I’ve been in and out of Denver a few times in the last couple of years. Last year, riding the RTA RTD light rail train was free. Since I’m staying near a light rail station, it was nice to be able to jump on a train and get downtown without hassle.
This year, the free ride is over, but don’t worry! If you can prove to RTA RTD that you are at or below 185% of the Federal poverty line, have a valid address (as all people below 185% of FPL do) and also a current photograph in the right format, you can get a whopping half off your fare.
For those of you over 185% of FPL, you’ll need to try to buy a ticket at the kiosk (which didn’t work for me) or use the app where it’s not possible to buy a ticket without first depositing money using a credit card (possibly a debit card will work, but I didn’t try it).
RTA RTD did lower fares — it’s $5.50 for a whole day of unlimited rides, and $2.75 for a three-hour pass. If you’re over 65, (and can prove it with an id, of course) it’s half off. While these fares are reasonable, if you’re fairly close to where you’re going and a group of people are going, a $15 Uber or Lyft ride each way is within shouting distance of the $22 RTA RTD fare for four people, and it’s faster.
The whole fare infrastructure also requires conductors on light rail to check tickets, and they do intermittently — so some people recommend buying a ticket in the app but not activating it, so you’ll only pay if they’re checking. In other words, fare dodging is basically risk-free for people who have the app and a credit card.
This is, in a microcosm, America’s attitude towards anyone getting any kind of break. Here we are in a sprawled out town that has a real smog and traffic problem, and the cure — mass transit — is set up to be a barrier to the working poor, plus there are lots of cases where the price makes ride sharing a reasonable alternative. But, if it were free, then perhaps someone “undeserving” might board a train or bus and get where they need to go, thus causing collapse of the social order.
As I travel through the West, I’m simultaneously surprised at how many towns have some kind of light rail (Tucson, who knew?) and by how few people ride it. I’m sure there’s a lot more than fare prices involved, but free would be a good start to increasing ridership.
Edit: Of course I screwed up the abbreviation for the Denver transit authority. Sheesh.
Baud
I’ve used public transportation systems around the word, and none have been free. Doesn’t mean your idea is bad, but it’s not the norm anywhere.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The local bus system has gone fare-free in my town. It’s nice but still limited by low frequency (local buses should come more often than once an hour). I think that in practice, making the system frequent enough that riding it doesn’t take a lot of planning is a huge deal if you can manage it.
Baud
@Baud:
Word = world
E.
@Baud: When I was in Mexico City in the 90’s the metro was so cheap it was practically free. I think it was something like 400 rides to the dollar. What a great system, too!
Baud
@E.:
That’s one place I’ve never been.
Was it inexpensive by Mexican standards too? At 400 rides, it sounds like it.
piratedan
Tucson’s system is not extensive but serves the purpose of getting its university peeps to and from downtown without being on the streets. In short, it helps keeps drunks from behind the wheel and resolves the fact that there isn’t a lot of parking downtown. Also helps to get those students who are working, a mechanism to supply their labor to downtown venues.
Suzanne
So in the Sun Belt cities, there’s so few lines and stations that you usually need to drive to a park-and-ride station anyway, so by then, it usually makes more sense to just drive all the way to where you’re going.
In John’s new neck of the woods, Scottsdale voted down a light rail line in their city some years back — even though there are lots of bars and nightclubs there and it would be great to keep drunks off the road — because they didn’t want poor people to easily access Scottsdale.
Also, I cannot emphasize enough how much public transit is often a hostile space for women. There’s the high-profile incidents, like the shoving of Michelle Go in the NYC subway, but there’s also just normal street harassment and gross men trying to strike up a conversation. This kind of stuff really has to be kept in check for public transit to not be thought of as a pit of despair to be starved for funding.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
This makes me intensely angry. We should be pouring money into transit. Instead we pour it into highways.
Alison Rose
@Baud: Agreed, but I do think mistermix is right about the way this country makes it very difficult for those who need a break to get one. In many cases, you have to be Dickensian levels of poor to qualify for things, and you have to provide insane amounts of proof to get them.
While I was working on my SSDI application with my lawyer (which the government is taking its sweet ass time with), we also did an SSI application, but she mentioned that typically, your living expenses cannot exceed something like $2100 a month or something. My rent alone is just over $1900 (which is absurdly high for this place). I asked her what the government expected people to do — live under a bridge in order to get assistance?
There are a lot of people who truly seem to think that if you don’t have money, you don’t deserve to live. It’s scary.
trollhattan
Transit mavens talk about “the last mile” as critical WRT getting ridership.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation)
When they were laying out the route for our first light rail line plans were for it to cut through CSU Sacramento campus and the university president had a fit, forcing them to run it on the wrong side of a major arterial. Students wishing to use the system need to walk a good distance to campus (where the first class will be on the other side of campus, as God intended) but not before crossing that arterial at a major intersection with a second one.
That’s tens of thousands of fares lost/year with a commensurate giant bump in needed campus parking.
Compare with Portland, where the streetcar (LR’s baby brother) runs right through Portland State University campus.
David Hunt
I read that Albuquerque has made in-city rides on their mass transit system free because the fare revenues didn’t even cover the cost of administering the fares. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing was true in Denver…but God forbid one of Those People get something without being bled for it.
Baud
@Alison Rose:
Agree. Way too much paperwork.
trollhattan
Speaking of infrastructure, sun’s out and CAISO reports 68% of California electricity supply currently from renewables: 12 GW solar, 3.2 GW wind, 0.7GW geothermal.
Not bad for January.
Anyway
OT: the rapacious Saudis are at it again – throwing obscene gobs of money at sports organizations in an attempt to buy respectability. After their success with the PGA and various soccer tournaments they’re now coming for the WTA finals At least a few rich Saudi women will be able to attend the matches as long as they don’t have to drive to the arena
Mallard Filmore
@Alison Rose:
Proving you don’t have a full time job is a full time job.
