Free or extremely cheap transportation is a fascinating development. I always found it odd that the rhetoric around transportation was that it should make money. We don't expect other parts of the government to turn a profit. Why transportation?
If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out. Maybe it'd gain some popularity and we could finally see a shift away from cars. Public transportation is a difficult process because until the money is spent and the line is there, people are not sold. Whereas with cars, even if a highway is not built, people still have a car by default. Therefore the government needs to float money, either in infrastructure or in subsidized fares. At least subsidized fares is a little less binary than infrastructure.
If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out. Maybe it'd gain some popularity and we could finally see a shift away from cars. Public transportation is a difficult process because until the money is spent and the line is there, people are not sold. Whereas with cars, even if a highway is not built, people still have a car by default. Therefore the government needs to float money, either in infrastructure or in subsidized fares. At least subsidized fares is a little less binary than infrastructure.