Hi NYers. Since this is one of Zohran’s priorities, gentle reminder that there’s 2 more days of early voting. Sun is out right now and polling center lines are at their shortest. vote.nyc
Comment on From what I've seen, public transit is either expensive and terrible or cheap and good.
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Being good and being cheap are both indications that public transit is being properly funded. When funding is short, they have to raise fares and cut services.
Septimaeus@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
stoy@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Yep, what plenty of people don’t understand, or don’t want to understand is that a good public transport system is seldom directly profitable.
Instead, the profits comes from taxes, public transport enable more people to work in a far greater area, meaning that you get more money through income tax, people earning money also get to spend it, generating more money from sales tax, and so on.
This is also why privately funded public transport systems are less common than state/city funded systems.
squaresinger@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What most people intuitively understand, though, is that public roads are expensive, not profitable and still a worthwhile investment.
It’s kinda baffling that the same isn’t intuitively understandable to everyone when it comes to public transport.
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yeah—ideally, fares only need to cover the marginal/fluctuating costs, not the fixed cost of the whole system.
For private transportation, fares need to pay for both, and generate a profit on top of that.