VeraLycaon

Vera Lycaon

@VeraLycaon

Awoo~

31 y/o white passing mixed w/ Black monster woman from the Netherlands. Artist (occasionally). Writer (again, every so often). Prone to camera sniffing behavior, one of them θΔ folk.

AD: @blimpjackal

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VeraLycaon
@VeraLycaon
CERESUltra
@CERESUltra
alyaza
@alyaza
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CERESUltra
@CERESUltra

The last two points in that ask absolutely make my blood boil.

Like, I could go on a several page tirade here but my short version is I don't have to make car payments on public transit, I don't have to pay for insurance on public transit, I don't have to pay for repairs or regular maintenance on public transit, and the chances of me being killed by someone else on public transit are bare minimum a hundredfold less than by another car driver.

The cost of gas versus the cost of a fare is such a disingenuous measurement even if it is a common comparison because it acts as if having a car costs nothing otherwise. If I took 20 one way trips a week at 2.90 a fare it works out to about $50 less a month than I make on my goddamn car loan payment.

Sure, fees going up sucks for poor people, but the reason most people I know who are destitute take public transit in the first place is because they can't possibly fucking afford owning a car without going into a great deal of debt, assuming they even get approved for a loan to begin with. Acting like using public transit is somehow bourgeoisie is such a divorce from reality that it boggles the fucking mind.

VeraLycaon
@VeraLycaon

For real. I'm in Europe (the Netherlands more specifically), am dependent on disability income and like... I literally cannot afford to own a car on top of my living expenses. I'm not even talking about actually using it or the initial expense (you can get a second hand car for like one grand - hardly a bill I can't foot by myself), I'm just talking about maintenance to keep it roadworthy and the taxes you pay on the damn thing. Gas money? I've seen Americans complain about having to pay $5/gal for gas and like... that's cheap here. That's prices we haven't seen since the first half of the '00s. For a while in '22 we were paying double that. I can only imagine it's an even worse deal once you venture outside the West, barring perhaps countries with big domestic oil resources.

I think I'll stick to public transport.

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in reply to @alyaza's post:

upthorn
@upthorn

I understand that you're speaking primarily about NYC, but the asker may have been taking a more generalist argument.
Here in the Sacramento area, a one-way bus fare is $2.50, and you don't have to pay for parking in most areas. So it really is cheaper to take a car most of the time.

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chelsea-wtf
@chelsea-wtf

Many car trips take less than 1 gallon of gas! It is unclear why you would compare the cost of a gallon of gas to a single transit ride.

For example, if I live in Austin and I'm already priced into owning a car, many trips are cheaper by car than by transit. I know for a fact this discourages car owners from taking public transit because it has happened to me.

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nottoph
@nottoph

c. fares exclude the very poorest from public transit; i.e.; the homeless unemployed, whomst are targeted by said fare enforcement. Free cards can be issued but this is a burden on both the person and the bureaucracy

you have literally just prescribed a solution the ostensible problem you think exists, are we being serious here

well, i mean. the problem with the solution is laid out right there, isn't it? it's the same problem any means-tested social democratic policy has.

the fundamental premise we are operating from is that somebody needs to be paying these fares - you can't offer free cards to everyone, or everyone (or at least a significant majority) would take them and your premise is defeated. so we need to make sure that only the people who really "need" them get them, and that people who don't, don't. that requires guidelines and a bureaucracy and enforcement and some kind of proof-of-income system, and at that point you have lost. because as soon as you concede the premise that a system to weed out "cheating" is necessary, you have left the door wide open for Some Fucking Neoliberal to waltz in and start imposing stricter requirements, demanding more stringent proof, cutting office and application hours, hiring clerks who will say things like "well you have no income, but you've still got an old iphone from before you started sleeping in your car, DENIED." they do this with medicaid and disability benefits and basically every other means-tested program (because the gravitational pull of profit motive in a capitalist society is inescapable), and whether its because they cant afford the time or can't afford the money, the result is the same: a system that the poor and disenfranchised can't use.

if anything it gets worse because now half your budget is going to whatever fuckshit public-private-partnership, quasi-monopoly, paid-for-the-mayor's-reelection-campaign tech equity firm leases the turnstile software and runs the app or whatever, instead of, like, the trains. along with all the money going to means-testing bureaucracy and fare cops, which may or may not amount to even more than the fares themselves actually bring in.

so. thats my take

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