walnut 🌱 (@walnut)

@reece
This is a really weird comment to make when I already mentioned Luxembourg, but I guess you dismissed it is not good enough. Which, compared to Hong Kong or Tokyo, it's not, but is that really because they don't charge fares? And America is the richest country in the world, Luxembourg isn't special there.

You didn't come across as arrogant, but it was frustrating that you typed a long response that seemed to ignore what I said. Especially since you've come across my arguments often, I would have thought you'd have more to say then "that's not how anybody else does it."

When talking about fares there's not a false dichotomy of "Luxembourg can have the 10% of revenue from fares or not", it's will the government pay a bit more than it already is and reduce costs by not needing to handle all the associated costs with charging fares and determining who can and cannot get free transit or a discount.

And I really do wonder how tap to pay with credit cards or apple pay or whatever works, because I genuinely don't know. Are transit agency's really eating the fees of credit cards? That seems grossly inefficient. At a glance at translink's fares this seems to be the case, since the "Stored Value" compass cards that have a $5 minimum have a reduced fee. Convenient for tourists, maybe, but so is not having a fare (and zones!) at all.