Or make the transportation free, then you don't have to worry about policing infractions and instead spend the low effort policing money on cleaning, security, and improvement.
Your comment might be deeply offensive to people who have suffered in actual caste systems.
On the local train we were unable to take luggage into first class (a small number of seats blocked off by a plexiglass entrance), but folks were very accommodating of some clueless Americans just trying to go a few stops down the track.
The regional train was nice, but second class on the way back from our destination was just as comfortable.
Long story short, the claims of comfort and cleanliness between the classes didn't really seem apparent.
on regional and local trains i have to agree the difference is less apparent.
i guess the main benefit is that first class areas are going to be less packed. i am not sure but it may be the case that you are not even allowed to stand in first class if you have a second class ticket.
so if the train is crowded then that crowd won't be allowed in the first class area, and it is unlikely that you buy a first class ticket without a seat. but if the train is only lightly filled it probably makes no difference at all.
Let's face it, classism right now manifests as:
* poor folk use terrible public transit
* med income folk drive cars
* high income/wealth folk get driven around by robots or staff
At least with the classist train you cut down on emissions and public funds spent fixing roads. And I'd argue it's a bit less unequal than the status quo in 95% of the US.
Persuasive to what type of people?
What doesn't work is laws that aren't enforced. Either enforce them or repeal them.
So conclusion before evidence?
At least the founders had the foresight to codify innocent-until-proven-guilty.
This isn't anything like innocent-until-proven-guilty.
But if the collected fares are paying for enhanced police brutality or other deleterious second-order system behavior, it's not so cut and dry.
The plan is to let anyone on the subway, with no fares. It turns out that the violent, unstable people who make public spaces unwelcoming are disproportionately represented among those who cannot pay $2.50 for a fare. So they scare off regular transit riders who mode shift to something else. It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare, so it's financially and logistically impossible to actually keep it safe. Then your transit ridership tanks and people who hate funding transit can declare the whole thing a giant waste of money and any new funding dies politically because now there's no public ridership constituency left.
Nobody cares about the revenue gained from $2.50 fares. What matters is the tiny amount of resistance that offers to the small number of people who are largely responsible for making public transit unwelcoming.
Are you making a case that a violent person, who ignores the stringent laws of society against violence, will diligently follow the laws of society requiring $2.50 prior to riding public transport?
LOL
There is a cost benefit analysis that even serial offenders go through to pick a victim. If a transit system insists on fares, it is likely they are watching out for fare dodgers which increases the risk of getting caught even before the offender gets a chance to offend.
Are you making the case that a society unable to protect its denizens from violent offenders in broader society will be able to protect its denizens on public transport from those same violent offenders through the application of a $2.50 fare?
Hmm.
How many times have you heard of road rage incidents which deescalate as soon as one party realises that they are being recorded by a dashcam? People’s behavior under surveillance is different from their private behavior.
Surveillance doesn’t require fee collection.
Is violent crime in Target stores higher than it is in Costco locations because the latter charges an admission fee?
I would personally be surprised if violent attacks are differentiated in rate between the two.
Why is loitering an issue/crime? Should it be?
What does loitering mean? Why is it a problem?
So I'll only go as deep as a quick search for "loitering definition" -- the first hit aligns to what I hold as my personal understanding:
Loitering is the act of standing, lingering, or waiting around idly in a public or private place for an extended period without a clear, lawful, or obvious purpose.Why is loitering a problem?
Maybe someone at the transit center is there to enjoy the architecture without needing to go somewhere. We ask artists to design a beautiful space transit space, and then want to exclude someone that wants to just imbibe the vibe. Others may have some other purpose for that space. The spectrum of experience for 7 billion humans is unlikely to be fathomable to allow for enumeration as 'allowed activities'. "Loitering" is a silly, unserious, approach to managing criminality, as is a $2.50 fee. A $2.50 fee isn't going to stop anyone with criminal intent.
Either it is a public space or it isn't. If no harm is being caused, no reason to exclude anyone from public spaces.
Are you pretending to be a space alien unfamiliar with how crime works on Earth? OK, let me spell it out for you.
Various forms of crime require previous periods of observing the target. For example, if you want to rob a shop, you want to know how many employees are inside, whether most of the leave at a certain time for a lunch and leave one of them in the shop alone, whether they leave together at evening or again one of them stays behind and closes the shop. Similarly, if you want to assault a person, you wait until you find someone walking alone, and make sure that the rest of the group is not walking a few meters behind them. If you sell drugs, you need to stay on the street, waiting for the customers to approach you. etc.
On the other hand, there are almost no good reasons to stand for one hour in front of the shop, observing what goes on inside. There are almost no good reason for a group of adult men to stand in front of a school at evening. Etc.
I am not saying that anyone who stands at a weird place should be immediately arrested. But it makes sense for other people to be concerned about that, and call the cops, who will ID the people who stand there, and tell them to go away. Which they cannot do if standing there is perfectly legal. Hence, the "crime" of loitering.
Are you suggesting that society can reduce crime by charging a fee to be out in public and surveilling public spaces for fare evasion?
Brilliant!
I feel like you've argued from a false dichotomy -- we can't do X because of bad things, so we have to put up with Y and bad things.
The robber barons built libraries. Yes, it took some heat off of their reputation, but, they weren't idiots and neither were the people for whom they were driving wages down or driving prices up. They and municipal orgs of the time and other civic minded groups built libraries and schools because society is better off have more education. Capitalism, done right, actually can have good outcomes.
In a similar vein, healthcare makes people healthier as a general outcome. "Socialized medicine" (more properly understand of as healthcare as a publicly-provided good) enables a more healthy population -- business owners benefit because the people they can hire from are healthier, so more productive.
Public transportation in dense areas should be seen similarly. More efficient, lower pollution when expanded and widely available, easier to police, less of the nasties like PM2.5 from tires and asphalt, less road deaths, and so forth.
Elon Musk and the whole capital serving US government is not a good outcome.
There was a fun take on it on r/comics recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1x4toay/the_day_all...
> business owners benefit because the people they can hire from are healthier, so more productive.
As we can see now - capitalism would prefer "stupid", way productive robots running 24/7 in a dark warehouses to a healthier, more productive population. Lighting savings are already cover most of difference (/s but only so slightly).