On 23 Oct, 10:12, "Jim Hawkins" wrote:

How would you stop the trains becoming doss houses ?
How would you stop gangs of yobs from boarding for
a variety of illegal/antisocial purposes?

Why would you want to stop somebody doing something just because it's
illegal? Being illegal doesn't make something bad, or good.

As for anti-social activities, people do these things today; charging
for the use of the railways doesn't stop them from doing so.

I think the main reason that it couldn't be done is the one mentioned
previously, that use of the railways would rise considerably, and
there would be no income to raise capacity to cope. I suppose that in
theory it might work if trains, rails etc. were given to the railways
for free, but this couldn't happen unless the train builders were
given steel etc. for free, and all of their workers were prepared to
work without payment. This in turn would require steelworks to be
able to obtain free iron ore, coal, limestone etc. and for their
workers to work unpaid, which they might be prepare to do if food,
housing and everything else that they need was provided to them free
of charge. Unless you could get to the point where everybody on the
World would provide everything for free, then it's not going to work.

Some transport is provided free of charge; the bus from Reading
Station to the place on the old power station site where Microsoft
are, I can't remember the name of it, was free the last time I used
it, I would guess that the companies on that site contribute towards
the cost, to enable visitors to reach their otherwise rather
inaccessible location.

What seems to be unusual in this country is for a transport operator
to make a service free if the cost of collecting the fares would make
it uneconomic to do so. This does seem to be more common elsewhere; A
couple of examples from the USA, Until recently only the St. George
station on the Staten Island Railway had turnstiles, and a fare would
be paid by a passenger entering or exiting at this system (unless they
were making a free transfer from the Subway via the free ferry). Most
passengers probably are passing through St. George, but those who were
not could ride for free. The last I heard, a couple of years ago,
turnstiles were likely to be installed, and fares charges, at a couple
of other stations on the system. One was the next station, only a
short distance from St. George, because it was thought that to many
passengers were walking this distance, and thereby not having to pay
the fare. I'm not sure about this, as many would transfer to the
Subway in Manhattan, and therefore would get a free transfer and pay
no more, unless they had used up their free transfer on a bus on
Staten Island, or needed to transfer from Subway to bus, or make a non-
free transfer between Subway station. The other was Eltingville,
which is a busy station. I don't know if they have actually started
charging for trips from these stations yet, but the MTA has some
pretty serious financial problems at the moment.

The other case was at the PATH station in Harrison, NJ where
passengers entering the system there would get a free ride. On PATH
one ride is deducted from a card when entering the system but you just
walk out on exit. Since there were no Turnstiles, or ticket issuing
facility, at Harrison this resulted it the rather odd situation that
rides to that station were charged for, but rides from it were free.
This ended a few years ago when the turnstiles throughout the system
were replaced, and all stations, including Harrison, now have them.
Wasn't the Gosport ferry free in one direction but charged in the
other at one time?

There does seem to be a difference in that here operators seem to be
unwilling to allow passengers to travel for free, even if they make no
loss by doing so due to the costs involved in collecting the fares,
but elsewhere they sometimes seem to be more willing to do so.