Would you use public transport more if you got some cash back for it?
Do you think that would help people use public transport more and as a result help reduce climate change or at least increase the awareness?
Question - Climate Change & Public Transport
mrjk05 on 13/09/2019 - 16:40
Poll Options
- 57Would love cash back or some reward
- 167I have to use public transport anyways, but getting something back would be great
- 30No it won't be affective
- 94Dont care
Comments
I get the idea behind the cashback.
If public transportation is more affordable and has less upfront costs than private transportation (car, fuel, parking, servicing, rego, insurance), it could be viable. For instance, if car transportation costs you $2k/year and public transportation costs you $1k/year this will keep things as they are now, but further giving $500 back to individuals on their tax return for being "carbon friendly" could be a good initiative for the normies.Of course, this would also spark up the question; wouldn't you get even more conversions if public transport was free?
Maybe… but none of these matters if the public transport system itself is bad. Or if it requires many individuals to be driven a few kilometres to the nearest train or bus station (maybe electric scooters are the answer?).
This might be a contraversial idea (esp. on this website), but people generally don't value what they get for free (with several exceptions), there have been several studies on this psychological effect, eg. https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/12794/do-peop…
You can give stuff/services (eg. public transport) completely for free, and fewer people will value it as they no longer see a monetary worth to it. Giving a discount in perpetuity will have a largely similar effect. Giving an occasional discount will attract more buyers/users initially, but will return to pre-discount levels over time, but with an additional percentage of conversions (eg. give free coffee for a month, 1000 customers switch from their regular cafe to try it, promo ends, 100 customers remain ethier out of loyalty, or because they are now comfortable with the new retailer).
Perpetual rewards for loyalty, such as those offered by Coles/Woolworths, are effective in the long-term, as customers continue to return until they see a better deal from your competitor. That's an interesting competition for transport — the only competitors to public transport are private vehicles, taxis, ride-sharing — none of these is likely to offer a better deal to target public transport users (leaving aside from cycling/walking or those times when the other options may be cheaper than a train ticket).
None of the studies pertains to service, it was all focused on a product. And people react differently between services and products.
The only conclusion that I can draw from these incomplete studies, is that it may be beneficial to increase public transport costs up from $1k/year to $2k or $3k/year so that it is inline with private transportation (cars). That way people value their money/travel much more by being more considerate.
Then maybe giving back $3k to certain individuals, or to all individuals on a cyclical basis (every 2 years?). That way it feels like a lump sum they receive, and they feel happy/smart for making the eco decision. Sort of like a reverse-insurance, or a better Fly-buy system.
People walking or riding bikes are even more 'carbon friendly', why should public transport riders get a cash bonus for polluting 'less' ??
Because people that pay extra to live in the CBD, or are engaging in walking/riding still get to pay less money than those using public transport overall. And they also get to stay fit and healthy. And because there's no way to make sure/monitor that they actually don't use public transport or even private transport (Uber).
Basically, that's just semantics.
@Kangal: I wasn't suggesting we pay a cash bonus to people who walk/ride, just that they are in fact less 'polluting', and hence more deserving of any such bonus.
@trapper: I get it now.
However, human psychology is a fickle thing. For some reason, teaching people is generally more effective with rewards rather than punishment. So you start with a goal; reduce emissions then you need to formalise a strategy that has the biggest impact. In this case, it would be to affect as much people as possible, hence why targeting public transport would be more effective.People that walk/bike are a smaller niche. You can counter-argument by saying, why don't we just make everyone have to walk/ride instead. And then you hit the realities of city building, where you have a concentrated point but have people spread out over a larger land mass. Otherwise you would have to build the CBD in suburban areas, and that's not possible with the economy. Australian cities are actually one of the more "advanced" in this regard, as we don't over-concentrate the CBD as you see in Asian and European countries, thanks to basically having a lower population, higher resources, and able to plan things in-advance.
So we can increase people to walk/ride more, but not significantly. And we can punish those for using private transportation (taxation). Perhaps we need to incentivise public transport, and have people adopt it from an early age (like those 10 year olds taking the train to school in Japan) instead of dropping kids off everywhere by car/uber.
…but if the public transportation system sucks, people either won't travel as often, and use private transportation instead.
People walking or riding bikes are even more 'carbon friendly', why should public transport riders get a cash bonus for polluting 'less' ??
