Pollution Free Cities

Pollution Free Cities: "Key Quotes:
“I would have mass transit be given away for nothing and charge an awful lot for bringing an automobile into the city.” (Michael Bloomberg, Mayor New York City)
“in 2000 the government subsidy to each private vehicle owner was about $5,378 in Canadian dollars. In that year, the average cost of providing each trip taken by transit in Vancouver was approximately $5. The equivalent subsidy for transit users would have been 1,075 free trips’
“Revenue for any system drops when ridership dips or when fares are increased.. the Simpson-Curtain rule.. It drops 3.8 per cent for every 10 per cent increase in fares, researchers have found.”
“public transport .. an essential public service, and as such, like health and education, should be paid for out of general taxation.”
“72% of people interviewed in a recent survey said they would not give up their car until they could use public transport without charge (UK survey)”"

Students fight for the free transit pass

NEW YORK -- About 1,000 New York City high school students chanted "This is what democracy looks like!" and waved homemade signs and banners Friday as they marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest a plan to eliminate their free transit passes.

The students walked out of classrooms all over the city at noon and converged at City Hall Park for a rally with elected officials and transit union members.

Then they marched across the bridge for a second rally near the former headquaters of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in Brooklyn.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=940476&category=STATE#ixzz0qgKDj4Ys

New York Students fight for free transit

Students are planning to walk out of 23 high schools to demonstrate outside City Hall against the threatened end of free bus and subway rides to and from school, protest organizers said Thursday. NYTimes

 http://wcbstv.com/topstories/mta.metrocard.student.2.1745808.html

Komanoff and Kheel New York Heroes

Reuters/Eric Thayer

Komanoff’s work may not have made him a celebrity, but his rigor gained him a reputation within the rarefied world of traffic geeks. In 2007, he got a phone call. Ted Kheel, a legendary labor lawyer and one of Komanoff’s heroes, had made it his personal mission to completely rethink New York City’s traffic policy. Was Komanoff free to help?

Now 95 years old, Kheel has been trying to improve New York’s traffic for more than half a century. He is obsessed with the economic damage that cars do to cities—damage that’s much greater than most people realize. In 1958, as the New York City Transit Authority was preparing to raise subway fares, Kheel wrote a paper citing a survey that found that traffic congestion cost more than $2 billion a year. “This vast sum,” Kheel wrote, “equal to $1 a working day for every man, woman, and child in the city, has to be paid by someone, and it is. It is assessed against all of us in the form of higher prices, inflated delivery costs, and increased taxes.” It would be cheaper, he argued, to subsidize public transportation and save the hidden costs associated with driving.

Kheel made the same point a decade later, in a New York magazine cover story arguing against another fare increase: “Any balanced analysis will surely prove that the taxpayer actually pays, for every person who chooses to drive to and from work in his own car, an indirect subsidy at least 10 times as great as the indirect subsidy now paid the mass-transit rider.” Reuters

Light Rail plans for 42nd Street New York

Michael Bloomberg - have the courage of your convictions !

He did venture to suggest his plan to charge people for driving into Manhattan would funnel millions into mass transit. He noted that more money would come from increased ridership and that the feds would kick in a bigger chunk of change. He allowed himself to imagine an ideal that is not likely ever to come to pass.

"I would have mass transit be given away for nothing and charge an awful lot for bringing an automobile into the city," he said.

A reporter might have expected a politician to then rumble away in a black SUV. He instead walked the two blocks to the G train without a single news camera to record the event. The subject of the subway fare again came up as he strode toward the turnstiles and he noted that the MTA currently offers significant discounts geared to those who commute underground.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/06/07/2007-06-07_its_hizzoner_to_ride_train-2.html#ixzz0l529D0I9

Peak Auto?

... The question is whether or not we in the USA will wake up to this new reality in time to take advantage of the economic opportunities and needs of the new era -such as the need for American manufacturers of streetcars, for instance.
The really good news in this story is that this could be a transition to a time when the carnage from motor vehicle crashes will no longer be considered an accepted part of modern life. A time when our urban places will once more be designed for people and not be trashed to accommodate cars. And when the profligate burning for mobility of the earth’s finite store of petroleum will be looked at as a quaint relic of the past. A past not unlike the one now regulated to the movies where people smoked in doctor’s offices and on airplanes. A past that causes us to say: what were they thinking?...Norman Garrick on Planetizen

How can I help?

When you plan your vacation, if you are going to a resort town, ask them if they have free buses. Contact the local Chamber of Commerce or mayor's office.  Many ski resort towns have free public transit. Other resort areas are catching on.

Public Transit - Fiscally Responsible Investment

It’s time to face what all of us know: much of our transportation system is broken. Traveling in the NY/NJ/CT metropolitan region is often a nightmare. In fact, transportation is our region’s number one economic and environmental problem.

Follow on Twitter        Webpage

"Connecticut is making significant steps towards spending its transportation capital dollars in a more sustainable manner," the report says. "Projected capital funding for transit projects is up significantly, and funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects has also increased." ConstructionPros

Costs of NOT HAVING free public transit

New York City – The average New York City driver loses $1,888 each year as a result of driving on roads that lack some desirable safety features, have poor pavement conditions or have inadequate capacity to meet travel demands. In total, New York State motorists lose $16.4 billion each year due to traffic crashes, additional vehicle operating costs and congestion-related delays, according to a new report released today by TRIP, a Washington, DC based national transportation organization.

Tripnet [PDF]