Free national public transport economically viable

[Cowboys]

Ive been thinking for some time now that to be the biggest vote winner (at least for mine) would be a party who’s policy was by the end of a term to introduce free national public transport for all… im not obviously economically versed so im not sure how feasible such a policy is and im aware of how this would require a great degree of re nationalization and how socialist this could sound (eugh feel dirty just saying the word)…. To me though it’s an interesting discussion anyone got any ideas as to how a government could work this idea?

[anson]

yeh man trains are WAYYYYY too expensive!

[God's Work Experience Student]

Gaz - and you are conservative how? I'll grant the current situation is not a great deal better than nationalisation but only because the transport industry has so many aspects of being nationalised. Proposing full nationalisation as a solution is like proposing sticking your head underwater as a solution to nearly drowning.

The first problem is that with no price rationing, useage of public transport would immediately jump and the cost would spiral. The nationalised industries wouldn't care about passengers, only about their government masters so they would treat people like crap.

If you look at the public transport sector there are very few signs of a competitive market. Train companies are not allowed to own their own trains - instead they are mostly owned by banks who can pass whatever costs they like onto the operators. Since there is no competition allowed, the companies have monopolistic pricing power over passengers. Instead of competing over routes the operators must take a "bundle" including profitable and unprofitable routes. Keeping these routes depends upon pleasing the regulators, not the customers. When similar restrictions were removed from the US aviation industry under the Carter administration, plane fares dropped significantly.

The buses are not quite as stringently regulated but they are still nowhere near a free market. Of course all the infrastucture, roads and rails, are owned and maintaned by the goverment, with predictably catastrophic results.

Government intervention is the problem. Instead of intervening more, the state should back out and let the market serve customers.

[fagin]

and privatising the railways worked so wel...

[Graham was disembowelled]

what gaz was asking for , though, was FREE public transport, not cheaper public transport.
would it not be possible for there to be a competitive sytem for transport operators, and yet have it so travel is free? i'm sure stagecoach aren't allowing pensioners on buses for free because they are being kind - i suspect they are not losing any money at all - the money must come from somewhere else.
can the somewhere else not also pay for free transport for everyone else too? no better way to get people out of cars and into buses and trains! unless of course you are into taxing fuel so high ppl cant pay for it.

the long term benefits of this would be massive, but that's exactly the problem - the financial gains wouldnt be seen for a long time. there would be other gains, namely better air quality, less traffic congestion, less accidents etc etc (I could go on).

[Cowboys]

In addition, whilst i would advocate free public transport. With regards to this equating to more government/regulation/whatever and my views on conservatism...

Yes increase government controlled service in the transport sector; however this increase would have to be balanced with reductions in what to my self at least would consider less useful public services, prime example the NHS.. im not for a second advocating a larger public sector just a change in the focus…

[God's Work Experience Student]

Well we would all rather the government spent more on the services we use, and raised the revenue from taxes we didn't pay. In reality though, that cannot work for everyone and in the end, the politically powerful win out (rarely the people such interventions are supposed to help).

As I said before, we never really privatised the railways, just outsourced delivery to private companies. This can sometimes be effective - such as with school vouchers - but in cases like this, and the government's PFI initiatives, it is the worst of both worlds. Government is the customer and passengers are freight. Free bus rides for pensioners are mandated by GMPTE, in return for which the companies receive huge subsidies.

As for "free" public transport, this is a misnomer. We would still pay, just not at the point of consumption. Herein lies the problem. However much public transport you use, the cost is spread among others. Equally, you must pay a proportion of their usage. In the end we all end up using, and paying for, far more public transport than we would otherwise do. As for carbon emissions, without conceding the worthiness of that goal, you would have to balance increased travel against any efficiency gains (although small cars now beat high-speed trains in that respect anyway).

The only way I can see making the idea viable is through some form of travel voucher. People would have to be given a limited number of vouchers for use on public transport. In this way at least, companies would have to compete in some way (as Graham's leg suggested) and the rationing problem would be solved. The government is currently considering plans for issuing tradable personal carbon quotas (to reduce emissions) and I would have thought the two schemes could be implemented together (this would also make the scheme effectively self-financing since drivers and air-passengers would pick up the cost).

