Why? Because the United States has very different laws and tax codes than other countries? You don’t understand why we can’t just copy/paste stuff from other countries here? Yes, there are some places in the us that have fare-free service, but to compare those to a multi-state transit system like wmata is simply disingenuous.

Oh yah, your sources are Wikipedia and news articles retrieved from Google, along with yet again more virtue signaling about why free public transit is great. Yes, I agree, in an ideal world we all take the metro/bus everywhere and no one needs cars. But how are you realistically gonna make that happen. I’ve live in Asia for over a year and trust me I’d love to have no car. But to just say ‘let’s have no fares transit’ is such a leap it just doesn’t make sense.

My example is literally just one thing I thought of off the top of my head. If you can’t see the potential pitfalls of having no fares in a the wmata idk what to say. Sure, no one can predict the future. Maybe a fare free metro is amazing and it works out perfect, or maybe it falls apart and is rife with safety, reliability, and corruption issues.

350mm a yr in fares is a lot to make up for. Plus, as you hope, when literally everyone is riding the metro that will increase costs. And you’re misrepresenting facts by saying ‘it only represents 10% of the budget’. It represents 78.3% of operating budget.