[greekrich92]

The subway should be free, and continuous fare hikes when you're already double paying with your eyes because of all the advertising they shove in front of you is more incentive to turnstile jump. Overpaid do-nothing senior adminstrators and lawmakers who are in the pocket of privatization are the problem, not that 17 year old.

[pclowes]

Enforcing fares massively decreases vandalism, and antisocial behavior on public transportation.

If you don’t have public transportation that I feel safe having a 10-year-old ride on unaccompanied by an adult then you do not have public transportation. You have a very expensive drug addict shelter on wheels/rails.

[ButlerianJihad]

When I became homeless (again) about 26 years ago, the buses were a place of refuge and relaxation for me. I could easily pay the fare and stay on a long haul line. I'd be assured of safety and quietness for about 2 hours or so.

The area clinics were participating in this, because they could procure "Reduced Fare" passes that they would distribute to mentally ill patients, and we could get unlimited transit rides all month long, as long as we were still checking in, on the regular, with our case managers. Our providers would ensure that they qualified us for the "Reduced Fare" program.

After a while, the bus stops became camping grounds for street people who didn't ride. And the trains became camping grounds for people who needed to sleep. Literally, early in the morning, I would board the train and see people zonked out, with pillows, blankets, the whole bit.

Then a campaign began to clean up behavior aboard the transit system. Riders would need a destination, and fares were checked, and people were booted if they hadn't paid fares. So the vehicles themselves became quite sparse, and safer, and smelled better. But oh, the bus stops again. Everyone camped with impunity at the bus stops, and for paying passengers, it was intimidating just to beg for one place to sit down.

The transit system is undeniably safe. I am sure that 10-year-olds can ride unaccompanied. Any violence or fights, those seem to be between gangstas or people who know one another already, not just random outbursts.

Thankfully, too, they open up centers where people can chill, and get drinks of water and use the bathroom, which is honestly preferable to riding buses on false pretenses.

[inigyou]

That's not really anything to do with fare evasion. That's a global systemic problem. That's the entire system being completely retarded, for political reasons ("look, we're solving homelessness")

[ButlerianJihad]

Fare evasion on the trains here is child’s play. It’s on the honor system and so if a fare inspector pops you, worst case you’re disembarking at the next station.

In 18 years, I’ve literally never ever seen an inspector giving a stiffer penalty than that!

[aweb]

That's an interesting point and I agree it makes some kind of sense, but is there a source for it?

I live in Montpellier France and all transit has become free 2 years ago. I didn't notice any change in people's behavior at all. Transit is also free in Talinn IIRC and I wonder if they saw something there?

[wiether]

Then they'll shift the goalpost: it's not free, someone is paying for it, which is every taxpayer.

Then you'll ask for receipts of what they pay to use the roads and they'll be out.

Regarding free transit, I think part of the reason it can fail is the socioeconomic situation. In places that rewards the rich and abandon the less fortunate, it's deemed to fail.

But also, I think that when people have to pay to use transit, they'll be less willing to act as a warden, so if they see someone doing something negative, they'll keep out, thinking that it's the responsibility of whoever is taking their money. Meanwhile, when we see public transit as a common good, we are more willing to act to keep it great.

[pclowes]

https://growsf.org/news/2026-02-12-bart-fare-gates-10-millio...

The maintenance cost graph is very eye-opening.

[hahahaa]

Right maybe we can make them free and safe? Not sure why that is not possible. Walking on the street is free. In many places it is safe too.

[MoltenMan]

Safe is a tougher problem, and especially when you consider that in most American cities with subways, the exact cities we're talking about right now, generally NO, there are many areas where it is not safe to walk! While I agree public transportation safety and public safety in general are incredibly important, they're also (clearly, given how we're failing at them) also difficult endeavors.

I also think this is relatively orthogonal to cost; cost is nice because it helps keep the people you don't want in the train (crazy people with knives, people smoking weed in the train, people who yell at everyone on the train and make them feel unsafe, etc.), but it's also important to create at least a small barrier so that people don't 'waste' the transit system! In general, when things are completely free, they will be taken advantage of; even a very small tax / friction helps stop this. If the subway is completely free, there's no reason to not just sit on it all day (taking up space and making it worse for everyone). I think subsidizing the subway is net beneficial given that we subsidize cars and things already with road upkeep and such, but free is not what you want.

[hahahaa]

There are other things to consider. Free public transit would make it more desirable to not use cars as much reducing congestion, accidents, pollution, energy usage. The need to build less high traffic roads may be a money saver to offset. Also it will get more people to exercise by walking to bus stops. You'd need disencentive for abuse but you can personally only add 16 person hours of usage per day so it is not like say free unlimited money or electricity where a single user can add a lot of strain. And spending all that time on transit is a cost. For homeless people yeah you may need to solve that problem! Build more housing for sale and rent driving down prices and reducing the number of homeless yet productive people (with jobs but can't afford rent). Build shelter for homeless with problems they can't hold down a job.

