Once again for the people at the back. The purpose of public transport is to transport the public. Making money from doing so is a secondary purpose at best.
Noone talks about the profitability of the motorway network. So why do we do the same for public transport?
@quixoticgeek I'd say making money from it is a bug.
@quixoticgeek 'No-one talks about the profitability of the motorway network.'
We already have one privately owned motorway, the M6 Toll, and many tunnels and bridges that charge tolls. It's more likely this profit obsessed government will authorise more toll roads than make public transport free.
Toll roads & bridges become converted into taxpayer-funded infrastructure for the rich.
The rich get to travel on uncluttered & well-maintained roads, funded by the taxpayer, while the non-wealthy are crowded into toll-free infrastructure.
Tolls tax the taxpayer twice for the same thing.
Once through income or VAT taxes, & again for service fees to use already funded public infrastructure.
Tolls are a tax on workers. It hides the diversion of public ...
1/2
@pthane @quixoticgeek I'd forgotten that England still has road tolls. Some place.
In France, the Autoroute system was built by the government, and then gifted to the Vinci group when it turned out to be extremely profitable.
Vinci are the assholes that charged me 40e for a 30 minute parking at a public hospital to check someone out
Vinci sucks around 5 billion euros a year that should be government money, or a reduction of 10% on their margins
@quixoticgeek
Lol all motorways have a fee in my country and its private entities that get the cash and monopoly despite it being paid mostly with alot of EU public monies :D its very profitable for the private entities and terrible for everyone else
@suqdiq which country is that ?
@quixoticgeek
Portugal :D it's funny cause if you do Lisbon >> Porto (~300km), the highway tool is easily the most expensive part, more than the fuel !!! :D yay PPP (Public Private Partnership), public puts up the money, private takes the profit for 30 to 40 years
@suqdiq I had pondered visiting Portugal by train. My planning got as far as Madrid and then I had to go for a walk and calm down...
@quixoticgeek
Trains in portugal might be great in about 30 to 40 years....maybe..... :( i dont drive so i wish it was not the case... Spain does have some trains, its a shame we didnt learn from them :p ours are way worse than them and our task arguably easier...
@suqdiq and getting from Portugal into the Spanish network. Is Lisbon and Madrid the only pair of neighbouring European capitals that don't have a direct train connection? (Except for Helsinki)
@quixoticgeek @suqdiq We're just off to Helsinki from Stockholm tomorrow! By ferry 🙂
@quixoticgeek they do have a train connection......but it's literally like 13 hours..............yeah.........and politicians have been talking about TGV for decades but never materialises and folks that dont live in Porto/Lisbon really like their cars
i guess would be interesting to see how the petrol heads in Porto think about their Metropolitan line (overground tube), it's been 10y+ at least and it covers a big area/population and reaches other cities
@suqdiq @quixoticgeek last time I drove Porto to Lisboa it was easily €60 one way… the train is typically €45 one way, and flying can be as low as €35 one way, though I have snagged the odd round trip for €50. I find travelling within Portugal to be an almost endless source of cognitive dissonance.
in Italy it's the same - highways are owned by private companies.
I am not sure if they are always profitable though. We had cases like the bridge collapse in Genoa which apparently could/would have bankrupted one entity. Many highways defaulted in Spain in 2008, etc...
@gggeek
The contracts guarantee the money, if theres no usage they will collect a minimum fee (at least in Portugal), sorta like train companies in UK during Covid but like all the time and for decades :D
@quixoticgeek
@quixoticgeek surely the money is made by having the people in the right place...
For example if you don't need so many seats then you could have bus routes that go to shopping districts that are more like airport busses with lots more space for baggage.
@quixoticgeek Championing functional public transit and pointing out the glaring inconsistencies with how we treat car infrastructure? That's a follow for me!
@belwerks thanks. I mostly moan about public transport, talk about bikes, and post photos if clouds. It's not very exciting...
@quixoticgeek that sounds like exactly the thrilling content I need more of in my feed :D
From the perspective of the wealthy, taxpayer infrastructure is for their use only.
When taxpayer dollars go to benefit taxpayers who aren't wealthy, it's resented & is data mined for grievance-building.
Then #KochNetwork uses those feelings of grievance to torpedo investments in public transit & high speed rail.
Keeping folks hooked on long commutes using their toxic planet-frying products.
They fund malign influence campaigns.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-public-transit.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/koch-activists-phoenix-ban-light-rail
@quixoticgeek Actually the profitability of roads is talked about, if only within the business. Proposals for new roads have to have a benefit/cost ratio worked out as part of the planning, and if it's too low they don't get built.
@quixoticgeek Article in the paper the other day, saying how a local toll road was unprofitable and management needed to raise the tolls. In a reportorial failure, the salary of the company’s CEO was not disclosed.
@quixoticgeek Here in the UK, we've had over 30℅ of bus routes removed. My new bugbear is the folk persist in calling it "public transport.' No longer - it's merely " transport"," like a taxi.
@quixoticgeek Doubly true considering that at least some calculations peg the *public* cost per person of a car to be higher than the public cost of a bus. In other words, even if you'd provide the public transport for free, you'd still be saving money.
@quixoticgeek @zicon you are so wrong. Think this through again.
