Promoting public transit with modern pricing schemes | Hacker News Reader

Promoting public transit with modern pricing schemes

phys.org

8 pointsPaulHoule3 comments

Sounds good in theory, but fails to account for the cost of uncertainty in understanding how much it will cost to get somewhere. Good chance people say "screw this, I'm taking a car".

The article indicates that dropping the price failed to reduce transport by car, but Denver did an experiment in 2022 in which fares were entirely dropped and according to reports cited in this Denver Post article, the experiment reduced nitrogen dioxide pollution by more than 7%.

https://www.denverpost.com/2023/05/31/rtd-free-fares-ozone-y...

Honestly it's better than I'd expected as my personal reason for avoiding public transit in Denver isn't cost, it's inconvenience and massively increased travel time. I'm inclined to say adding cost complexity would do more to discourage ridership than increase it.

I ride the bus almost every day to work, my satisfaction is pretty high but I am using it almost exclusively to commute to a "9-5" kind of job. If you consider the hassle of parking at the other end it certainly saves time.

My son works a "5-2" shift at the other educational institution in time and we had to find him a car (1996 Buick Park Avenue) so he could make it on his schedule. (Also, if you looked at the schedule you might think you could make the transfer from downtown to Ithaca College but the timing doesn't work and you have to wait 40 minutes and it's definitely possible to walk up the hill in that time.)

My employer pays for my bus pass but recently the fare machines have been busted on 90% of the buses so practically the bus is fare free for everyone at the moment.

Once in a while I do some other adventure on the bus, I did a sleep study at the hospital for instance and it was easy to catch the bus at the hospital, catch some breakfast downtown, then take another bus to work. Bus service on the triangle between the downtown, Cornell, and the mall is also excellent. (4x an hour!) However, if the bus doesn't fit your schedule and destination it is useless to.

Uptake is nowhere near enough to "change the world", I catch the bus at this "Dollhouse village"

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3882896,-76.3618646,3a,75y,5...

which is almost a perfect situation for transit-based development, on a good day five people show up, today it was me and one other person, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the number of cars you see parked there.

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