Zurich especially has no improvement potential here because it already does everything possible to force people onto public transport e.g. parking is heavily throttled, driving through the city is extremely slow. Transit is already saturated at peak times. There aren't armies of people driving cars around who would take the train or bus every day instead if a yearly Abo was only cheaper. Maybe a small number but not many.

> Indeed if it leads to less infrastructure investment it might worsen, but it's not obvious that this is what will happen

Of course it will lead to less investment! Not just of public transport but everything. This decision opens up a 185M CHF/year financial hole in a city of ~300,000 residents. It's already one of the most expensive cities in Switzerland, and the most expensive in terms of corporation tax. A full 25% of companies were already considering relocating out due to the high taxes.

Look at it like this. This decision is so bad that even public transit advocacy groups are criticizing it!

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/various/public-transport-critic...

> The public transport information service (Litra) and the public transport industry organisation Alliance Swiss Pass are also critical of general discounts. Public transport always costs the same, even if customers pay less – in the end, the taxpayer pays more, they said.

How bad does a decision have to be for the subsidized services themselves to tell you it's a mistake?

It comes on top of other catastrophically expensive recent socialist decisions like the 13th AHV, buying up so much housing in prime real estate and restricting it to low earners, etc. Where will the money come from? It will come from higher taxes on "high earners" like tech workers (ordinary tech workers). It will come from us. This vote increases the cost of public transport for us, and probably by a lot. It just won't show up on the ÖV bills.