Germany Considers Free Public Transport in Fight To Banish Air Pollution (theguardian.com) 321
"Car nation" Germany has surprised neighbours with a radical proposal to reduce road traffic by making public transport free, as Berlin scrambles to meet EU air pollution targets and avoid big fines. From a report: The move comes just over two years after Volkswagen's devastating "dieselgate" emissions cheating scandal unleashed a wave of anger at the auto industry, a keystone of German prosperity. "We are considering public transport free of charge in order to reduce the number of private cars," three ministers including Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks wrote to EU Environment Commissioner Karmenu Vella in the letter seen by AFP Tuesday.
I'm not in Germany but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'm not in Germany but... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the ONLY reason? I'm also dissuaded by the fact that my car starts and stops closer to where I want to be.
Re:I'm not in Germany but... (Score:5, Informative)
That's the ONLY reason? I'm also dissuaded by the fact that my car starts and stops closer to where I want to be.
In European cities, the distance from the next available parking spot often will be further than the distance from the next public transport stop.
Re:I'm not in Germany but... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's certainly true, but I think the GP's point is that anybody who can afford to drive will still do so, because the car runs on exactly your schedule, and goes exactly where you want to go. The route can be changed at any moment and offers much more comfort and a more pleasant experience.
Apart from this, even if parking is sparse, it will usually be much faster to drive. It depends on the city, but most people value less time spent commuting over all else.
Re:I'm not in Germany but... (Score:4)
I can afford to drive all the way to my job, but I leave the car mid-route and take the train to the city center. This is so to avoid the huge morning and evening traffic jams, and because I can go reading or web-browsing during half the ride. This combination takes about 1/4 longer than going all the way by car, but it's worth it.
Re:I'm not in Germany but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apart from this, even if parking is sparse, it will usually be much faster to drive. It depends on the city, but most people value less time spent commuting over all else.
The first claim is far from true for many European cities. When I moved to Munich (1995), I sold my car after it stood useless and rusting for 18 months. Going by subway, it took me about 10 minutes to get to work (and the subway ran every 10 minutes). Going by bicycle was 20 minutes. Going by car was unpredictable, but never less than 20 minutes, even with private parking at home (so no searching). Now I live in Stuttgart, and while going by car might be nominally a bit faster with no traffic, we cannot have any meetings at 9 in the morning, because during rush hour, my colleagues travel time goes up by an hour or so. The public transport system in most of the US is (intentionally or not) crippled. Try Singapore, Hong Kong, Munich or even Paris to see what it can be like.
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It's not crippled. With a few notable exceptions (e.g. NYC), the cities here tend to be a lot sparser than the European cities I've visited. The means the traffic problems which slow down driving your own car there are not as bad here (in time per distance), and that public transportation has to cover a larger area so either runs slower (more stops per trip) or leaves you with a longer distance to walk after getting off (fe
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Time in a car is dead time. On the bus I can read, write, take an online course, review my work email, etc. Commuting is much more efficient and a walk from a station to work serves as daily exercise. Oh, and it's cheaper if you look at it in costs per mile. Also safer.
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It's a lot healthier to stand. You'll be sitting at your desk all day and letting your arteries and bones degenerate. Best to stand as much as possible.
Also, get a standing desk at work.
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Pleasant experience? Traffic jams, road rage, desperately looking for a parking spot, you call that a pleasant experience?
Driving sucks. Public transport sucks as well, but driving is worse most of the time.
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Try riding the Red or Blue lines in Chicago and get back to me on that.
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Yes, exactly. And driving, I am not going to [experience various unpleasantries].
Well, public transport systems sure differ. Many around the world are clean, fast, and safe. I've never seen any body wastes in a subway or tram in Europe. As for going by car: do you ignore traffic accidents and the accompanying risks and costs?
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Many around the world are clean, fast, and safe. I've never seen any body wastes in a subway or tram in Europe.
That may change. If the ride is free, they may soon have homeless people living on the train.
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Here in the US, there are maybe a half-dozen places where having a car is less convenient than driving, all dense city centers where a distinct minori
Re:I'm not in Germany but... (Score:4, Informative)
I live in Austin, and find the bus to/from work more convenient (and cheaper) than driving. Downtown parking garages are $25-$40 a day, so by taking a bus, it not just saves me $800 a month, but also 30+ minutes a day in commuting time, just to find a spot in the 10+ levels of the garage.
