Grand River Transit

[danbrotherston]

I think that using services should cost something - and I think it’s not good for the long term stability of a service to take out that revenue source. People should internally understand that nice things cost money and you should pay for your use, even if heavily subsidized.

The cities across the world with the best transit have fares, and I think it’s important to keep that link between usage + payment.

Do you feel this way about libraries? schools? healthcare? roads? snow removal? parking? criminal justice? municipal trash collection? public parks?

There is a very VERY long list of free things that society provides. Why are none (well many) of these things uncontroversial or even assumed?

There's nothing inherent about them that makes them free. Libraries here in the Netherlands aren't free, you have to pay to use them, I found that surprising, but only because of my cultural context, not because libraries are inherently different from transit which means it should be free. Different countries have different fees for schools, these are cultural choices.

I don't think there's anything inherent about a service that means it should cost money. How something is funded is clearly relevant, but not to whether it is a good service, or something valued by a community.

I will say one thing though....that's an intensely neo-con/liberal statement. The idea that monetary transactions are the definition of value is....problematic. Lots of things don't have monetary value assigned to them but are extremely valuable--home labour most specifically, but also community, friendship, more ethereal things as well--our failure to recognize these things has been a fundamental source of problems in western society. Sorry to put it so bluntly.

Also, I'm not sure that usage based fees provide the best long term stability. They're prone to "death spirals" and also like, a complete collapse with COVID and such. Every transit agency is still trying to recover from this.