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The NYC subway is using AI to detect fare dodgers
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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Mass transit should be free.
Fare evasion is like stealing bread. It's a crime of desperation.
This kind of budgetary indulgence only indicates the MTA doesn't much like the public of the city it serves.
Nah definitely not. If you're that desperate where are you even going on the subway? I've literally seen homeless people pay the fare. The only time I'd consider it justifiable is if you're in a rush, the train is right their, and your payment isn't working. Otherwise like what, where you gonna go and what you gonna do if you can't even afford $2.75?
If it was free, conservatives would put more effort into killing it off like they did in the 60s and 70s when they killed off trains and subways in a bunch of cities, killed off the trolley systems in several cities, etc. Otherwise their donors would lose too much money on people switching from driving. But yeah, it's almost entirely funded by taxes anyway. Would be logical to make it 100% funded, but keeping a small fare keeps it a smaller target of conservatives.
Yes bad actors are always a problem. So I guess we should never do anything substantial to reform the system because rightwing shitheads will try to sabotage it.
I didn't say that. It's just that first we need to fix the election system that is totally broken through gerrymandering, funding cuts, re-expanding mail in voting and early voting, making election day a mandatory holiday for all but emergency services, get the big money out of politics by removing personhood from corporations and thus removing their "right to free speech" as well as their ability to donate unlimited funds through various means and possibly even making all election ads paid for by public funds that are equally distributed if requested, etc. Then once everyone can vote without losing their job for having to take off almost an entire day and they can vote for local politicians rather than ones that will mostly be responsible for conservative areas connected to their sliver of the city, we need to organize progressive people to actually do it. But I think once it becomes apparent that their votes actually have some chance of making a difference, it won't be as hard as it is now.
Oh sure yeah lol none of this is realistic as our election system, and our representation system are massively defective, and of course a lot of people have lost their fucking minds.
Maybe they should start electing people to charge property taxes correctly to those ultra luxury condos.
Local mass transit should be free. It is already really heavily subsidized, often almost entirely subsidized, so it wouldn’t cost as much as you think.
America won't achieve that with such low tax rates
In the UK, it's a tad different. The Tube and buses are nationalised but the National Rail is privatised which explains why it's shit and yet so expensive.
Similarily in Germany the DB (Deutsche Bahn) was also privatized in the 90s (100% owned by the government tho). Since then half of all points/switches were removed since they're expensive to maintain. This leads to many trains being late, which propagates through the entire railroad network. And half of the revenue of DB comes from businesses other than transporting people because the latter isn't really profitable. Infrastructure isn't profitable, that's why mass transport should be nationalised (again). Just like roads.
Luxemburg doesn't anymore
Luxembourg is extremely wealthy and really small, which makes not charging for mass transit easier. But I agree that mass transit (at least regional, not bullet trains) should be free to use.
There's now a 50€ ticket in Germany which allows for use of all regional trains, but it'll get more expensive over the coming years too.
Mass transit barely exists in most of America.
Yes. Interestingly US taxes aren't even low if you factor in what you have to pay for directly, compared to what other countries pay though taxes.
Mass transit cannot be free.
It should however be without toll. It can quite reasonably be funded with tax.
But free? No. Someone somewhere has to pay for the infrastructure and operations.
Free to use, funded by taxes. Like how healthcare should work.
This seems like needless nitpicking. The end result is the same, it's still free at the point of use.
Free as in free to use. Just like roads.
I'm curious how much of the budget is covered by fares. I think here in Europe it tends to be roughly 50%. But the trains are much better than NYC and the fares are cheaper.