Melbourne

Just making public transport free without increasing funding for it will only turn it into a soup-kitchen service that only those with no other options will use. The well-heeled bourgeoisie will stay in their cars; they have podcasts to listen to and cruise control to crawl through traffic jams for them, and anybody who regards strangers’ body heat and odours as anything other than a celebration of common humanity will avoid it as much as they can. If they can’t, then once fuel prices drop, they’re out of there and not going back, instead talking about the dark days of packed trains in the way that refugees talk about regimes they fled.