[sustran] Re: Why Free Public Transport is a BAD idea? - Comments

[Velo Mondial]

Don't we just need better public transport, that brings us from where we are 
to where we want to be?


Pascal J.W. van den Noort
Executive Director Velo Mondial
operations at velomondial.net
 +31206270675 landline
+31627055688 mobile phone

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From: "eric britton" <eric.britton at ecoplan.org>
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2010 11:49 AM
To: <Sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>
Subject: [sustran] Why Free Public Transport is a BAD idea? - Comments

> A new comment on the post "Why Free Public Transport is a bad idea?" is at
> http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/why-free-public-transport-is-a-
> bad-idea/
>
> Author : Brendan Finn
> E-mail : etts at indigo.ie
>
>
> Here are my five reasons for not making transit free:
>
> 1) Needlessness: People are willing to pay a fair price for a reasonable
> quality product. It makes no sense to give it away and lose all the income
> customers were willing to give. The people transit most needs to attract -
> car-users - pay a lot of money to buy and run their car. They have already
> shown a willingness to pay for quality, so why focus on free rather than
> quality?
>
> 2) Effectiveness: Free transit means that a lot of public money goes on
> provision of the basic service. For a city of 1 million people, this is
> likely to require 300 to 500 million Euro per year just to  keep what we
> have going. That consumes all the money that could have been spent on 
> extra
> services, better quality, transit improvement schemes such as BHLS/BRT,
> terminal/stop upgrades, etc.
>
> 3) Social balance: Transit would need an extra 200-300 million Euro per 
> year
> in a typical city just to fill the gap for what people were paying 
> already.
> This is serious money, and would fund a wide range of educational, health,
> social support, urban improvement and other things that would improve the
> daily lives of the citizens. While transit subsidies should remain, it is
> hard to make a case that the marginal benefits of making it free outweigh
> the other worthy uses of public funds for the same group of citizens.
>
> 4) Dependency: Free transit means complete dependency on the public purse,
> and the political support for such a policy. Expensive programs get cut
> sooner or later, it is inevitable as government philosophy changes. The 
> Horn
> of Plenty dries up.  Reintroducing fares and a slew of service cuts to
> balance the books seriously undermines transit attractiveness and 
> ridership.
> If making transit free attracts riders, it stands to reason that charging
> for it again will drive them away.
>
> 5) Loss of business focus: Transit is a business. It works well and
> efficiently because people remember that it is a business. Even if the
> public purse is a significant customer who pays for those extra services,
> affordable tariffs, extra quality, etc., it is still run as a business. 
> You
> work hard for your buck, and you make sure the job gets done right and 
> gets
> done safely. If you forget that it is a business, the discipline goes and
> everything gets sloppy.
>
> I can also give five reasons to justify public subsidies to transit (which 
> I
> believe in), but that's not the same thing as making it free.
>
>
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