[sustran] Re: [NewMobilityCafe] Reinventing Transport in Cities: Pillar 1- Public transport should be free

[Chris Bradshaw]

If our goal is "new mobility", we cannot give a "pass" to transit, either to defend the status quo or suggest that everything would improved if it were free.   We don't want to fall into a kind of thinking I call "transit correctness."

I was a bit surprised to here the terms "transit-captive" and "transit-choice" uncritically mentioned.  This, of course means those _without_ a car of their own and those _with_ a car of their own.  In reality, it is the car-owner who lacks freedom.  To wit:

Yeates:

> ... the car still costs a lot in fixed costs if left in the garage, but that is the result of having cheap petrol and high fixed costs, rather than the other way round.

It is this misbalance between high fixed costs and low variable costs that makes a car-owner work so hard to not leave home without it (and actually fears being further than 50 m from his).  And since car-access is a monopoly for private-ownership rather than sharing, people don't have a choice to own just a "little" car.  We should be thinking about dividing the poipulation into the the "car-captive" and the "car-choice," or between living car-dependent and living car-lite. 

I agree that transit should pay its own way, but only if the car pays its own way as well.  The only way the latter will happen is if we move to a shared-car regime, in which, naturally, the costs are almost all variable, so that each use of the car is to be resisted.  Further, a shared-car regime provides little need for the car-travel that is stimuated by the need to take a car with you in order to have it available if a need arises, since shared cars are available everywhere. 

With the high-tech components carshare organizations naturally add to their cars, it is easy to charge users peak-hour congestion charges, area-congestion charges, and to limit speeding and other congestion-exacerbating behaviour (illegally turning left, blocking drivers behind).  And it will allow for one-way uses and spontaneous ride-sharing (as opposed to the stodgy risesharing for regular commutes) that could allow transfers between rideshare vehicles and transit.  (And, it would provide on-demand car-access to the people who have arrived at the job without a personal car!)

If that could happen, bus service to the suburbs (residences and business "parks") could be replaced by ridesharing in these types of vehicles.  Such a scenario would mean that transit in the city core would, as Jane Jacobs suggested in her last book, Dark Age Ahead, not need subsidy at all, and the other service would be totally privately provided by carshare organizations (CSOs).

I am presenting this vision -- and its contributions to walkability -- to WALK21 in Toronto in early October.

Chris Bradshaw
Ottawa