One of the many "alternatives" to #freetransit

The Oil industry is extremely capital intensive. By capital we mean not just money, but fixed assets: trucks, pipelines, wells, ships and such. As well, oil depends on the same sort of fixed inventory for consumption: roads, parking lots, cars, gas stations, and such.

Most of what oil does, move people around in cars, or goods in trucks, can be done much more efficiently with trains and buses. But if this waste is reduced, demand will drop. If demand drops, prices could drop. The return on money sunk into fixed assets would drop. When oil price drops, reserves become resources. In other words, no longer recoverable at market price, they are no longer assets. A vicious cycle would begin. Lower return, lower asset value of product, while fixed assets cannot quickly be reduced.

Public transit is a very serious threat to the oil industry. Free transit raises this threat exponentially. This is why you see so many "alternatives" pop up when some one suggests free transit.

Road pricing is a favorite. Road pricing continues the myth that we are a pay-per-use society. The so-called "conservatives" love this. The irony of their hypocrisy is almost poetic. They hate bureaucracy, but nothing creates bureaucracy like putting a toll on everything. If you want to see a good example, drive on the Tri-State Tollway outside of Chicago. Dozens of farms have been paved over so cars can wait in eight lanes so 35 cents can be collected from each car.

There are many other "alternatives" and there is an army of paid oil trolls, and free wannabe trolls, in various corporate media, who are eager to put them forward.

Why Motorists Should NOT Pay for Crash Investigations

This Streetsblog article starts out well. Calling out the autosprawl externalities.

Streetsblog New York City: "The same problem applies to private motoring, the costs of which are, in many cases, spread across non-drivers or society at large. The curb lane in front of my home provides free storage for my car-owning neighbors’ vehicles. A portion of my taxes go to maintaining highways I rarely use, caring for uninsured crash victims and asthma patients in city hospitals, bailing out the auto industry because it’s too big to fail, and fighting wars to keep oil cheap."

But then advocates pricing one of those externalities, the costs of collision administration. Adding fees likes this, road-pricing (tolls), and congestion pricing are not good ideas.

We need to take responsibility for our society as a whole, not create more bureaucracy trying, like hypocritical libertarians, to attach fees everywhere in until everything is "fair." Let's face it we have autosprawl. It's horribly expensive and wasteful. We should change it at the root cause, not apply bureaucratic band-aids.

Make public transit fare-free. Carbon dumping, collision costs, and oil wars have been free for autosprawl profiteers for many years. Free transit will shove the rudder in the right direction.

What's good, bad, in human transportation

Good

• Fare-free transit - breaks the back of autosprawl critical mass.
• Car sharing - allows people to live without car ownership
• Bike sharing/bike lanes - promotes car-free lifestyles
• Walkability - this should be the goal of all other plans
• Gardens/Farmers Markets with local food - less driving to supermarkets
• Good schools - reduce suburban flight and consequent commuting

Bad

• New subways - take people underground to allow cars on surface
• Bus rapid transit - in most cases supports suburban commuting and makes city more dangerous
• Bus on shoulder - seriously?
• HOT/HOV lanes - promotes inequality, tries to make the unworkable road system work
• Road pricing/tolls - squeezes the people for more money to keep roads working
• Solar panels/insulation for sprawl houses - avoids the problem - promotes inequality
• HSR - solving the wrong problem first, divisive

Mixed:

Rail projects, including HSR, can be good or bad, depending on whether they promote car-free living or are just trying to preserve the suburbs.

What is wrong with road pricing? Plenty.

The idea of road-pricing, aka congestion pricing, aka tolling, is that the free market should apply to roads, that users should pay, and they should pay more when demand is high.

This is a scam. The auto-system is unsustainable, has always been, will ever be. It exists solely by virtue of heavy subsidy, and the externalization and deferral of costs. Now the bill for deferred infrastructure maintenance is due, and there is no money. Things are bad, but the oil industry has great power and is insisting that the system be prolonged. One of their biggest trolls, Grover Norquist, says to keep the gas tax.

Road pricing is just a sneaky fake free-market way to raise money to save the already unsustainable auto system, locking us in to more misery in the future.

A much better solution is to gradually dismantle the auto system. This can be done by making public transit fare-free and increasing ridership. The increased ridership would lead to demand for more frequent service, which would lead to more ridership.

