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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @BeeRye 5 Nov \ parent \ on: Trump’s worst nightmare wins New York. Mamdani shows how Trump can be defeated. Politics_And_Law
ya, that is true it certainly is not cultural in the US. If it was gonna work anywhere, it would probably be NYC. Its so hard to know the second order effects (good and bad) of such things...which I think that is lost in these kind of progressive proposals (good effects overestimated, bad effects ignored/understated). Hard to imagine it having a chance in any other part of the US with so little population density.
Something about the whole proposal though seems a bit redundant though. When NYC already has an expansive subway system, why not just work on improving / making that free? Seems odd to make buses free and ignore the existing infrastructure (or is the proposal to make subway free too and it just is a good tagline to say 'free buses'?)
Don't know the detail in NYC and would have hoped the entire public transit system could be made free but perhaps buses serve the margins which feed into the subway system?
Guess you would need to introduce such a change progressively (no pun intended) and start somewhere. Free subway could be prone to overload perhaps.
On cost, in my city here in NZ (popn 500,000) we have only buses, no subway and the buses are ~70% subsidised but not free.
The cost to use the bus is roughly equal to the cost of fuel to drive the same route, and so there is little incentive for most people to use the bus- so the buses are mostly empty.
I would rather increase the subsidy to 100% and get the busses fully utilised and get greatly reduced road congestion and GHG emissions in return for my taxes.
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Yes I agree that is a significant barrier.
We are sold the car as a symbol of individual freedom - only to end up in gridlock.
You only need to shift 10% of commuters from using the car to public transport to get a significantly larger reduction in road congestion at peak traffic times.
Making public transport free to use in already highly congested cities could incentivise enough people to make the move and deliver better outcomes for most people.
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i can settle on subsidized public transportation where justified by population density, with a sustainable funding model agreed to in some fair manner, but free has too many negative externalities. People treat free stuff like total shit, so I think it would be important for there to be some cost as a public scheme to nudge people towards using public transportation.
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There is a cost in using public transport. Inconvenience. Using a bus will rarely be as convenient as driving your car.
There is also a significant benefit to others whenever someone uses public transport...reduced road congestion and reduced GHG emissions.
Conversely using a car imposes costs on others and relies on heavily subsidised road networks.
Car users are usually not paying thew true cost including externalities/consequences of their car use.
Therefore it is perfectly reasonable where possible to provide free to use public transport (funded by taxes on other road users who benefit from the reduced road congestion) to maximise public transport utilisation.
The ideal mix will vary depending on the market but in large already congested cities the benefits to most people from free public transport can be significant.
Currently we often have the worst possible mix with substantial tax subsidisation of public transport but minimal use of it because there is still an entry cost similar to taking your car.
There is a difficulty in neoliberal Libertarian ideologs in recognising that sometimes pure market forces do not deliver the best outcomes.
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