PDQ Mobile wrote:It seems like one extreme to another to make it free. For it must cost some substantial amount to run?
Surely a better way would be a quick, clean, joined up, green, public transport system that charges easily affordable fares?
There is the issue that if the fares really are easily affordable then the costs of collecting the money, checking tickets, etc, can get close to the revenue collected. If that happens then the system might as well be free to use.
E.g. on a bus route where most users have pensioners passes or school bus passes*, the cash collected from those who do pay may not cover the extra costs created by collecting it. Collecting cash fares means fitting somewhere secure to keep it, robbers occasionally bashing up drivers to steal it, drivers occasionally stealing it, passengers occasionally dodging paying it, precautions against the last three, having someone at the depot collecting it up from the buses and counting it all, transporting it to the bank, anti-robbery precautions for those stages, and paying the bank's charges for accepting large volumes of small coinage.
A card-only system (as on London buses) can reduce costs but still needs a very reliable computer system, precautions against electronic theft, and a number of skilled staff to deal with the inevitable problems which crop up (e.g. TfL's Oyster system cannot cope with people swiping in at railway stations then, on finding the train is cancelled, leaving again and getting on a bus instead, or with them being stuck on a delayed train for so long that the system assumes they left without swiping out: both have led to me needing manual refunds).
* on two bus routes in Somerset and one in Surrey, I have found drivers taken aback at my trying to pay fares. In each case, it was so long since anyone of working age had travelled on the route that the drivers had got into the (technically illegal) habit of not bothering to take along a fare chart, ticket machine or cash box. On one route in Surrey the driver did not even realise he was driving a public bus. The depot manager when putting him on the turn had referred to 'taking the old ladies shopping' and he was under the impression he was on a private hire job for Social Services to take pensioners on an outing to the shops. It was only when I argued and produced a copy of the timetable that he realised it was actually a bus route, although all the other passengers were indeed old ladies.