"Free public transportation increases the number of passengers, and can increase them significantly, but the shift is mainly from pedestrians and cyclists, and hardly takes drivers from their cars," Liimatainen said.
According to Liimatainen research in various cities around the world has found that car traffic is not necessarily reduced once public transport fees are waived, but rather when parking costs are increased.
[...]
Transportation researcher Liimatainen estimated that making public transport totally free would only reduce personal vehicular traffic by a couple of percentage points, but at the same time potentially overburden the transport system.
[...]
Flink noted that transport service levels in Tallinn have not been sufficiently developed since they went ticket-free. She said that no new tram lines have been built since 2013 even though new housing developments have sprouted up in the city.
I look at it more from the point of view of economic incentives and capacity. Making public transport free seems like a great way to fill it up if that's all you want to do, but apparently it's...
I look at it more from the point of view of economic incentives and capacity. Making public transport free seems like a great way to fill it up if that's all you want to do, but apparently it's often with people could have easily walked or biked a short distance, and would have if they had to pay.
If public transport is being used (the trains and buses are crowded), then you either need to build more, or encourage it to be reserved for more high-priority reasons. Charging something for it both raises funds and limits the more frivolous usage.
(It also hurts the poor the most, which is another reason to be in favor of UBI.)
Interesting analysis of some non-obvious consequences of free transit. I wonder what could be done to reduce the number of drivers in cities, especially given that in many, many cases it is simply...
Interesting analysis of some non-obvious consequences of free transit. I wonder what could be done to reduce the number of drivers in cities, especially given that in many, many cases it is simply not necessary. I have heard of some cities implementing a type of dynamic tolling based on congestion, and perhaps that might be a good incentive to get people using transit. If there's already traffic, and you have to pay to get into it, you might just take the free transit instead.
Depending on the layout of the city and the nature of traffic, paid parking could probably approximate this effect. So if most of your traffic is commuters coming in to park that would do fine. If...
I have heard of some cities implementing a type of dynamic tolling based on congestion, and perhaps that might be a good incentive to get people using transit.
Depending on the layout of the city and the nature of traffic, paid parking could probably approximate this effect. So if most of your traffic is commuters coming in to park that would do fine. If you're dealing with a lot of through traffic, though, you might need to set up tolls and fees. The latter option is more operationally complex though, and would end up getting stuff that we might want internally, like delivery trucks or private shuttles, as well.
From the article:
[...]
[...]
I look at it more from the point of view of economic incentives and capacity. Making public transport free seems like a great way to fill it up if that's all you want to do, but apparently it's often with people could have easily walked or biked a short distance, and would have if they had to pay.
If public transport is being used (the trains and buses are crowded), then you either need to build more, or encourage it to be reserved for more high-priority reasons. Charging something for it both raises funds and limits the more frivolous usage.
(It also hurts the poor the most, which is another reason to be in favor of UBI.)
Interesting analysis of some non-obvious consequences of free transit. I wonder what could be done to reduce the number of drivers in cities, especially given that in many, many cases it is simply not necessary. I have heard of some cities implementing a type of dynamic tolling based on congestion, and perhaps that might be a good incentive to get people using transit. If there's already traffic, and you have to pay to get into it, you might just take the free transit instead.
Depending on the layout of the city and the nature of traffic, paid parking could probably approximate this effect. So if most of your traffic is commuters coming in to park that would do fine. If you're dealing with a lot of through traffic, though, you might need to set up tolls and fees. The latter option is more operationally complex though, and would end up getting stuff that we might want internally, like delivery trucks or private shuttles, as well.
A system of passes for commercial vehicles generally works fine.