There are a lot more than six places where public transportation is useful.
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Death by hobo and death by car crash are both very very very low probability events. If one is ten or a hundred times more likely than the other, they're both still inconsequential.
Classic case of not understanding risk. Risk is a frequency of event compounded by the severity of it. Death is as severe as it gets, so let's look at frequency. The frequency of a population is quite low. However that is largely thanks to the many people who take themselves out of the risk pool by not driving causing that statistic to be driven down. The worst thing you can do is compound your time at risk increasing the probability that you will be involved in an accident.
You think it's low probability, y
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That sounds like my truck!
But being serious, all of that can be fixed by proper funding.
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In sensible cities you have all the stuff people want to visit built around public transport hubs. The railway station, for example, is often also a shopping centre and near to office blocks in Japan and some parts of Europe. In fact in Japan the retail attached to the station keeps the train tickets cheap and the service very high quality.
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I practically always use public transport, because I can make good use of the time - read a book, follow my news, sometimes even do a bit of coding or just thinking.
Driving is a waste of time if you have good public transport to resort to, especially if you are a commuter and do it every day. Also, the short walk to the bus or tram stop is good for my health, considering I have a sedentary job like most of us.
Also, cars are noisy, expensive and they stink. I wish more people would use public transport.
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The only reason I drive rather than commute by train is that it's a lot cheaper for two people to drive than it is to get the train.
The only reason I drive rather than commute by mass transit is that I live in the US and mass transit is almost non-existent outside of a few major cities.
Re: I'm not in Germany but... (Score:2, Insightful)
If they really cared about emissions they would keep their nuclear plants running. They care more about appearance.
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Most of the rail where you find passenger rail lines (Amtrak with extra luggage space) and commuter rail lines (more seats, no luggage space) is ac
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At least where I live, Public transportation is just too slow.
I live 50 Kilometers from my work. Even if public transportation reached my house, it would take 3 or 4 hours to get work. and 3 or 4 hours back. So my day would be Wake up, Travel to work, work, track to home, sleep.
Living closer to work, will require living in a noisier area, with more crime, and in a much smaller home.
Having a car, really gives me the optimal life style that I and my family choose to have.
"Free" (Score:2, Insightful)
Free doesn't mean free. It means now every time your neighbor gets on a bus you have to pay a fractional cent. Paying it for them motivates them to use it more. Now it means all your neighbors.
That might work there, but where I live the bus sucks so bad I couldn't use it if it were free. It takes a minimum of three hours to get to where I want to be, less than one to drive.
Roads are also subsidized (Score:5, Insightful)
You are forgetting that roads are also heavily subsidized. So, each time you drive to work you are taking money from a neighbor who cycles, or walks, to work. https://frontiergroup.org/repo... [frontiergroup.org]
"Aside from gas taxes and individuals’ expenditures for their own driving, U.S. households bear on average an additional burden of more than $1,100 per year in taxes and other costs imposed by driving. Including:
An estimated $597 per U.S. household per year in general tax revenue dedicated to road construction and repair.
Between $199 and $675 per household per year in additional tax subsidies for driving, such as the sales tax exemption for gasoline purchases in many states and the federal income tax exclusion for commuter parking benefits.
An estimated $216 per year in government expenditures made necessary by vehicle crashes, not counting additional, uncompensated damages to victims and property.
Approximately $93 to $360 per household in costs related to air pollution-induced health damage."
This is only a small snip from the article that I provided the link to.
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You are forgetting that roads are also heavily subsidized.
And you're forgetting that everybody benefits from those roads - that's why they're subsidized.
Re:Roads are also subsidized (Score:5, Insightful)
You are forgetting that roads are also heavily subsidized.
And you're forgetting that everybody benefits from those roads - that's why they're subsidized.
And everyone benefits from Mass Transit too. Even if you don't use Mass Transit, you benefit from cleaner air, less congested roads, and an improved over-all economy. (Cities with good Mass Transit are generally considered more desirable- which brings in more employers and people wanting to live there, which improves your property values, the tax the city brings in... and along with that more amenities for citizens).
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Just like everyone would benefit from robust Public Transportation -- so what exactly is your argument here?
I don't directly benefit from Public Transportation, no. I do have some indirect benefits.
But the road in front of my house *directly* benefits me, even if I don't drive. The mailman and UPS guy still drive down it, people who visit me use it, etc.
