Transit is expensive, claiming people have a right to free transit is just idiotic on so many levels.
Transit is very expensive and the cost / benefit needs to be decided by the public. Governments also need a plan to pay for it. But I would not say it is idiotic just because it is expensive.
I can ride the bus as many times as I like, and that creates costs for the system. There's no direct relationship between user whim and system costs for the other two services.
Roads are in fact overused and traffic is a nightmare in many cities because they are free. You could easily create a pay-per-use model for roads that charges based on usage. Instead roads are just seen as a public good used by everyone.
There's no reason why society could not treat public transportation the same way. I'm not necessarily saying it should be free. Countries with the best public transportation tend to charge something, but the goal isn't to cover the cost because transportation is seen as a public good.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-13/debunking...
It doesn't matter how expensive transit is, if the total costs of fare collection & enforcement is greater than what they collect they're better off making it free and potentially making up the small shortfall with extra taxes.
Considering a lot of these systems will be built by large consultancies specialized in milking out government contracts while delivering shoddy work, I wouldn't be surprised if fare collection was actually way more expensive that it needs to be.
I think it will really help reduce car use if transport were free. People would use it more, obviously but that would lead to more services being available. Win-win especially for the environment IMO.
Of course what I'm arguing for is making transport free officially, not fare evasion.
However, people tend to use transit if it is reliable, trust worthy, and available. Even with a reduced cost, if you have a bad network already.. it's just going to make it worse and then piss off the tax payers.
System collapse with public transit is a sad thing to see.
Houston, Texas is like that. I got checked four times in three days.
I saw non-paying people get fined on the spot. From what I could hear, it was $75.