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Not a bus
Make waiting rooms and offer free bus rides | |
Free public transit would solve some problems with getting people to use it. Free point to point vans would solve even more. One problem with this idea is the number of homeless people who would start using them as hotels, just to have a warm place to spend the night.
This companion service would
offer free waiting rooms near bus and train stations. (not in the bus/train stations; that's too busy, not designed for resting, and not a place a hobo can rest for more than an hour) These waiting rooms would offer air conditioning, a number of soft benches and a small shared bathroom, and no other amenities. They would be closed for cleaning for a couple of hours every day to prevent camping. Otherwise they would present a more desirable option than the actual bus for a much lower cost.
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// not designed for resting, and not a place a hobo can rest for more than an hour // |
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How do you enforce that? The amenities you describe (soft benchesm restroom) would be more attractive to a hobo than riding a bus/train all day long, and they will want to stay for as long as they can. |
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Those are the problems with the bus station itself. The non bus would be available for up to 24 hours at a time. |
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Oh, I misunderstood. So you're hoping "free shelter" combined with "free public transit" will offer some synergy, making both better than they on their own? |
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(or - perish the thought - are you really saying "I'd ride the bus more if it wasn't for all these hobos stinking up the coach!" ?) |
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I think the Help File specifically forbids ideas along the lines of "take an existing good thing and make it free or cheap, but without explaining how it becomes free or cheap". |
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//how it becomes free or cheap// In times past, The Rich simply paid to keep suffering huddled masses of The Poor sequestered, away and out of sight. The Judges could be paid well to enact supportive legislation. |
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Poor houses, work houses, prisons, mental institutions, public transit, public schools and public libraries all kept the lesser-thans occupied and off the streets. None of these situations was particularly comfortable, because of the Puritan impulse to blame the victims of capitalism. |
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[Voice] has suggested comfort and compassion be added to these public services--possibly as a result of realizing the Have-Nots lost the birth lottery in a skewed system stacked against the 99%--which is arguably a completely new idea. |
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A completely new idea? Arguable indeed! |
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Never thought of it yourself? Every social and economic philosopher in recorded history and maybe before just skipped over it? |
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// I think the Help File specifically forbids ideas along the lines of "take an existing good thing and make it free or cheap// |
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This idea is for a new thing, the non bus, which would help allow a free thing which is sometimes suggested. Like an idea which would allow a car to function better is not an invention of the car. |
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//you're hoping "free shelter" combined with "free public transit" will offer some synergy, making both better than they on their own? // |
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This form of shelter, as far as I know, is not offered anywhere. The idea is not for a homeless shelter of any kind. No registration of people, no checking people at the door, no verification of income, no offer of free food, no rooms, etc etc. It's just some close-packed benches and a bathroom. A full substitute for sitting on the bus, so no one has to sit on the bus unless they actually want to travel. |
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This makes it less expensive to provide free bus trips. Every aspect of the non bus (air conditioning, bathroom, cleaning) is cheaper to provide than the same services but on a bus. Weight is saved. Seats are freed up. |
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So, if a homeless person can't stay at any one "waiting room" for more than an hour, but then has the option to go out in the rain or take a bus to another waiting room, I think they'll take the bus. So adding the waiting room only reduces the problem by 1/2, and still costs a lot of money. |
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Lets see... The goal is to get people to take the bus instead of driving. If the "solution" chosen results in people traveling more, then we've made traffic and pollution worse rather than better. So simply making busses free is not likely to align well with that goal, and creates other problems as well that this idea is trying to address. |
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It seems like the best way to encourage efficient travel modes it to simply add higher taxes per mile for cars. That can be gas tax or mileage tax. Use some of that revenue for roads and some to subsidize the cost of transit passes.
I considered giving out a free bus pass with vehicle registration, but again that encourages people to travel more, and we need to make sure that it isn't cheaper to register a car and not drive it rather than simply buy a bus pass. |
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Again, the one hour limit is a limitation of a typical waiting room at a bus station. This does not apply to this idea. This idea intends to provide a place in which a person can wait for up to a day. The original statement is perfectly clear and I refuse to update it. |
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The proposed solution allows people to wait for longer periods of time without doing so on an actual bus or train. |
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Again, the idea is not to offer free transportation, but for a thing which will make it less expensive to do so, if that is deemed desirable. |
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// (not in the bus/train stations, that's too busy, not designed for resting, and not a place a hobo can rest for more than an hour) // The grouping/precedence of the comma separated items is unclear. I first ready this as a list of 3 items: "not in the bus/train stations, that's too busy", "not designed for resting", "and not a place a hobo can rest for more than an hour". The symmetry of each starting with "not" helped me choose this interpretation. |
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After re-reading with the context of your comments, I think you meant to have an initial statement: "not in the bus/train stations, that's" followed by a list of qualities of train/bus stations: "too busy", "not designed for resting", "and not a place a hobo can rest for more than an hour". |
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No need to change the text, just the punctuation. I would propose: "This companion service would offer free waiting rooms near bus and train stations, not in the bus/train stations. That's too busy, not designed for resting, and not a place a hobo can rest for more than an hour." (Though to be pedantic, "that's" should be replaced with "those are" because the word "stations" is plural.) |
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<this comment should be deleted once read. It is meant as a communication to [Voice], not a long term addition to this idea.> |
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// the idea is not to offer free transportation, but for a thing which will make it less expensive // |
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I’ve tried, but I can’t read your original description that way. I read is as you wanting to offer free bus rides, but not to homeless people who would use them as hotels. Silly me for focusing on the actual words you used. |
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But okay, if “make public transit less expensive” is the goal - how does your suggestion do that? Does it reduce costs of rolling stock, facilities, salaries for operators? If diverting homeless people to some other shelter system does so, what’s the cost of setting up and running those facilities? Is it any less than what you saved by keeping hobos off the bus? |
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I’ve never designed or executed a budget for a public transit or homeless shelters. Have you? Tell me how the financials work. |
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//Silly me for focusing on the actual words you used. // |
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//This companion service would offer free waiting rooms near bus and train stations// |
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"free transit is good" is NOT the same as "the idea is to offer free transit." |
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The idea doesn't make general transit less expensive. It solves a problem which only arises if transit is free. If transit is free some people will start using it for non-transit purposes. Much like if you start giving away free apples you'll find people using them as animal feed and compost feed stock. |
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If transit is free or near free and only in that case this becomes a problem. The solution is this idea. |
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// Is it any less than what you saved by keeping hobos off the bus?// |
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Yes. //Every aspect of the non bus (air conditioning, bathroom, cleaning) is cheaper to provide than the same services but on a bus. Weight is saved. Seats are freed up.// |
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You will be diverting some small percentage of people from homeless shelters and possibly sheltering some people who would otherwise choose a tent or underpass but having to move every day makes that much less of a problem. |
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edit: changed comma to semicolon |
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