I can make the argument for free public transportation, but for free public roads? The argument makes itself.
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You are forgetting that roads are also heavily subsidized. So, each time you drive to work you are taking money from a neighbor who cycles, or walks, to work.
Can you think of anyone who doesn't benefit from subsidized roads? Unless you live in a self-contained biosphere constructed by local labor from locally sourced material, the food you get at the store was trucked in from somewhere else, the fuel you use for heating/travel was trucked in from somewhere else, the place you live was constructed from materials trucked in from somewhere else, and there are services available to you beyond walking distance because there are roads available for those services to
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You are forgetting that roads are also heavily subsidized. So, each time you drive to work you are taking money from a neighbor who cycles, or walks, to work.
Conversely, the very existence of a good road network, transportation technology, fueling network, and so forth could be seen as being "subsidized" by private motoring culture.
I'm rather glad that paramedics don't have to take a train to come get me. For one thing. Would fancy motorized ambulances exist, if private motoring had never happened?
Also, would motorized buses even exist, without private motoring? How much public transport as we know it today would even be possible, without us private drivers?
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Why shouldn't the neighbor who cycles or walks to work help pay for the roads? All the food, clothing, materials needed to build and maintain their house, and other goods and services they need to live are delivered via those roads, even if they personally don't use them.
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I am not saying that they shouldn't. After all, nearly everyone derives benefit from all of the public goods that we fund. The problem starts when people forget that their favorite means is subsidized, just like the means that they don't, personally, like.
So, no, bicyclists don't, often, complain about subsidizing the roads that autos run on. The problem is that people in autos often think that they are paying the full cost and assume that all other road users are free riders. One hears the same about rail
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It was half that. I've found any time I move close to work, work moves. Also most of the business centers of this city aren't places you want to raise kids. No, the bus system sucks. If you want to go downtown and back on a weekday during business hours you're cool. If downtown were the center of the pizza and you wanted to go to the next slice or the next one over, you have to go to the center, wait, then come back, there isn't really a slice to slice option in most cases. If you want to get anywhere
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Also most of the business centers of this city aren't places you want to raise kids. No, the bus system sucks. If you want to go downtown and back on a weekday during business hours you're cool. If downtown were the center of the pizza and you wanted to go to the next slice or the next one over, you have to go to the center, wait, then come back, there isn't really a slice to slice option in most cases. If you want to get anywhere other than business hours on a weekday - good luck. I've tried riding the bus in this city, there are bus stops that are supposed to have a bus every fifteen minutes, you're lucky to get one every forty five.
I've found this true in most places I've been in the US. There's a reason for this. The reason cities aren't planned around efficient mass transportation is because most people, other than the desperately poor, don't use mass transportation (and shut up people in NYC and DC you're the exception not the norm).
The reason only the poor use mass transportation is because mass transportation sucks. The reason mass transportation sucks is because only the desperately poor use it.
It's a vicious cycle. If citie
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I personally like to ride my bike.
I've had four jobs where I could do that, three of them in a small town before I actually graduated high-school.
I'm working on number five right now, I'll have to get the job then move before it becomes an option, but I've got someone with inside strings trying to help make it happen. Showers are a must in Texas if you plan on doing an office job while biking.
I honestly thing the automotive industry and the energy industry have a lot to do with our poor design. The movie
Re: "Free" (Score:5, Insightful)
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This isn't an option that people would refuse to consider.
People want their job, and they also love living away from everything.
Commuting is an acceptable trade off.
Public transit will need to figure out how to be fast, and solve the last mile problem. Saying we should move (especially in America) abandoning our properties, and our away of live. Is a dangerous... very dangerous proposal.
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Two miles - if possible, walk, skateboard, scooter, skates, two miles is nothing. Where I live it may be practically impossible due to the way the roads are built to get there on foot in less than two miles if at all, but the idea stands.
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You gave your own exception. Even in cities, where they haven't invested in walk areas. a 2 mile walk everyday is a hazardous proposition.
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I reread what I wrote, then I read what you wrote, I'm trying to make sense of what you said, but I can't in context.
Eliminate the commute? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's lots of people who commute every day that don't actually need to be in the office every day.
But the company decides it's more convenient and they aren't paying for the commute so they make everyone come in.
I could do 95% of my job from home, but no, I have to come in, because it's easier to yell across the office than it is to pick up the phone.
