고2 김현수 #78 People should not pay for using public transportation systems.

#78 People should not pay for using public transportation systems. Over the past few decades, people have argued whether or not people should pay for using public transportation. Some might believe that public transportation is a possession of every citizen, so the government should pay for using it; nevertheless, others might think making free of using public transportation is not a good idea. However, I am convinced that people who use public transportation must pay for using it. Actually, I have a couple of good reasons for my assertion. I will clearly show and develop why I maintain my insistence as specially as I can in the next following paragraphs; quality of service and burden of future generation. Firstly, free public transportation fee connects to low quality of service. On one hand, if people pay for they use buses everyday, the bus companies are going to make profits. By making profits, the bus drivers work harder and also try hard to improve the service they provide. On the other hand, if people do not pay for the bus fee, the bus companies will not make any profits. Then, the bus drivers will lose the motivation they should work, and the service they provide will get lower. For example, Fukuoka, one of the biggest cities of Japan had every bus company to provide their service for free in 1978. Citizens of Fukuoka welcomed this policy at first. However, since the bus companies and bus drivers lose their motivations to work, the service that they deliver got lower. Then, the citizens who thought the service should be recovered collected the signature of over 50.000 citizens to get rid of the policy. As a result, the policy was gone and the citizens started to pay for the bus again. Nowadays, citizens of Fukuoka are fully satisfied with the service of the bus companies. If the citizens had not decided to pay for the bus, the quality of service that they receive today would be lower than other cities' bus companies provide. Secondly, future generation is going to owe tremendous of taxes if we use public transportation for free. Some people might say that the government should pay for the public transportation since it is a possession of every citizen. Yet, we should not forget the fact that the budget of city is the taxes that we pay. For example, if we use the subway for a year and do not pay for it, the fee for using subway will be paid by the government. However, the money that the government used to pay the fee is the taxes that citizens have paid. At the end, the one who has to cover the loss is future generation. Actually, this is the main reason why most people who oppose to use public services for free. According to KSC, Korean Statistical Center in South Korea, conducted a survey on 500 citizens who use public transportation everyday pertaining to whether they will support if the city government announces that the fee for public transportation is going to be free. Interestingly, approximately more than 95 percent of them answered that they are going to oppose to the announcement since they do not want to leave the dept to their children. This result clearly shows that people who use public transportation should pay their fee for using it.