Another Scott
@Baud:
Made me look, as I had a vague recollection of the system in Vienna. Correct, fares are not free.
As MM says, and as Atrios used to harp back when I read him, having complicated systems that require a bunch of rules and administration and friction are expensive and offer poor service. Tax the rich more to pay for it. It’s much more efficient – and cheaper – to make public transit as friction-free as possible rather than trying to come up with some sort of fare structure that somehow finds ways to squeeze money out of every rider to pay the way.
Trusting people to buy the appropriate low fare and having a few plain-closed random inspectors who can issue hefty fines seems like a decent way to do it. Trying to prevent scofflaws by having giant fancy gates seems like another expensive friction point. Having fancy “counterfeit-proof” fare cards, likewise. Demanding that everyone show their proof of payment every time, likewise.
AFAIK, no public transit system exclusively pays for itself via fares. Increasing the subsidy and reducing the friction is the way to get more people to use them, and get more people off the roads, and reduce transportation emissions, and all the rest. And it would make their budgets more predictable, and you wouldn’t have issues like DC Metro facing a $750M deficit in FY25.
[ /preaching to the choir ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Colorado Toad
It’s RTD, not RTA.
They did go fare-free for all light rail and buses three months again in the summertime, when we have the most problems with ozone. They’re running a year-long program where anyone under 19 rides free, which will help families.
Of course it would be great if they could go fare-free all the time, but the lower fare structure does help out. And it’s been interesting to watch the clusters of development that have gone up around almost every light rail stop, apartments and offices. As someone who’s spent 64 years living the Denver metroplex, our transit options are way better than they used to be — ain’t perfect, but the changes are good.
Abnormal Hiker
@Baud: Trams in the Melbourne CBD are free.
Leto
@Baud: I’ll agree that it’s not free, but 1) it’s super easy to use 2) the kiosks work and 3) there’s a ton of stops. For example, the metro system in Rome (underground, metro, bus) is $26 for the entire week, unlimited use. That’s what we did a decade ago when we spent a week there. Did I have to prove anything? No. Just went to the news stand, bought three tickets, and we were done.
i don’t know how you fix this. We won’t raise taxes to pay for this stuff, we’ll keep pushing the costs to the people who can least afford it, then we’ll wonder why it’s underfunded, underutilized, and looks 30 years old. We need to do this to help combat climate change, to reduce cars on the road, and to help people who need to get around who don’t own a car. Idk.
edit: that $26 is the current price. It was cheaper a decade ago.
Harrison Wesley
Manatee County (FL) is winding up an experiment with free public transit. I guess they’ll be deciding in the next couple of months if that’s what they want to do going forward. I hope so, partly because I rely on MCAT to get around and partly because I think they really should encourage less crowded roads. Fares aren’t super-high to begin with: regular fare is $1.50 one-way (you can buy daily or monthly passes for the whole system) and old farts like me only pay $.75.
Aziz, light!
@trollhattan: I stepped off that streetcar through the PSU campus half an hour ago, here for my class today as a senior auditor. Portland’s extensive system of trains and streetcars is very handy when needed. But ridership is down now that the downtown core has collapsed as a desirable place to work and play. I wonder if the system’s funding mechanisms will survive.
Baud
@Leto:
I was curious and looked it up. NYC subway is $34 for the week.
azlib
@Suzanne: It is a shame Scottsdale turned down the LR system. It was to end at the Scottsdale Airpark which is a pretty big employment center. Meantime the 101 Freeway gets widened which may have been deferred if the LR was in place.
SpaceUnit
I’m in the Denver area but haven’t used the light rail since before Covid. Its main problem is that it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s great for traveling downtown or to the airport, but entirely useless for going anywhere else.
To be fair, its primary purpose was to reduce traffic on the major commuter corridors during rush hour so all it can do is drop you off in the burbs if you want to stand on a corner scratching your ass.
VeniceRiley
@Suzanne: Yes. Hostile to women, indeed.
Maybe the men here with so many opinions on funding could put their heads together and solve that problem?
Brachiator
Nothing is free. In many places, the farebox collections do not sustain public transportation. Subsidies are still necessary.
In the Los Angeles area, public transportation was free for a time during the pandemic. Ridership has not recovered. There are some proposals to make public transportation free permanently.
For bus and rail, there is a TAP card or phone app. It’s easy to get a TAP card online, on buses, or at stations. There are discounts for students and the elderly, and it is not difficult for most people to get them.
For the light rail system, it is easy to get around the fare check turnstiles. Compliance checking is rare. There is not any regular reporting on fair avoidance.
The system is okay, but budget crunches have resulted in significant cutbacks of buses, which in turn, discourages ridership. The biggest problems are a significant increase in crime on trains and buses and at stations, and a burden caused by an increase in homeless and troubled riders.
Officials are hot to improve things in time for the Olympics.
ETA. There are also fare discounts for low income people. It’s not that hard to sign up for it.
Alison Rose
@Suzanne: Had a dude sit next to me on a bus once and start jerking off under his coat. Super fun times.
RaflW
Sydney, Australia was fantastic for transit. Maybe not the cheapest, but for a tourist it was basically ideal. LRT, buses and ferries are all under one fare authority, even if some of the ferries are nominally private. As long as you have a chip-enabled credit or debit card, it’s just tap in / tap out.
No proprietary card to buy or app to install. And once you’ve hit the fare cap for the day, while you do keep tapping in & out, they don’t take any more fare money that day. One can buy a fare card if one isn’t in possession of a chip-enabled credit/debit card.
