CommentsTRANSIT WATCH-Metro is considering fare-free rides for its buses and trains.
Earlier I argued against this stating that paying fares keeps transit riding from becoming a free-for-all, filled with chaos by those who instead of paying will think a free ride as a license to not respect the other riders on buses and trains and behave without restraint.
Paying fare creates a social compact of paying for a service, and from it comes a behavioral modification of expected respectful behavior, and puts those who don’t pay on notice that they have broken this social contract.
For those who may not like the idea of behavioral modification, try driving without it.
Backers of fare-free state it would help the low income, and help particularly those essential workers in today’s tragic scourge of the COVID pandemic. What would help the low income and essential workers riding buses and trains, and riders including students, teachers, caregivers for the sick and elderly, nannies, house and office cleaners, and anyone who rides, is some sense of peace and quiet on a bus or train while we try to gather our thoughts for the day ahead, and wind down from the work day just lived.
We pay for our rides through the paying fare, and sales tax dedicated to transit, and if we also own a car or have one in our household pay through vehicle tax. We are paying our way, and expect some order while on a bus or train.
Wearing a face mask is required on Metro and other transit agencies. Paying fare enhances this critical action by creating a situation where as part of the riding community and being respectful towards other is the social contract to ride a bus or train.
In the Metro fare-free proposal:
We also need to learn more about how a fareless system would affect the ongoing issue of homelessness in our region and on the Metro system, an issue that we hear about from riders almost every day. We do think that free fares would encourage higher ridership and having more people on buses and train would likely make riders feel safer.
From my experiences of regularly riding buses and trains since 1992, and experiencing the dramatic growth of homelessness on the streets, and on buses and trains, this idea probably not came from Metro who deals with homeless daily, but outside influences who do not see or know how the homeless ride transit, nor know the experience of riding buses and trains regularly with high or low occupancy.
I feel for the homeless. They do need protection because they are assaulted, beaten, sexually assaulted, murdered. They navigate a hostile environment on the streets. They need help, but it is not up to transit agencies to act as social workers.
If there was higher ridership from fare-free as the study posits, which they state in turn would make the homeless more safe on buses and trains, they should rethink their position.
Homeless, from my experiences, do not ride as frequently during the crowded commuter hours because it is a very quick paced situation, and they are vulnerable, slower to act and react because of living in hostile environments, and probably from hunger. Some suffer from mental illnesses which need to be treated properly by professionals, not transit agencies.
The homeless carry their worldly belonging in bags or wheeled carts or luggage, and this takes up a lot of room on buses or trains, which could be damaged in the crunch of high occupancy. The homeless tend to ride when ridership is lower so they can have more control over their space on the the bus or train and their belongings.
Their belongings can create a hazard by blocking aisles and doors on buses and trains. In higher occupancy the situation is worse, and the abuse heaped upon them from riders trying to maneuver around the belongings increases.
Metro knows tragically too well that a train with passengers does not guarantee safety after one of its own employees was stabbed to death the Red Line at the 7th Street Metro Station. It is unknown if the attacker paid fare or not.
Occupancy on buses and trains does not create a safe atmosphere, though it is much more hazardous and deadly to drive or be a passenger in a private car, SUV or truck.
For the thinkers that other transit riders create a safe atmosphere for the homeless because fare-free will create greater occupancy, and allow homeless endless safe rides and shelter on buses and trains, from my observations, the homeless very rarely pay fare.
Metro and other agencies turn a blind eye to the homeless because they already know the dire situation of these people who have so little.
The COVID pandemic will some day be defeated. It may be months or a year. However, what was occurring before the pandemic, is happening now, and will continue is the existential threat of global warming and climate change.
This is the primary reason why I ride buses and trains, to reduce my carbon footprint, and I find riding buses and trains, even when crowded, far superior to sitting in gridlock.
But our time left to make the dramatic changes needed to reduce climate change is getting shorter and shorter. Action is needed now, and while California is setting a 2035 deadline to phase out new sales of internal combustion engines for electric vehicles, that is too far in the future, and the change is too small to be immediate.
What is immediate is to make the changes to global warming now by driving less and riding transit more, but if the riding experience is chaotic because of fare-free then after a few transit trips new riders will return to their cars, and this existential threat will close down upon us with terrifying speed.