Not quite, "polluting less" is not well defined, the question is "polluting less than _____".
When you have someone who lives 50 km from the city, putting that person on a train vs. a car will drastically reduce that person's carbon footprint. On the other hand, when you have someone living 1 km from work, whether they walk or drive will not drastically change their carbon footprint.
So if you were to pick which groups to target any sort of incentive towards in order to reduce carbon emissions, it would be the group who are driving the furthest, which would be the group you'd want to move onto a train.
Public transport is already heavily subsidized by the state government.
Public transport should be free. It's a win-win for all.
- Lower infrastructure costs.
- Ease road congestion.
- Reduce pollution.
- Reduce road toll.
- Reduce travel stress.
…. list goes on and on.
Who is going to pay for all this free travel?
Someone else.
People who benefit from less users on the road. Trucking companies who can now get trucks from A to B in less than half the time, people who prefer to drive (and are happy to pay to travel quicker)…etc.
The savings outweigh the cost.
The cost is reasonably fixed.
The benefits are so wide reaching they are hard to measure.
@iDroid: So where should we cut funding to provide free public transport? From health, education, agriculture, policing, infrastructure, sport, arts, etc?
because we need an incentive.
waiting for the train, then standing there awkwardly having to smell people's farts and breathe people's coughs while trying not to draw any attention and to keep balance is a negative experience.
If it were free I'd still drive.
Cash back and I'd probably do it every now and then.
Last time I took the train I had to buy a Myki card ($10), it automatically went as Concession. I had to then buy a second for Full Fare. Cost $18.80 for the one travel to the city and back (Eastern suburbs in Melbourne). It's always a negative experience with Metro. Time before this I had to get a replacement bus and it took 2 hours because they told me to go onto the wrong bus, going in the wrong direction. Should have taken half an hour.
That's why they'd have to reward me to take the train! (I could go on)
Already use public transport because it is cheaper than paying $17 a day for parking. Would like discount/cashback but it wouldn't entice me to use it more.
Public transport in Melbourne for example is already subsidized to the tune of about $1.5 billion / year by the public purse… if the gov't want to encourage greater use they just need to increase funding to reduce fares.
Cashback is a stupid idea.
What have you been smoking?
Hopefully nothing, smoking would be bad for climate change.
Are you trying to increase my awareness of climate change without offering a cashback incentive? Git outta 'ere.
Ok thanks.
Free public transport?
Username checks out:)
I would use public transport more if it was more reliable and didn't take half a day to get from A to B
More info needed: how far is it from A to B?
Half a day obviously
half a day is a measure of time
Half a day times two is a whole day, i.e. 24 hours. A whole day to go from A to B and back to A is not that bad if it's the daily commute to work.
Don't know what a to b is nor what mode of transport you take… For me the trains in Sydney are very reliable. I catch two trains and total travel time one way is 45-50 mins. Ofcourse you will get the hiccups now and then and people tend to focus on the bad aspects and not the good. Traffic is definitely way more unreliable and would cost me atleast double if not three times more if I drove to work.
You could use some of the cashback to buy a dictionary
Public transport would be a lot Greener if it ran on Thyme.
Sage advice.
Too Clover
Mint joke
Good work cumin up with that!
I would use more public transport if I didn’t have to sit next to strangers.
You obviously haven't used it for a while if you think you get a seat.
You got me. I don’t use public transport.
If you introduce yourself, then they won't be strangers.
I try, but they always look at me funny and roll up their windows.
and roll up their windows.
On public transport?
You'd still be strange though JV. Ha ha #rekt.
Dw they don't bite. Atleast I haven't been bitten yet.
Australian's are controlled by advertising and propaganda.
I wonder if they'll notice that there's no ice at either pole in 2024 or whether they'll keep being controlled by the fossil fuel sector and insist that nothing is happening?
Rofl no ice by 2024. Luckily the internet is forever with statements like this.
Everyone is so stupid but me. I can see through the propaganda and understand reality. There is a giant conspiracy only smart people like me realise.
Everyone has their coping mechanism.
Luckily your comment will also be on the internet forever (not that I think there'll be no ice in 5 years but it's definitely going away).
@AncientWisdom: No ice at either pole = most coastal cities underwater. We won't be here to read the comment and/or the server is an artificial reef.
Just for completeness sake, if both poles melt, which we would safely assume, all other major ice forms would follow suit to the same, if not major extent, the sea level would rise by some 70m.