[MoltenMan]

Why do you need free public transit for this? Why not just cheap public transit? Cars certainly aren't free, but people drive them because cars are just far better in most ways; you get to listen to your own music, they can be fun to drive, are incredibly flexible (can go anywhere), don't have the last mile problem, take like half the time unless it's rush hour, etc. Cost just isn't the reason people aren't using public transit. People buy cars because you NEED cars for many other reasons (most of them mentioned), and then once you have a car and pay for insurance and everything it's simply nicer and faster than public transit (rarely cheaper, even only factoring in gas and per mile depreciation, although the BART is so expensive it comes close). (FTR: I'm not sure where I stand on public transit subsidization; I think some is definitely good, but not sure how much I think is optimal).

[arcxi]

You need cars because you live in the country where cities are built around the assumption of car ownership. Go to any place with an adequate public transit and you'll see a lot less cars. Go to Tokyo and you'll be shocked, it's the largest city in the world and their highways are practically empty. It just doesn't make any sense to drive when your public transit is that good.

[inigyou]

Why not make it so there are better free places to sit than the subway? Like a park or something?

[CHB0403085482]

It's attitudes like that let that stop any and every public transport being built.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0s86kEUxxak

[pclowes]

I don’t understand how you could possibly get that take away from my comment.

Not maintaining existing public transportation and making it dirty, difficult or dangerous to use is what prevents the construction of more. Voters vote against throwing more money into what seems like a lost cause or at least something they wouldn’t use if they had any other option. In the US any class besides the lowest classes typically does so they avoid public transportation and use cars and so it gets worse.

The transportation must be somewhat appealing to the middle class in order for it to be scalable and sustainable from a tax-policy perspective.

I am very pro public transportation! Would love it if ours and the rider behavior on it was held to the same standard as Amsterdam.

[CHB0403085482]

Sorry, man. Misread your intent.

[inigyou]

They aren't enforced in Berlin and the worst vandalism is graffiti on the side of some trains (which, let's be real, who cares and it adds some variety).

You know what I think helps? Treating people like grown-ups

[pclowes]

The impact in SF was absolutely incredible. A very small percentage of the writers was causing 90+ percent of the problems and vandalism.

Treating these people like adults would be best, but I’ll take getting them off of public transportation first.

https://x.com/SFBART/status/2020952977180328184

https://growsf.org/news/2026-02-12-bart-fare-gates-10-millio...

[inigyou]

What was the vandalism?

Sometimes you see trains with graffiti on one side and a stern duct-taped paper notice offering a reward for turning in whoever drew the graffiti to the police. Which is retarded, it's just paint. They seem to have stopped doing those notices now.

If you think graffiti is vandalism I don't care. If they were smashing the windows then it actually matters.

[pclowes]

Lol, no it was not just graffiti. I dont mind graffiti nearly as much as say:

- open drug use (literally smoking crack on the bus) - screaming threat of violence to everyone one around - purposefully urinating or defecating on the seats. - literally lighting things on fire - deliberately smashing glass at bus stops (somehow very endemic in SF)

I do think graffiti is a public notice of: “this is a place you can treat poorly and behave terribly in with no consequence”

Some graffiti I think is quite artistic and a sincere cultural contribution, but most on the sides of buses are more of the bathroom stall variety.

[inigyou]

I don't think you need fare gates to stop those things. You need police to arrest them. On one visit to Berlin, someone insulted a bus driver and the bus waited 10 minutes for the police to come and arrest him.

Just as importantly, you need to stop arresting people who aren't doing those things. Otherwise there's no differential and no reason not to do them.

> I do think graffiti is a public notice of: “this is a place you can treat poorly and behave terribly in with no consequence”

I think that's only true in authoritarian regimes. The kind of place where all crimes are considered fatally bad, resulting in no differential. Otherwise, if there's graffiti but no feces on the sidewalk, it signals that you can paint graffiti, but you can't defecate on the sidewalk. You see the difference?

[hduto]

Genuinely curious here: is this born out across all geographies? Japan's fare enforcement for instance vs western Europe and resultant behavior?

[tonyhart7]

some culture as just better than others

[inigyou]

Why?

[lovich]

> If you don’t have public transportation that I feel safe having a 10-year-old ride on unaccompanied by an adult then you do not have public transportation. You have a very expensive drug addict shelter on wheels/rails.

What an escalation. If I don’t feel safe having a 10 year old drive a car is that just a drug addict shelter on wheels?

[dublinben]

Public transit should be worth the (inexpensive) cost of a ticket. The money used to make fares free should instead be spent on improving the quality of service. Better service attracts more riders, bringing in more ticket revenue, enabling further service improvements, and so on. It produces a positive flywheel effect that benefits current passengers, new passengers, and even drivers!

Free transit is a downward cycle, where increased ridership just increases costs, creating a negative flywheel.

[qazwsxedchac]

Counterexample: Public transport throughout Luxembourg (the entire country, not just the capital city) is free. As in beer. Clean, safe, and reliable, too.

The positive "flywheel effect" where transport connectivity enables network effects does exist, but it does not follow that free public transport leads to negative effects.

[xyzelement]

Fares cover 40 per cent of the subway operating budget. It seems necessary revenue.

The 17 year old dodging fares becomes the 34 year old doing the same.

The percentage of fare dodgers who aren't pieces of shit in other parts of their life is zero.

[inigyou]

The percentage of people who aren't pieces of shit in at least one part of their life is zero.

[inemesitaffia]

Private Jet rides should be free

[inigyou]

They are. You just gotta obtain the jet, the fuel and the pilot.