Asheville Transit: Broken Promises of Improved Bus Service – Yet the Associated Fare Increase Happens Anyway; More Fare Increases to Come

I would like to see Asheville have FREE public transportation. It’s the right thing to do. If the buses were one time, ran every 1/2 hour, ran until 10:00pm, ran on Sunday, and were FREE – people would use it. They wouldn’t have to pay for a car, gas, insurance, maintenance, parking – and they wouldn’t be polluting the environment and depleting natural resources. That would definitely keep Asheville standing out as an example. The Asheville city council just wants to join the crowd, raise the rates to match other cities, and watch in anticipation as their expectations that ridership will decrease come to fruition.
Asheville Transit: Broken Promises of Improved Bus Service – Yet the Associated Fare Increase Happens Anyway; More Fare Increases to Come�|�Asheville Street Sentinel

UK National FPT Campaign - Research site

FPT Research Group – Inaugural Conference

Posted on June 18, 2010 by fptresearchgroup

FPT Research Group – Call for Research Contributions
Inaugural Free Public Transport Conference – Birmingham Britannia Hotel, October 16th, 11am – 5pm
A message from Bob Jeffery (Research Coordinator)

The national Campaign for Free Public Transport has now set a date and booked a venue for our inaugural conference. Taking a somewhat broader approach than has been outlined in previous communications, we now wish to invite any and all academic speakers who wish to debate the merits of Free Public Transport specifically, but also issues around transport and society more broadly. Core themes are as follows:

*Evaluating Public Transport in UK
*Transport Economics
*Transport and Social Inclusion
*Transport and Climate Change
*Evaluating the merits of public transport subsidies
*Campaigning on Transport Issues

Read more...

Climate catastrophe is not coming...

It is here

China - Huantai County considering free public transport

4, free public transport, developed in a number of places in the economy will not run, and has achieved good social impacts such as Guilin, Yangtze River, Hengyang Nanyue areas where they introduced the free bus in the city after the Pubian be a welcomed by the people and establish a good image of the government and pragmatic, for local economic development, investment also played a good role in promoting. Huantai County as a hundred years, the county selected one of the country, from the economic strength and social needs of the urban public transport are necessary to improve the function as soon as possible. From simplified Mandarin via Google Translate:

Wisconsin - Young people make free transit work

APPLETON — A pilot project that allowed Appleton middle and high school students to ride Valley Transit buses for free last semester was so successful, it will be back this fall.

The Board of Education's business services panel this week recommended its partnership with Valley Transit continue at least another school year after hearing Deborah Wetter, Valley Transit's general manager, describe the positive impact it has had on ridership....

...Wetter said she sees something of a "cultural change" around appeal of public transportation and some adults' perceptions bus riding is only for "those people. That's a stigma we've been fighting for years." She said based on responses Valley Transit is getting, many of them on its Facebook site, the students are "educating their parents who had negative impressions." Post Crescent

Amy Huang makes the case for free public transportation

Promoting public transport encourage more people to use public transport and leave their cars at home, and not only does it have benefits for the environment and the flow of traffic, it also have sociological benefits.

With all these new debates and regulations about reducing green house gases in order to save our planet, there is one obvious move that no one seem to want to raise - free public transportation.

Public transport had been criticise for being unreliable, expensive and inefficient and the public simply does not want to sacrifice their privilege and comfort of driving their own car than sharing a crowded bus. The exercise of trying to ask car owners to drive less will never succeed if this continues.

By providing free public transport - it will give more incentive for everyone to start taking public transport. Car owners can finally justify it is indeed cheaper to catch public transport, and in term will result in less cars on the road, not only reducing green house gases but also ease congestion and road rage.

The problem with today's society and government, is that no one is willing to invest into public transport. Governments spend ridiculously amount of money each year in military budget and neglect there are more important things that need to be taken care of within its nation. If they would be willing to invest a little into public transport and making them free, there will be justification for its people to pay a little bit more tax and perhaps even willing to make donations towards running the public transports.

Catching public transport will also increase the social interaction between everyone. Driving is such a lonely task that isolates drivers from their surroundings. Catching public transport means more exposure to our surroundings and its people, perhaps even know more neighbours and fellow workers, and by more human interaction, we all become friendlier and bringing the communities together.

The long term effects of free public transport will mean more people will use it, less cars on the road, less green house gases released into the atmosphere, creates a more social-able environment and overall just a good initiative to take. Amy Huang on Helium

Free Public Transit saves money -- according to honest economists

...According to University of Washington assistant director of transportation services Peter Dewey, “Without vigorously managing our parking and providing commuter alternatives, the university would have been faced with adding approximately 3,600 parking spaces, at a cost of over $100 million…The university has created opportunities to make capital investments in buildings supporting education instead of structures for cars.” At the University of Colorado, free public transit has increased use of buses and light rail from 300,000 to 2 million trips per year over the last decade. The increased use of mass transit has allowed the university to avoid constructing nearly 2,000 parking spaces, which has saved about $3.6 million annually....
Read more... (buy the book): Principles of Economics by Libby Rittenberg, Timothy Tregarthen

UK - Campaign for free public transport expands

2nd Call for Papers - Inaugural Free Public Transport Conference

The national Campaign for Free Public Transport (after a a few false starts!) has now set a date and booked a venue for our inaugural conference. Taking a somewhat broader approach than has been outlined in previous communications, we now wish to invite any and all academic speakers who wish to debate the merits of Free Public Transport specifically, but also issues around transport and society more broadly. Core themes are as follows:

*Evaluating Public Transport in the UK
*Transport Economics 
*Transport and Social Inclusion
*Transport and Climate Change
*Evaluating the merits of public transport subsidies
*Campaigning on Transport Issues

I would also like to take this opportunity to apologise to those researchers who responded to our first call for presentations for the changing of dates, but I'm sure many of you will appreciate the difficulties of assembling a campaign with a truly national scope (we now have members or affiliates in Glasgow, Manchester, Norwich, The Isle of Wight, Bristol, London and many other places as well as ties to international free public transport campaigners - for instance the ambitious plan to finance free public transport in New York City by Charles Komanoff has recently featured in Wired magazine http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_komanoff_traffic/all/1 ) and in ensuring the representation of a broad range of organisations, activist groups, political parties and independents (support ranges from former independent MP Dai Davis to Guardian Journalist Lynsey Hanley to two of Britain's largest Trades Unions, Unite and PCS). Now the national campaign has had some time to coalesce we are ready to work towards this inaugural conference where we will debate the transport issues facing Britain and the wider world today, present various arguments for free public transport, and move forward by voting on issues of policy.

Presentations should last no more than 10-15 minutes and all efforts should be taken to make papers accessible to a lay audience. Abstracts can be sent to fptresearchgroup@googlemail.co.uk and the conference team will endeavour to notify speakers promptly. Please also get in touch if you have any further queries or would like to know how you can become more involved with the campaign and its national executive.

Your sincerely,

Bob

People die, car production continues

Record temperatures in northern India have claimed hundreds of lives in what is believed to be the hottest summer in the country since records began in the late 1800s.
The death toll is expected to rise with experts forecasting temperatures approaching 50C (122F) in coming weeks. More than 100 people are reported to have died in the state of Gujarat where the mercury topped at 48.5C last week. At least 90 died in Maharashtra, 35 in Rajasthan and 34 in Bihar. Guardian

US Youth not in love with the car

In a major positive trend for ordinary people/a major crisis for the investing class, it seems that, even in our car-pushing social environment, younger residents of the United States are starting to vote with their feet against cars-first transportation.DeathbyCar