Just incase that doesn't seem like much, Melbourne is 31m above sea level. New York and London sits on 10 and 11. Tokyo 40.
@[Deactivated]: Melbourne would be flooded if the ice melted? Be right back, going to run any internal combustion engine I have at maximum rpm.
@brendanm: Eh, go for it. I bought my property exactly 71m above sea level.
The beach would be literally out my backdoor.
@brendanm: Not my neighbour. He is on 69m elevation.
It's okay, I've seen him throw non recyclable coffee cup lids in the recycling bin. Maniac.
@[Deactivated]: Sounds he like will be getting what he deserves for such a blatant recycling rules violation.
My house will also be about 65m under water, but I have flood insurance, and it's for the greater good.
@brendanm: Don't worry you can still live there comfortably in the dry months, and you won't need a permit or a fence for your new swimming pool either!
There has been no ice at the poles before, and there will be no ice again. Who would have thought things go in cycles, absolute madness.
What was the human population of the planet the last time there were no polar ice caps?
@Pantagonist: Zero. What was the human population for most of the earth's history? We are living on a planet who's climate changes, it has since it was created. We can't stop that sadly.
@brendanm: Precisely.
So given that we have no lived experience of what life for us would be like in the absence of polar ice caps, the decision then becomes whether we want to learn how to adapt to the changing climate and persist as a species or if we're happy to die out.
Personally I think we should aim for the latter and demonstrate that we're deserving of our self-awarded "sapiens" species classification.
@Pantagonist: We seem to be happier to insist that driving less will save us all, even though deforestation etc due to increased population is more of an issue. Id prefer the latter as well, as the earth is going to do whatever it wants, and we are simply a tiny blip on its timeline at the moment, and one that is quite insistent on destroying it.
@brendanm: I don't think anyone is saying "driving less will save us all".
I think it's more about saying that individual transportation creates more greenhouse gases than public transportation, so more people using the latter would be better from a greenhouse gas emissions standpoint.
I accept that transportation's contributions to the overall greenhouse gas load are small in the grand scheme of things, but I think most people looking at the issue consider them along with factors such as deforestation, intensive agriculture, industry emissions and other factors that we have direct control over. Yes, volcanoes will continue to erupt and contribute to the changing climate, but my question is why we're happy to hurry the process along when the change that occurs is likely to be bad for us? Surely it would be better to have more time to respond to a challenge that homo sapiens has never had to respond to before?
More broadly the challenges for us if we manage to make it to post polar ice cap age are dealing with sea level rise (requiring a strategic migration away from the existing coastlines where more of the world's population current lives), the disappearance of critical food sources from our oceans (that will eventually become saturated with carbon dioxide, become anoxic and be unable to support life that requires oxygen to breathe), obtaining drinking water etc.
If I look ahead to such times that will likely be beyond my lifetime, I think we should be working out ways to respond to these challenges now rather than waiting until the proverbial hits the fan.
@Pantagonist: The best way would be electric and renewables to power it, after that electric with nuclear power.
We could start by not encouraging exponential population increase.
Agreed.
RIGHT ON!
This thread should be renamed 'Let's weed out the brainwashed in the community'.
"Climate change is a myth so this thread is pointless"
RIGHT ON!
Is it?
Given I walk to most places, how would using public transport more reduce climate change?
You exert yourself less, so less carbon, you eat less because you're more sedentary, so less food miles, your shoes wear less, so less rubber wasted.
Ok, I'm probably clutching at reusable straws…
I'm pretty sure that climate is controlled by that mystical big yellow thing in the sky………
Many assume that it's output is constant
Are there any studies out there that illustrate a correlation between the increasing luminosity of the sun with recent temperature data recorded on Earth?
Genuinely interested.
Of course there isn't. If there was, this 'debate' would have been ended instantly by those with vested interests.
Alternative solution: let's blow up the sun.
Just send rockets full of ice at it to lower the temp a little, don't go crazy
Remind me again what the climate is like on the moon? The same as Earth, you say?
The moon is quite cool because it's made of cheese.
I mean end game for transportation is either we all get some super efficient jet packs some how or some really great robot taxi army fuelled by the sun or other renewable energy.
But for now yeah public transport subsidisation would be great and good for people to get some exercise honestly moving around between public transport etc.
At the end of the day really it is a money thing until we break that new discovery in fuel/energy technology.
