<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>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></item><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>matkoniecz</author><text>I would expect the same expectations also from air and car traffic.&lt;p&gt;If railways are expected to break even, then I expect the same from public funding in roads and airports.&lt;p&gt;Using the same metrics.</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>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></item><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>ljw1001</author><text>Great idea. Maybe we should try paying the cost of car travel via gas taxes. We could start by just paying the for the entire road, bridge, and highway network, and then add in the costs associated with climate change.</text></comment>