It’s not an American idea. It’s a pretty normal concept that public transit is not a charitable program and must yield benefit commensurate with spend. The view that public transit should have low farebox recovery is predominantly American and the opposite of the majority of successful public transit programs everywhere in the world.

If what you said was true then it would be the inverse - operating costs would be mostly paid out of government subsidies in the areas with most ridership. But in fact, it is (and predictably so) the case that good transit systems have high farebox recovery - the HK MTR, Taipei MRT, and the Tube are those I’m familiar with and they’re all much nicer and more frequent and have high farebox recovery.

In fact, I find the whole thing confusing. Do people actually believe public transit is meant to be some kind of giveaway to a small number of riders? It’s clear from looking worldwide that where it is useful riders pay high enough fares because it is so useful.

I can understand some sort of bootstrap capital investment (or one-off interventions like for COVID-19) but the idea that operating costs should be predominantly covered from general taxation doesn’t really hold up if you look at which places are effective at this.

> The view that public transit should have low farebox recovery is predominantly American and the opposite of the majority of successful public transit programs everywhere in the world.

Not unreasonable, but low farebox recovery (or "subsidies") may still be less expensive than building out roads/highways to handle various situations:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commuter_rail

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxWjtpzCIfA

The idea that roads are subsidized for commuters should also be considered:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_price

How does this relate to the Interstate Highway System? Its funded neither by fares nor general taxation, but some weird "parallel construction" system of taxation.

> Do people actually believe public transit is meant to be some kind of giveaway to a small number of riders?

Yes. Absolutely yes. I mean I don't know what "people" "believe", but that's how public benefits are supposed to work in an equitable system.

"An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport." In my opinion, that idea extends to anything that we know makes a society better: libraries, public education, etc. It shouldn't even be controversial to a sensible person that those are not revenue generators, let alone profit centers.

It's analogous to "handicapped parking" (as it's called in the US) and similar accommodations: people will balk at the costs or other arguments used when compared to a relatively large population who don't need them, until they suddenly require those accommodations for themselves or a loved one.

Be a poor, physically-disabled human being in a small, underfunded town, then come at me with "farebox recovery" BS. We need to stop pretending like we don't live in a post-scarcity world, but we just choose to allow terrible people to run things and make bad faith arguments to keep ignorant people ignorant.

Good public transit even benefits those not using it by reducing other kinds of traffic. Everbody should be in favor of such investments but many people just don't think that far during their next traffic jam frustrations in rush hour.

It’s a pretty normal concept that public transit is not a charitable program and must yield benefit commensurate with spend.

The benefits of public transit derive to all of society not necessarily those immediately riding it. That's true of a multitude of state spending, education, social services and so-forth.

The US doesn't directly charge for many of the costs of roads, certainly it doesn't charge for the drawback in the form of pollution and urban sprawl. But when you get to buses, suddenly "you're not a charitable problem..."