If the train was going to run regardless, and there isn't that high of a demand on this level of off-peak, adding the weight of a person or two is practically nothing to the rolling of the train.
> JOHN COCHRANE: I think the activists who wanted toilet equity did not imagine the solution would be no toilet or a fight with businesses over who's going to be able to use the toilet.
> [...]
> BERAS: Without that incentive, Nik-O-Lok was right. The free public toilets were overrun with people who had to go or people abusing drugs or having sex. Cities were changing. In lots of places, they struggled to fund and maintain public places. With no income from the toilets, taking care of them was harder than ever. Cities couldn't deal. Eventually, they closed them or let them fall into disrepair. The pay toilets may have been flawed, but they served a purpose that no public or private entity has been able to effectively fill since. John says this is a classic tale of a price control, when the government imposes a price.
I think the case for at least allowing nominal payments for toilets is pretty strong. Anything that is free either requires significant and expensive oversight to mitigate anti-social behaviors, or a society that has equivalent anti-social checks baked into the culture (which the U.S. definitely does not have). We should aspire to ubiqitous free toilets, free transit, etc, but there's an infinite number of things people want to be free, or at least subsidized. The public has to pick & choose and allocate its resources wisely.
Note that almost everywhere in the U.S., transit is strongly subsidized and often effectively free for the most in need, but it might require some legwork. In SF where it's quite trivial to get this subsidy (https://treasurer.sf.gov/economicjustice/sfmta-transit-disco...) people still balk at the requirement, though I think the people who complain the most are the ones far too wealthy to have to worry about these things. Some government programs, especially Federal programs, have onerous application and reporting requirements specifically designed to dissuade use, but individual transit subsidies aren't generally structured this way. In SF and to a lesser degree California, there are armies of people paid to hold people's hand through these processes (mostly for Federal and Federally subsidized programs, as many state and especially local programs tend to be very low friction).
Always funny to me how people try and put laws on things for homeless people when the ills people are worried about with homeless people are already illegal but not being enforced. E.g., "we must charge for transit, to keep homeless people off as they could smoke meth on the platform." Never mind smoking meth on the platform is already illegal. Never mind that it isn't getting enforced. Never mind that this lack of enforcement on meth usage suggests farebox enforcement isn't going to suddenly out prioritize meth usage enforcement and be successful to combat meth usage in some round a bout way.
It ends up being about the optics of politicians getting to advertise that they are doing "something" and never mind if it works or not, because the people clamoring the loudest, angry suburban whites usually, aren't even the ones using these systems to begin with. They are told in their propaganda bubbles that these systems are dangerous rather than experiencing it with their own eyes and making any conclusion. They demand action for a system they will never use. After whatever action passes they don't become users either, the goalposts move to some other slight or ill that is really a proxy for "I don't feel safe around black or brown people."
This has crossed my mind for other things too, like immigration.
People say they don't want immigrants because of crime (whether that's a reasonable concern is a different topic entirely), but it presupposes that laws against crime aren't enforced. If we had stricter law enforcement would people worry about (immigrants, the homeless, etc.) less?
On the other hand, no charges mean you can get rid of a lot of cruft: no tickets, no gates/turnstiles, no machines, no payments, no paperwork thereof, no ticket inspectors, etc etc. So in fact having 0 charge is unequivocally better than having a residual charge.
In other words: charge price = cost, or don't charge at all and get funded by public revenue.
In every city I know of, the fares for public transit more than pays for the cost of collecting. Also, in every city I'm aware of, even the ones with high transit ridership (Tokyo), there is lots of room for adding more transit and getting even more people on, but money is lacking to do that.
I'm also aware of no place where people who use transit to consider cost one of the major barriers to using it more. The barrier, even for the poorest people, is almost always not cause, but the service just doesn't meet their needs. Which is to say most transit systems need to raise their fares a little more and use that extra money to give people the service they actually want.