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http://www.euronews.com/2018/05/21/free-public-transport-across-estonia
Estonia is set to implement free transport for its residents across much of the country as of July 1. The free fare zone will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Estonia is already a world leader in free public transit: In 2013, all public transit in its capital, Tallinn, became free to local residents (but not tourists or other visitors, even those from other parts of the country). The new national free-ride scheme will extend this model even further, making all state-run bus travel in rural municipalities free and extending cost-free transit out from the capital into other regions.
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Free Public Transport is Launched Across Estonia
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @09:20AM (48 children)
They are paying in taxes to enjoy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Informative) by theluggage on Thursday May 24 2018, @09:52AM (3 children)
c.f. the UK and USA where we are paying for it in taxes and still paying to ride [thoughtco.com] while also, often, lining the pockets of large private-sector corporations running the services who are just as inefficient, but less accountable than, government-run services. Here in the UK we're really good at combining the worst ideas from Europe and the USA to provide services that combine the efficiency and economy of socialism with the ethics and human values of capitalism.
Then there's the indirect costs of traffic congestion [economist.com] which everybody pays. Don't own a car? It still affects the costs of goods and services. Walk or ride a bike? Worth every penny for nicer, quieter roads and city centres. Have lungs? Savings on healthcare (which, if you don't pay for via taxes you'll have the 'choice' of paying for privately or suffering and dying for free).
Guess what: not paying taxes isn't free, either.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @10:08AM
dying isn't free either.
Either your family or the state (ie: everyone) will be paying for a pathologist, a mortician and an undertaker. and the rent of the funeral parlor. and the coffin. flowers optional.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @11:43AM (1 child)
Never said that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Touché) by RS3 on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:33PM
Doesn't matter on the Internet.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @10:18AM (14 children)
It costs money to charge - hardware, software, systems and enforcement, support, extra-consultants etc so it would make more sense if they didn't bother charging tourists or anyone at all. Then it would actually be cheaper.
But the cheaper costs would be spread over those taxed for it and not just those using it.
So free public transport would make sense for small rich city states like Singapore and Hong Kong, since there wouldn't be that many/any rural folk in the "outskirts" who could complain they will rarely/never use it and thus shouldn't be paying for it.
For such rich countries it's just like a mall or office building not charging people to use the elevators and escalators. They make their money elsewhere.
For larger richer countries the rural folk might be subsidized by the city folks taxes more than the other way around so free public transport could still make sense.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @11:23AM (7 children)
Southern Californian - Los Angeles/OC area resident's take on it:
There are a lot of jobs that do not pay well here. There are also a lot of people who live too far away from an appropriate job to be practical. We have several families down the street from me who are living in bungalows constructed in the 1940's for singles and young families... now each bungalow is apt to have two, two-income families living in it.
Parking is atrocious. The neighbors closer to them are having the city cordon off their area to require local resident stickers, so as to keep the "bungalow people" from parking in front of their home. I come out of DelTaco and find these people parking on some of the main roads not marked off yet, often parking their cars over a mile from where they live.
These houses were designed for one car per bungalow. Yet many bungalows will have five drivers living there. All of 'em trying to get to work. Many with jobs paying minimum wage.
We are having one helluva homeless problem too, as those economically forced from bungalow living find themselves either on the street, or somehow buying a camper and visiting each neighborhood, camping for the night, and gone before anyone figures out the camper does not belong to any of the neighbor's friends or family. Stealth camping, so to say.
This is getting ridiculous. First California shuts down the free University system that gave us such an educated workforce we attracted high tech firms from all over the nation to locate here. Now they get people that barely speak English. We seem to have money to "address" homelessness by temporarily housing them in motels. Any city "having a heart" gets flooded with homeless. We need like all getout to get these people back in the workforce, but we don't pay them enough to buy housing, yet we expect them to arrive at the workplace all prissied up with fresh bath and whatever.
If there is anything I think we need here in Southern California, its free public transportation.
