Posted on 12/12/2022 5:53:59 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare for the District of Columbia and other major cities that public transit was a lifeline for essential workers and that even modest fares could be a burden to them. So the nation’s capital is introducing a groundbreaking plan: It will begin offering free bus fares to residents next summer.
Other cities, including Los Angeles and Kansas City, Missouri, suspended fare collection during the height of the pandemic to minimize human contact and ensure that residents with no other travel options could reach jobs and services at hospitals, grocery stores and offices.
But D.C.‘s permanent free fare plan will be by far the biggest, coming at a time when major cities including Boston and Denver and states such as Connecticut are considering broader zero-fare policies to improve equity and help regain ridership that was lost with the rise of remote and hybrid work. Los Angeles instituted free fares in 2020 before recently resuming charging riders. Lately LA Metro has been testing a fare-capping plan under which transit riders pay for trips until they hit a fixed dollar amount and then ride free after that, though new Mayor Karen Bass has suggested support for permanently abolishing the fares.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
“essential workers”
...I hate this term and I hate that so many people use it and believe it. ALL WORKERS ARE ESSENTIAL!! My neighbor argued that the Guitar store down the street was not essential. I said “he employs 8-10 people that would beg to differ with you” F’n moron
Many folks in DC would not ride the buses in bad areas even if you paid them to do it.
The reasons are a total mystery to the “experts”.
;-)
Ditto for avoiding certain metro lines.
You’ll pay more in taxes than your free ride ,LOL
Well the DC busses are currently running mostly empty so why not?
SOMEBODY pays. I will wager that somehow the Federal government will stick national tax payers with bill.
Just like CA and NY reparations. They will try to get national taxpayers to pay for it.
Eons ago, that term meant something. I first heard it in the context of office closures due to extremely foul weather (relative to the norm for a particular area). "Essential workers" were those whose jobs were necessary to keep the pipes from freezing or to prevent some similar disaster. Oddly, the workers whose jobs revolved around the office/factory/whatever's actual product or service were NOT "essential workers".
The term has been grossly misused and misunderstood, and now bastardized by the covidiots.
Basic bus rides are free. There is a charge for a bus with no turds in it.
That's interesting. I got the exact opposite lesson from the "COVID-19 pandemic."
What I learned is that people should never rely on the government to provide public transit service, and should avoid sharing rides in closed spaces with strangers at all costs.
BUS = Hobo Sleeper Cars
Doing this in Albuquerque. It turned already marginal transit into rolling opium dens.
The entire recent academic literature on urban transportation centers around limiting automobile use. These “scholars” openly call for traffic congestion for cars, especially via road use limits, aka restricted bicycle and bus lanes. (They know most of these bike lanes will go empty but they applaud the use of space that would otherwise be filled with cars.)
Sadly, these utopian idiots have deeply influence city planners.
For them, “free fare” buses is just an excuse for cities’ inability to move people from their cars.
... btw, the next step after “free” is “compulsory.”
It's not free! It's paid for by TAXPAYERS!
Sigh. Socialism/communism will always be popular with those who think they can get something for nothing.
All aboard the Ghettro Bus!
Doo da bus stop heeyea?
Ohhh yeeah
C’mon back
Ho’da Doh, Ho’da Doh!...
A highly subsidized system (as ALL “mass transit” systems are), gives up and admits it might as well be 100% paid by taxes and just let everyone use it with no fare revenue. They will say soon after the first year of “free” busses that they will add the “free ride” to the D.C. subways system as well.
Very large cities are NOT sustainable without government subsidies. The density and what that does to property values and resulting property costs, and how those costs bleed into the cost of every enterprise in the city, creates some of the largest income disparities in each country with very large cities - wealthy white collar workers with well a well cared for class of gpvernment employees, and workers who cannot sustain their employment there without subsidized government services, like transportation.
In addition to what real estate values alone do to the cost of living in large cities, that fact is magnified by the property taxes which in most locales are pinned to the real estate values. In some locales the property taxes can be equal to having an additional mortgage.
Bus?! In DC train is the way to go if you want to do the mass transit thing.
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