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Lazy Management.
It's far easier to manage by looking at the timeclock than it is to evaluate the actual productivity of your employees. If you do the former, you have to either have everyone in the office, or have all sorts of invasive spying stuff loaded on their company gear to track their every move. If you do the latter, you don't care where they work, when they work, or even how many hours a day, only whether they produce the right quantity and quality of output.
Unfortunately many managers are still of
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I concur.
The problem is that most companies "peter principle" people into management. It's pretty much the worst way to run promotion in a business, and yet just about every business does it.
You take someone really good at the current job, and ask them to manage people who aren't as good at that job. Now you've removed one of your stars, and you're asking them to do a different job that they may or may not be good at. Knowing how to do your job well doesn't have any bearing on whether or not you're a good m
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Quick Math, for those that can't do it in their heads.
40 Hours (std work week) * 95% work at home = 38 hours work at home, and 2 hours at the office.
My guess, is that 2 hours are stupid meetings, that should have been a memo in email, or *GASP* a teleconference. Lets just double it, and for the sake of it double it again. That means you can come to the office for two half days a week, and spend three full days, two half days working from where ever. That's 80% (original 95%) work from home.
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I can do almost 100% of my work from home. There are rare occasions when equipment fails out of scope (lightning, power outage, upgrades/replacements) that require me to go onsite, but still that isn't my "office" work.
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How are you measuring productivity. I want metrics.
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Yeah, you could, but will you? The answer is no. My employees are considerably less productive when they work from home. If people didnâ(TM)t abuse the privilege Iâ(TM)d grant it more often. As is, I have learned to expect at least a 50% productivity drop on WFH days. Sucks becaus now I donâ(TM)t work from home ever since I canâ(TM)t restrict it and at the same time do so myself, but thatâ(TM)s how it goes.
If you manage employees that suffer a 50% drop in productivity in a WFH environment, then you're not a manager, you're a babysitter.
Personally, I don't find value in employing children. To each their own.
Free is not necessarily the most important (Score:4, Interesting)
If there is only 1 bus every day, even if the bus is free, I will not take that bus.
I live 6km from my work, there is a bus that stop just in front of my house every hour. I still take my car to go to work. Why?
By car it take me 15-20min to go to work in the morning and 8-10min to go back in the evening.
By bus with a change for a metro it take me ~20min in the morning and between 45min and 1h15 in the evening.
Even if the bus and metro were free, I still value the time lost way higher than the price of riding with my car.
Re:Free is not necessarily the most important (Score:5, Insightful)
6km is a pretty easy walk or a 15 minute bike ride.
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I think the point is, that it takes longer on the bus than it does to walk 6 km. That has been my experience for the most part. The only place where buses make any semblance of sense is when they run every 15 minutes.
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Definately true. Busses are a joke, at least in the US.
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I lived in a city where the buses ran every fifteen minutes, and my apartment was 1/8 mile north of the same road that my work was also 1/8 mile north-of, but the workplace was in an adjacent city where the buses ran every half-hour. Every other bus turned around at the border between the cities, and those half-hour buses that did continue tooled around that city's downtown and then sat at a senior center for fifteen minutes before continuing. It took 45 minutes to go eight miles and if I missed the bus I
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I've found that in a city, a bicycle can almost always overtake and pass a bus . . .
hawk
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Good thing then that here in Germany in bigger cities we have buses (and trams, and subways, and city trains) that run every 15, 10 or sometimes even 5 minutes.
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depends where you live. This week where I live 6km would be extremely miserable at -29c with 40cm of snow. whether you walk, or bike.
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>Even if the bus and metro were free, I still value the time lost way higher
>than the price of riding with my car.
And here you have what is so often missed in the "ooohhh! mass transit! rah rah Rah1" rush.
To become an option, the opportunity cost, including time and convenience, needs to meet one of two thresholds:
1) the cost of that specific trip needs to be less than gas for a car owner (OK, add a small bit of maintenance in)
2) the cost of always using using it, including cabs ride sharing when n
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3) the mass transit must come close enough to your destination on both ends of the ride
This can be difficult in suburban areas of the US, partly due to the low density, and partly due to the design of suburbs, such that you can't simply go in a straight line to a bus stop because of winding streets and fenced yards. If the walk takes more than 15 minutes or so (I'll even be generous and say "for each end", and that's up to an hour of just walking!), nobody sane will want to do it five times a week. Bicycle
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because of winding streets and fenced yards.
