[sustran] Info on Free Public Transport or Transit

[EcoPlan, Paris]

-----Original Message-----
From: Lee Schipper [mailto:SCHIPPER at wri.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 2004 10:21 PM
To: Tramsol at aol.com; WorldTransport at yahoogroups.com
 

Trouble is it is very difficult to figure out how many riders are real
switchers from cars, how many would have walked (my case when I rode in
Seattle 10 years ago), and how many are real new trips generated.  Not
that I would demand 3 digit accuracy, but this is an issue if the busses
could be better deployed elsewhere..Do we have any figures from any of
these systems in any countries that give an answer?  

-------------------------

>>> Tramsol at aol.com 11/23/2004 6:02:21 AM >>> Many US Cities have RFZ
(Ride Free Zones) in the CBD (Central Business  District) and you pay
the fare as you leave the bus after it has left the RFZ.  THis  is a
useful tool for keeping MVR (Minimum Vehicle Requirement) down, as the
biggest burden on any cross-city route is where the bus is delayed by
drivers  collecting or even just processing fares, on the vehicle and
other vehicles in  the traffic queue.  By simply allowing walk-on travel
during the business day,  there is considerably less delay to and caused
by buses picking up  passengers, and the cost of this is calculated to
be greater than that for collecting  the fares .   

That essentially is the guiding principle on providing free public
transport.   The Belgian town with the free buses, is hasselt
(www.hasselt.be), which put  in the free bus service because it was
cheaper than building a third ring  road, and it allowed them to rip up
the tarmac on the original Green Boulevard,  constructed in the mid
1800's and eroded from a tree lined circular carriage  drive to a 4-lane
dual carriageway with a few scraggy remnants of the original  trees.
The conversion of the city into a pleasant place with reborn public
squares, and retail turnover 4 times higher per sq m than in mjor
shopping  districts in Brussels has attracted business to the town, so
that the local taxation  has, in real terms gone down, whilst still
paying for the free bus service,  and reducing the city debt, as the
city was no longer burdened by the draining  and downward spiral of
building ever more roads for the relentless supply of  cars to fill
them.  

We keep trying to tell this to cities like Glasgow where  roads are on a
par with New York in their dominance on the public doimain, and  lack of
maintenance - yet they still think a 6-10 lane motorway carving across
the south side, with predicted cost of £1bn will be an economic
benefit....I  wish I had their debt manager's skills in convincing my
bank manager I need  money to spend.   

It did take courage - as driven by Steve Steavert the then mayor, who
went on  to become the transport minister for Flanders, and the funding
from the  Flanders Regional sustainability initiative, and equally one
should remember that  80% of the operating costs for all bus services in
Flanders is paid by the  regional government. 

A book on the Green Boulevard Project was published, describing the
project,  and Jan Vanderputte the city transport manager (IIRC) has done
a number of  presentations on this. 

Fundamentally like all Green and 'free' transport there is a prime green
policy document, one which promises to pay the value printed on it, and
folds  neatly to go into your wallet.   

Dave Holladay Transportation Management Solutions  Glasgow