Assume every tax rate except for the “personal allowance” was increased by 1% to fund free train travel.
Would you be in favour of this?
I’ve not done the math for this (though did look up some stats for a Scotland specific post, and it seems to be feasible: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/44818305). So for the UK it may require a lower or higher increase (and to be fair my Scotland “calculations” were very rough and likely entirely wrong). This is more just a question about whether people would be in favour of something like this in general.
I am for free public transport from taxation there are some important caveats that would need to be worked out though:
We currently have low capacity relative to latent deamnd capacity (mostly at peak times) and at the moment that is managed through fares. We would need a system that manages demand in another way.
Our transport system is in large need of upfront investment to stop the current managed decline so you’d want a way of making sure that making it free doesn’t mean the government is now more limited
Its also worth noting that its unlikely to be a direct swap in of current revenues with additionally required taxes as there are projects that are very costly that could be redirected and any successful mode shift away from cars would also carry a net positive economic effect on the whole treasury.
Potentially in the short term what could help is a ‘sunk-cost’ ticket similar to the bahnpass where you still pay but do so yearly and get access to any trip anywhere. It makes it more competitive with cars which have massive sunk cost effects which make every trip seem cheaper.