As a tourist, I didn’t enquire at the time about lower income, disabled, youth or what have you for ‘concession’ fares, but here are the capped max for them: au$8.90 a day (Monday to Thursday) / au$4.45 on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and public holidays / au$25 a week (about 16 bucks a week at current exchange rates). Tourists and regular users are capped at au$17.80 m-th, half that f-su, and au$50 a week.
I love that Friday is part of the ‘weekend’!
Baud
@RaflW:
Singapore also uses credit card chips. And is really cheap.
HeleninEire
NYC is spending so much money trying to stop fare evaders. I get it and I don’t know the answer to the whole question, but what NYC is spending is more than what the fare evaders cost.
Adam Lang
While I agree with all of this, it’s notable that in San Francisco the counterargument to ‘just make it all free’ is that our homeless population will move into the busses and a) take up a non-trivial amount of the space and b) drive the more fastidious and easily-offended off of public transit.
The non-obvious counterargument to this is that busses and light rail already are free, except for when a fare inspector is on the vehicle, and yet oddly this is not a serious problem right now.
The more obvious counterargument to this, that we should be providing places for the homeless to live that are not objectively worse than riding around in busses 24/7, is also apparently non-obvious to both the old money crowd and the tech crowd. And although neither of those are prime users of public transit — aside from BART which is an entire separate rant — they are in complete control of the situation. So in summary, fuuuuuuck.
Leto
@Baud: yup. Lots of stops, able to all around the city, easy to pay, but as Suzanne pointed out, the icky/gross dude factor is an issue. NYC relies on its transit system to move their people around (work, tourism, whatever), so they’ll do the work to keep it affordable.
@VeniceRiley: we’ve had endless discussions on that, just like we’ve had endless funding discussions. If you’d like to propose something, go ahead.
Yarrow
Germany made the trains very cheap for awhile. Here’s an interesting article on it.
RaflW
@Baud: I felt like $11.75/day (us) was very reasonable. The Sydney ferry network alone is an absolute bargain at that rate. And several days we didn’t even hit the cap, IRRC.
JML
@Alison Rose: boy you ain’t kidding. a friend of mine has been struggling with this issue, and despite serious medical conditions that limit his mobility and have made it impossible for him to continue working the barriers he’s had to deal with are maddening. He’s literally had to put assets into trust (a small inheritance) to keep from losing all of his benefits and it’s an almost constant battle, all while his health keeps getting worse (degenerative condition).
I blame Reagan. Ever since that scumbag and his made-up stories of “welfare queens” driving Cadillacs this country has gotten meaner and crueler to those in need. Hubert Humphrey said “The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”
Hubert was right, and Reagan was a dick who continues to fuck this country decades after his hellaciously bad and corrupt administration. (people forget just how many Reagan officials were indicted or sent to prison…)
HeleninEire
@Baud: In Ireland if you are 66 years old you can ride all the public transportation systems for free. This is important…for me 😀
Whe I retire- 2 years 2 months, yeah I’m counting. – I plan to spend my summers in Dublin and use it as place to hop over to other European ccountries. I was thinking my first year retired I would see all of Ireland. Nope. I’ll only be 63.5. I’ll wait 3 years until I can travel for free.
Sure Lurkalot
The amount of real estate we’ve ceded to cars is truly astounding and we keep expanding roads and building new ones as if that’s the (only) answer to our mobility issues. Parking lots are a particularly poor land use and it’s maddening that as we mindlessly get sold and buy bigger and bigger vehicles, they stripe the parking spaces smaller and smaller (actually, the size of vehicles alone enmaddens me greatly).
My big issue with light rail in Denver is the last mile. I could walk to an express bus that ran at rush hours only for about a 35 minute commute to downtown but a car-free combined bus/light-rail trip takes over an hour with a further walk to a different bus stop. But as a retired non-commuter, light rail is a pretty good deal for tooling around town, $2.70 for a day pass. That’s the youth price too but currently, 19 and under ride free until August of this year.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I believe you mean RTD, our highly criticized transit system also known as “Reason To Drive” because of real (and perceived) chronic mismanagement.
Last year’s A-Line (the airport line) wasn’t free all year, far from it. You must have hit it during those times when they made it free in an effort to boost ridership, at least on the A-Line.
The discount fares are great b/c they include the airport. But in typical RTD manner, the Standard Fare structure, while cheaper than what was before, is still considered high for an airport run. And nobody ever checks your ID for the discount rate if you look old enough and wear a mask.
Your relating of checking for fares on the A-Line is spot on (but they’re more diligent over the last 6 months in checking on each and every trip) although now, if you have a Discount Pass, it’s not worth the bother trying to skate…and believe me, as someone who uses the A-Line to/from the airport, I’d skate when it was at the previous, non-discounted rate.
Per SpaceUnit above, RTD was a mess prior to the Plague Years and messier now. Two lite rail lines have been shut down, a combo of no ridership (and little demand regardless of fare structure) and hiring issues (as in “Can’t find people to work”, or so RTD says).
TeezySkeezy
Surprised more people aren’t talking more about the new insurrection brewing in Texas.
Kelly
I’ve been taking care of my 87 year old Mom’s finances this year. Her only income is social security. I figured out she qualified for low income energy energy assistance. Probably. No application form on the website. I called to apply. Yes, she probably would qualify. She must fill out a paper form mailed to her. OK please mail me a form. You’ll have to call back after the first of the month. That’s 2 days away? Yes, call back in two days. So two days later I spent from 8 am to 2 pm calling back, all lines are busy. I get through and all they want is a name and mailing address. Response will be in 4 to 8 weeks. The form arrives. I fill out the form, print 2 months of electric bills, print a copy of her very simple taxes, requested a benefit letter on the Social Security website. SS was easy emailed the letter within minutes. Photographed and printed a copy of her drivers licence. Maybe some other stuff. The envelope required extra postage. It’s been about 8 weeks I need to call and see what’s going on.