Rich people always gonna want comfort and can afford it and poor people well they got no choice.
I believe in man-made climate change;
But until governments believe in it, they won't be doing anything to be really 'supportive' to combat that, such as really effective public transportation to the point that it makes driving your own car a silly choice.
Put in this way, why spend billions on roads when you can put the same amount of money into public transport and make public transport excellent. Let's get some high speed trains from Melbourne-Sydney-Brisbane as a start so we all don't need to fly everywhere; and let's not get our first high speed trains almost 100 years after Japan got their first ones.
You've reduced the options to the binary of flying causes pollution therefore the construction of a high speed rail supposedly will cause less pollution. Many other possibilities exist, ie. the cost of building a high speed rail system will end up being the bigger environmental impact.
Japan has a population roughly 4 times the size of Australia in a much smaller space. That's far more people using a railway that requires far less to build.
These points are not based on belief.
Typical non-climate change believer message ie let's not do nothing because whatever you want to do is going to be worse off anyway, which can be an absolute fallacy.
Anyone can talk about population statistics and country area size. Man made it to the moon, we should have bigger goals and passions that numbers.
which can be an absolute fallacy.
It can be. You'll have to prove it if you want to change anyone's mind. No amount of believing, as hard as you may try, is going to change any rational person's opinion.
we should have bigger goals and passions that numbers.
Like make mistakes based on nothing but a factless belief?
@[Deactivated]: I dont have to prove anything because you proved nothing either, other than give population statistics and country size which anyone can do.
And Man did make it to the moon, fact? But I guess or so it seems you don't believe that either.
population statistics and country size which anyone can do.
Yes. Anyone can do it and come to the same conclusion because they are facts. The credibility of facts do not increase with rarity.
And Man did make it to the moon, fact? But I guess or so it seems you don't believe that either.
You guessed wrong again.
I also made a sandwich.
Neither achievements are relevant to this discussion.
@[Deactivated]: And I just made myself a cocktail, a lazy pino colada; some rum, pineapple juice, coconut cream, ice … too many calories and not relevant to this discussion.
Let's get back on topic, you said many other posibilities exist, so why not start with your example one that cost of building high speed rail will end up the bigger environmental impact. Where's your proof to that? And you must have it because you don't like factless belief.
@TheMindsetTraveller: The burden of evidence lies with the person challenging the existing process.
The airplanes already exist. You're claiming that we should stop using the airplanes and implement a new system which requires the construction of a railway and trains. The burden is on you to prove that this has a lower environmental impact than the existing system.
It is childish to air your ideas and expect people to look for proof of the contrary.
you said many other posibilities exist
Yes. Breaking the binary premature conclusion, a third outcome exists (possibly more). The emissions associated with mining, processing, shipping, fabricating and teraforming a railway line between two cities for the small population we have outweighs the environmental impact of the continued usage of the existing system.
This is just a hypothetical but entirely reasonable opinion. Again, proof of viability for change should be presented by the party with the agenda for change.
@[Deactivated]: Wait a minute, you disputed my belief of man made client change (ps. are you saying god doesnt exist?) So moving forward lets not talk hypothetical here. Show me some proof that high speed transportation can cause more environmental damage? Because you like facts remember
Show me some proof that high speed transportation can cause more environmental damage?
You entirely skipped the process to get to the point of a serviceable high speed transport.
I'm not sure what you're doing but debating it is not. You're making claims and having others shoulder burden of proof. You're jumping to conclusions in several instances and you're using the achievement of space travel to somehow demonstrate that construction of an alternative mode of transport is environmentally viable.
I don't think you can debate anything, much less perpetually.
You've reduced the options to the binary of flying causes pollution therefore the construction of a high speed rail supposedly will cause less pollution.
This is true though, the emissions from one person flying are significantly higher than from one person catching the train. Planes burn a lot of fuel for the amount of people that they carry.
Japan has a population roughly 4 times the size of Australia in a much smaller space. That's far more people using a railway that requires far less to build.
This is besides the point - the MEL-SYD corridor is the second most flown domestic route in the world. There are planes flying from MEL-SYD every 5 minutes or so from all the major carriers. The only route which is higher than MEL-SYD is over water, so for all intents and purposes, the MEL-SYD route has the highest air traffic of any domestic route that can feasibly be substituted with a train.
Why "cash back"? Why not just…reduce the ticket cost?