorman or a pool or whatever, except you aren't paying for it nearly as directly.
I'd suggest this means we need more housing vouchers, and I'm not sure you'd disagree. :-)
If you can make it ubiquitous and free. Sure you'll get some increase in property rates closer to things like train stations, but if there is SOME form of convenient public transit in all areas of the city, I think that would go a long way toward evening out property values a bit.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: I feel like there should be a way to get public transit almost everywhere, in the way that water, sewer and electric is (now) almost ubiquitous. That could totally be a product of my own ignorance, though.
ReplyDeleteMickey Schulz , Tony Lower-Basch concurring opinion from me: I agree we need ubiquitous transit. I am unconvinced that busses and trains and trams will get it done, at least not where we have high density.
ReplyDeleteI think it'll be a problem until we have self driving cars, running from place to place picking people up and delivering them as need be. Once the cost to cities of self driving cars becomes obviously lower than other things (no driver), I think its only a matter of time.
Whether those cars are owned by google or uber (hiss) is kinda irrelevant, as I think in the next ten to twenty years, our city management will regulate it to the point of being a city service.
The rich move to places that public transit doesn't reach and become more and more isolated.
ReplyDeleteWhy, Adam Dray ? They don't in NYC.
ReplyDeleteOr, rather, do you think everyone who can afford to moves away from the city, or that it is a matter of preference that is held by some?
ReplyDeleteI've just seen that happen as a trend in Baltimore. Hell, they closed a walking path between the Owings Mills Subway station and the mall when a woman got murdered, but I think really, they just wanted to keep "city people" (read: minorities) from coming up to the mall. Now the mall is a dead wasteland and they're shuttering it.
ReplyDeleteI think, in NYC, you /can't/ move away from public transit, though plenty of folks live out in Greenwich, right?
Adam Dray Yeah. I think DC and Baltimore are going different directions on this one, and I'm not sure why.
ReplyDeleteAs Tony mentioned, when the metro moves in, prices go way, way up.