Yes. Later tonight
@quixoticgeek it’s because public transport is considered to be for the poor, so it’s useless and expendable to the rich
@scavello "equality is not when everyone has a car, but when the rich take public transport"
@quixoticgeek I live a small-medium size spread out city, so public transport is inefficient because it relies on profitability, so it actually takes the same amount of time to take a bus as it does to walk to your destination. It’s really sad
@scavello public transport doesn't have to be like that. But that will require investment to fix.
Which city?
@quixoticgeek I’d rather not say due to privacy reasons. But I will say I’m in western canada
@scavello maple sauce city it is then. Sprawl and suburbia are the enemy of livable.
Is maple leaf city full of stroads ?
@quixoticgeek lol yea, but the city council has been installing a lot of bikes lanes which is an improvement for non car accessibility.
Full transparency though, I do drive (an EV) as it’s required for my work.
@quixoticgeek Because public transport is all run by publicly traded companies, and if shareholders don't see growth they all start crying and throw their toys out of the pram...
@quixoticgeek Heck, I feel like if most people heard about a toll road making a profit, they’d be actively mad.
@quixoticgeek I have lived in places that do talk about the "profitability" if the motorways, and basically it becomes a pile of toll roads managed by private companies so the money doesn't even keep the infrastructure running.
So yeah, profitability and transit do not mix well in any model. (This is support for more public transit, to make sure I'm clear)
@quixoticgeek (i hate that)
Roads are expected, accepted, road expansion and investment are always "necessary" or "justified"
Public transit has to prove its value, time and time again.. And i think that USians expect this is different in the EU, but following NL politics (and NS specifically) its clearly not that different
We've been fighting a highway expansion through the center of Portland OR for years now, we fought the replacement of the Columbia River Crossing. Assumptions are wrong
@quixoticgeek general oil
This leads to a vicious cycle of "there isn't any money, so we can't make it better and we have to optimise it for farebox revenue, so people don't ride it because it sucks, but there isn't any money..." and so on.
The fix is obviously "don't worry about the farebox and publicly fund it." But unfortunately, politicians are assholes who don't care about the well-being of the people they are allegedly supposed to help.
They really do want to build a good system, and they do a fairly good job with what little they have. For them, it's not about a profitable system. It's about ensuring they have enough money to keep the lights on and keeping the driver's paycheques from bouncing, whilst ensuring they have enough to fund their biggest capital improvement they're presently doing (BRT).
It gets very little public funding, most of its revenues come from the farebox (I think it's like 75% 'cept the BRT), unless the city or state or feds get involved and give them the money they need, it will continue to suck.
@quixoticgeek Careful with that talk. You might reinvent toll roads. :P
@quixoticgeek Hate to tell you this, but they are. It's not big right now, the folks saying it are getting thrown out of council meetings, but eventually somebody will let them stay.
Public transport benefits the communities it serves far more than it costs in taxes. It's one of the valid reasons for tax - to provide a common good.
@quixoticgeek Public transit authorities track their success via ridership. PTAs need to measure ridership to see if they're doing a good job serving the public. In that context, cost to ridership is important to consider. It's not a question of profitability, it's a question of spending public funds wisely.
Yep! & at the very least, recognize that revenue sufficient and profitability are quite different. It is notable that vocabulary for making money and making so much money that it's profitable... are often conflated.
Ideally public transport "loses" money... but at the very least it should aim to not extract excess from the public.
Otherwise, it can hardly be called "public."
@quixoticgeek@social.v.st wtf who in their right mind- right sorry I'm European I forgot Americans are too carbrained.
@quixoticgeek@social.v.st I'm sorry but for me it's obvious that public transport doesn't make money directly but rather increases the value of the streets around it and generally generates income indirectly as people improve their QOL and can afford to pay more rent.
@Cinnamon I am also European.
@quixoticgeek@social.v.st yeah it just makes me confused how some people don't know.....
@quixoticgeek the motorway system was exceptionally profitable for civil engineering companies and vehicle manufacturers
@quixoticgeek Also schools, libraries, hospitals.
@quixoticgeek Here in Southeastern #Wisconsin, we are years into the "I-43 North-South Expansion" project where they are bulldozing homes to add more lanes while public pressure to remove I-794 (https://www.rethink794.com) is building. Back in 2002, #MKE removed the Park East Freeway (https://city.milwaukee.gov/DCD/Projects/ParkEastredevelopment/Park-East-History) and only good things came from that. I saw the DOT at the State Fair yesterday, lobbying for the i-94 expansion. I really hope that it fails.
What we spend subsidizing cars is obscene.
@quixoticgeek the Dutch implementing/extending "surge pricing" soon in daily peak hours.
As if they don't want people to use it!
How about increasing capacity, making all non-car commutes (cycling) more attractive? Government forcing companies to allow work-from-home as the norm where possible?
(It may seem strange to bitch about lack of cycling infra in NL, but we still treat cyclists as second rate citizens, cycle path maintenance does not compare remotely to roads. Yeah, as I cyclist I should weigh 40kkg so I would flatten those roots pushing up the asphalt, whaddayasay? That thin cycle path asphalt can't carry 40kkg? So a mover making dents in the cyclepath is also OK? Etc.)
@quixoticgeek "We are very smart people and are playing small business with public services. Markets are better at everything." said a Dutch person while standing at a busstop that just went out of service.