I would like to add some other savings:
• the plants and trees along streets and
freeways benefit from the reduction of
pollutants;
• the cost of building parking structures (as
now required for any commercial buildings);
• to reducing traffic, especially in crowded
areas would be reduced;
• adding to community, as people chat on the bus
• additional jobs, for bus cleaners and mechanics
and passenger support. I think every bus should
have an employee on to act as liaison and
problem solver.

“For example, a theoretical line that picks up only 1-5 rural passengers far away at great public expense might never stop running under such a system where fares/income are not accounted for.”

Oh well, in that case we should dig up rural B-roads if the costs of maintaining those roads isn’t covered by the share of VED and fuel duty coming from the drivers who use them!

(Hint: transport has uses other than raising money.)

And local councils are quite happy to (ahem) scrap weekly refuse collections, cut mental health services, hike up Council Tax – and withdraw subsidies for bus routes under current funding arrangements. Why would they suddenly decide to start throwing money at your hypothetical under-used bus service if it became free at the point of use?

(Hint: they wouldn’t.)

What does cost have to do with something being clean and efficient?
If something is cheap, it doesn’t mean it is clean or efficient in the environmental or even engineering sense. Also time isn’t a factor when considering the environment.

Cars are cheap because of the vast amount of cheap fossil fuels used to subsidise their use, combined with massive marketing campaigns and business infrastructures. The fact is if a car is cheap to run then it is because of a false bias and help given to support it. The down side is that if you want to walk somewhere where the car dominates, you will have a difficult and costly time trying to do so.

As the post says, public transport is heavily subsidised already. The balance of the argument is that making it free would increase other avenues of public expenditure as a result of encouraging people to take advantage of free transportation. The first step is to realise that public transportation (pt) will never make a profit and as such is already ‘paid for’ by the government. The next step is to see beyond a car culture. If people know they can just hope on a bus or tram or train and visit a towns center or travel around a city it will encourage spot spending. Spot spending is the coke you pick up from the station vending machine, the visit to the museum shop you happened to go into on a whim.

Free transport opens up a town and gets people to go to places they wouldn’t normally go to because the “parking is so inconvinient”.

The taxes raised through sales and increased consumerism (the side benefits of free PT) more than outway the costs of implementing it.

Just my opinion…