Comment on From what I've seen, public transit is either expensive and terrible or cheap and good.
theneverfox@pawb.social 2 days ago
That’s because it’s infrastructure. It’s very expensive, and needs to be publicly funded to be good - otherwise you have a death spiral of raising prices, neglecting maintenance, and losing passengers because it’s expensive and terrible
You can easily make it all back from taxes though… Good public transportation means anyone in a city can work, shop, or patronize anywhere, it makes the economy go brr
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
The best public transit systems can even make back their money just from low fairs alone due to shear ridership
theneverfox@pawb.social 5 hours ago
The best ones don’t bother, because collecting fares is expensive and slows everything down
You can have self funded infrastructure, it can work, but it just seems like a bad solution. It’s a weakness. All it takes is one leader throwing a wrench in the process, and the whole thing unbalances and you get a death spiral
But if it’s free? Even if maintenance is neglected for a time, there’s no feedback loop
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
That’s simply untrue. the best public transit system on earth collects fees, and no, it doesn’t slow things down any significant level because it’s just tapping as you walk by