One problem I see with it though is our pre-occupation of trying to have everything "premium" so as to justify high prices... I would be quite happy with the bus like I had when I was a little kid going to school. It was quite functional. But if some clown decided to do damage, there just wasn't anything there that would be very expensive to either repaint or replace. I wish that very few that do so much damage could be dealt with. Maybe new technologies will help us all to have nice things by snaring the asshats that mess things up for the rest of us.
I remember when the zoo was free, but asshats came in and kept causing so much damage that many of us actually petitioned the city to start charging admission, because what we really wanted is to discourage the asshats from being there, and figured the zoo would have a little more money to fix things up nicer for those of us who wanted to enjoy our public zoo. And I can't help but believe the asshats will ruin the public transportation if a fare is not charged. But I hate so bad to see people going through what I see them going through just to get to their jobs and conduct their daily business... while the car that they forced to own spends 99% of its life - parked. In everyone's way. And they are so vulnerable, being the rage around here now is stealing catalytic converters. We are creating a monster. And perfectly good hard working people are being ground into hamburger with it.
I would love to see us develop the technology to catch the asshats in the act, corral them up, and assign them work details fixing not only what they did, but fixing the damage the other asshats that have not been caught yet did. If they don't work, there will be nothing for them come supper but what was left over from everyone else's meal. My guess is that we have an asshat for every ten perfectly good people, but they are causing entire neighborhoods to go down.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:08PM (2 children)
Try higher raise (than a bungalow) buildings first. Until you increase the population density enough, you won't have comprehensive public transportation. Look at New York [wikipedia.org] density.
Suburbian lifestyle has advantages (among them, not hearing through the wall your neighbours having sex; in suburbia you'll only hear the orgasm phase and then only if she's a screamer - grin).
But you are paying for the suburbian life-style with longer distances to travel and more expensive/less coverage public transportation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:28PM (1 child)
As I understand it, one of the main reasons the area I live in hasn't been flooded with high rises is that the city is nestled on top of Orange County's main water aquifer fed from the Santa Ana river when water is available in the early part of the year, and slowly fed from Prado dam upstream over the remainder of the year.
In the event of intense seismic activity, this area may well experience soil liquifaction, that is: quicksand.
There are not too many areas where one can get to some decent foundation... but stuff not too top-heavy is apt to not do much.
Its like building on a mud pie. Even though you may seat to some bedrock down there, what do you do about all that water/soil sloshing underneath your foundation?
So, this whole area seems constrained to not much height or really cheap expendable construction... just in case.
Kinda hope it stays that way. I would hate to see us look like some of the "upper class" areas with all that high density and clogged eight lane streets we have further to the South of us. I just wish when I bought I could have afforded some property out East of us in the canyons.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:39PM
Ah, you're right, I forgot about that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:11PM
Mark 14:7 For ye have the asshats with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday May 24 2018, @05:37PM (2 children)
Solve both problems by getting the non-mental homeless a shower and a uniform and put them in the free bus to keep the assholes from doing damage, and therefore raise ridership by convincing single women that public transport is safe.
Ok, you may need to charge 50 cents to a buck a ride, just to partially offset those extra costs. Daily pass up to a buck is a good tradeoff compared to a car. Above that, you need gas/parking to get more expensive to convince more people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @05:05AM
Gas, parking and oversize vehicles need to become much more expensive. There was a time when vehicles were getting smaller but now the trend is to make them heavy and wide as an F150 truck and rumble out low frequencies. Totally destroys the ambiance of the neighborhood and damages roads to the 4th power of weight. Not to mention poses more risk to cyclists. Places like California should be trimming roads down and eliminating street parking to create dedicated bike lanes. I would make 75% of my journeys by (electric) bike if it was safer.
