Kansas City added a single light rail line through downtown and made it, initially, free.
It has been so wildly popular, bringing happy Kansas Citians to the restaurants and clubs downtown that the business owners begged KC to keep it free.
Still free and I believe they are extending it.
I would love to see K.C. bring back some of the jazz nightlife that once charged downtown. (Though it might have been the availability of liquor there during Prohibition too.)
All I see in this thread are people saying it won't work and then people giving examples of it actually working quite well. The scientific method is telling us something here...
Yes, the scientific methods suggest that 99.9% of all systems and almost all of the very best highest performing systems have fares. 'Light rail' in the US are barley even transportation systems. At best they are property value plays by cities. Running a single line in a city full of cars isn't really interesting data.
And in other places they had light year that gets paid that had effects that were much the same.
Once you are talking about an actual working transportation system and not the occasional line here and there. Where it is actually real then there is a clear scientific question. Lets assume 500M to operate the system:
Should you A: Invest 500M in service improvements every year
Should you B: Invest 500M in giving away free transport
(The irony though of once having had a fantastic trolley system throughout Kansas City in the early part of the 20th Century and having ripped that all out by the time I was born.)
If this impedes progress in the future is this really good? We already have a good situation with fares, we should make it better - and when you look at the data (as opposed to what people say) it consistently shows that the main reason most people don't use transit more is lack of service and not the cost. Optimizing on cost helps a few really poor people (which everyone against this plan has already said we need some program to just help them), while it does nothing for everyone else who need service.
Or to put it a different way, it costs money to run transit. So what if we take the money you are proposing to add to cover the loss of fares and give it to the transit agency but retain fares: they could afford to add more service and I contend that this would do far more for ridership. (assuming we are smart about what service we add)
Between Green Lady Lounge, the Black Dolphin, the Phoenix, and a couple of cool spots on 18th and Vine, Kansas City’s jazz nightlife is becoming increasingly popular again among younger crowds. KC also just finished extending their street car system down past the Plaza to UMKC’s campus as well, mostly in preparation for hosting the World Cup.
I moved from Iowa City to Kansas City after college so I have been spoiled with public transit.
It has been so wildly popular, bringing happy Kansas Citians to the restaurants and clubs downtown that the business owners begged KC to keep it free.
Still free and I believe they are extending it.
I would love to see K.C. bring back some of the jazz nightlife that once charged downtown. (Though it might have been the availability of liquor there during Prohibition too.)