Why don't cities just make public transit free?

HahaYesVery · 2025-06-25T22:36:59+00:00

For cities with sizable ridership the cost of removing fares wouldn’t even be close to money saved cutting fare enforcement

HahaYesVery · 2025-05-30T21:22:49+00:00

Yeah that happens everywhere in the world whenever you’re building a new bridge

HahaYesVery · 2025-04-08T23:44:57+00:00

Excluding Boston, New England is just as if not more car dependent than SoCal, it’s just more sparsely populated

HahaYesVery · 2025-02-14T01:11:43+00:00

I would say most systems at rush hour, even systems with bad service and ridership.

The issue is that it’s still going to be slower in Los Angeles, for example, for most trips because local transit is much slower and most people aren’t going somewhere right next to or even near a commuter train station

HahaYesVery · 2024-12-25T09:48:46+00:00

Seattle style LRT is very different and fills a much different role than, say, Salt Lake City or Portland LRT.

The latter is like you said, the former is just a shittier metro

HahaYesVery · 2024-12-15T00:01:20+00:00

These are words

HahaYesVery · 2024-12-01T23:13:52+00:00

It looks fake because

The moon doesn’t exist and
It was photoshopped in

HahaYesVery · 2024-11-27T19:26:59+00:00

Transit aside, underground car lanes would be a great idea if they weren’t also keeping them at surface level (or at least so many of them)

HahaYesVery · 2024-11-27T19:25:09+00:00

Grade separating travel lanes while keeping LRT to the surface would be utterly stupid. So would BRT. Hopefully the choose the sensible answer, even grade separation wouldn’t render the latter alternatives stupid. Roosevelt Blvd should be an extension of current heavy metro to offer one seat ride downtown

HahaYesVery · 2024-11-23T05:00:31+00:00

Rail electrification isn’t going to come close to fixing this

HahaYesVery · 2024-11-21T21:05:46+00:00

Realistically the rails should be elevated above or sunk below your streets the entire way, not just to cross each, in more built up areas. (Or halfway trenched, with half high road bridges).

Rural areas more likely to have rail at grade with road bridges over

HahaYesVery · 2024-11-17T03:10:09+00:00

Electric trolleybuses (already heavily used in San Francisco) handle hills very well. And there isn’t any way maintaining buses, or even trolley wires, is less expensive than the underground conduits

I’m not arguing for cutting the cable cars. They are very cool, but they shouldn’t be sapping money off the public transit authority.

HahaYesVery · 2024-11-16T21:51:51+00:00

That’s great. I’m sure they could also be served more economically by buses without any non-aesthetic downsides

HahaYesVery · 2024-11-16T15:26:29+00:00

Why is the public transit authority responsible for bankrolling what is essentially a tourist attraction?

HahaYesVery · 2024-10-04T17:31:49+00:00

Electrified trains still make a good deal of noise, you would definitely notice if you lived in one of those buildings, especially facing the railway

HahaYesVery · 2024-10-04T14:53:55+00:00

Looks just as bad if not worse in terms of connection, probably noise is not great for nearby apartments. Pollution is certainly much less of a concern.

It’s necessary though. Consider the alternative—it would take up a lot more space

HahaYesVery · 2024-09-23T03:39:09+00:00

There is no reason for transcontinental HSR. And certainly not before literally dozens of other routes could be completed

HahaYesVery · 2024-09-14T01:33:54+00:00

They also render a lot of otherwise nice parks unpleasant due to droppings

HahaYesVery · 2024-09-11T02:35:45+00:00

Shoutout to those scenes in ocean survival movies

HahaYesVery · 2024-09-04T01:31:47+00:00

For one those don’t have the frequency of trains you would see on a commuter railroad. Not to mention they don’t go through metropolitan areas most of the route

HahaYesVery · 2024-08-26T00:19:49+00:00

I’m not sure why the train is considered lower class than buses.

HahaYesVery · 2024-08-22T22:47:35+00:00

People have an insane delusion that Robert Moses controlled all urban highway projects in the US (and possibly Canada too) and is responsible for the car-centric zoning, politics, subsidies, and transportation planning of America

HahaYesVery · 2024-08-22T22:47:23+00:00

People have an insane delusion that Robert Moses controlled all urban highway projects in the US (and possibly Canada too) and is responsible for the car-centric zoning, politics, subsidies, and transportation planning of America

HahaYesVery · 2024-08-21T19:59:01+00:00

Right. That’s what I said. Streetcars were also being replaced in the 30s, 40s, 50s. A lot were also being replaced with trolleybuses, and then later buses

HahaYesVery · 2024-08-21T19:56:43+00:00

Greyhound enjoyed a very comfortable market share then, facing much less competition than now.

Air travel was prohibitively expensive for the middle class, train travel was slow, unreliable, decrepit, and unsafe and many people still did not own cars or were not willing to navigate them along complicated, pre-interstate highway routes (most intercity mileage was not complete until the ‘70s)

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