Mendo
Means testing is awful, but when it comes to transit, it’s an open question as to whether additional funding should go toward improving service or making service free. Ideally, of course, you’d have excellent service, and it would be free. But if you have an extra $100M to improve your local transit agency, you’ll probably help more people by first making service good and keeping the fare, rather than by maintaining crappy service and making it free.
https://slate.com/business/2021/06/free-transit-is-not-a-great-idea.html
From the article: ‘But those same riders also overwhelmingly said reliability was a bigger concern than affordability. And that’s just among people who ride now. “For millions more people the barrier might be the bus doesn’t even go to their doctor’s office, or they can’t rely on it getting there when the schedule promises,” Higashide said. “People won’t have true freedom of mobility unless there is twice, three times, four times as much service as what exists today.”’
Jay
Here, $80 a month paid for Skytrain, an Express Bus, and a local Bus, a 60km commute, 5 days a week, to and from. It only required a 2 block walk to work.
At one time, when I worked at the “other place”, sometimes, an opening shift required a 10 block walk to the Skytrain station, to catch the 5:15am first train, but then I found a trail through the Green Zone, that cut the walk by 4 blocks.
Transit was nice, 99% of the time, mostly same route, same time and as a result, a small community of regulars. In the am, I would web surf, on the commute home, we had a group that would all sit together, chat together, and often, drink an after work beer or two.
One time, due to a snowstorm, going home took 6 hours, our bus pushed and abandoned Porsche off the road, my phone ran out of charge, SWMBO was upset that I didn’t call her, now Transit is adding chargers and free WIFI to all transit.
If you are on social assistance, the Province provides a $100 transit pass, good for Skytrain, Coast Mountain Busses, Fraser Valley Busses, West Vancouver Busses and the Seabus.
RaflW
As to RTD transit usage from the OP: I recall reading something a few years back about system use v. design. Planners went with the easier option of running LRT (more often that not, but not entirely) along easier right-of-ways next to big highways. Made some sense in terms of faster implementation, less nibyism, and at least some chance to pick up commuters already used to the DT rush hour and looking for alternatives.
The Covid shift to less in-office and in downtown commuting has not been great for RTD. Pre pandemic, we made use of the heavy rail A Line airport service a fair amount, and I think that is again doing pretty well for ridership, but the ‘traveller tax’ where they double the fare for that last stop is an irritant. How much actual cash does RTD take in from tourists vs. discouraging them from using the A Line? A family of three would much rather take a Lyft, I’m sure. Even a couple might question the value of $20 into Downtown and then having to make a connection.
mali muso
@Suzanne: when we were in Mexico City earlier this month, we rode the city buses quite a bit. Most if not all had the entire rear section reserved for women and children under 12. It’s painted pink and has big signs alerting passengers to the restriction.
Kelly
Yesterday Mom’s 28 year old heat pump died. None of the energy efficiency tax credits are refundable. She pays no income tax so no tax credits. Fortunately she has a wood pellet stove. It’ll keep us warm while I figure out the heat pump replacement.
TheOtherHank
I live in the SF Bay area (a few miles south of SF on the coast). If I want to take a BART train I can drive a short-ish distance and get to a couple different stations. But, generally, I don’t. It’s really expensive, to the point where if you calculate gas and bridge tolls (if you’re crossing the bay) it doesn’t save that much money. And then there’s the hassle of not having a car at your destination, since the other transit options are pretty meager. In my town the San Mateo Transit busses tend to run hourly or less, so coordinating a bus ride to the the train station so as to arrive before the train you want leaves is basically impossible.
Eons ago (early 90s) I took a trip to Eastern Europe. We went to Moscow, St Petersburg, and Prague. All of them had great metro systems. The exchange rate at the time meant riding the Russian metro trains cost about 1/10 of a cent. This meant I felt like I was being ripped off in Prague since the price there was 25 cents. But you could get around all three cities on the metro. The BART trains run up one side of SF. If you want to get to other side of the city you have to get on a Muni bus or street car, which can work, but generally it’s a bit of a walk to get to the right Muni stop (to be fair I think there is one station that has both Muni and BART stops)
terraformer
We have a dichotomy in this country, largely (but not completely) represented by the two political parties:
One wants to provide for the greater good, to make living easier for everyone, and to reduce or remove barriers impeding that
The other wants only certain people – defined by status, wealth of a certain level, and/or privilege – to live more easily, and to erect and strengthen barriers
And convincing the latter to support the former is a monumental task, largely driven by greed of the already-haves who have created and nurtured a decades-long mis- and disinformation campaign designed to make their followers believe that doing so is a zero-sum game
Suzanne
@trollhattan: There’s so many bullshit interests at play.
So I was in graduate school at Arizona State (Tempe campus) when the Phoenix light rail first opened. It saved me a lot of time, because I could park for free and then walk about 10 minutes to my building. And ASU has some of its schools in downtown Phoenix, so they offered the students a pass for like $75 for unlimited rides for a semester. Bangin deal.
That route happens to pass just north of the airport. When the newest terminal (at the time) was built, a tunnel was constructed into the building for the light rail to go through it. But the cab companies didn’t like that idea, so they leaned on the City to move the route north. So now, if you want to go to the airport, you have to get off the light rail at a station outside the airport and then swit to the “skytrain”. Intentionally making it less convenient and more expensive.
frosty
Baltimore has a light rail line that goes from north of the city south to Anne Arundel County. From what I’ve seen, the cars are pretty damned empty.
During my 14 years working for Arlington (and living in Baltimore)* I drove to the MARC station; commuter rail to the Red Line, change to the Orange Line, my building was 20 ft from the station elevator. Not bad. I miss my afternoon naps on the train.
