Many governments control public transport fares, ostensibly to protect poor public transport users.
Recent experience in Jamaica and Barbados demonstrates the damage that can be caused by such constraints if they are not carefully designed and accompanied by an appropriate subsidy financing mechanism. In an ideal world, government dissatisfaction with the distribution of income would be dealt with by lump sum money transfers within the fiscal system. In such a world, public transport would simply be commercial. In the real world governments often do not have adequate fiscal instruments to achieve desired income transfers. Control of public transport fares is then one instrument used to countervail this inadequacy.