Whether the yard is fenced or not makes no difference. You should not be on it unless you have permission from the owner.
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except the decision to add buses becomes much more one about cost than utilization at that point. Now they justify adding buses by whether there are enough riders to cover the cost. If the riders aren't paying for it then they can no longer do that and it's all a matter of how much the city is willing to pay, and that usually isn't much.
Makes sense to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the thing: It costs billions and billions, and billions to make and maintain those roads. That's considered a worthy service built by shared effort of the society. The additional cost of running buses across those roads is much less, basically a small percentage of cost to increase the the capacity and utility of those roads more.
It makes the overall society more efficient, since those tax dollars are saving millions of individuals much more money over time, usually folks who actually spend money in the economy instead of the savings/investment classes that tend to shelter their activities from the economy at large.
Ad described, at least, makes sense to me - and would be nice to use if I ever visit there.
Ryan Fenton
Never forget ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Roads receive "investment", public transport (including rail) receives "subsidy". As if a layer of tarmac is somehow going to earn money on its own if only enough were spent on it.
Politicians love to play these verbal sleights of hand to fool the stupid and unfortunately it works a lot of the time.
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Roads receive "investment", public transport (including rail) receives "subsidy". As if a layer of tarmac is somehow going to earn money on its own if only enough were spent on it.
Politicians love to play these verbal sleights of hand to fool the stupid and unfortunately it works a lot of the time.
Actually it's more like: if roads & railways are re owned by the state they are 'anti-competitive', 'inefficient', 'socialist dinosaurs' that get 'subsidies', money stolen by violent means from the pockets of the taxpayer (especially the rich ones). If roads & railways are privately owned they are models of efficiency that receive 'investment', spur competition even if they are monopolies and never ever charge their captive customer base unreasonable usage fees because the companies that run them ar
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That is in fact exactly what happens. The increased business activity from building a road (where it's needed) means more economic activity and thus more tax revenue for the government. The entity which builds/owns it reaps a monetary benefit from it, thus making it an investment.
Public transport doesn't increase economic a
Re:Makes sense to me. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what frustrates me about the argument against nationalising the railway (here in the UK). Opponents proclaim that if the states run it, it will run at a loss, and therefore the state should not run it. But that ignores the secondary benefits - running a frequent and free train service would, for example, allow people to live further away, increasing the supply of viable housing and so easing the housing crisis in urban areas. People would save money, not just in travel costs but on things like nursery care, because they might actually be able to get home at a reasonable hour. The state might lose money on the train service but get it back from economic boosts (of people spending their extra disposable income, increased productivity as some people use their time savings to do more work) or reduced costs (e.g. the health costs of pollution, the cost of social housing when housing is scarce, etc).
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Re:Makes sense to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
A second frustration is the viewpoint that the government can't manage anything without massive waste and corruption. I've worked with a number of very large private businesses now, and they all were shitshows on the inside. Bureaucratic mazes of self-imposed rules, employees that should have been fired years ago, silos in departments that didn't talk to each other and screwed up trivial tasks because of it, etc., etc.
These companies were no better than the state government agencies I've worked with, and in at least one case, were far worse. But not only were they incompetent, they also made a significant profit while being incompetent.
Had some of these projects been run by the government, they wouldn't have been any worse, and would likely have cost less, simply because government doesn't build in a profit margin. In areas where there are natural monopolies, it makes sense to have the government run things. It's far too easy for the private sector to milk every last dime out of an essential service if there aren't adequate avenues for competition. And whereas a private company is very resistant to do anything that doesn't improve revenue, the government can be lobbied to do such civil projects, if enough people feel it's worthwhile.
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A second frustration is the viewpoint that the government can't manage anything without massive waste and corruption.
That is certainly the story that was told, and told again, in the 1970's and 1980's which led to the notion that privatisation was not only sensible but essential if the country was to succeed on the global stage. Of course the people pushing that view were also the people who profited when those industries were privatised.
Unfortunately that viewpoint is now practically enshrined as 'common sense', and, unless you own a popular newspaper, you've got practically no chance of persuading anyone otherwise.
Fast
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Do you have any studies or numbers to back this up?
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Maintenance is mainly necessary because of wear by heavy vehicles. That is trucks (which would still be there, or might even increase because of less busy roads) and busses (which would definitely increase).
