this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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There's something else to consider, and that is all the people you lure off the road and onto public transport are not only now costing you money, but you also lose the revenue from them driving their vehicle, not only the RUCs or fuel excise, but the GST on all the running costs.
RUC isn't really extra money. Vehicles using roads damage them. Less vehicles means less potholes meaning less repair cost so to a certain extent that counteracts it (I doubt it's 1 for 1 but a large chunk least).
Plus we already pay for roads through rates (to some extent, councils also get money from RUC and petrol tax), no reason you can't socialise the road costs some more once you get more optional traffic off the road. Sure higher rates but you're getting free PT.
Another option often talked about is tolls. You could do that to recover the shortfall, though personally I'm against tolls in most cases as it feels like double dipping (we already have user pays through RUC and petrol tax, why not use the system we have).
As I mentioned earlier I'm not actually convinced that free public trandport is the right path, this was more a thought experiment (and I'm left wondering why running trains is so expensive!).
Even of the trains aren't free, it's mathematically true that every person who takes PT instead of driving reduces congestion by that amount.
It's not all that complicated a tasks to work out which has better value. If the money spent on roads will not reduce congestion by as much as the same amount spent on PT, then it's a fool's errand.
I think if you halved public transport costs (so it's clearly cheaper than driving) then you'll get a bunch more users. I knew many people during half-price fares that used public transport when before they didn't. I'd have full support for returning to the half price fares (so long as you had some way of mitigating pocmeting this since public transport is run by private companies since the law was changed to prevent councils running it themselves).
However, I'm less convinced that the second half of that cash is well spent. We would likely get most of the benefits from half price fares. You probably won't get the same benefit for money spent as you would for the first half, so you have to consider what that money would otherwise be spent on.
As an example, would you rather have free PT, or half price PT and rail to the airport?