* DC salary and Baltimore mortgage and all it cost me was three and a half hours a day.
Suzanne
@mali muso: Yeah, that’s a thing in lots of places outside the US. I wish we had it here.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
This is a good vid on why it costs so much and takes so long to build transit in the US.
Sister Golden Bear
Iowa GOP bill would legal anti-trans discrimination.
Just asking questions, amirite?
Note: Part of the effort to force trans people to use their sex assigned at birth and their birth names — aside from the inherent cruelty — is to make us easily identifiable for the other forms of discrimination that Republicans plan to legalize, in order to drive trans people out of public life.
Brachiator
@VeniceRiley:
@Suzanne: Yes. Hostile to women, indeed.
The short answer is get a car. The longer answer is more and visible law enforcement.
Some people look for people to prey upon. This most often seems to be women and the elderly.
At Los Angeles Union Station, I regularly see women harassed, often by people asking them for money in very hostile tones. But hustlers will also target elderly people with similar stunts.
I am a big guy. For a time, I was rarely bothered by anyone, but now that I use a cane sometimes, when I go through Union Station, I sometimes have to deal with female pick pockets who try to get close to my pockets and packages. Guys still leave me alone.
Recently on a bus, the driver warned that a troubled man was on the bus who had been exposing himself.
One area service, Foothill Transit, regularly has police officers, in uniform and plain clothes, ride buses.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RaflW:
I can’t speak to ridership by people flying into/out of DIA but in terms of a commuter rail line, it’s very heavily used taking people who work at the airport to the airport. They get to one of the stations (typically Central Park or Peoria) by whatever means and off they go.
I’ve flown a crapton over the last year, always using the A-Line (I live 5 minutes south of the 38th & Blake Station) and there’s an okay amount of travellers, not massive by any stretch, but the commuters *to* the airport? That’s massive.
VeniceRiley
@Leto: How about a life sentence or bullet for each of them until they stop? Otherwise, car it is. No one jacks off in my car.
trollhattan
@Anyway: What would an appropriate MAGA hat for Saudi women look like?
Alison Rose
@Brachiator: Not everyone can afford a car or is able to drive. And law enforcement does not always give a shit about men harassing women.
John Cole
It’s the plan with libraries. Anything for the common good has to be disbanded so the poors can not enjoy it and monetized so the superrich can exploit everyone else
evap
@HeleninEire: Do you know what is required for this? My spouse is Irish and owns a house there, but has lived and worked in the US for the past 40+ years. We are wondering if he can get the free travel.
evap
I like what NYC does. It’s easy to enter, just tap a credit or debit card. Once you get to a certain number of rides in a week, the rest of the week is free.
trollhattan
@Kelly: Ugh, in January to boot.
Our electricity utility has rebates for new heat pump installations, but obviously that’s not true everywhere.
We hit year 1 with ours this month and I can vouch the gas bill savings are greater than the electricity price bump. Plus, sooooo much quieter.
Good luck on your replacement quest.
Brachiator
@Alison Rose:
You are absolutely right. We are having a conversation about solutions. I noted some of the things that Transit agencies are doing.
I didn’t mention a “see something, say something” app and phone number which people are encouraged to use, which seems to be practically useless.
What solutions do you propose?
Pete Downunder
Public transit in Oz in a mixed bag. Brisbane has the largest geographic area under one council in Australia and is third largest in the world. It is mostly low density suburbs so bus and trains are hard to be efficient. The buses are very expensive except for students and the elderly like me and the trains don’t always go where you need to go. The train to the airport was a private/govt deal and very expensive and the contract prevents the city from providing bus service. For a family ride share is usually cheaper. The same happened in Sydney. There have been efforts by left leaning politicians to provide cheaper and more frequent bus service. The city council at the moment is right wing dominated but there is hope to change that in the March election.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
A friend had a hobo assault him on our light rail last week–spilled onto the sidewalk at his downtown stop. Good times.
Kelly
@trollhattan: The new heat pump will be cheaper to run and I knew that an over 20 year old pump was on it’s last legs. I have money put aside. Called around today to get estimates. Seriously considering ductless. About half the ductwork runs through a very well ventilated crawls space so abandoning those leaky old ducts might be good. Also ductless would left her heat and cool only the rooms she uses.
Wood pellet stove will get us by. It seems likely a new heat pump will be cheaper to run than the pellet stove. Easier to.
Alison Rose
@Brachiator: I mean…I’m not sure why it should be up to women to solve the problem of men being pigs.
My solution: Men stop being pigs. And maybe those of you who aren’t pigs can try to rein your bros in when they act that way. Society stops raising boys to believe they are little princes who get to do whatever they want when it comes to girls.
None of that is gonna happen any time soon.
Jay
@Brachiator:
Here, we have a lot of construction workers and trades, riding Transit.
Harassing women or acting up is a great way to get a serious beat down.
Seen it several times, participated once.
It’s not just the social public contract, but it also makes the rest of us late for work.
VeniceRiley
@Brachiator: I propose men figure out men and come up with a solution. Because as long as they don’t care much about it, nothing will be done.
Brachiator
@Alison Rose:
@VeniceRiley:
As I have noted the people I consistently see harassed are women, the elderly and the disabled. Vile people prey upon those who they believe are weaker.
Violent crime, which is becoming more prevalent, affects men and women.
We are all in this together, and that is true when it comes to solutions as well.
ETA. Is it Mexico and Japan that has women only segments of some transit lines?
Ohio Mom
@Alison Rose: Having gone round with Social Security on both SSI and SSDI, I think the thing that is hanging you up about how much rent you pay is that benefits are the same everywhere, an area’s higher cost of living is not factored in. It’s the federal government treating everyone equally, as they must.
