Location Transport

What is a counter-argument if im for free public transportation?

What is a counter-argument if im for free public transportation? Im writing a persuasive essay about free public transportation for everybody. What is a counter-argument i can make?

Public Comments

1. Buses are grimy and the people on them are too. Same with the subway. Plus its dangerous, you know, people with knives and such. Unsanitary. Slow.
2. I am against free public transportation because "free" means paid for by tax payers, and I am a tax payer. I want my taxes to be used for more worthy purposes such as national defense. Giving everyone free public transportation will cost me more money on my taxes because they will need to raise taxes to pay for that. As a believer in the capitalist system, I believe also that prices are necessary to manage a balance between supply and demand. With a limited number of seats and operating schedule, the availability of transit is limited. But if it is free, demand is potentially unlimited. This could produce unsafe unhospitable conditions such as long lines or people trampling each other to get their "free ride" in the same way that they might trample and kill people to get a cheap TV at Walmart. To maintain a safe environment, prices for travel should be set that control the demand for travel to more closely match the available supply.
3. Nothing is free. Somebody has to pay for it, whether it's the individual passenger or the taxpayers as a whole. It's only fair that each person pays only for what they use. As an analogy, how would you like it if every time you go into a supermarket, you have to pay the exact same amount everybody else does even though they take more stuff than you do?
4. My counter argument is simple and factual - there is no such thing as FREE transportation and it doesn't sound reasonable for people who don't use it to have to pay for it.
5. Is it that hard? Here's why we don't have it - Nobody wants it, and nobody will ride it. It's just a gratuitous theft of money from the public, spent on your government cronies, for no benefit to the public. People who are in the business of providing things to the public transportation department of your government will be the only happy ones. They'll even be happy to bribe you to give them billions of tax dollars.