ONE TOWN SQUARE: at the intersection of peak oil, climate change, and land use

Here’s an intriguing, well researched, and well thought-out idea from Dave Olsen at Planetizen: drop fares for public transit completely – make public transit free.

You might ask, how could we possibly afford to do this, particularly given the fiscal crisis confronting government at all levels? But take a look at the real-world examples Olsen provides, and the question becomes, how can we afford not to?

Charging fares for public transit doesn’t make economic sense. Collecting fares is as or more expensive than the revenue it brings in. And the higher the fares, the more ridership and revenue fall. In focusing on collecting fares instead of maximizing the public good that transit provides (i.e., transporting people while getting cars off of our congested streets), purveyors of public transportation become consumed with revenue-passengers and ways and means to squeeze every last cent out of people who are doing the “right” thing by abandoning their cars and using public transit.

Olsen argues the questions transit system operators ought to be asking are: What will bring more people onto our system? How can we make it more convenient to use? How can we grow our system every year? How can we coordinate/integrate better with other transportation systems?

Wherever fare-free transit has been tried, ridership has exploded, by 700%, 900%, 1200% and climbing. If the objective is to get cars off the streets, making public transit free really works.

Olsen mentions several alternative ways of funding fare-free public transit systems, methods that have proven track records either alone or in combination: sales taxes, property taxes, federal funding, passes, employer taxes.

Olsen has a vision of the community fare-free transit could result in:

Just imagine your transit system removing the farebox and funding transit in this way: anyone that could would get out of their car, climb on the bus (assuming your transit system prepared for this mass influx appropriately) and not only get to work on time feeling refreshed, but go shopping, playing, visiting, learning and generally rejoining their community, all for free! Corporations wouldn’t even notice the added cost (despite their wailing) and businesses could convert some of their existing employee parking to bike parking and use the rest of these expensive asphalt properties that they don’t sell to developers for more customers and clients, who now would travel without congestion.

The possibilities for urban renewal are many and vast, and — added to the need to critically reduce our carbon output and the epidemic of death and injury by automobile — it makes Fare-Free Transit a planner’s and politician’s tool like no other.

Finally, as Olsen points out, we have no choice.

We simply have to change our ways in order to stop the insanity that is destroying our own planet. Fare-Free Transit can’t stop global warming alone (the US military alone spews half of all the greenhouse gases we create as a species), but if more of us had this kind of bus to get on, one can only guess at how far it would take us toward creating the change that our children need to survive.