Free public transport: Everyone benefits - Everyone pays

From

Continueing my investigation of free public transport is the site "FreePublicTransport"! Its "Executive Summary" is as follows:

If public transit were free, more people would use it. Fewer auto-miles would be driven. Carbon dioxide emissions would drop. Everyone would benefit. It would be fair, then, that the cost would be paid by everyone.

Let's address the argument that autosprawl is good for the economy. The profits generated by millions of single family homes and millions of single occupancy vehicles are not real profits. The waste of resources and other societal costs are "externalized" from the calculation of these profits, passed on to the taxpayer, future generations, and other countries.

Check out the site.

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Climate to put heat on fish stocks

July 09, 2007
From The Australian

CLIMATE change is likely to put significant pressure on the nation's fish stocks, with new CSIRO research identifying the eastern and southeast coastlines as the most vulnerable to warming temperatures.

A new CSIRO climate change vulnerability index, to be launched today, finds coastal waters will warm by up to two degrees by 2030, encouraging fish to move south, threatening marine turtles, and potentially pushing box jellyfish down the east coast.

Scientists said yesterday fishing stocks potentially faced a "double whammy" from the consequences of fishing and climate change.

The climate change index, developed by CSIRO's Marine and Atmospheric Research Unit, considered seven large marine domains around Australia and determined their vulnerability to climate change based on five dimensions.

These were biological, regional characteristics, climate change, fishing, and other stress factors caused by human activity.

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Stop Charging People to Ride the Bus

July 5, 2007

From The Tyee (Canada)




This is the first part in a five part series about public transport, specifically in Canada though the principles apply the world over.

The time has come to stop making people pay to take public transit.

Why do we have any barriers to using buses, trolleys, SkyTrain? The threat of global warming is no longer in doubt. The hue and cry of the traffic jammed driver grows louder every commute. Yet since 2000, TransLink has hiked fares 50 per cent, and its board has just agreed to follow the staff’s recommendation to raise them higher still.

That kind of thinking is so last century. Just ask the mayor of San Francisco, a city similar in size to Vancouver, who ordered his staff to seriously explore the cost efficiency of no longer charging people to ride public transit.

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Read the article.

Also in the series:

• No Fares! A reader funded series
  
• Next door to BC, the Bus is Free
  
• No Hassle Transit? Try Hasselt
  
• Let's Knock Off the Fare Box
  

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