Video has a disappointing lack of focus on the tambourine player/hype man and whatever this is www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3QL...

Gemini Dream is the best Moody Blues song

This is very funny… “free fares had no impact on car volumes… reorganizing the bus network had a higher impact than free fares”

Most places have discounted fares for people who do not have a lot of money which is fine. We should probably also lower the cost of monthly passes. I should pay money to ride the bus though.

If you need the bus to get to your job then you need the bus to arrive on time and get you there on time. If it’s free no one cares as much about getting you there.

For any level of service you could provide with taxes, you could probably make riders better off by charging fares and then using the money to run more service.

Taxes also compete with other priorities like fire, sewer, water, police, parks, library, etc, which you can also provide more of with $

HAA letter to Walnut Creek, CA for tonight's Design Review Commission meeting re proposed 422-unit builder's remedy project at 2775–2855 Mitchell Drive, which includes 55 low-income units.
@agrobbonta.oag.ca.gov @california-hcd.bsky.social
drive.google.com/file/d/1JnUm...

Free is also a price that rations access

How is City College SF doing? Haven’t checked in on it in a while

“Desire to increase pollution” completely the opposite, if you can pay for more buses with user fees and more people ride the bus that’s less pollution.

Lower income riders in surveys suggest they prefer more frequent service to lower fares.

If there were giant airplanes between city blocks and everyone only needed to travel to one of four or five stops - I agree with you a free train would be a good way to solve that problem.

Yes it’s a lot cheaper to operate a system frequently when it runs on electricity and there’s no driver!

Am I talking to a bot that has memorized a list of talking points and moves from one to the next. Maybe you should have paused for a moment after arguing $12m for 0.1% speed improvement was good

WMATA said their fare gates are going to add eight figures of revenue this year in addition to lowering crime throughout the system. Estimated cost was $40 million, so four years.

I mean… those things are not the same, Europe uses PoP and that seems fine but they are also competent at checking tickets there and have a lower monthly pass amount

I’m not aware of a large system that has free fares and frequent service

The gates are increasing the revenue. This is currently happening throughout the BART system, as well as WMATA.

In addition crime is down because people who commit crimes typically don’t pay the fare, and lower crime is also helping ridership.

Rear door boarding has already been funded in New York City. The readers exist on the buses. There is no “fresh funding crisis” for rear door boarding.

It saved one tenth of one percent of time according to the data, at a cost of $12 million.

The pilot demonstrates that the bus got slower during the pilot period

SFMTA also surveyed people who didn’t ride to ask why they didn’t ride and the top answers were that the bus was too slow and didn’t arrive often enough.

It found a 30% *increase in boardings* not an increase in riders. This is an argument for a cheaper monthly pass.

bsky.app/profile/burk...

Not sure what case exists for banning transgender surgery for minors that doesn’t also exist for banning plastic surgery for minors, maybe you could argue it’s less reversible? More cosmetic?

Yes - they are able to deliver higher frequencies because of the revenue they get from collecting fares.

Somehow bus agencies in Europe and San Francisco have solved this, New York can try what they tried, it’s not a law of nature that people won’t pay.

Opposition to fare increases from “bus should be free” folks blew a $20 million hole in SFMTA’s budget and led to service cuts

Sorry where in Europe do they have free fares. HSR in China is not free.

Maybe New York should try opening the rear doors on their buses, a feature that they paid for and then refused to turn on for some reason.

Maybe New York should try opening the rear doors on their buses, a feature that they paid for and then refused to turn on for some reason.

Minimum wage in America: How many people are earning $7.25 an hour? | USAFacts In 2023, about 869,000 hourly workers —1.1% of all hourly workers — earned at or below the federal minimum wage. That’s the lowest number since data collection began in 1979.

This describes 1 in 100 workers in the country and many of them are people like teenagers or second earners usafacts.org/articles/min...

Surveys of low income transit riders repeatedly show they prefer more service to lower fares.

At any level of service you could provide with free fares you could make riders better off by charging a fare and running more buses.

The National Movement to Halt the Spread of Multifamily Housing, 1890-1926 Efforts to prohibit apartments, rather than merely regulate their construction and condition, began in the 1890s. Through the early 1920s, major cities used stringent building codes to achieve this...

Good morning, a good day to read about the history of the multifamily building code in the US and how little of it related to safety www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...