Public Transit Subsidies

Public transportation is heavily subsidized. But liquidating it because it’s not profitable would cause extreme traffic congestion. The city would cease to function. Buses and trains are a multiplier for capacity.Private transportation is also heavily subsidized. Usually it’s in indirect ways like the government paying for roads and airports, mandating parking minimums, and keeping driver licensing lax. There’s rarely direct budget line items to keep fares low. But make no mistake marshaling

lol the idea isn't to make money off transit, it's to save money on roadsroads cost more than transit - a LOT more, and motorists aren't paying anywhere near the cost of road construction and maintenance, they're (quite literally) free-riding subsidized trips on the taxpayertraffic also destroys productivity, public health, life expectancy etc etc so costs money in many more ways than motorists not paying for them

Because it's easy enough to make public transportation's passengers pay?

Your issue seems to be with funding. Fares are usually quite a small component of transit system’s budgets. We don’t require users of city streets to pay fares to use that transportation infrastructure, with exception of the occasional toll-funded highway/bridge/tunnel, and we spend many many billions of tax dollars more on those than we do on public transit. If free transit is a bad idea so are free city streets.

At least the fees are invested back into public transport (for non rich people)

Most public transportation is taxpayer subsided.

> Most US public transit systems are funded by taxes in addition to fares. The true cost of a bus ride can be many times the ticket price. If the services doesn't provide enough value for the service, let the customer decide.What about the true cost of cars? I don’t drive, yet my taxes are used to subsidize car ownership, including the storage of vehicles in public spaces. The various externalities — pollution, congestion, deaths, excess asphalt — are not included in the true cost of

I was talking about the Taxes that subsidize public transport DUH

Public services don't need to make money. What we spend on those services isn't "losing money", it's spending tax money on a service that benefits all of us. Train (and bus) lines reduce traffic, cost less, and fuel commerce along their routes. Your estimate of what's being "lost" doesn't account for the economic gains that come along with public transport, which is estimated at 4x the cost of investment: <a href="https://www.apta.com/r

You're putting your car before your horse. The reason they don't pass this cost benefit analysis is because we continue to build and subsidize road construction, gasoline, and cars. If you keep subsidizing that, then turn around and look at public transportation and sneer at it as if it is somehow something that is a subsidy, of course you can never do an appropriate cost/benefit analysis. Not to mention that instead of fixing the issue, we keep building roads. That never solves t