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| Re: Luxembourg Becomes First Country to Make All Public Transit Free (1516431) | |||
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Re: Luxembourg Becomes First Country to Make All Public Transit Free |
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Posted by MainR3664 on Fri Jun 21 09:57:08 2019, in response to Luxembourg Becomes First Country to Make All Public Transit Free, posted by https://salaamallah.com/ on Thu Jun 20 16:45:22 2019. I am a big fan of public transit in general, trains in particular, and especially particularly, the NYC subway, which I have loved since I was a child. I realize that NYC could not function without it. When I was a kid, I was so offended and upset when a maternal uncle of mine would constantly refer to it as the "stinking subway"- he could never, ever, just call it the subway- he was 100% consistent in that. But even as a kid in the 1970s, I had a sense of what it COULD be.With all that said, I do not think a completely fare-free system would work here. NYC and the USA are, simply put, not Luxembourg. Sadly< I think doing that here would lead to a terrible outbreak of anarchy in the system. Paying a fare, even one substantially reduced by subsidies, makes all users into owners, or at least, stakeholders, much more likely to care about and respect the system. I'll give a non-subway example of the principle: When I was shop steward of my union chapter, we were given a fairly decent allocation of funding from the main union (obviously, that money came from our dues). I would use most of this funding to arrange for very nice holiday meals and special events open to all members of our chapter, with an open bar and nice food in good Manhattan establishments. I COULD have made these events completely free of charge. But I, and my whole council, decided that people needed to show some ownership of the events, so we collected an admission charge usually ranging (depending how much money was available) from 10%-20% of the actual cost (and officials also personally paid this charge as well charges). Could the events have been afforded without these charges? Yes. But a minimal charge succeeded in getting the point across that the events were not really free, and members should act accordingly. |
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