The most expensive part though is in the construction of roads, and increasing capacity of them, this is far more expensive than routine maintenance, and that all drops significantly as you carry more people in fewer lanes of traffic, and with fewer large interchanges, etc.
Truck traffic also will not increase because of less crowded roadways, heavy trucks don't just drive around for the sake of doing so, they take specific items to specific places, there's no reason to believe that less crowded roads would
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Yes, giving everyone their own Cadillac might improve things and make society more efficient
I doubt it. In most of the world, the roads wouldn't cope with that level of traffic and the lungs of the people would definitely not be happy with the increase in pollution.
Transportation is not the government's job.
Who degreed this? Effective transportation is the single thing that economists agree benefits the overall health of an economy, yet is difficult to monetise because the people that benefit do so at one remove or more (e.g. businesses benefit from a larger pool of accessible employees and customers). This sounds exactly like the kind
Doubtful it could work in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Some cities such as Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, etc. are so spread out that providing reasonable public transportation, even if people are paying, is impossible. Europe has dense urban cores in their cities, and even car-centric German cities haven't spread out so much that providing transportation is a problem. A place like Dallas with zero natural boundaries has spread out to hundreds of square miles. In cities like that, public transportation isn't generally used as a way to get to work...it connects low-income housing with places of employment, hospitals and shopping areas because that's where the limited funds are best spent.
Other US cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington are at least candidates. Metro NY has a decent regional transportation system...there are 3 commuter railroads and several suburban bus lines, and a good amount of development has grown up around the rail lines. And of course, the city itself has subways and buses. Unless they absolutely need their cars to get around during the day, or are super-wealthy and don't care about parking costs, most people who are working normal-schedule jobs take the train or bus into the city. In other cities, you'd need way more than free fares to get people out of their cars.
Fare revenue from public transportation doesn't come anywhere close to paying for the real cost of running the system. Getting rid of it would make it even harder to run, unless everyone decided that it was a public good and should be paid for with taxes or reduced spending on roads. Also, people would have to understand that they can't externalize the cost of living on a 3-acre lot in a super-far flung suburb...making bigger roads just encourages more sprawl-based development. And that's a lifestyle change I don't think most Americans can handle.
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I don't live in a big city like New York, so I only hear about the subway (or taking a cab) being so much cheaper and faster than owning a car.. but where I live, as you say, it's not practical. What's a 20-30 minute commute each way to/from work, would be 2 to 3 times longer by public transit. I don't have time to waste on that.
Then there's th
Missing the point (Score:2)
A major reason is due to air pollution, aka taking care of your citizens health. Also known as not permitting car companies to externalize costs, i.e. having some one else cover the cost of people sickened by your product.
They could just stop burning coal (Score:2, Insightful)
Germany is still the largest coal user in Europe. The mining unions are very powerful there, cars are a drop in the bucket as far as pollution, the thing is they are visible, not many people like to live next to large power plants. If Germany had not shut down there nuclear plants they would have easily met the EU mandate.
It is already heavily subsidized (Score:2)
I saw a story that the local bus systems spends 10 bucks for every buck it gets in fares. So how far are we from free as it stands. Europe may be different but in the US the mass transit brand is pitiful except for a few cities. People already pay a significant premium to drive.
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...if it's free, then people abuse it (taking it for granted)...
Abuse it? Are you suggesting that people are going to start taking public transportation just for fun without anywhere to go?
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Depends where you are, but I can definitely foresee buses full of homeless people in the city centre areas in the winter. Of course that may serve to shed some light on a different problem and get some attention there.
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I didn't even consider the homeless. Now I feel bad - That's definitely a concern. Agree that if it caused a problem, it may initiate efforts to give the homeless a better option to stay warm than the bus. Could be a positive depending on your position on letting the poor freeze..
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Well that's one affirmative to the question I asked, so I guess recreational use of public transport exists. I'm still not sure I'd use the word "abuse" or worry about it becoming a major problem. If seats taken by sight-seers displace people trying to get to work, it'll be a concern.
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"Cruising" was a popular thing to do when I was in high school, but it was exclusively in private vehicles. "Cruising" in a bus seems even sillier than doing it in a car.
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You are confounding a homelessness problem with a transportation problem.
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So what... the bus is driving that way anyway...