Instead, consumers are buying double-wide SUVs and cities accommodate them by adding/widening car lanes. Los Angeles is essentially a collection of islands with 6 lane rivers of traffic criss-crossing it. You live on your small island because it's such a pain in the ass trying to cross the river in any direction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @10:15AM
I spent a year taking the bus. It was faster for me to BICYCLE 30 miles *EACH WAY* than to take the bus to get anywhere. And for any sort of short bus trip the bike won hands down. However the number of places with bicycle stands was exceedingly small, and new buildings/shopping centers almost never include them. Furthermore bicycling during inclement weather is a terrible idea, and drivers constantly dip into the bike lanes, leaving you to either risk getting hit from behind, find (usually expensive) handlebar mirrors for your bike, or ride on the sidewalk, which is illegal and usually gets you dirty looks from pedestrians even if you give them right of way.
I had an ex girlfriend who had to spend 3 hours each way to take the bus for what was otherwise a 15-30 minute car ride depending on traffic. Since it crossed county lines she had to transfer buses at the county border, take a second bus up to the cross street, then take that bus to her school. If any of the busses were delayed or broke down it could turn into a 5 hour bus ride, or in some cases on the way home, have the bus routes ended for the night before she got to the final bus home.
Those examples are just for college students, where it is bad, but usually wouldn't lose you a job. For people doing that 5-7 days a week with the chance of being fired at any time, relying on public transportation is just foodhardy. And when they cut back bus routes/hours AND raised ticket prices it literally stopped making sense for anyone other than government workers and college students, because all other individuals didn't have their bus passes subsidized, and the cost for a monthly bus pass was actually *MORE* than gas and insurance for even a middle of the road car. And that middle of the road car would save you 1-4 hours each direction each day that could be put to use buying groceries or making trips to pay bills/deal with government services that disadvantaged people otherwise wouldn't be able to utilize.
And that is in *CALIFORNIA* which is supposed to be the most hippy dippy state out there, behind maybe a few individual cities around the rest of the country.
(Score: 5, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday May 24 2018, @11:50AM (3 children)
But if they didn't charge foreigners they'd open themselves up to "travel tourism". People would fly in to Estonia just to use the free public transport rather than paying for local travel in their own country.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday May 24 2018, @03:41PM (2 children)
You're being facetious. But tourism is a very serious problem. As someone who's been very very successful in the hotel industry, I know more about it than anyone. Let me tell you, Amsterdam is having big problems with tourists. They're getting overrun by beer bikes. But what can they do? They're not a Country, they're just a city. Estonia, it's different. They're a Country now -- used to be part of Russia, they were doing great as part of Russia. And so many Estonians are Russian. I think there are as many Russians in Estonia as there are Crooked Hillary supporters in America. As a percent. Believe me, they'd love for Estonia to rejoin Russia. And we'd save so much money on that (NATO). Believe me. But right now they're a Country. If they're getting too many tourists, they could do a travel ban. Like we did. We were having big problems with the tourists. The San Bernardino shooting. I said, let's do a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. And it's working beautifully. No more Muslim shootings!!!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:44PM (1 child)
How to spot a fake: Trump using the word "facetious"? Ha!
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday May 26 2018, @06:28PM
I'm very highly educated. I know words, I know the best words.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:40PM (1 child)
And by and large, those using it wouldn't be paying any tax for it either.
At least not in the US. Maybe in the EU where public transit has a better reputation.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @06:05AM
If you're living in a city that still has public transport you're most likely to be paying tax one way or another. Sales taxes, GST, VAT etc. Unless you're actually begging for food etc, instead of buying stuff with money you obtained.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:04PM (17 children)
Not to mention secondary costs due to increased criminal mobility.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:13PM (9 children)
I really doubt the Estonian criminals need to use public transportation to be mobile.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:22PM (8 children)
Then you've never seen the pickpockets in Tallinn.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:41PM (7 children)
No, indeed, I haven't.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday May 24 2018, @01:15PM (6 children)
That's the problem with pickapockets, no? You don't see 'em.
You get to dinner and suddenly discover you can't pay for your dinner!
Then comes the nightmare of replacing all those cards and other documents governments and businesses require you to keep handy.