However, at the end of the day, these measure only mitigate the problems of interventionism. It would be government who would decide how much we could all travel and decide the terms on which it was provided. Thus, this becomes another (somewhat flawed) redistributionist measure - and one with phenomenal overheads to operate. It would be more cost effective to simply let the free market bring down costs and extend the welfare system to cover the difference (and let people spend the money on whatever they want), or better yet, repeal regressive taxes which would actually eliminate overheads.

[lisa13]

Money makes the world go round, even biofuels have greater impacts and destroy the worlds rainforests in order to grow the crops to create it, attributing to the greater problem of global warming. We need a system which is in equalibrium with the environment and economically viable.

I personally am in favour of nuclear fuels and electric road systems (trams etc), this is far cheaper and environmentally sound, I say dump the waste on a planet far away!! Yes contraversal, but it does make sense!

We already have the road infrastructure to make this work and it could be free to everybody who 'works' and 'pays taxes'. People who dont have jobs and dont contribute to the "pot" would have to apply for a pass in order to use the system and would be judged on individual merits.

Any thoughts/flaws in this?

[Graham was disembowelled]

well biofuels would only destroy rainforests if they are grown on rainforested land. this does not have to be the case. rainforest land is rarely fertile enough to sustain crops for more than 2 seasons, as the forest system is so dependent on rapid material breakdown, and NOT nutrients locked within the soil itself.

nuclear energy is something which we are likely to have to come to rely more on. so long as energy can be produced safely, and equally importantly the waste disposed of safely and effectively, nuclear fission is a viable option. however at present (especially in the UK) we have no policy for disposal of HIGH level nuclear waste. it is vitrified and stored in tanks at sellafield and (i think) dounreay. it has already been buried, and then dug up again when the government decided it was unsafe. until we get this situation sorted out we cant really (or shouldn't) increase nuclear energy reliance. in terms of sending waste into space - this approach has been looked into, but the dangers of something going wrong on launch outweigh the benefits, given that rocket crashes DO occur, and an accident could quite easily send high level waste right round the earth. everyone would get a bit! perhaps in future if space flight becomes more reliable...
another way forward would be to delelop nuclear fusion. this is quite far off at the moment, but would solve most of our problems if it could be harnessed safely.

until then - there are plenty of other energy options, such as micro generators in homes, private renewables (feeding into the national grid IF they change the crazy laws which say you are contracted to provide a set amount per year otherwise you get fined!!!), hydrogen power (hydrogen generated using solar powered electrolysis to break up water). LPG in vehicles...
the problem is that many of the patents for these solutions have been taken by oil companies in anticipation of the phase-out of fossil fuels. especially ones for car engines.

anyway... i'm starting to go off on one...

[lisa13]

lol, dig down in the earth and power it off the rock we live on. That would be a good option, geothermal energy is very underused.

[Graham was disembowelled]

hehe very true.
not easily done though unless you live in iceland or hawaii. would be a rather difficult engineering challenge!

[God's Work Experience Student]

On the subject of shooting the nuclear waste into space, I think it takes about nine pounds of rocket fuel for every pound of cargo. That's a lot of rocket fuel.

I think solar power is likely to be a bigger source of energy in the future. The biggest increases in demand for energy are likely to come from the developing world. Apart from the fact many of these countries get a lot of sun (comparative to us), the cost of harnessing solar power may be less than putting a 'national grid' style energy infrastructure in place. I note there have been some developments in making solar power a lot cheaper using lenses.

Bio-fuels should be used if they are cost effective but we will never have close to enough to meet our future energy requirements. In the West I expect coal and oil to be a big source of energy for the foreseeable future. For the record, in economic terms we will never run out of oil - there will always be enough oil for those who are willing to pay the price (there's a lot of oil out there, it's just not viable at current market prices so we don't count it).

Returning to the subject of public transport. Public transport needs a certain level of population density to be economically (or environmentally) viable. Cars are still a better option if you live in the country. I don't know that drawing power from an electrical grid is any cleaner than hydrogen power. In both cases the key is low cost electrical generation.

As for providing free access to people who work, I can see that being politically difficult with pensioners being a powerful voting block. I still prefer payment at the point of usage as the only meaningful way of managing demand.