Not excusing the rule, just explaining it. Most everything to do with Social Security is extremely arcane.
When Ohio Son was on SSI I was warned to use every penny, every month, because if there was money left over, well obviously he did not need that much money from Social Security.
Now that Ohio Dad is retired, Ohio Son has been moved to SSDI. Extra money now is not so much of a problem, I can just move it into Son’s ABLE account.
Which brings up this question, can you show that your disability started before she 26? Then you can open an ABLE account, it’s a way to launder money such as gifts from family members.
The money in an ABLE is not counted when adding up your assets, it is not included in the $2,000 limit on how much money you are allowed to have. Which come to think of it, is probably why the attorney told you it’s not a good idea to spend more than $2,100 a month, because if you are spending that much, you probably have more than $2,000 every month going through your books.
You can spend your ABLE money on everything and anything except (as a lawyer leading a workshop on this topic said) porn, booze, and adult entertainment (and maybe tobacco? My memory is foggy because it didn’t apply to us). The ABLE account is sort of a poor person’s version of a trust fund.
The government is in the process of hanging the rules so that anyone who acquired a qualifying disability before age 46 can have an ABLE account. Why 46, who knows? I don’t remember the time line on that change, again, if it doesn’t apply to Ohio Family, I don’t file it away.
Kelly
@trollhattan: Just checked. There are incentives for replacing electric resistance primary heat sources. The electric resistance auxiliary heat is all that works now but I don’t think that’ll qualify.
Brachiator
@Jay:
Also a good way to get yourself stabbed or shot.
suzanne
@Jay: It’s not just actionable harassment. It’s also getting ogled, getting flirted with, getting interrupted while trying to read or listen to music, and generally treating transit like it’s a pickup opportunity. This is not illegal, but it’s fucken tiresome and many women will go to great lengths to avoid it.
Geminid
@Anyway: The Saudis tried to host the the Turkish football championship game a month ago, but that one blew up in their faces. The Riyadh match had to be canceled because the Turkish players were going to wear warm-up shirts with Kemal Ataturk’s likeness. After all, 2023 was the 100th anniversary of the Turkish Republic that Kemal founded.
The Saudis don’t see Kemal the same way; they think Kemal’s secularization of Turkiye was one of the 20th century’s biggest tragedies. Sports officials visited the locker rooms to lay down the law, and brought cops along to show they were serious.
So the Turkish footballers ended up flying home that night. Ten thousand cheering fans greeted them at the Istanbul airport, waving Tukish flags and Ataturk posters. Turks don’t like Saudis any more than Americans do.
The fans were also glad the championship will be played in Turkiye now. It will be a big game. Galatasary and Fernerbahce F.C.s are based in Istanbul, on opposite sides of the Bosphorus. They’re like the Yankees and the Mets.
Almost Retired
@Brachiator: I take the train to downtown Los Angeles sometimes to meet friends for dinner in the Arts District and sometimes to court. The subway really got sketchy during and after the pandemic, particularly (as you note), Union Station and the Civic Center stops. Lowered ridership lead to people feeling unsafe on nearly empty cars, leading to an unhealthy spiral.
Last time I went downtown I noticed a lot more uniformed employees -not exactly security. I think the City calls them ambassadors. They’re not armed. It seems to make a difference. I get that security can’t be everywhere, but an enhanced presence seems to be a bit of a deterrence. Money well spent. Even then there seems to be some inequity – more visible security on the Santa Monica line, less on the Hollywood and South LA trains.
Alison Rose
@Brachiator:
No, it isn’t. When one side is doing the vast majority of the harassing, it should not be equally up to the other side to help sort it out. And I will note, your comment about “preying upon those who they believe are weaker” is getting pretty close to victim-blaming. What the hell was I supposed to do about being a small young female? Take HGH to try to grow taller? Walk around in a suit of armor?
It is not the duty of a victim to get the perpetrator to change. Nothing we do matters if men don’t start viewing others as equal human beings to them, and don’t stop thinking that “whatever I want, I get” is the way to go through life. Men who harass and assault people aren’t going to listen to those people asking them to stop.
Alison Rose
@Ohio Mom: Well, what I had was SDI which was not quite enough, and my mom covering a couple of things for me. Right now, I had nothing but the money you all gave me and now that that money has run out, my mother paying my way completely. Which she cannot do forever. My living costs are what they are because this is where I ended up when I was working. My disability means I cannot move. So those costs will not go down.
gene108
I don’t think the cost of train fare is prohibitive enough to keep most people from using mass transit versus driving everywhere.
Driving your own vehicle from point A to point B is usually the easiest way to commute. Mass transit cannot compete with the convenience, unless we make city driving less convenient, like limiting parking.
If there’s going to be free train fare then stick with it. These overly complex schemes to means test probably cost more money than they save.
Jay
@Brachiator:
Stabbed, not really. Guy cut a guy on an am Bus in Surrey today. The stabee, got a serious beatdown. They kept beating him until the Police showed up, 20 minutes worth. The stabbed got a bandage, the stabee was taken to the ER in a coma.
One is more likely to get stabbed at a Transit station, where the perp can run away, than on Transit.
When asked why they kept beating the guy when he was disarmed and restrained, the reason given was “he’s making us an hour late for work”.
Getting shot here, because of the general absence of handguns here, pretty much requires that you be in a gang.
@suzanne:
yeah, that’s an issue.
On the 555 Express, in the am, if I had to share a seat, I would just say hi, and do my surfing. On the trip home, there we would take the 4 seats facing each other, and the other 4 across, as a mixed group. A bunch of old farts, a couple of younger men, and 3 young women, that all worked in the same area, were on the same schedules, took the same buses, met at the 195 bus stop at 4:30, and hung out and chatted. We were a social group.
