Free buses for ever greater numbers of wrinklies

I’ll leave it to the statistics to determine who the worst drivers in Canberra are, might have something to do with all the rice burner imports in police compounds and wrecking yards. Free bus travel makes sense, add a few more great bars and cafes near interchanges( and of course toilets) and it might show the parkway loonies that there’s more to life than being a very unskilled boy racer or female mobile phoneaholic.

Those well off retirees are the ones least likely to use the bus service, so this will be used by the poorer ones, or the ones driving Yaris’s and Getz’s. Won’t do anything about the whackers in 4WDs, though.

I’m ambivalent over this one.

On the one hand, Canberra has plenty of well-off retirees who don’t need to have their ACTION bus travel subsidies increased from 80% (which is the general level of subsidy) to 100%.

On the other hand, Canberra’s public transport has more important problems to address.

troll-sniffer said :

There are an increasing number of economists who are advocating free bus travel across the board for a lot of the world’s cities. There’s not enough room in a Riot-Act post to even summarise their arguments properly but it would appear that in a lot of cases the marginal cost to the community of missing out on the revenue is more than outweighed by efficiencies gained, as well as community benefits otherwise rarely considered such as better use of land resources not devoted to parking areas etc.

Canberra would seem to be an ideal place to look seriously at a free bus system. Revenue is less than 20% of the operating costs. Strip out the inefficiencies and costs associated with fare collection and it might well be that the effective revenue is less than 10% of the operating costs. If a free bus service managed to replace just a few percent of car trips in Canberra a cost benefit analysis might show an overall gain for the community.

Just a thought. I’d love for someone with a better knowledge of the overall picture and at least a modicum of expertise and foresight to give their views.

what he said

milkman said :

CraigT said :

How about they give it to anybody that can demonstrate they own a Toyota Yaris or a Hyundai Getz? That’s the kind of crap we need to get off the roads.

Or SUVs. Urgh…

You forgot Volvos…

YES! And remove licenses from the same, so they don’t cause chaos by doing 50km/h down the Parkway just because it’s raining a bit.

CraigT said :

How about they give it to anybody that can demonstrate they own a Toyota Yaris or a Hyundai Getz? That’s the kind of crap we need to get off the roads.

Or SUVs. Urgh…

There are an increasing number of economists who are advocating free bus travel across the board for a lot of the world’s cities. There’s not enough room in a Riot-Act post to even summarise their arguments properly but it would appear that in a lot of cases the marginal cost to the community of missing out on the revenue is more than outweighed by efficiencies gained, as well as community benefits otherwise rarely considered such as better use of land resources not devoted to parking areas etc.

Canberra would seem to be an ideal place to look seriously at a free bus system. Revenue is less than 20% of the operating costs. Strip out the inefficiencies and costs associated with fare collection and it might well be that the effective revenue is less than 10% of the operating costs. If a free bus service managed to replace just a few percent of car trips in Canberra a cost benefit analysis might show an overall gain for the community.

Just a thought. I’d love for someone with a better knowledge of the overall picture and at least a modicum of expertise and foresight to give their views.

How about they give it to anybody that can demonstrate they own a Toyota Yaris or a Hyundai Getz? That’s the kind of crap we need to get off the roads.

Anyone over 60 should get it.

60+ are some of the worst drivers especially given their experience at it.