AmericanAnDerTU

I had a brief discussion with my friends Florian and Martin on Twitter about whether or not public transport and such should be absolutely free. Unfortunately, given that 140 characters is just not enough to express one’s self (and I was in the middle of class), I decided to write this blog post about it. This way it’s also a bit more public and easier to respond to.

Should public transport be free, though? I would say no. For starters, in a country like Austria where the government already carries a large financial burden in providing many socialized services to its people, I think something like this would be the straw to break the horse’s back. Whenever you increase the services offered by a government, you do inevitably either have to cut funding elsewhere or increase taxes to finance it. Like it or not, things cost money and revenue has to be made somehow.

In Austria, there is an excellent system that helps finance road building. If you do not want to use the highway system (the Autobahn), then you don’t have to pay for it. To be allowed to drive a motor vehicle on the highways, one must buy either an annual pass or one of the various passes that are cheaper, but don’t last as long (for instance if you’re just passing through Austria as a traveler or you’re visiting). In the USA, everyone has to carry the costs of the roads and the Interstate system is federally funded. I would love to see a system such as this implemented across the USA. The way I see it, if I am not profiting from a service such as this, why should I pay for it? On the open market, if you don’t want to pay for a service or good, you don’t have to. I find it very lazy on the part of many governments that they force their citizens to carry certain costs that they really should not be forced to.

That being said, I love the idea of public transport. In Vienna, the public transport is absolutely fantastic and there are only a few exceptions where driving a car in Vienna is faster or more convenient than the trains and buses, but Vienna can still get pretty traffic heavy. Thankfully it’s not as bad as in say, Atlanta, but it can still get a bit crazy. I would love to see the costs of public transport somehow reduced, but I think overall the prices are pretty fair as they are. The annual pass costs just shy of €450 in Vienna, a price I find more than fair. When you think of all the inherent costs of owning a car (maintenance, yearly inspection, insurance, fuel), the public transport in Vienna is far cheaper than say, London.

The only way to make public transport free is if there was a way to impose some kind of tax on the citizens of whatever city or town is making its transport free. There is a huge issue here, though: What about the people that visit Vienna and don’t live here and are not paying this tax at all? Tourists? Business travelers? No, I think the idea of paying for a ticket is more than fair and the perfect way of enforcing a tax on the people that use it and not forcing others to carry the costs of something that for them is irrelevant and holds no value. 

(I’m also against punishing someone for owning and/or driving a car by imposing a tax. The “West” is for the most part very open and we have the freedom of choice and those choices, so long as they are not really destructive, should be left free. Plus, let’s face it: taxes on cars in Europe are already high enough.)

Image courtesy of Die Presse