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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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"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"
-- Time Bandits
(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.