( I question highly why I am still required to carry a driver license or auto registration. Any patrolman pulling me over has instant radio access to that same information, and my DMV photo. All I am doing by having that info on me is making it available to the pickapockets. I don't mind losing the store loyalty cards so much... all the info they have on me is bogus anyway. )
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:09PM (4 children)
Bingo.
However, it's not that hard to avoid being pickpocketed. Just make it too hard/risky for them to reach your valuables - e.g. put your wallet in the pocket of tightly fit jeans or in a small purse lined with a thin metallic mesh hung by your neck under your shirt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:26PM (1 child)
Keep an enraged mutant ferret in your trousers at all times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @03:19PM
Had one when younger; it sorta died though, now it's useful only for excretion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @04:36AM (1 child)
College GF picked my wallet out of my back pocket one day while we were walking down a hall. Ever since then I've kept my wallet in a front pocket. Side advantage, I'm not sitting on that fat lump.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 25 2018, @04:46AM
It's not a side advantage, it's actually two advantages, front and back:
- the back advantage - no longer sitting on a fat lump
- the front advantage - next time your GF slips her hand in the front pocket, at least you'll get this advantage in exchange for you wallet
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @03:05PM
I question anyone who demands a license.
When I had the gas connected for this place I rang the company to start the account. They wanted name address dob drivers license. . So I said "what? I have to get a drivers license to connect the gas so I can have hit water?" After some stuffing around she created my account without it.
Since then I have learned that they collect the info to do a background check because the see having a energy account as bring a type of finance. Fuck em.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:27PM (6 children)
Check out the demographics of Estonia on wikipedia, its like 99.8% white and the remaining 0.2% is Jewish so its crime rate isn't going to be like Venezuela or Baltimore. The murder rate per 100K population is less than 1/4 of Mexico. They have this weird Russian Mob vs local "trade union" thing going on otherwise the rate would be only slightly above zero. Their police basically don't enforce drug trafficking laws as long as the criminals keep the civilians out of it, which is a weird implementation of decriminalization, so there's roughly zero reported drug crime, but there's plenty of drugs just not an object of enforcement. Unlike the US and more famous organized crime, they have a weird thing going on involving international jewelry theft, its just kinda their thing, and their neighbor countries complain constantly, sometimes hinting at reparations.
Its basically a small country that is like living in the white American burbs... if you're not directly involved in organized crime, there's not much other than drunken/drug problems (especially drunken drivers), family disturbances, drunken family disturbances, and petty crime stuff like shoplifting and pickpocketing and that's about as bad as it gets.
Part of the reason they won't have homeless people riding the bus as a shelter, is they don't have diversity so there goes a large fraction of homeless; the other part is because they don't have diversity they don't have the incredible financial drain of diversity ruining their society, so they can afford social programs such that they don't have non-diverse homeless. If you tried this in the USA or any diverse vibrant country it would be a homeless bum transport service and mobile heroin shooting gallery, but they prefer a different cultural style. Its not going to be like buses in the USA which are basically a minority crime delivery service.
I looked into the place quite a lot back in the "e-citizenship" era earlier this decade, so some of this may be a few years out of date, maybe its better or worse now.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Thursday May 24 2018, @05:43PM (4 children)
Aaah, the wonders of the Trump Era!
"They have less diversity, so they have less problems. Wink. Wink. Nudge. Nudge."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @08:51PM
Well it is a VLM post, that dude should be Grand Dragon Cocksucker by now. Maybe even the KKK is put off by him?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @01:29AM (2 children)
Did you even look in Wikipedia? I don't think so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Estonia [wikipedia.org] Here's what it says: "Today, Estonia is an ethnically fairly diverse country, ranking 97th out of 239 countries and territories in 2001 study by Kok Kheng Yeoh....According to the census of 2000, 109 languages were spoken natively in Estonia. By 2011, the number of languages spoken natively had increased to 157, mainly due to new immigrants."
