Monday, April 30, 2007
Mass Transit
So living in CA this bridge collapse is a big deal on the news around here. Close to 200-250k cars are going to have to find a different route or take mass transit. The governator declared all mass transit free for today. Which got me thinking.. what if mass transit in urban areas were free everyday during rush hour. Would it alleviate traffic? Would it be worth it instead of building 8 and 10 lane highways all over the place? Who knows but it may be worth a try.
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2 comments:
Parking and traffic is a big problem on our campus too. My company gave all employees a free unlimited bus pass and helped the city fund a large transit station on campus. Now thousands of employees ride the bus every day instead of taking up parking spots. You've got a good idea there. It has worked in small situations elsewhere... maybe you should write your government peeps.
If this is a temporary solution, for a temporary problem, I’d be ok with it. It’s OK to jumpstart a fix to a problem, but it should be a permanent solution. If this free rider ship wasn’t available, in time, the market will find an equilibrium. There’s a pain factor that people get to, where they’ll decide when to choose a different solution (mass transit), or put up with the current solution (driving in gridlock).
Take the case in Minnesota.
The MTC (Minneapolis transit Commison) is projected to not even be able to cover operation costs with their ridership fares. So every year, we subsidize the bus commuters.
On the other hand. They’re raising the gas tax. Not all of the vehicle and gas tax collected by the gas tax is put to roads, and some funds are diverted to the general fund. http://www.senate.leg.state.mn.us/departments/scr/report/transfund.htm
But, I’m a free market man, we should let the free market decide what is too much traffic and what is not. Ben had a great story about Microsoft having a parking issue, and they’ve relieved their parking costs by supplementing it with bus passes. Great to hear that a private company had a problem, and they took it upon themselves to fix it, which the benefited the whole community.
Oh yeah, we just passed another bill that would divert more money from the highways to support light rail. (Which can’t support itself either).
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