Buses Shouldn't Be Free (opens in new tab)

> Many proponents of fareless rides point out that drivers expect free or subsidized parking and do not directly pay for the cost of maintaining roads or other necessary infrastructure.

Have these people never tried to park in a city? And "directly" is such a weasel word: do registration fees, gas taxes, and tolls not count?

Religious cults offer free bus rides to "volunteers" or regular hangouts. Busses are obsoleted by rideshare app and pandemic concerns. Uber and Didi could follow established bus routes for pickup and dropoff at higher frequency.

Not collecting even minimal fares means other parts of the system won’t be funded. Cut the price in half or more. But it has value. It does not need to make a profit.

Run more frequently ! Biggest complaint of mine.

Completely disagree, the service needs to be free. One of the reasons bus service is such a mess is that people would rather use their cars than a bus so there's very little incentive to make bus services any better. It's a catch 22. Bus service doesn't get better because ridership is low and ridership is low because bus service is bad.

Free bus service will increase ridership which in turn will improve bus service over the long run. One very important point, the service needs to be safe and clean. Otherwise, it will be an ugly mess that no one wants to use.

Instead of eliminating it, let's run the fare collection machine backwards, and give a rebate to riders.