The problem with free public transport is that it turns into a de facto homeless shelter. And then it isn't safe to use anymore. You let people evade fares and then those people go onto stab people like Zarutska.
> You let people evade fares and then those people go onto stab people like Zarutska.
That has nothing to do with it. The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee. But it is interesting that you should right away jump from the one to the other, effectively using the poor dead girl for your agenda. Crime and homelessness are complex problems some parts of which are easy to solve and some of which are much harder.
You can't simply jump from 'someone got murdered on public transport' to 'public transport can't be free'.
Arguing that modern fare gates lowered crime is a pretty terrible response to the comment to which you responded. It shows a real lack of articulation ("crime bad, crime down here, therefore I don't need to refute what you said").
The original poster said:
> The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee.
I don't see how lower crime on BART due to fewer people hopping the turnstiles refutes that at all. (Huh, I just learned turnstiles is spelled with an I and not a Y. At least your comment led to me learning something.) It just seems defeatist, which is what the people looting this country want.
You're literally making up entire sentences, are you OK?
> The original poster said:
>> The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee.
> I don't see how lower crime on BART...
Maybe you didn't read the link, but it's a 67% reduction in crimes against _riders_. Not property, not soliciting, but crimes against other humans.
The murderer in question was unemployed, homeless and aimlessly riding public transit. We (as a society) should have done a lot more for him, but (see stats above) it seems clear to me that making it easier to be in a confined space with the rest of society wasn't solving his problems and certainly didn't help her.
that's a strange argument.
Perhaps there's something broken about a society that has a significant homelessness issue. The free public transport isn't the problem, it's likely that society has a surplus of citizens that prevent economic progress and/or the deployment of solutions known to be effective against homelessness.
I don't think $2.50 is what's preventing this from happening today.