So literally regular passengers won't get on a squalid bus that homeless people have taken over.
There's a downtown shuttle here. It was free for awhile. It got taken over by the homeless and normal commuters stopped using it just about entirely. They finally started charging a quarter to ride and made everyone get off when it reached the end of the line and the bus went "out of service" for fifteen minutes. Suddenly there weren't really any homeless people riding it just to pass the time anymore, and th
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You do know how taxes work, don't you?
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Then it isn't free, is it? Lets obfuscate the cost, and then nobody really knows how much anything really costs.
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Exactly, just like they currently pay for the roads that the cars are driving on now.
From a strictly cost standpoint you'd have to see if the reduced maintenance on infrastructure for cars, as well as the reduced costs to the healthcare system from lower pollution and fewer collisions offsets the cost to provide the public transportation system. There's also a likely GDP boost as cost of getting to work is no longer an impediment to the working poor.
Of course there may be other benefits that don't show up o
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I can't believe that all these AC libertarian comments on this article are for real. Nobody can be as dumb as this post is. It has to be trolling, right?
Also, it's "vicious" not "virtuous", you dope.
Re:The Problem with "Free" (Score:5, Informative)
In Germany pubic transport is rather clean and efficient.
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I hear much of the rail lines in California were bought out long ago by the gasoline companies, and shut down to passenger transport.
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Same for a Bus or a Train, Dirty, Smelly, NASTY!
Have you ever been to Germany and used the public transport here?
If not, how can you judge?
I'm using public transport here in Berlin daily. And while there is room for improvement, the buses and trains usually are not dirty or smelly.
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Oh boohoo. I'm not that young either and I do all of that. Your just too lazy to get entitled miserable ass into shape and buck up. You should see some of the college women I've met on the bus. They don't need a Mustang, just someone who knows how to talk to them.
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There's really no telling whether or not this would improve the poor bus service. Once something becomes a pure cost on a balance sheet, with no offsetting profit, it's really hard for politicians to justify pouring more money in to it.
At the moment, you justify increased bus service based on profitable routes. If a route is running at capacity, it generates a profit from ridership and you can justify increasing the number of busses on that route. But if increased ridership does not equate to increased prof
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You didn't even read the post you replied to did you?
He specifically stated where he thought the money would come from:
- decreased health costs from less pollution
- decreased road maintenance costs
- time savings for commuters (I'm assuming he meant that this would translate to increased GDP)
Now as to where the balance falls as to cost vs savings, hard to tell, but to dismiss it out of hand as "nothing is free" is somewhat ridiculous when the person has already stated as much in his post and shown where the
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There is something to that actually. Many government fees cost more to collect and process than they earn. I don't think that transit fares are in that category, however I'm sure you'd find that a certain percentage of the fare cost is purely the cost of charging a fare (printing tickets, maintaining machines to sell and validate them, distributing tickets to stores, collecting coins, rolling them, taking them to the bank, reconciling number of riders vs fares collected, etc, etc.) and that the actual reven
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Sorry, nothing is free. Someone has to pay for that.
This is true. The economic output of a country is fixed over time and no amount of spending can ever increase it. Building textile factories in the industrial revolution made no difference to the amount of cloth produced, cheap electric lighting made no different to the number of productive hours for which businesses could operate, building canals and roads had no impact on industry and so on.
Lets be real: If people want transportation, they can move into a city and be able to walk to their destination
Also true. The supply of city centre housing is elastic.
Oh, wait. Nothing you've said is even slightly bounded
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100% of people receive 'free' stuff from the government. Some people have an issue with other people getting something they don't think they need or deserve because they think that it is causing them to contribute more than is fair.
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There is no such thing as free. Governments are not a source of revenue. Anytime anyone says the government will provide something for "free" they'd be much more accurate if they'd instead say "paid for by someone else that is compelled by the government under threat of force and/or imprisonment."
I'm sure this will get down-modded repeatedly because we're at a point where over 50% of people are receiving "free" stuff from the government.
I would say close to 100% of people are getting "Free" stuff from the government. You travel on roads don't you? Walk on sidewalks? Have an emergency number you can call when you're in trouble.
These are all tax payer paid. When it comes to public transit- yeah, it costs government money (and we know who pays the government), but it might not all be a loss. A well used mass transit system means you need to build fewer roads, with fewer lanes, they get worn down slower. Emergency services can be sprea