comment: >
  
  The “richest country” yet motherf$@kers can’t get a ride
context: Bus systems tend to not bring in enough anyways, might as well just eliminate the cash box and all the expenses and trouble it brings.  How much wasted time is used to check passes >
  
  It’s all part of the same transit  system including the subway, and people jump the fare gates and sneak onto the buses already. The transit police don’t enforce the fares. >
  
  Go Washington DC!
  Public transit should be taxpayer supported, free at the point of service, clean, safe, ubiquitous, run throughout the night, and wonderful enough to make the single occupancy vehicle an economic liability for most of us.   America needs to invest what is necessary to make this happen! >
  
  
  [Public transit should] run throughout the night
  
  So much this.  It's understandable if service slows with the demand drop, but it is simply unacceptable to have 4-8 hour periods where no public transit is available. >
  
  Yes.  There are people who work night shifts who need to get to and from work. >
  
  Or getting back from the bar after an evening >
  
  It always killed me that the boston subway service shut down at midnight, and bars shut down at 1:30am.  Do the math. >
  
  Yes, more of this, please. For people who cannot afford cars or choose not to, this is a godsend. >
  
  This is something that's great in theory. Until homeless people sleep on the bus all day. >
  
  The fact that homeless people use public transit as a form of shelter is a problem. The solution is not to take this option away from them, rather to de-incentivize them from using this option. It wouldn’t be hard, it’s a goddamned bus ffs. Would you choose to sleep on a bus if you had another option? >
  
  The way to de-incentivize it is to enforce fare rules. I'm all for building projects / cheap housing / homeless shelters. I however want safety and order to be enforced on public transit. Hell, I literally had a teenager pull a knife on a bus for asking him to put on headphones or stop blasting his shitty music on Muni. >
  
  No one that disagrees with you is advocating for thunderdome on public transit. Everybody wants to feel safe, including homeless people. Give them a better option and they’re going to take it. If seeing more of them on busses is the kick in the ass that society needs to solve this problem, so be it. >
  
  Yay! Zero fare is what low income folks and the environment needs! >
  
  They both need a lot more >
  
  Correct, but this is still worth celebrating. >
  
  They do this Norway. Public transportation is free and private automobiles are taxed. But you can get waiver for doctors or public servants. >
  
  Germany's busses were free, when I visited there in 2006, medical care too, if you had a card.  They apologized having to charge me for a doctor visit that was just €15 more than my copay back home! >
  
  The Philippines capital city Manila has a Edsa carousel free bus ride on the Main Street I took it many times there so convenient so why not bring this system to USA. >
  
  I would love to see zero fare nationwide. >
  
  Sure, if you have police to keep homeless people from sleeping on the buses and trains. >
  
  Have you ever ridden public transportation ?
  It sounds like you haven’t. >
  
  In all my years taking public transportation its not been that bad. >
  
  They make it sound like it's all happening at once. If they take BART five times a week, they're going to see something happen once in awhile.
  BART is about to cut service drastically, due to lack of ridership following the exodus from downtown San Francisco office towers. I hope they're happy they helped discourage people from riding. >
  
  A lot of the hate towards public transit is pure classisim lots of upper middle class and wealthy fear being seen with poor people. >
  
  You got that right. >
  
  A mass transport transit toll is a tax on the poor and impoverished. 'Cause wage workers have to count hard enough to notice but the very rich has a private jet. Glad they abolish this. >
  
  Eve if it weren’t, free mass transit gets used by more than just the poor and ultimately saves municipalités a shipload of money on infrastructure maintenance and construction >
  
  And hopefully it gets the car exhaust out of my face when I'm riding my bike. If people have a choice between parking fees/traffic/maintenance costs and free transit, they'll suddenly realize the bus isn't so bad. >
  
  They need to extend it to the metro >
  
  My old town introduced free bussing. The biggest change in the riders? A bunch of child care centers would take their kids to the downtown library, playground, and carousel.
  Sad I moved out before the next local election. Current town doesn't even have fixed bus routes. >
  
  You don't need buses to be free for everyone for that. Youth fares are common. In the Seattle area, children under 18 now ride free (as of a few months ago). >
  
  The children already had reduced fares. Having free fares made it even easier. >
  
  I know YMMV based on the city, but I've lived in places with fully free public buses and places with standard fare buses, and honestly the free ones always seemed cleaner and more reliable. There weren't noticeably more drunk, gross, whatever people on the free buses, but a ton more ordinary folks used it for ordinary transit. Shit, even if there had been more people snoozing in puddles of puke, it's like their presence was watered down by how many more regular riders there were.