Almost Retired
@suzanne: That’s exactly right. When I take public transportation here, I have a book or newspaper or something to signal that I don’t wish to make any new friends on the Red Line. It works. On the rare occasions when my wife rides the subway with her own book or magazine, creepy men will interrupt her and ask her “whatcha reading,” as though she were interested in participating in a mobile light rail coed book club.
Darren
@Jay: I live in the west end and agree transit is cheap, convenient, frequent, and (mostly) pleasant. It’s also very crowded, esp at rush hour. If it were free, I suspect many more people would use it. The system might not have the capacity to cope with that and it might not be easy to expand – the 5 Downtown already runs up Denman every 5-6 minutes. The same is true for the skytrain. Charging for transit might be as much a way of limiting demand to capacity as it is a funding mechanism. I don’t know if that the case elsewhere, but it seems possible.
Jay
@gene108:
Here, doing a 60km commute via Transit, to where I used to work, takes a little bit more time, (in my case, 15min longer than most days, than driving to work). The Express Bus get’s to use the HOV lane and it’s own two exits off the freeway, and I get to web surf.
Many days, however, Transit is way faster, because the city is full of bad drivers.
If your are close to a Skytrain station, and your destination is close to a Skytrain station, driving makes no sense.
Redshift
@terraformer: My short version of that is “Your top priority can either be that everyone should get what they need, or that no one should get anything they don’t deserve. It cannot be both.”
Redshift
@mali muso:
That seems like an excellent solution, and perhaps the only one that would work. I wonder if it could be maintained here without having additional personnel to enforce it. Maybe with a call button to the driver, and the train/bus doesn’t move until the offending person complies (I swear, I’ll pull this car over!)
I would definitely be willing to advocate for it. It could be billed as a temporary measure – you know, just until all the jerks learn to behave. 😛
Jay
@Darren:
When the system is working well here, there is always another bus. Going home, (towards the transfer station) if the 158 was full, there was an empty 138 right behind it, heading to the same station. The 138 route ended at the transfer station, but the 158 carried on into Langley, so for some of our “gang” the 158 was worth cramming into, but for others, it made no difference.
The am commute was conversation free, the pm commute was a social club. Halloween was a hoot as Sunny knew a prop guy at one of the studio’s who loaned him horror props to decorate his yard with. So forklift guy, repair guy, receptionist, pumpkin headed scarecrow, Sunny, all sitting in a row one day, same sort of thing next day but zombie pirate instead of pumpkin headed scarecrow guy. 2 weeks before, 2 weeks after.
Jay
@Redshift:
All transit here have emergency call bars running the length of the transit vehicle. Transit here has it’s own Police Force, they are a presence in every Skytrain station, some transit hubs and have a mobile force. They arn’t there to catch fare jumpers.
Bus drivers will let you on even if you can’t pay the fare.
There is also a large force of “Attendants” to provide Customer Service. All of the Skytrain stations and transit hubs have 24/7 video surveillance.
Darren
@Jay: true but there’s also another bunch of people wanting the next bus. I wasn’t trying to be critical of a system I rely on and like. My point, such as it was, is that while means testing is futile pricing may not be as systems may not be feasibly extendable. Much of the downtown traffic congestion is a function of the seabus bottle neck and low density on much of the north shore (outside Lonsdale Key).
Ruckus
SoCal has a pretty decent transit train system.
There is the diesel train the goes from the outer east end to Union station in downtown LA and there are a few different routes. Not the cheapest option but it’s still cheaper than driving. Runs every 1/2 hr.
There is the Metro system – all electric, there are a number of routes, I ride from the northeast SG Valley to Santa Monica for seniors rate – $.35 cents. Have to transfer in downtown LA, the starting train starts 2 3/4 miles north of me and runs to Long Beach, the train I transfer to runs from East LA to Santa Monica. IOW pretty much all the way east to west. There are other north south trains so while it doesn’t work for everyone, it’s not that difficult to use the system and mostly one can get where they are going. At one point the train I ride mostly runs between the 5 lanes each side freeway and the train is often faster than the traffic. The trains make little noise, the toughest part is getting from each end of your train ride to your final destination and that is rather easy. I’ve ridden the loop in Chicago, the commuter in Boston and others and all these are very similar.
suzanne
@Almost Retired:
Exactly. And, like, I know how to be rude and tell them to fuck off, but those interactions make my day unpleasant. I don’t want to have to do that.
It’s like that whole parable about the Nazi bar: that shit has to be absolutely shut down before it starts. I know transit advocates mean well, but this is a goddamn huge barrier. If people have a choice, they will not go where they feel like they have to be on guard all the time.
And that is to say nothing of actual crimes that happen on public transit.
Uncle Cosmo
In Prague, Metro, bus and trams are all free for those over 65, including foreigners. Seniors aged 65+ can verify their right to receive the free age-based fare/tariff through any form of ID card or a passport. Yet another good reason for all you auld phartz to get your tushes over there if yinz haven’t already. The transit cops take one look at me & don’t even bother to ask. (But if you’re under 65, buy & cancel those tickets [1/2 price for >60] or be prepared to cough up some korun.)
Andrya
@Suzanne: @mali muso: YESSSS to both of you. My experience is a bit dated, but from high school (1964-67) and college (1969-1974) I commuted via the San Francisco and Alameda County bus systems (2 hours per day in high school, 3 hours per day in college). Sexual harassment was frequent, and groping occurred occasionally. The only time that anyone offered to help me was when I was amicably sharing my newspaper with an African-American guy sitting next to me, and a fucking racist intervened to “protect” my newspaper.
The community college where I teach has a lot of international students, including from India, and they have told me that all long-distance trains in India, and some local ones, have “women and children only” compartments.