There would be no need for massive auto system infrastructure investment.

Free transit idea getting popular in Canada

Lorenzo Mele, a resource conservation specialist and social marketing practitioner, has been designing and managing environmental programs and services for 20 years.

Your City, My City: "Free roads? Why not free transit?

A recent Star editorial concerning road pricing generated the predictable response from the anti-toll crowd: we paid for the roads so we have a right to use them at no cost.

What if we all agreed that road use be free of charge, with one concession: public transit become free of charge as well? Consider this: we already pay close to 50 per cent of transit operating costs through taxes, why not go all the way and pay the full cost – it could be the cheapest way to give everyone equal access to transportation, and for those lucky enough to already own a private automobile it would be the most affordable second car they could ever buy."

Conservatism, highway subsidy, and the Lexus lane

Maryland Traffic - Photo Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

In a thorough, well-researched, and prescient article, Ben Ross of Maryland's Action Committee for Transit clearly lays out the insidious nature of the "Lexus lane." The Lexus lane and road-pricing in general are an attempt by so-called "conservatives" to reconcile their alleged free-market philosophy with their unquestioning support of highway pork. This article is must reading if on first glance you think tolling and privatizing highways are a plausible market solution to traffic congestion.

....These survey results suggest that the "Lexus lanes" moniker is well deserved. Who uses pay lanes is mostly determined by income. For most of the people in the free lanes, consumer sovereignty is a fiction. They haven't made a voluntary decision that their time isn't worth the price of a quicker commute. They are sitting in traffic jams because the toll exceeds what they can afford to pay.
Even if this is true, toll lane supporters respond, the lanes still benefit lower-income drivers. Those who can't afford to use the new lanes benefit from the added road capacity tolls pay for. With the wealthy on the new lanes, fewer drivers are squeezed into the free lanes, and everyone has a faster commute. The argument is logical, but it does not fit the facts. It turns out, excepting rare circumstances, that express toll lanes added to existing highways cannot raise anywhere near enough revenue to pay for their construction cost....Dissent Magazine

England free transport campaign heats up

Robinho rides the bus to practice - The Sun

The Manchester Campaign for free public transport is attracting a lot of support and attention. Voters recently rejected road-pricing, and are now hearing from the advocates of free public transport. Even the football stars are on-board.

Road-pricing hook baited with transit funds

The U.S. carbon-auto industry, through it's puppets in federal government, is tying transit funding to road-pricing. The taxpayer will pay for toll-booths, and then the roads will be sold to private companies who will then ration access to highways and special "lexus" lanes.

Folks, congestion is NOT the problem. It is a symptom of the problem. The problem is that taxpayers have paid trillions to support the unsustainable auto-and-sprawl system. Much private profit has been made and now the bill is coming due. The system is literally falling down.

Some smart California politicians are not taking the bait SGVTribune:

WEST COVINA - ....Congressional members, state, and local leaders expressed serious doubts about the toll plan, which they said would allow wealthy commuters to use the lanes at the expense of the working poor.

....The project proposed by MTA would convert existing HOV lanes on the 10 and 210 freeways into toll lanes that would charge drivers for using them.

....If the plan is approved, MTA would receive $214 million in federal money, which it could use to spend on additional bus and van service to use the lanes....

Congestion pricing and the Lexus Lane

The U.S. government has the job of building and maintaining the highway system with taxpayer money to keep the oil and auto profits flowing. This is a giant taxpayer subsidy to the private companies that profit from this otherwise economically unsustainable system.

Now the taxpayer is running out of money. So what to do? Privatize the road system. That is why you are hearing more about "congestion pricing" aka "road pricing". States will have to agree to road-price to get a few pathetic crumbs for public transit.

The well-off will speed along the private ["Lexus"] lanes and the rest of us will sit in jams. Of course, there still will be no place to park when you get there. The Washington Post documented this privatization campaign coming straight from the top:

...They and other political appointees have spent the latter part of President Bush's two terms laboring behind the scenes to shrink the federal role in road-building and public transportation. They have also sought to turn highways into commodities that can be sold or leased to private firms and used by motorists for a price....

...For Gribbin, Duvall and Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, the goal is not just to combat congestion but to upend the traditional way transportation projects are funded in this country. They believe that tolls paid by motorists, not tax dollars, should be used to construct and maintain roads....

WashingtonPost