<story><title>Spain will introduce free train travel</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-15/spain-will-introduce-free-train-travel-to-help-ease-the-cost-of-living</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hardwaregeek</author><text>Free or extremely cheap transportation is a fascinating development. I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money. We don&amp;#x27;t expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why transportation?&lt;p&gt;If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we&amp;#x27;d see more people try it out. Maybe it&amp;#x27;d gain some popularity and we could finally see a shift away from cars. Public transportation is a difficult process because until the money is spent and the line is there, people are not sold. Whereas with cars, even if a highway is not built, people still have a car by default. Therefore the government needs to float money, either in infrastructure or in subsidized fares. At least subsidized fares is a little less binary than infrastructure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Joeri</author><text>As someone who has chosen to get rid of my car and rely on public transport I would say the biggest problem public transport faces is quality and not cost. For people to trade in their cars connections need to be fast, frequent and a comfortable ride. This requires large investments and having high enough fares helps offset those investments. Making it free makes it harder to achieve that level of quality, so while it will sway the most price-conscious group, it would never convince the masses to take a train instead of their car.</text></comment>
<story><title>Spain will introduce free train travel</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-15/spain-will-introduce-free-train-travel-to-help-ease-the-cost-of-living</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hardwaregeek</author><text>Free or extremely cheap transportation is a fascinating development. I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money. We don&amp;#x27;t expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why transportation?&lt;p&gt;If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we&amp;#x27;d see more people try it out. Maybe it&amp;#x27;d gain some popularity and we could finally see a shift away from cars. Public transportation is a difficult process because until the money is spent and the line is there, people are not sold. Whereas with cars, even if a highway is not built, people still have a car by default. Therefore the government needs to float money, either in infrastructure or in subsidized fares. At least subsidized fares is a little less binary than infrastructure.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>balderdash</author><text>While I don’t think this stuff needs to make money, I think the goal should be at least be to break even, as people’s willingness to pay seems to be the best proxy of its actual utility to society. (E.g. trying to avoid bridges to nowhere [1])&lt;p&gt;The question then becomes how much if at all do want to subsidize transportation.&lt;p&gt;[1]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Gravina_Island_Bridge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Gravina_Island_Bridge&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>