Brachiator
@Alison Rose:
No, it is purely, coldly observational. And I included myself as potential prey. I am a big guy. I rarely have problems. I have never had a panhandler get up in my face and practically demand money, as I see them regularly do with women. But now that I use a cane more, I see the “ungodly” size me up to see if they might be able to take me down. I get approached more often by people who previously would leave me alone.
And there are light rail stops I would never use late in the evening under any circumstance. Metro and the police had to close down the MacArthur Park station for a time because assaults and other crime had got out of control. Unfortunately, there are people who don’t care who they hurt. I don’t know how to reach these people.
BruceFromOhio
Marxist. You all sound the same to me.
Uncle Cosmo
In fact it runs south to BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport. When flying I usually park at my brother’s house in Columbia & get a lift from him, but in a pinch I’d consider a quick taxi ride to the light rail line.
The line also stops at Oriole Park and M&T Bank Stadium. Convenient for getting there (seniors ride half-fare), PITA for leaving (since everyone arrives at different times but want to leave right away).
Then there is the Charm City Circulator, a free bus service that operates four lines that cross the city center. The longest runs from JHU Homewood south. I’ve ridden it once, pretty decent.
I did pretty much the same thing for a year as a Federal contractor working in Rosslyn: Auto from my home not far from the old Memorial Stadium to free street parking a few blocks from Penn Station, shank’s mare to there, MARC commuter rail to Union Station, DC Metro to Rosslyn, up the 4-storey escalator, three blocks’ walk uphill. Since I lived just over 50 miles from the workplace, the contract with the Feds paid for my commute; I got monthly MARC/Metro passes. I not only enjoyed decent public transport, the exercise plus low-carb eating dropped my body weight by 50 lbs of fat and lowered my blood sugar levels to a good range without external insulin.
Go Crows! Sauté Chefs! ;^p
wjca
Build a souped up taser equivalent into your cane? Or go old school, and get a sword cane.** Because nothing less will reach them.
** Wonder if you need a concealed carry permit for a sword cane….
Ohio Mom
@Alison Rose: Don’t get me wrong, I completely get the bind you are in. I agree, the system stinks, too many hoops to jump through for too little money.
There is some internal logic to Social Security though and understanding it (to the extent anyone can totally grasp it) is the key to leveraging what you can.
The $2,000 limit on assets is particularly awful. My Senator, Sherrod Brown was trying to get that amount raised but he doesn’t seem to be making any headway.
Quaker in a Basement
@trollhattan: A “hobo”? Does this rail line travel to the 1930s?
Whomever
Back when I lived in CO the joke was that RTD stood for “Reason to Drive”. (I used to take their bus from Boulder to the Airport fairly often)
Ruckus
@Adam Lang:
In parts of LA someone is supplying tents for the homeless. I think it’s the city. I’d imagine that given the numbers there just isn’t enough built housing or areas to build them for all the homeless. And while there are police that ride the metro trains and are at stations there are still homeless on the trains. Has never been a huge issue but that is the reality of the US big cities, we are crap when it comes to the homeless. I still ride the LA train system, it goes where I need to go, the cost for me is $.35 to ride 45 miles – which is just a tad less than gas……
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Foothill Transit is the local bus for me and I’ve never seen anyone on a bus but the driver. Now given the route I’m on I’ve also been the only passenger more than once.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Sometimes there will be a public address announcement on the bus about a police officer on board. I’ve also been on buses where there is an officer on board and a traling police car behind the bus.
AM in NC
@mali muso: This makes me so furious. The ONLY way women (and the kids they overwhelmingly do the care work for) can exist in the world safely and hassle-free is to be separated from predatory men. Because there are SO MANY PREDATORY MEN.
And that doesn’t happen unless the non-predatory men think “not my problem” about the men who are preying on their (the good men’s) moms, daughters, co-workers, sisters, granddaughters, nieces, girlfriends, friends – literally every woman they know.
Women cannot solve this problem of male violence against them. MEN have to step in and help, actively help, not just “I’m not a predator so no worries for me”. If you’re not regularly, consistently talking with boys in your life about male violence, porn, anti-women social media, “enthusiastic consent”, and patriarchal structures in our society, you are perpetrating male violence, misogyny, sexual violence, and patriarchal structures.
Every woman I know (and we are all married and raising sons) is exhausted from simply living as a woman in this world, and exhausted from having to do all of this educating pretty much on our own. We are tired. We are raging.
O. Felix Culpa
As a female resident of Albuquerque who has happily taken public transportation in cities around the world, the free rides policy here has driven me off the bus system. The buses have become rolling winter warming and summer cooling stations for the chronic homeless population, which is understandable, given the lack of suitable alternatives. However, the last time I took the bus down Central (old Rt. 66), one of those individuals had a severe shrieking psychotic break, with no help forthcoming. I hadn’t been feeling safe on the buses here for some time, given the panhandling, erratic, and potentially dangerous behavior of its denizens, and that experience sealed the deal for me. So now it’s walk where I can or drive, even though I’d rather take the bus.
In sum, I agree with the commenters who say that public transportation has to do a better job ensuring safety for women and other vulnerable people. Oh, and we need to seriously address the multifactored problems of mental health care, substance abuse, and homelessness in our society. That would be good too.
Geminid
@O. Felix Culpa: This is an important aspect of the problem of crime. Fear of crime can be a big factor in people’s lives that doesn’t neccesarily show up in crime statistics. It shows up in ways like reduced participation in public transportation.
This both a matter of equality and a freedom issue. Women need to be free to participate fully and equally in the public shere, and fear of crime curtails that freedom and makes them unequal.
O. Felix Culpa
@Geminid: Agreed. Thank you.