Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
You could eliminate the "problem" of people not paying... by just making buses free.
If we had electric buses of various sizes that had no driver, the marginal cost of increasing capacity would be very low so you could run them at very high frequencies, partially on demand. This would make transit much more useful and attractive, getting more people on public transit and reducing the costs associated with car use, so providing free buses could easily be revenue positive.
We have unattended transit already (Skytrain etc). Non issue. Use the money saved by eliminating the driver to increase the number of police etc, who are more qualified to deal with security.
The usual disclaimer of course; this ain't happening any time soon.
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All of what you state is very true except for unattended transit being a "non-issue". Monitoring 30 SkyTrain stations is nothing compared to monitoring a 1,000 moving buses scattered all over the region. Also the chances of having only 2 people on a SkyTrain car are next to zero but it can happen quite often on late night services. This could be a real safety concern especially for women.