Mass transit should be free if they have ads on it
Mass transit should be free and not have ads on it.
In fact, all advertising in public spaces (including things like billboards mounted on private property but aimed towards the street) should be prohibited.
If I were “dictator for a day” one of the odd things I would do is ban all billboards. I think this every time I drive down the highway.
In Washington State, it’s relatively difficult to have billboards along highways. It’s one of the reasons our state is still beautiful to travel across.
Every time I end up in other states that have much looser billboard placement laws it’s just awful and I wonder how people can live like that.
Many cities have taken baby steps, such as prohibiting tall signs. More steps to go
For the public and environment policy that mass transit is made for (freeing up parking space; removing polluting cars from the road; reducing congestion; reducing carbon burn) yeah. Mass transit should have no usage cost
I’ll accept public service adverts. Telling you about services, advertising health and well-being, telling you to keep your feet off the seats
Is the ad revenue on mass transit actually high enough to support its operation?(ignoring even maintenance or expansion, or the replacement of unrepairable vehicles)
It’s not, and I don’t even need to go look it up.
Operating a subway is expensive. Maintenance, new lines, new trains, you name it, it costs shitloads
It’s so expensive that the NYC subway used to be multiple private railroad companies but the business just wasn’t feasible (at a reasonable price) when the market had a downturn - which is why the city eventually took it over.
This is why the track geographies are so odd in NYC
Operating a subway is expensive only when you don’t compare it to operating a city on cars shrugs
It varies. Usually fares are just there to ration use of the mass transit, providing less than a third of its cost (ignoring capital)
Also: why would you ration transit? You want as many people as possible to use it
No one’s so cheap they cycle instead. Those who cycle do so for health. We could free up there roads for the die hard drivers
For bus systems at least the amount fares cover is typically on the order of 5% give or take in the US. The fact that bus fares exist at this point in the US has got everything to do with emotions, narratives and a political stance against providing a social safety net and nothing to do with cold hard economics.
My city’s transit is already being treated like a homeless shelter, so having free transit would be amazing but a disaster.
So, give them homes. Tiny homes are cheap and for most homeless people not having a house or address is the number one reason they can’t get a house or address. The others need to be in a care facility. It should take a true renegade to remain homeless. But we value profits over everything else.
The biggest homeless issue in my city isn’t with the homeless who want help, it’s with the mentally ill ones who don’t want help or are too sick to ask. There’s really no way to deal with that tier of homeless unless you do it by force, which most anti homelessness activists are against.
edit sorry I have feelings about this lol, I didn’t mean to send all this energy at you, more like I needed to howl into the void
This is such an enraging narrative and I encounter it all the time. My city has lots of homeless because the climate is temperate (and for other reasons but not the point of this post). My city also has free bus transit (no fares no nothing).
People ALL the time hem and haw to me about being concerned if we have free transit it will be “overrun” by homeless. Often it is people I am talking to about mass transit living in my own city who have zero clue we have even have free bus transit.
At the end of the day if you are “concerned about the homeless” using the bus too much or something you know the best solution? Use the damn bus, not only will you actually see with your own eyes that homeless are just using the bus like everybody else, you help push the needle of what the average bus user looks towards you and away from whoever you are imagining as bad.
Free mass transit is the foundation of the best cities in the past and future, hamstringing transit because of a fear of homeless “ruining” it is the definition of shooting ourselves in the foot for no reason.
Yes I see homeless on the bus a lot, I see lots of people on the bus. There tends to be a lot of humans on the bus.
I use the bus daily. And mentally ill homeless walking around pointing their finger at your kid and saying “bang!” Or telling your wife “I wanna touch you!” Is not ok. Those are the ones I’m talking about. The ones that make their issues into everyone else’s. When you start threatening my family, my sympathy for your situation and mental health vanishes