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday May 25 2018, @11:52AM
Read deeper, their idea of diversity is quaintly euro where the lines being redrawn repeatedly over the last centuries mean there's "true Estonians" vs "Russians" vs various others.
Its like saying Poland was very diverse because they redrew the lines so many times that there's Germans and Poles and Russians but they're all white people who've lived in the same houses (mostly) for centuries; by diversity they don't mean some dude from another culture on the other side of the planet was transplanted there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 27 2018, @03:15PM
http://culture-wars.com/muslim-rapists-gang-rape-torture-17-year-old-girl-set-her-vagina-on-fire/ [culture-wars.com]
You mean the food of muslims?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:45PM
Wait, what?
You say that like one classification has anything to do with the other, or they are somehow mutually exclusive categories.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @12:55PM (4 children)
So are we. Then we pay again for the ticket.
In one city they did the math, and found out that the ticket cost didn't even pay for the ticket paperwork, and it would be cheaper for the taxpayers to get rid of the tickets, because then they would only be paying for public transport and not for the paperwork.
Unlike Estonia, the idea didn't spread to the rest of the country, so the rest of us are still paying both for public transport and paperwork, and then paying again to create the paperwork (by buying a ticket).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday May 24 2018, @02:44PM (2 children)
Long distance telephone service in the USA was the same way, back when the market would accept $5/minute during business hours it doesn't matter if billing cost 5 cents per minute, but when technology drove the cost of service to less than a penny and only drove the cost of billing down to two cents or so, people paid a long distance bill that primarily funded sending them long distance bills and only a small fraction of the bill went toward providing long distance service, also a large fraction of revenue went out the door to advertising. That's all pretty much gone away now, but telecom billing in, perhaps, the 90s, was insane.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday May 24 2018, @07:55PM (1 child)
Yeah, its so much better now that every person over 15 yrsold is paying 30 to 60 dollars a month for cell service.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @11:04PM
Cellphones let you do things landlines never could: download hop-hop, order fried chicken online, get tweets from the Kardashians. Without cellphone-induced distractions, the njiggers might wise up and overthrow the man. The government should be subsidizing cellphones for the valuable service they provide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @04:57AM
Well think about it for longer than 2 seconds. Fewer cars on the road means first off less money spent on road maintenance. Then there is less traffic, fewer traffic collisions...less health care costs (from fewer traumatic injuries, and pollution caused illnesses, and less stress from driving). Seems to me the cost of functioning mass transit system is rather small compared to what we have now in the U.S.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday May 24 2018, @11:18PM (5 children)
Unfortunately, your shallow understanding of the situation defangs your argument, as the free public transport in Tallinn was a way of pulling more money into Tallinn from outside Tallinn (even outside Estonia). So I benefit in multiple ways from the change, and I was paying that tax anyway (no tax rate has changed).
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday May 24 2018, @11:23PM (4 children)
So... how exactly my argument is defanged?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday May 25 2018, @06:48AM (3 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 25 2018, @07:18AM (2 children)
Hang on, my argument was "It is not free. You are paying for it from you tax"
Why is it relevant your tax didn't increase? - a reallocation of taxes doesn't mean you are not paying it from your taxes
Why is it relevant it wasn't primarily motivated to give you the enjoyment of free public transport, but to attract more money from outside Tallinn? You are still enjoying it, even if it was a "secondary motivation" or just an unintended side effect.
What am I missing from your explanation or what I misunderstood from it and makes my argument "fangless"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday May 25 2018, @09:17AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @06:18AM
Actually your argument should be since you were already paying for it, them making it free could mean you pay less! Because it costs money to charge for stuff and make sure it's paid for. But that's only if they made it completely free for everyone and didn't bother tracking transactions, which doesn't seem to be the case since they're charging tourists.
Not bothering to charge and track means your taxes don't have to pay for stuff like turnstiles, payment kiosks, payment systems and people to handle the zillions of related issues (including refunds and handling of cash).